No. 74 - THE CHESS MATCH By: John J. Blanchard Wednesday, October 19, 2005 Feast of Tabernacles Great chess players have incredible minds. I don’t know if you have ever read any articles about these famous chess players. I have read about them. Sometimes in the sports pages, believe or not, they will have the chess standings and matches. They have incredible minds. They have tremendous powers of concentration. To be a great grandmaster or chess player you have to have tremendous powers of concentration. They have minds like steel traps! I remember a few things that I have read about Bobby Fischer who is a genius. Bobby Fischer is a grandmaster. He reputedly knows every move in a major tournament over the last two hundred years! When he is facing an opponent and they make a move, he knows if they were defeated by another grandmaster by such and such a move, by memory studying famous chess matches! I have a friend who is an 82-year-old man, who is still alive, for whom we have done a lot of work with our construction company. He was telling me a story about how he worked his way through college. He had the good fortune of landing a job taking care of an invalid. This guy was a master chess player. His job was to take care of this guy but also to play chess with him every day. He was paid to do this. This fellow is no slouch himself. He is a good chess player, but he is also an engineer. He has a good mind, but he could never beat this man! Visiting champions would come into this guy’s house and would play him. One time a Russian grandmaster came to play this guy. He had heard about this fellow, and he liked to play anybody who stopped in town. He was a state champion, by the way. He defeated the master in just a few minutes! The Russians are famous for their chess players, and they are very, very good. This grandmaster was way too much for this fellow who was way too much for everybody else in his state. It is interesting. I also remember another Russian grandmaster by the name of Boris Spaski who would make a game out of playing two hundred people at a time! Have you ever seen that? He would have a big arena, and he would have two hundred people out there, all of them good chess players in their own right. There were not slouches out there either. He would go around making moves just running up and down the aisles, and he would defeat them all! He would not do this once or twice, he made a habit of it. It was a way for him to keep in practice. It would be a waste of time for a person like me to play a master or a grandmaster at chess. There is just no way I would stand a chance. Probably nobody in this room would stand a chance, because they have those tremendous powers of concentration and that gift for keeping their focus on the game and remembering what moves work and what moves don’t. Where am I going with this story about chess? Have you ever wondered why Satan never gives up? Isn’t God the greatest? Why doesn’t Satan just throw up his hands and give up? Why is he always after you and me? Why is he always trying to defeat God? Doesn’t he realize it is hopeless? The only answer there must be is he feels he has a chance. It is obvious, he must feel he has a chance to defeat God. Today we are going to examine a little bit of what makes Satan tick, why he keeps going, why he doesn’t want to give up and why he really cannot give up until the game is over. THE BURDEN OF BEING THE CHAMPION First I want to examine God’s burden. When you are the best at anything, you have a burden. You have something to prove. If you are the world champion of anything, everybody comes gunning for you. God has a burden on His shoulders that He must carry. His burden is His word. Turn to Titus chapter 1, if you would. There is something that we often overlook here right at the very beginning of the book. We will read Titus 1:1-2. God does have a burden on His shoulders. God promised before time began that He would have beings who would be given eternal life and share the God nature with Him. This was a promise, and He cannot lie. He cannot be wrong. He can never ever make a mistake! That is a big burden to have on your shoulders. To always have to be right and never make a mistake is a big burden. Turn to II Timothy 3:16. “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.” What God is saying here is all scripture is given by inspiration of God. If you were to look that up in the Greek, that is “God breathed”. So the book you and I study (the book we call the Bible) is indeed His word that has been spoken by Him. There can be no errors in it! The whole thing is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction and instruction in righteousness to help us become righteous and perfect like Him. There cannot be a mistake in there. He cannot have any errors. That is the burden that is on God. That is the burden He carries. God’s word is completely binding. When He says something (when He makes a promise), He is bound by that promise. Turn, if you would, to II Peter. We do not have time to go through all the promises of God. There are many of them in the Bible, but II Peter chapter 1 refers to them. II Peter 1, verse 1: “Simon Peter, a bondservant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who have obtained like precious faith with us by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ: Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness…” All the things that we need He has given to us. “…through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.” Those are loaded scriptures, brethren! We are told we are going to be able to partake of God’s divine nature because of the promises He made, which are exceedingly great and uttered in His word! God carries around this load that He can never fail. One of His names is El Shaddai which means God Almighty. There is none greater than Him. There is no one greater. He is the greatest! He and His Son Jesus Christ (the Elohim) together have the mind that is the mind of all minds! They are not just chess players. They are not just grandmasters. They have the intellect that created everything that we can learn and everything that we are. They sustain the entire universe! They created a concept called free will (free moral agency). This is something God created. Then they created a class of being called angels and gave them free moral agency. Within that class of beings called angels they had a pinnacle of their creation. It was the angel Lucifer who was the most perfect thing They ever created! He was brilliant! He was beautiful! He was powerful! He was very, very smart! Ezekiel chapter 28 tells us something of this being They created. They must have been very pleased when They finished giving him life and existence. After having talked about the king Tyre and showing physical human attributes of a human king, these scriptures turn to look at another king behind human beings influencing human beings. That king is the king of this world. He is the god of this world (with a little “g”), Satan. But at this time at his creation, his name was Lucifer. Read Ezekiel 28:11-15. This was God’s apex of the things He created. This being, Lucifer, was the finest example of what God had ever created. If you were to look up the term Lucifer in the Hebrew you would find heylel which means lightbringer or morning star, to be clear or to shine. He was a lightbringer. We know the light represents the truth in the Bible. Lucifer was like a go-between between God and the angels, and eventually God and man. He was bringing the truth back and forth. Angels are messengers. He was the chief of all of them! He was the cherub who covered. He was taking messages straight from the throne of God and bringing light. He was the morning star, the light bringer. Because he was a covering cherub and the plans of God go before physical creation (remember Titus 1:1), he was there when God was devising the plans that you and I hold in the Book called the Bible. God was outlining We are going to do this and We are going to do that. We promise eternal life. We are making these promises. And God was devising the eventual replacement for Satan and his demons (they were not demons at that time). Satan was there listening to God and the Word talking. He heard, and he knew what was going on. Lucifer got an idea. Turn, if you would, to Isaiah chapter 14. Isaiah chapter 14 speaks of Lucifer again. Read Isaiah 14:12-15. Satan started thinking. I think I can pull something off here. I can ascend above the other angels in power and might to actually rule like God! I can ascend to God’s throne and be like God. I can run this congregation. I can take over the congregation of God (which is the people of God that would eventually come along), and I will be the ruler of the universe! He thought I can do this. It must have been possible in his mind to pull off. This must have been doable. He came up with this scheme and started taking the angels his way. He could do this because he was a lightbringer, and he could twist the truth. He could tell the things that he wanted to and leave out certain things. He got one-third of them to come his way. When he concocted this scheme, his name was changed to Satan, which means “adversary” or “accuser” or “destroyer”. He became God’s mortal enemy. Ezekiel chapter 28 again talks about what happened to him when God saw that this is what Lucifer was doing. We will go back to Ezekiel 28:16. “‘By the abundance of your trading you became filled with violence within, and you sinned; therefore I cast you as a profane thing out of the mountain of God; and I destroyed you, O covering cherub, from the midst of the fiery stones.’” He did not destroy Satan. He destroyed his power. He was no longer allowed to be the covering cherub. He was no longer allowed to come into the throne of God, before the very God, with a job and a position. But if we were to follow through and study all of the aspects of Satan, you could see he could still accuse. So he could still at that time go up to heaven and accuse as far as what other angels were doing and eventually of what other people were doing. But he could not have a position in the heavens at God’s throne. His position was destroyed, and he was cast out of the throne of God like a profane thing. This beautiful and perfect being was cast out like a profane thing. Jesus Christ witnessed that as the Word, and He said so in Luke chapter 10. Turn to Luke chapter 10 for a brief comment by Jesus Christ about Satan. Luke 10, verse 17: “Then the seventy returned with joy, saying, ‘Lord, even the demons are subject to us in Your name.’” He had sent out seventy teachers. They came back impressed with the powers that they had. Christ said to them in verse 18: “‘I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemies, and nothing shall by any means hurt you.’” He said I saw when God the Father decided this being has to get cast out of heaven. I saw him cast down this way like a bolt of lightning because he was a morning star (a light bringer). He said I saw that happen. God the Father and I have authority over this being, and I have passed that on to you so it is not amazing that the demons have to do what you say. It is incredible power. If you were to turn to II Corinthians 4:4 (which we do not need to), Satan was called the god (little “g”) of this world. From that time on he was a god figure over the earth, once he was cast out of heaven and on the earth. He was a god of this world, but he was a corrupter and an accuser. Satan co-opted God’s plan. Remember he knew a lot of the details. He has possessed a Bible just like you and I have. He and his angels can study the Bible just like you and I do, so God had to do some amazing things to be able to defeat this being. We will see some of that today. But he co-opted God’s plan at the very beginning. Turn back to Genesis chapter 3. Remember Satan was at the Garden of Eden. So once he was cast down and could no longer have a position at the throne of God and became Satan, he was still there in the Garden of Eden. Read Genesis 3:1-13. From that point Satan had co-opted God’s plan. Because he caused sin and could accuse Adam and Eve, he took to himself the people God created in His own image and likeness. That has led to six thousand years of pain, misery and suffering. Now what I am about to say is not meant to trivialize in any way what took place in the Garden of Eden or what followed in the last six thousand years. It is only meant to clarify and to help us understand how these beings are at war and at opposition and how God is going to defeat Satan. It is to help us understand these things, and it is to help us understand why Satan will not quit. A CHESS MATCH BETWEEN GOD AND SATAN I want to liken the ensuing war between God and Satan to a chess match. It is a match between a super grandmaster and a master. This is a super grandmaster who has everything at his disposal intellectually but against a very brilliant master. It is a battle between unequal foes, to be sure, because God is superior in every way. But Satan has two advantages. He would not have gone into this if he thought he had no chance. He has two advantages (two aces up his sleeve). One, he possesses God’s play book. What if you as a general or a coach knew everything that the other general or other coach would do, or you thought you knew everything they would do. Even if he were the most brilliant coach or most brilliant general, wouldn’t you think you could defeat him? That happened to Robert E. Lee, I believe, at the Battle of Gettysburg. His plans fell into Union hands. Robert E. Lee was the best general in the Civil War, but he lost that battle. In great part, because his enemy had his plans. Satan said I was there when they planned all this stuff. I listened to the Father and Jesus Christ talk. It took Them thousands and thousands of years (maybe millions; we do not know), and I was there hovering over Them! I think I can do this. Satan also has another advantage. Because of the burden that God has, he only has to beat God one time. Once God has made a mistake and once you make God a liar (once you make Him wrong), He is defeated. So God knows I can never make a mistake against this being. Never! Satan thinks I know that the plan of God allows for me to have six thousand years to rule over the earth. Surely I can beat Him one time if I have His play book. Surely I can do this. He convinced a third of the angels he could do it too. God set such a high standard for Himself also realizing I cannot be beat, and I won’t be beaten! He never says, “if”, “and” or “but”, he says, “I will”. When He says He will do something, it is going to happen. How this all plays out for the six thousand years is amazing. God has defeated Satan at every turn! God promised the gates of hell will never prevail against Him or His Church. That does not mean we cannot be hurt or we cannot suffer some dire consequences. Remember the gates of hell have to beat everybody who has been called by God and received the Holy Spirit. Christ is living there. We will see this as we go along. TRYING TO DEFEAT GOD THROUGH MEN In Genesis 3 after the co-opting of God’s plan, God pronounced a curse on Satan. Go back to Genesis chapter 3. Read verses 14-15. God pronounced a curse on Satan. Since Satan took mankind to himself, God said you are going to lick the dust. You are going to have to defeat Me through men, and I will defeat you through men because I made those men in the image and likeness of Myself and My Son. The battle is on the earth through mankind (the dust of the earth). Satan has been against the woman (the Church) from the very start. God said there would be enmity (there would be war) between you and Me through the dust of the ground. He said you are cursed to have to defeat Me through the dust of the ground. Since you took them to yourself, you will have to beat Me through them. Satan had no choice but to try to defeat God through humankind from that point forward. There was no more trying to get a position at the throne of God. This was going to be done here on the earth. If you were to look up that term “dust”, it is just gray dust. It is the word aphar in Hebrew or clay, earth or mud. That is what we are composed of. He had to lick the dust of human beings to try to get us to sin and to try to influence us with his words by his influences and with his broadcasts. But he and the demons still thought we can still do this. This is still doable. They are so inferior. They are just the dust of the ground. Do you see how feeble their minds are compared to our brilliance? They cannot even see us! They do not know where the broadcasts come from. They do not know where the influence is. They are full of weaknesses! Did you see how I defeated Adam and Eve? It was so simple! We can do this. So the battle ensued! Satan attacked humankind at every front. He caused every human being to sin. We have all fallen short of the glory of God except One, so that means he failed in that attempt. He failed because he has to do it to everyone. There can be no successes on God’s side. God had one who lived a life that was perfect without sin. He had to try to cause the prophets to lay an incomplete foundation, so he killed them and persecuted them. He did anything he could do. He put false prophets out there, Balaam and everyone else. Balaam failed. All the prophecies were written and everything was accomplished, but he attacked on many fronts. He said we will destroy Israel and Judah, the keeper of the law (the keeper of the word). They are the recorders of the oracles. We will destroy them with armies or with anything we can. He came close to destroying them, but he did not. They are still here to this day. The Jews still have the Torah. We can still go to the calendar because of them and know we are on God’s calendar. He came close. Even in World War II he almost wiped them all out, but he did not do it. He failed. It was another attempt where he failed. He had to halt the foreshadowing of what God was going to do in the spiritual realm in the Church (the body of Christ) after Christ’s first coming, so he said we will destroy the temple. We will destroy the sacrificial system. We will destroy the holy city, Jerusalem, so they have nothing to look to. But he did not do it quickly enough. They were there long enough (four hundred and some years) going through the rituals that God gave to Aaron and the prophets, as well as the cleansing of the temple. Then we could look back, so when God tells us in the New Testament I am going to build a spiritual temple, now we can look back. They still have the plans. The Jews can still show you what it looked like inside. We still know what they were doing there and what it meant to get away from sin and cleanse the earth. This is what the high priest, the temple and the whole sacrificial system was for. So he failed. We can still look to that and learn. He put out all kinds of false religions. He thought we will confuse them. They will worship us instead of the real God. They will worship creation instead of the real God. We will make them worship idols instead of the real God. We will put so many false religions out they will never find the true one! We are here today to prove he did not succeed. It was another failure. He said surely we can get Christ who is a human being to sin if we cause Him enough pain and suffering. Surely He will cave in. But he failed. Before that he said can’t we strike a deal. Christ, we can strike a deal. You don’t have to go through all the suffering. You know it is in Your Bible, and I know it is there, too. There is a lot of suffering I can cause You. If You will just agree to worship me for a minute. Just for a second say I am okay, and I will give You the earth! But he knew he would be able to have an existence not on the dark side of the universe but with humanity and around the earth. But God would be the king with Satan around him. Christ said, no! He used scriptures to defeat Satan. It was another failure. He could not strike a deal with Christ. Satan tried but could not do it. Satan said we have to find a prophecy that we can cause to fail. God made some promises here. One of them has to backfire! We are going to make something backfire. He tried to get the Jews to bring in false doctrines. He tried to get the Church to bring in false doctrines. The Church went underground. The Church was protected. He failed! As much as he tried to get the Church to reject the truth, there were always enough people to keep it going and pass the torch (as Mr. Herbert Armstrong would say) to the next era. Every time it looked like he was going to overwhelm that Church era, God said we are moving the candlestick to the next one. We will start again. Satan was defeated over and over in his attempts to get the Church to give up. He wanted to halt the progress of God building His temple of 144,000 firstfruits. He wanted God to get say 110,000 or 120,000. God said there will be 144,000 firstfruits. I have a funny feeling since the firstfruits are going to rule over the earth and the earth is going to be divided up into cities and what not for these people to rule, there are probably at least 144,000 princes of Satan over this earth. They are going to get replaced along with Satan. Christ will replace Satan, and there are 144,000 people who are going to replace his demonic powers (his other demons). He said all we have to do is get one of these positions not filled. But the dust keeps coming. We keep having children. We keep having offspring. God keeps calling. Since Jesus Christ’s first coming there have always been people who respond to the call. People say I will lay down my life for the world. I will pick up my cross and follow Jesus Christ. I will give up all selfishness. I will become part of this plan. God says if you do this with Me and you let Me live in you (if you will let Me work in a body of Christ composed of many people), you cannot imagine what I am going to give you! And we can’t, brethren. We can barely scratch the surface of what God wants to give all of us, but we have to hang in there. Once we have committed and put our hands to the plow, we have to stay the course. Satan knows that. He says I am going to get one of these positions empty; we are going to stalemate God this way. But the converted keep coming. The flesh and blood keep coming. Every time one of them dies preserved with their crown and their calling, Satan says I did not make it. It did not help him to kill eleven of the twelve apostles. He murdered them by martyrdom. It did not help him. It did not help him to kill Christ. It did not help him to kill any martyr who had the Holy Spirit, because you cannot kill a spiritual being. Christ says I am living in you. I am dwelling in you. It is not you who live anymore. Once you have agreed with Me, I have put My Holy Spirit in you and we covenant together, the body can die, but do not be afraid of who can kill the body. Be afraid of who can kill the body and the soul (the spirit that I put in you). This is what you must fear, and God says we are going to win! God says I am going to defeat you through human beings, and it started with that first defeat at Jesus Christ. There were a lot of prophecies that God made in the Bible. Many of them had dual meanings. We want to look at that for just a moment. I want to digress for a little bit. Let’s take a minute and go back to what God shows us in the scriptures about what happened to the Church. I want to turn to Revelation chapter 12. Verse 10: “Then I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, ‘Now salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren, who accused them before our God day and night, has been cast down.’” When Christ was resurrected to heaven, Satan could no longer go there to even accuse. He is down here accusing. The angels were very happy about this, but they were sad for us. Continue reading in Revelation 12:11. “‘And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death. Therefore rejoice, O heavens and you who dwell in them! Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and the sea! For the devil has come down to you, having great wrath, because he knows that he has a short time.’” Christ took that position from him when he was resurrected. From the point that he lost his position, he knew his time was short. According to the Bible time schedule, which he knew, he had about two thousand years left of six thousand years overall. He knew that, and he said we are going to get busy working on these firstfruits. We are going to defeat God this way. Continue reading in Revelation 12:13. “Now when the dragon saw that he had been cast to the earth, he persecuted the woman who gave birth to the male Child. But the woman was given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness to her place, where she is nourished for a time and times and a half a time, from the presence of the serpent.” The Church was nourished by God in a remarkable way, and Satan could not quite destroy them. It did not matter if he killed them physically. He had to beat them spiritually. Verse 15: “So the serpent spewed water out of his mouth like a flood after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away by the flood. But the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed up the flood which the dragon had spewed out of his mouth.” He spewed a flood of everything he could send after the Church. He used armies, persecutors, false religionists and false prophets, but he could not stamp it out. Eventually the earth swallowed the flood, and it made it possible to have a tremendous work in the Philadelphia era. People had free will to choose from the knowledge of the tree of good and evil. More and more governments started to say we need religious freedom. We have to stop persecuting people. We have to give people freedom of speech and freedom of expression. There were certain governments (nations who were descendants of Israelite nations) who said we are not going to tolerate religious persecution. We are not going to tolerate the government having a specific religion they endorse. What did that allow? That allowed the Church of God to do its work! Satan could not stop it. Human beings passed these laws. The Philadelphia era took off. The word (the gospel of the kingdom) was spread throughout the world as a witness. Satan tried to stop it, but he could not. He could not do it. Verse 17: “And the dragon was enraged with the woman, and he went to make war with the rest of her offspring, who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.” He went after the last era. He went after the remnant which was the last era left, and he did it in a very vicious way. He was enraged because he knew the time was ticking, and he knew he was down to the very end of his reign if he did not do something drastic and very quickly. He started going after the Church in a very unique way at the end of the age. Satan wants to deny Christ a bride. He knows if he can do that, he has made God a liar. He has made God wrong, and he will have defeated God. But all of Satan’s schemes so far have come to naught, and they will come to naught. God is brilliant! We cannot imagine the mind power of God! It is just completely awesome. God even laughs when He sees what Satan is trying to do. I want to read a little bit of Psalm 59 verses 8 and 9. “But You, O Lord, shall laugh at them; You shall have all the nations in derision. I will wait for You, O You his strength; for God is my defense.” God says you wait for Me. I am going to take care of this situation. He laughs at the nations. Is He laughing at the physical nations of the earth? We are so weak compared to God. We are no challenge for Him whatsoever. The nations that God is really laughing at are the nations behind the nations, which are Satan and his demons. Turn, if you would, to Psalm chapter 2. We will prove that in just a second. Of course, God could snicker at what human beings could try. As a matter of fact I will tell you a little story. I hope I can get it right. I just read it recently. Apparently Titus, the Roman general, who sacked the temple in 70 A.D. had a general who was just ahead of him. I am trying to remember his name. He was afraid to touch the temple and the Church of God because he had heard about the reputation of God. The city of Jerusalem had been surrounded by these Roman armies. They came out and wanted to strike a deal with this general. He said I cannot make this deal with you. They wanted certain numbers set free, and they wanted to protect the Torah (the Bible). They said if you let some of us out, keep and protect the Torah, and keep some of the things of God, we will make a deal with you. You won’t have to sack the city. He said I am very fearful of this. I do not want to sack the city, and I cannot make the decision not to. It comes from higher up. This rabbi said I know. One of our prophets have told me that you will be Caesar. The guy said you cannot say such a thing. Caesar is Caesar, and I am just a general. At that time a runner came up (a messenger) and bowed down before him. He said Caesar has died, and you are now proclaimed Caesar! He thought this is amazing. That is when Titus of Rome took over. Titus was a horrible general who was very sacrilegious in his view of God. He put down the Great God of the universe, sacked the city, did tremendous damage and then told the rabbis who wanted to make a deal with him that your God is nothing to me. I am just paraphrasing. I will trample him just like I trampled your city. So he was taking the holy vessels from the temple on a ship back to Rome. A big storm came up, and so everybody was fearful. They started throwing stuff overboard so they would not sink. One of the people on the ship said this is because you profaned God’s name. You blasphemed God back there. He said there is no God that can stop me! This sea, I say, cannot fight me. God let the sea calm down. He got back to Rome, but while he was still on board the ship a prophet came up to Titus and said there is a little enemy for you to defeat when you get on land. Titus disembarked the ship, and when he got on land, a little insect flew around his head and up his nose. This is according to Jewish history. It lodged in his brain and grew and grew. I forgot the number of years he had it. It was quite a number of years. He was in incredible pain and then he died. When they did the autopsy, there was a thing growing in there that looked like a bird that grew in his brain. They said exactly how much it weighed. So he did not get away with much. That is from a Jewish history record that I read. I hope it is accurate, but that is the story they give. I would not want to be the one to blaspheme God! Satan has done this seriously. Turn, if you would now, to Psalms chapter 2, verse 1. “Why do the nations rage, and the people plot a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord and against His anointed…” If we were to just read this as a physical scripture and say the kings of the earth got together to defeat Jesus Christ and His anointed (which would later be the Church), there is a case to be made for that. But who was really able to defeat God? Could human beings defeat Him? We do not stand a chance. It is Satan who moves the nations. Satan fights for the dust of the ground. So he is the nation behind the nation. DEMONS OVER THE NATIONS As a matter of fact (and you can check this out), if you were to look up the term nation or nations in the Hebrew, you will find it is goy which means a sense of massing of a foreign nation like troops, hence a Gentile. But there is a figurative or spiritual definition that follows that, that says a troop of animals or flight of locusts. There is a dual meaning here, obviously. I will digress for just a moment because I want to prove this to you before we conclude the sermon. Anciently physical nations were used to defeat God’s people (Israel and Judah). Satan moved nations to try to defeat them such as Babylon, Greece and Rome. It was primarily those three nations but Egypt before that. Satan and his demons rule over these people. Turn, if you would, to Isaiah chapter 14, which we have read a part of already. Isaiah 14, verse 3: “It shall come to pass in the day the Lord gives you rest from your sorrow…” That is when the Millennium starts. “…and from your fear and the hard bondage in which you were made to serve, that you will take up this proverb against the king of Babylon, and say…” It is following that in verse 12 where God says, “How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!’” So we see the king of Babylon is Lucifer. Babylon means confusion, so Lucifer is ultimately the king of Babylon. We can see that as far as the physical sense goes in the Old Testament. Physical Babylon did attack Israel, but it was influenced by Satan. Satan is king over a spiritual realm called Babylon. Turn, if you would, to Daniel chapter 10. We are just getting a short glimpse here into the spirit world. Daniel 10, verse 10: “Suddenly, a hand touched me, which made me tremble on my knees and on the palms of my hands.” This is Daniel speaking. “And he said to me, ‘O Daniel, man greatly beloved, understand the words that I speak to you, and stand upright, for I have now been sent to you.’ While he was speaking this word to me, I stood trembling. Then he said to me, ‘Do not fear Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart to understand, and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard; and I have come because of your words. But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days; and behold, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, for I had been left alone there with the kings of Persia.’” The kings of Persia and the prince of Persia were evil demons that this angel had to fight his way through to answer the prayer of Daniel. It took him three weeks to do it. Interestingly enough, they are princes over a realm that is named the same as the country below them. They are called the kings of Persia. Drop down to verse 19 of Daniel 10. “And he said, ‘O man greatly beloved, fear not! Peace be to you; be strong, yes, be strong!’ So when he spoke to me I was strengthened, and said, ‘Let my lord speak, for you have strengthened me.’ Then he said, ‘Do you know why I have come to you? And now I must return to fight with the prince of Persia; and when I have gone forth, indeed the prince of Greece will come. But I will tell you what is noted in the Scripture of Truth.’” He is bringing a message to Daniel to answer Daniel’s prayer. He said I fought my way through these princes and kings of Persia to get here. Following them will be another prince from Greece, another demon, named over the same country that followed the Persian empire (the Greek empire). Over the nations of the earth there is the king of Babylon, and we saw earlier in Ezekiel 28 the king of Tyre who was Lucifer. There are kings of Greece and Persia, and as we will see in a minute, over Rome there are demons that work in the affairs of men. Turn, if you would back to Revelation 12 where we will see this. We will read a little earlier in the chapter this time. Revelation 12, verse 1: “Now a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a garland of twelve stars.” This is the same woman that Satan was told you will have enmity between this woman and you and your seed. This is the Church. Verse 2: “Then being with child, she cried out in labor and in pain to give birth. And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great, fiery red dragon having seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems on his heads. His tail drew a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to give birth, to devour her Child as soon as it was born.” The congregation of ancient Israel and the prophets who prophesied and worked so hard for the first four thousand years were the people (the congregation, the woman) that gave birth to Jesus Christ. In the physical lineage you will see that that is true, and in their spiritual work you will see that that is true. And who was waiting there when He was born to destroy Him? It was the dragon. In my Bible I do not recall a dragon there. I remember Herod sending troops. The dragon (the demon over Rome) influenced the dust of the earth to try to kill Christ. Satan has to work through the dust of the earth to defeat God, and God will work through the dust of the earth to defeat Satan, which is why we had to have Jesus Christ become a man. He had to live a perfect life. God only had to do it one time to start the whole process off to start the defeat of Satan. We see here that physical nations are ruled over by demons, and these demons have influence. They are the prince named over that country or over that region. We have seen it in the Bible. How about that figurative definition, the locusts? Turn to Joel chapter 1. It is an end time prophecy. DEMON LOCUSTS Joel 1, verse 1: “The word of the Lord that came to Joel the son of Pethuel. Hear this, you elders, and give ear, all you inhabitants of the land! Has anything like this happened in your days, or even in the days of your fathers? Tell your children about it, let your children tell their children, and their children another generation. What the chewing locust left, the swarming locust has eaten; what the swarming locust left, the crawling locust has eaten; and what the crawling locust left, the consuming locust has eaten. Awake, you drunkards, and weep; and wail, all you drinkers of wine, because of the new wine, for it has been cut off from your mouth.” Verse 6: “For a nation has come up against My land, strong, and without number; his teeth are the teeth of a lion, and he has the fangs of a fierce lion.” Satan goes about as a roaring lion. Verse 7: “He has laid waste My vine, and ruined My fig tree; he has stripped it bare and thrown it away; its branches are made white. Lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth…” And think here about the ten virgins. “…for the husband of her youth. The grain offering and the drink offering have been cut off from the house of the Lord; the priests mourn, who minister to the Lord. The field is wasted, the land mourns; for the grain is ruined, the new wine is dried up, the oil fails. Be ashamed, you farmers, wail, you vinedressers, for the wheat and the barley; because the harvest of the field has perished. The vine has dried up, and the fig tree has withered; the pomegranate tree, the palm tree also, and the apple tree, all the trees of the field are withered; surely joy has withered away from the sons of men.” That is why it appears Satan may finally have won, but he did not. We know that Jesus Christ says that fig tree is going to start to bud and bear fruit again. It did not die; it just came close. Turn, if you would, now to Revelation chapter 9 to prove the source of these locusts. Read Revelation 9:1-12. We do not have time to go through all of this today, but you can see here the source of the locusts that stripped God’s vine is Satan from the bottomless pit. He has stripped God’s vine (His vineyard and his fig tree) bare. That is why the definition of nations is twofold. There is a physical side and a spiritual side. The real enemy of God is not mankind; it is Satan. God laughs at his nations and their plans to defeat Him. Now you see how that works. God laughs at this brilliant being who is a master, but He says I am a super, super grandmaster! What do you think you are doing? You should have left well enough alone. SATAN IN THE TEMPLE This is how the Church has come to be in the fix we are in, brethren. If you would, turn to II Thessalonians for confirmation of that. Go to II Thessalonians chapter 2 and read verses 1-5. This being who had the audacity to try to take God’s throne in heaven has succeeded at the end of the age to sit in God’s spiritual temple. He thinks he has God defeated, but he doesn’t. History, in a sense, is repeating itself from a physical previous fulfillment to a dual spiritual latter fulfillment. That is what we are being told right here. Paul was saying when you see this happen, that is when to be afraid. But that is also for us to know when Jesus Christ’s return is at hand! He is going to save us before no flesh is left saved alive of the body of Christ. So it is not going to happen, brethren. We are not going to be defeated. The gates of hell will not win. God and Jesus Christ are going to win. We, brethren, are God’s holy vessels. Turn, if you would, to I Thessalonians just back a couple of pages. Read I Thessalonians 4:1-4. We know we are the temple of God and we are part of the holy city of God. That is what the Church is, and that is what God has been building. But God has within there the vessels that He is using. Human beings are the vessels, the Potter’s clay, molded in the things that He can use to bear fruit. Think back to the ten virgins carrying the oil in their vessel. Now go back to II Corinthians chapter 4. Read verses 5-7. “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels…” in the dust of the ground. We carry this truth of God and the oil in the dust that we are. “…that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us.” He continues on in verses 8-16. Whether we are captured, whether we are down or whether we are persecuted God has not forsaken His Church, and those who love the truth will stand again. Keep the oil in your vessels. Be ready to trim your wicks because that is our job now, brethren. That is our job. It is a very important job because we are the tail end (the remnant) bringing up the last group to form the hundred and forty-four thousand and relieve the earth from this terrible suffering it has been going through. Satan should have known you don’t mess with God’s holy vessels. He did it physically, and what happened? We are going to go back and look at that. Turn to Daniel chapter 5. It was one move he should not have made, but it was one move where he really had no choice. Daniel chapter 5 talks about the incident after Nebuchadnezzar had crushed Jerusalem and crushed and destroyed the temple. He hauled off the holy vessels. His son Belshazzar had a feast where he profaned these vessels and blasphemed God. Let’s read a little bit about it. We do not have time to read the whole thing. Daniel 5, verse 1: “Belshazzar the king made a great feast for a thousand of his lords, and drank wine in the presence of the thousand. While he tasted the wine, Belshazzar gave the command to bring the gold and silver vessels which his father Nebuchadnezzar had taken from the temple which had been in Jerusalem, that the king and his lords, his wives, and his concubines might drink from them.” Can you imagine the audacity? Verse 3: “Then they brought the gold vessels that had been taken from the temple of the house of God which had been in Jerusalem; and the king and his lords, his wives, and his concubines drank from them. They drank wine, and praised the gods of gold and silver, bronze and iron, wood and stone.” They praised the idols that represented Satan and his demons who were over Babylon at the time. Satan was mocking God! What do you think of that temple now? What do you think of this move, God? How are You going to beat us now? We have your vessels! You know the story, but we will read a little bit of it. Drop down to verse 13. “Then Daniel was brought in before the king. The king spoke, and said to Daniel, ‘Are you that Daniel who is one of the captives from Judah, whom my father the king brought from Judah? I have heard of you, that the Spirit of God is in you, and that light and understanding and excellent wisdom are found in you. Now the wise men, the astrologers, have been brought in before me, that they should read this writing and make known to me its interpretation…’” I did not read the incident, but it will be explained here in a bit. A detached hand started writing on the wall next to the king. Of course, he was terrified and so was everybody else present. They brought in Daniel to explain the writing because they could not figure it out. Drop down to verse 18: “‘O King, the Most High God gave Nebuchadnezzar your father a kingdom and majesty, glory and honor. And because of the majesty that He gave him, all peoples, nations, and languages trembled and feared before him. Whomever he wished, he executed; whomever he wished, he kept alive; whomever he wished, he set up; and whomever he wished, he put down. But when his heart was lifted up, and his spirit was hardened in pride, he was deposed from his kingly throne, and they took his glory from him.” It is a like a minor physical portrayal of what happened to Satan who is also called the king of Babylon. Continue reading Daniel 5:21-29. But it was too late. He had taken the vessels of God and blasphemed God. He made a mockery of the sacred symbols, and he was destroyed that very night! It was over for him that very night. SATAN HAS BEEN CHECKMATED Brethren, we are starting to understand Satan has fooled with God’s sacred spiritual vessels. If God became that angry over a physical building and blasphemy of His word through physical things, how angry is He today that Satan has fooled with the Church of God (the temple of God) and tries to sit in the temple of God showing himself that he is God? God is not going to take this much longer! The game is almost up. Satan has been checkmated, brethren! Just like Belshazzar, that was his last move. You are looking at one of the last moves Satan will ever make. His time is just about over. Our job now is to get ready and get rid of every spot and blemish. We need to trim our wicks, because our Redeemer and our Savior is nearly here. He will take us by surprise! We have been looking at this far too physically. He will take us by surprise, but if we watch, prepare and pray, we will be ready and be the bride of Christ. That is my prayer that all of us would see that. Work hard and diligently with whatever time we have left.