1: THE FALL OF SATAN AND HIS PLAN FOR MAN
Our story must begin before the planet we inhabit was set in place by our Heavenly Father. There seems to have been a conflict in the heavenlies between the Almighty and one of His created angels, Lucifer. The latter evidently wanted more authority than he was being given, and challenged God Almighty. God's response was to throw Lucifer and one-third of the angelic hosts who followed this satan or "enemy," out of His presence. (Ezekiel 28)
I understand that many have seen this fall at a much later date. I will certainly not be dogmatic about the time-line. But the enmity between Lucifer and the Father seems documented enough.
From subsequent study of Scripture, such as Genesis 3:1, where Satan is seen in the Garden of Eden and the Book of Job, (Chapters 1 & 2)where he seems to have access to God's Throne -as a visitor- coupled to Ephesians 6:12, where the headquarters of demon activity is "heavenly places," we conclude that Satan and his hosts have been assigned for this present time to the earth's atmosphere. Thus is he called the "prince of the power of the air." (Ephesians 2:2). Jesus called him the "prince of this world."
We learn in Revelation 12:12 that he is to be limited, at a later date, to earth alone, and will wreak as much havoc as he can in the short time allowed. A further step down for this falling angel will be ultimate destruction in the lake of fire described in Revelation 20:10. Then will the Devil be in "Hell." He certainly is not now.
We must try to speak loudly only where the Bible speaks. Very softly I suggest a motive, perhaps the motive for all of Satan's activity is revenge.
Imagine having been the "anointed cherub," certainly the most beautiful and the wisest of all the created beings. Then favor is retracted, and you are unceremoniously dumped off the mountain of glory and splendor. Rebellion and revenge, all self-justified, fills his heart and he has always believed that he has a right, a just cause, for all that he does to the sons of Adam. He truly believes that all the kingdoms of earth should be his personal domain.
But even having gained all of earth's wealth, being a spirit entity he can never be thus satisfied. He uses these things to reach his long-term goal: replacement of the Lord God as ruler of all. If he can, by enticement, or force, or confusion, gain control of the hearts of men, he will feel justified in opposing God on God's own terms: love and free will. Men, he thinks, will eventually choose Lucifer, and, yes, even love him.
Perhaps he feels that by already having a large percentage of heavenly beings on his side, and then winning the voluntary allegiance of the majority of earthlings, his power will be so great as to eclipse, eventually, the Almighty's . Perhaps He thinks God will just "give up" after awhile, having been rejected so soundly.
He certainly knows how to deceive. My 11-year-old asked, during a family devotion time, "How can Satan read this book [we were studying Revelation] and still believe it is possible for him to win?" I told her that the devil is a liar. A deceiver who in fact has deceived himself!
And his work of deceiving man goes on unabated, untiringly. He wears many garbs, many faces. He can be seen as a lamb, or a dragon, or anything in between. He continues, refusing defeats that are handed to him by erstwhile Christians. But defeat will be his.
I here inject the plea for my readers to be sure they are not caught up in this defeat by being deceived by the religions Satan has created.
c. 4000 B.C.
Need I remind readers of the beginning of human history, the challenge of Satan to our first parents, and their agreement to his dominion? (Genesis 3:1-5) In this story we see the elements of all future enslavements by the enemy:
• his opposition to and questioning of the very words of God.(v.1)
• his desire for earth people to rely on themselves to cover their shame (fig leaves) vs. God's provision of a blood sacrifice to do that (animal skins).(3:7,21)
• his appeal to things visible and touchable, vs. God's appeal to intimate spiritual relationship with the Creator.(3:6)
Previews of Babylon, the confusion of the ages. God speaks, Satan questions.
Next we see the introduction of worship.(Genesis 4) Scriptures previously quoted indicate that Satan was closely involved in Heaven's worship, and perhaps we can deduce that he since has become a master of creating things that are "close" to the real thing, since he knows what the "real thing" is.
Worship. So what was wrong with what Cain brought with which to worship God? We can talk about an improper attitude, a lack of sacrifice in the gift given. But it would seem from further reading of the ways of God that the thing which draws the line between the true and the false in this area is the blood; that is, God's eternal purposes in Christ, His desire for selfless creations who will give all, His need for our entire being. I believe all of this is taught in the short passage mentioned.
But Cain...he did it his way, and played into the hand of him whose plan was gradually unfolding. Using Cain, Satan has eliminated the first righteous "seed of woman," perhaps believing that God was speaking of Abel in Genesis 3:15. We learn here that Satan simply doesn't know it all!
2: BEGINNINGS OF BABYLON
c. 2500 B.C.
The flood.
The story continues with more and more sin being introduced into the world. It looks as though Satan is going to win an early victory, when God decides to start over. The flood washes all away except eight righteous people. (Genesis 6-8)
But immediately the enemy begins his work on certain members of the family. Ham's disrespect for his father is recorded, and the descendants of Ham become a focal point in the enemy's plan.
Gaps in this Scriptural narrative are filled in by records of various civilizations of this time. I certainly do not want to suggest that secular sources are "inspired" in the Biblical sense. But God is not without witness in the secular world. Though the record is at times perverted and corrupt, the patterns of history eventually give testimony to the truths of the Word of God.
The Biblical record next mentions Ham's son Cush, then the son of Cush, Nimrod. (Genesis 10:6-12)
The name and person of Nimrod has given rise to much speculation and a certain amount of controversy. Before we launch into non-Biblical sources, let us lay the foundation God has already given us about this man in Genesis 10.
• v. 8. He began to be a mighty man on the earth.
• v. 9. He was a hunter.
• v. 9. He is said to be "before the Lord."
• v. 10. He is somehow instrumental in the building of Babel (the tower, later the city)
• v. 10 . He also builds Erech, Accad, Calneh, in "Shinar", and Nineveh, Rehoboth Ir, Calah, and Resen in Assyria!
• From Micah 5:6 we glean that Assyria becomes known as the "land of Nimrod."
Thus saith the Lord. What saith the facts of history? And from these facts what legends have arisen? The answer to these questions may well be a major key to the understanding of the mystery called Babylon.
The name Nimrod is sometimes spelled Nemrod, and there is today a major city by the Euphrates called Nimrud, traceable to the Biblical city of Calah, mentioned above.
Encyclopedia readings will inform you that this Nimrod resembles the world-renowned Gilgamesh, similarly a Babylonian hero noted as a mighty hunter. Now this Gilgamesh was "priest-king" of "Uruk," or as in the Bible, "Erech", which we know to have been built by Nimrod. Starr, in A History of the Ancient World, adds this interesting piece of information:
"One artistic symbol drawn from [the Gilgamesh Epic], that of Gilgamesh strangling a lion, was handed down age after age until it appeared in medieval cathedrals in Western Europe."
Perhaps you see faintly where our tale leads us. Let us return to the main trail of evidence.
Rabbinical traditions say that Nimrod ordered the building of a tower as an act of defiance against God. They agree with fellow Hebrew Josephus, the famed first-century historian, who states in his Antiquities of the Jews (Book I, chapter 4, vs. 1-2), that God had intended the post-flood people of earth to send colonies abroad "for the thorough peopling of the earth."(Genesis 9:1 agrees!) They disobeyed, and the tower of Babel scattering was the outcome of their disobedience.
But why did they disobey? Josephus:
"Now it was Nimrod who excited them to such an affront and contempt of God...he persuaded them not to ascribe [strength] to God, as if it was through his means they were happy, but to believe that it was their own courage which procured that happiness. He also gradually changed the government into tyranny, - seeing no other way of turning men from the fear of God, but to bring them into a constant dependence upon his [Nimrod's] power. He also said ...he would avenge himself on God for destroying their forefathers!"
Forerunners of humanism, "up with people" mentality, and as you will see, a whole lot more...
Nimrod has been in some places equated with Marduk, the great Babylonian god who is the central figure in pagan mythology for thousands of years. Thus Nimrod could be placed Biblically wherever the term Merodach appears. (As in Isaiah 39:1, Jeremiah 50:2) The names "niMROD" and "MeRODach" could indeed be from the same root.
He also sounds a lot like Greece's Orion and Rome's Romulus, mighty hunter-warriors about whom fantastic tales are spun. He is in fact a mythological Everyman, one who seems to be the very source of all of Babylon's lies, the man behind the myths.
So, this man is said by God to have been the founder of the Babylonian and Assyrian kingdoms. Do you not marvel how the inspired writer passes over this fact as though it were nothing? Men make a big deal of their kingdoms; God is not impressed.
What does grip God's heart is that His creation is once more straying from Him, trying to find a visible security, especially security from future floods, but also a way to get to Heaven without relationship to the Lord of Heaven. This way of doing spiritual business is the essence of Satanic worship.
It is important to identify here the land of which Babylon was a part, the "land between the rivers." Ancient history books begin the description of this Mesopotamia with an account of Sumeria, probably the first civilization known to man. Most of Sumeria's history lies before the flood. By the time of Abraham, (2000 B.C.) it is said that the Sumerian nation vanished.
Mesopotamia then becomes host to the "Semite." The history books usually omit that the Semite is the descendant of Sem or Shem, that son of Noah who will carry on the blood line that leads to the true "Seed of woman." Semitic presence in the middle of the third millennia B.C. corroborates the Biblical story of Noahic sources for all earth's present peoples.
c. 2450 B.C.
With Nimrod and company come the actual beginnings of Babylonia/Assyria in this same Mesopotamian region. Through him and his followers come an early perversion to the truths Noah and his sons, probably especially Shem, propounded as they came from the ark. Their transmission of a personal knowledge of the one true God quickly begins to deteriorate as it is passed on and then blatantly corrupted by God's angry enemy. Nimrod, the mighty one "before the Lord" (as in Genesis 13:13, where the same Hebrew preposition has been changed to "against" in speaking of God's relationship to Sodom's citizens) works overtime in disseminating his false religion of works.
Nimrod's first city, Babylon, has a name which is itself a study in confusion. The Scriptures rightly tell us that the original tower of that city, perhaps patterned after, or the pattern for, the Mesopotamian ziggurat, was called in Hebrew "confusion" or Babel. The word from which this one is derived is bawlal, which Strong's Concordance defines as "mixing".
So this is God's view of what is happening. He confuses men who have added their own ideas to God's .
But, checking this location in the scholarship of men, one will find that the "original" name for the town is actually kadingira (in Sumerian) or bab-ili (Semitic). Now, Bab-ili means "the gate of the gods."
So, man explains the phenomenon of Babylon in terms of gods of his own choosing. God continues to say, "You're confused." Jesus later will say that the "gates of hell" will not prevail against His church (Matthew 16:18). In Babylon, the so-called gate of the gods is actually earth's gate to hell and death, but it will not prevail against those who are truly Christ's.
As Babylonian thought progresses, the idea evolves that man is created to relieve the gods from the tedium of work. Thus "works" are constantly needed to make man pleasing to the gods. Then, in this changing culture, human representatives become needed to speak to the "rest" of humanity. These chosen ones become priest-kings, actually living in the temple erected to the false god.
From this start comes an elaborate priestly administration. There are priests for incantations, priests for ordinary offerings to the gods, exorcist priests, singers, priests for anointings, omen-interpreters, actors, female temple prostitutes, other priestesses. (from The Greatness That Was Babylon, Saggs, p.346)
The gods and goddesses behind all this administration are likewise a slow evolution. The deities recognized become the standard-bearers for ancient mythology, albeit under a myriad of names, for 3000 years! And over and over, these "persons" are nothing more than reflections of the creation rather than the Creator.(See Romans 1:20-23)
Before formally meeting these false ones, keep in mind that in Babylonian thought, gods are not lifted up as an example to be followed. They are merely a personification of forces, an answer to the inevitable questions of man. These "gods" are in fact quite human at times. Though they are to be feared and obeyed without question, they are unquestionably frail. So, true morality, to the Babylonian mind -then and now- becomes a matter of obedience to an overlord rather than doing the right thing for the right reason.
Though at times the rules and regulations in Babylon have seemed to be narrow and intense, a closer investigation reveals that "anything goes" in Satan's kingdom. The one essential is submission to the top man, that is, outward conformity. The condition of the heart in Babylon is considered a personal thing, not vital.
How different the domain of God! In that realm, the heart is won first, and the person so won becomes a voluntary subject of the Lord, willing to be used in any capacity.
But in Babylon confusion reigns. Doctrines of a million demons are all accepted and somehow absorbed. As long as one is inside the walls, saying "yes" to the top man, there is no end to the confusing possibilities of belief.
Babylon knows no "narrow way."
