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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks About the Tempter (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 037. The Battlefield
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The Battlefield
This leads up naturally to the sphere of Satan's activity. Where is this great struggle going on? Will you note that there are five places of residence or headquarters of activity assigned to Satan in God's Word? First of all he was in the presence of God. (Eze_28:13-17.) After his fall, he was cast out of that presence; his headquarters were moved to some place below the throne of God, and above the earth, as the chief sphere of his activity and ambition. (Eze_28:16; Luk_10:18; Eph_2:2; Eph_6:12.) That is his present scene of action, and will be until the close of the present order of things.
After a while he is to be cast down to the earth. (Rev_12:7-9.) Then follows the time when he shall be cast into a place called the "abyss" or "pit"; (Rev_20:2-3.) and afterwards he is to be consigned to what is called "the lake of fire." (Rev_20:10.) Our practical concern just now is wholly with his present headquarters and sphere of activity.
His headquarters is somewhere above the earth; the sphere of his activity is the earth and the atmosphere that envelops it. His titles "prince of this world," (Joh_12:31; Joh_14:30; Joh_16:11.) "prince of the powers of the air," (Eph_2:2.) "the god of this world" (2Co_4:4.) indicate that. The two great temptations in which he himself was chief actor were on the earth, in Eden, and in the Wilderness.
In the attack upon Job, two of the disasters that came were war—an evil spirit aroused among men—and two of them were wild storms in the atmosphere that surrounds the earth.
In the remarkable story of Daniel, tenth chapter, the opposition to Daniel's prayer was by some evil spirit-being, who intercepts God's messenger on his way from God's presence down to where Daniel was on the earth. While the old man was praying on his knees in the woods down by the river Tigris, two spirit messengers, one from God, the other opposing God's messenger, and so from the enemy's camp, were wrestling up in the spirit realm above the earth. But the wrestling was regarding something down on the earth.
The very striking passage in Mark's Gospel (Mar_4:35-41.) makes yet clearer the sphere of activity. A great storm had arisen while our Lord slept on a pillow in the hinder part of the boat. It must have been an unusually fierce storm to have so thoroughly frightened these old sailors. In distress and alarm they awaken Jesus and ask for His help. Notice both His action, and His words. The usual reading is He "rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace be still." The more literal reading is immensely suggestive and helpful. "He said to the sea, Lie down, be muzzled." It is the sort of language one uses in speaking to a dog that is misbehaving. If the word be repeated in the sharp peremptory tone of command, in which one speaks to his dog, it makes the sense yet more intense and real;—"down sir! lie down!"
The whole passage is significant. It is not the sort of language to be used in talking merely to wind and wave, especially by as even-poised a man as our Lord was. There is at once the recognition of an evil spirit, or a group of them, who had aroused the unusually violent storm.
The very language used is a recognition of personality. There was some one at work through wind and water. He is ordered down. He obeys. There was a great calm. But the point to mark just now is that his sphere of action includes wind and water as well as the earth. Mark keenly why this is the sphere of his activity—because we are here. It is us he is after, and through us the dominion of this realm.