Satan's Strategy
Most people assume Satan’s strategy is simply to create all the sin, hardship and pain on earth that he can. But it is far more complicated than that. Satan’s actual strategy is completely focused on opposing God in order to keep himself out of the Lake of Fire, a sentence which was handed down from God long before man was created, and that is all he cares about. Everything else is merely a means to try to achieve that outcome. Satan is now in an appeal stage for his sentence since he questioned how God could do such a horrible thing as condemn creatures He created to eternal punishment, and he accused God of being unfair, unloving, and a liar. A harsh accusation and absolutely false, but God decided in His infinite grace to grant Satan an appeal trial, therefore Satan's sentence is being delayed during human history to allow him to make his case. The creation of mankind became a large part of this appeal trial, and Satan's plan is now using mankind to try to stay out of the Lake of Fire.
Since Satan's focus is on the single goal of proving why he and his fallen angels should not be sent to the Lake of Fire, he will do anything to achieve that goal. That is certainly where evil and chaos come into play, but these are not the main part of Satan's plan. The main part of his plan has a broader goal of showing that God is both unfair and unloving toward humans and that God has also lied about the prophesies of the Bible, which is God’s Word. Satan figures that if he can prove God is unfair, unloving or a liar then God would be no better than Satan. It is a blasphemous plan, certainly. But if Satan could actually prove any of these assertions he would escape his sentence to the Lake of Fire, but then, God would not be God, so the assertions are impossible to prove. But it is all Satan has to work with so he never gives up trying. The consequences of failure are what drive Satan to extreme measures, and he does not care who gets hurt in the process.
It is helpful to remember that Satan is a created creature. He does not have foreknowledge of future events except as revealed in the Bible. So he is a student of the Bible as a source of “intelligence” about what he must do to try to thwart God's Plan. He cannot read minds. He can only be in one place at any given time. His power and operations are limited by God, and he must comply with God's rules or he will be imprisoned. He is not as physically powerful as the elect archangel Michael. He is a super-genius but is not omniscient, only very smart; and he has been around a long time so he knows a lot. But he has the exact same soul design as any human, just in a vastly superior body. He is extremely arrogant, vain, a total liar and filled with hatred, all of which blind him to reality and cause him to make very bad decisions. This is merely to point out that Satan must play by certain rules and that he does not have anything near the mental or physical capabilities of God. If Satan is going to influence history and people, he must do so by convincing people to join his side, not by physical force or cosmic powers. When a physical matter does occur such as demon possession (rarely) it is a result of first giving in to Satan's persuasive influence. Given all that he has found very effective ways to influence and persuade people by playing to the basest instincts of mankind; and when human history ends most people who ever lived will have fallen into Satan's plan by their own bad choices. So we must give him his due, that given the constraints God has placed on him, and the fact that he is merely a created creature, Satan is very effective at influencing massive groups of people to join his evil cause. And that cause is entirely self-serving, not a matter of trying to accomplish anything useful or helpful for the people he ensnares.
We will begin with a summary of Satan's strategy, and then fill in the details. This helps put the overall issue into perspective so we do not get lost in the details.
Satan's plan unfolds in stages and focuses on different issues during different periods of time. His primary focus and most ambitious plans were aimed at the promised Messiah Jesus Christ. Satan first tried to prevent His arrival, then tried to kill Him or stop Him from providing salvation during His First Advent. Once those had failed, Satan's focus changed to proving God to be a liar by trying to prevent Biblical prophecies from being fulfilled as God has promised. Satan reasons that if any prophesy of the Bible is not fulfilled, then God has lied, and God would be as imperfect as Satan. Another focus is to show that Satan can provide mankind with the things God has promised, and sooner, and also without all the restrictions God imposes. A primary part of this portion of the plan is to convince as many people as possible to join with him and reject God's plan for salvation. This may only look like a "misery likes company" approach, but he figures it adds to his argument if more people choose him than choose for God, showing he is more popular than God, which in essence is a popularity contest with God. During the Church Age Satan also opposes believers as he has during all Ages, but the Holy Spirit puts additional limits on that opposition against Church Age believers. And since Satan rules this world he is also trying to provide a perfect environment on earth, which God has promised as part of the Millennial Kingdom under Jesus Christ. But if Satan could do that first, he believes it would show him to be better than God in man's view since Satan would appear to treat people better than God, giving them a Satan-produced millennium apart from God so that man would reject God's true Millennial Kingdom. This perfect environment approach is a current primary focus. Then near the end of Satan's appeal trial during the Tribulation Satan's only remaining game plan is chaos, evil, and trying to kill all people on the earth and especially all Jews since they are part of Biblical prophecy for the Millennial Kingdom. Satan believes that given enough chaos anything might happen. That is where the Tribulation comes into play. In all of these approaches Satan's focus is to prove God unfair, unloving or a liar so that he just might slip out of his sentence to the Lake of Fire. As we see, Satan's plan is multi-faceted and changes to meet the various Ages of human history. We also see how Satan not only focuses on doing evil things, but is also highly focused on doing "good" as he defines it to show he is as good or better than God. He believes that if he can show himself to be good in the eyes of mankind then he will win his appeal trial and avoid the Lake of Fire. If all of this sounds like the plan will likely fail, that is correct. But Satan continues to try anything and everything he can, hoping something just might work. Satan has memorized the Bible, and he knows how it all will end. But he wants to write a new final chapter which ends "...and Satan and his fallen angels lived happily ever after." Severely delusional.
That is the overview of Satan's plan, and we will fill in the details as we proceed. But first, how did things get to this point anyway?
Satan was the most favored angel in Heaven for a very long time, maybe thousands or possibly even millions of years. He was created by God to be the most powerful, best looking, smartest, most personable angel of all. Therefore the view most have of Satan as an ugly red beast is untrue. He was very close to God and had the best of everything available to him. Ezekiel 28:12 says of Satan: “This is what the Sovereign Lord says: ‘You [Satan] were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. 13 You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone adorned you: 14 You were anointed as a guardian cherub, for so I ordained you. You were on the holy mount of God; you walked among the fiery stones.”
As the number one angel in heaven Satan had the best of everything. At some point he became arrogant and desired to have more authority than God allowed, so he led a revolt against God, recruiting many angels to follow him. Satan's original coup attempt occurred long before the creation of man when he revolted against God and declared “I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars [angels] of God...I will make myself like the Most High” (Isaiah 14:13-14). Satan's thinking was that he could set himself up as ruler of a group of angels living apart from God's authority, essentially a group under the rule of Satan and entirely apart from God. Satan looked at God and wanted to be like Him. He lusted for God's power. He did not think he could be God, just be like Him in the sense that Satan wanted to be a separate ruler adored by his own group of followers, and not be under God's authority. This is why Satan fell. It was a lust for power. After all, Satan was the smartest, most powerful, best looking angel God had created, so he reasoned he was very special and capable of doing what God did. He saw the authority and power of God and wanted it for himself, which induced an arrogance leading to revolution against God. Pride precedes the fall. (Proverbs 16:18)
Ezekiel 28:15 also covers the fall of Satan due to arrogance:
"You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created till wickedness was found in you. 16 Through your widespread trade you were filled with violence, and you sinned. So I drove you in disgrace from the mount of God, and I expelled you, guardian cherub, from among the fiery stones. 17 Your heart became proud on account of your beauty, and you corrupted your wisdom because of your splendor.”
Satan and the other fallen angels waged war in heaven against God and His elect angels, and of course Satan's side lost. A trial occurred, and Satan and all fallen angels were judged guilty and sentenced to the Lake of Fire before mankind ever existed. We can surmise from what the Bible says about associated issues that Satan objected to his punishment by saying an eternity in the Lake of Fire was unfair, and not what a loving God would do. As a result God allowed an appeal trial, and this is where mankind entered the picture. God created one man and one woman, with souls exactly like angels' souls but in much lower bodies, and placed them on earth to start the process to resolve the issues of God's perfect fairness and perfect love. During human history mankind is on earth to prove that God is a fair and loving God, and that Satan’s sentence to the Lake of Fire is justified and consistent with God’s perfect character. Therefore, Satan’s future is tied to the human race, so all his plans are linked to human history. His plan has had several components to this point, some are ongoing, and some are yet future. And contrary to popular belief, Satan has never been to Hell, and he certainly does not rule over it. Hell (Torments) is a temporary holding cell for human unbelievers until they are judged at the end of history and it is not meant to house angels. The Lake of Fire will replace Hell, and that is the destination of Satan and his angels as well as all human unbelievers. This sentence will be carried out for both groups after human history has ended. This shows how human history is tied directly to what is known as the "angelic conflict."
We see that Satan's fall resulted in a very long-running angelic conflict in which mankind plays a significant role, and it continues even now although Satan has already been judged guilty and sentenced to the Lake of Fire. In fact, this angelic conflict is why man was created. Satan’s revolt against God resulted in 1/3 of all angels choosing to join with Satan, while 2/3 remained loyal to God. This divided angels into elect and fallen angels. Once this separation of elect and fallen angels occurred, each group was on a separate path toward eternity. With this background of the angelic conflict in mind, we will now begin to discuss how Satan’s plan affects earth and the human race. First of all, Satan is the legitimate ruler of the world despite stealing it. He stole it from Adam at the time of the fall of man in the Garden when Adam was the ruler. God put Adam in charge, but Adam lost the rulership to Satan when he sinned. In his role as ruler of the world, Satan is a despot and generally incompetent, more so than most understand. He is a super-genius, but his arrogance blinds him into making very bad decisions. He opposes all of God’s desires for mankind to have individual freedom, engage in enlightened self interest, and have the freedom to choose between God’s plan and Satan’s plan. In contrast, Satan wants to force mankind to accept his plan over God’s plan and submit to him, rather than to freely choose God. Satan’s plan is one of force and subjugation of mankind. Satan does not like mankind, and does not care what happens to anyone unless they can help further his evil plan. He only cares about staying out of the Lake of Fire, and he is determined to use mankind to achieve this goal. Of course, it is all foolishness on Satan’s part and certain to end up as God has already ordered, but God is allowing Satan every opportunity to prove his point. This is where mankind suffers in the process at the hands of Satan’s plan. But God gives each one involved the choice to chose a side, God's side or Satan's side. Those are the only two options.
God established ground-rules for the appeal trial, so Satan must remain within those rules just like any court of law requires proper procedure. God divided the appeal trial after the Garden of Eden into stages of history, therefore a discussion about how God divided human history into periods of time, referred to as Ages in the Bible, helps us understand why and how Satan’s plans have changed in relation to them. A brief review of Ages is in order to see how Satan's plan changes to line up with the various Ages of time. God has a multi-faceted plan for human history which must play out in stages. Those stages each have different requirements and rules (covenants) necessitating changes in God’s direction to man during the various Ages of time, which also requires Satan to change his own plans. God has divided human history into the following Ages:
1) Age of the Patriarchs: from Adam until Moses
2) Age of Israel Part I: from Moses to the Cross, then an interruption inserts the Church Age
3) Age of the Church: from the Cross until the Rapture (Resurrection of the Church)
4) Age of Israel Part II: resumes and finishes during the seven year Tribulation
5) Millennium Kingdom: the 1000 year reign of Christ completes human history.
Satan's plan changes to oppose God during each Age as he seeks to find a way to prove God unfair, unloving or a liar. Prior to the start of the Ages of time Adam was given rulership over the earth, and his throne room was the Garden of Eden. When man eventually sinned, following a pattern similar to Satan's sin, God provided salvation through the future Messiah who would eventually be Jesus Christ, proving God's love and fairness to unworthy mankind. This came as a shock to Satan who thought he had just won his appeal trial by tempting the humans into sin. Now God had thrown him a curve ball. Mankind was allowed to expand in numbers to provide a broader test to further disprove Satan’s assertions about God being unfair and unloving, so Satan revised his strategy. One change in Satan's favor was that he had gained rulership of the world, since Adam had lost that rulership by sinning. After being thrown out of the Garden, mankind's new role for each one who would be born was to choose for or against God. Each person was required to make a simple choice. They could use their free will to accept the gracious gift of eternal salvation through Jesus Christ the Savior, or they could reject it and remain in Satan's realm. God's salvation offer showed Satan that God is not only perfect righteousness and justice, but also perfect love and completely fair. These combined traits can legitimately put Satan and all fallen angels into the Lake of Fire as punishment due to the finality of their rejection of God. Now we will take a look at the various sub-plans in Satan’s overall plan as he tries desperately to avoid his certain doom.
Satan’s appeal trial started the day man was created. Satan’s first plan was to tempt the man and woman to disobey God, which was to sin and therefore “fall” just as Satan had. God established only one way man could disobey Him and sin, which was to eat the fruit of one prohibited tree. The tree was a simple yes/no daily test for the man and woman. And they were created with both a soul and human spirit, but with no sinful nature, therefore any temptation to sin would only come from outside of them. Satan looked at the situation and surmised that if he was able to tempt the two humans to sin, he would win the appeal trial and his sentence would be canceled. Unknown to Satan, God had a surprise in store since God knew Satan could eventually tempt the humans well enough to induce them to sin by eating from the one forbidden tree. But Satan did not know about God’s salvation counter move. Satan lied to the woman and deceived her into eating from the prohibited tree. Satan told her in Genesis 3:3 “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?...4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” Satan tempted the woman to eat, lying to her about spiritual death, and playing to her own desire for power to be like the Most High God, mirroring Satan's fall. And when Adam saw what she had done, he saw no choice except to join her and face the consequences together. When they had both sinned, Satan rejoiced and thought he had won his appeal. Then God offered the sinful humans a way of salvation, which they both accepted. That changed everything. The rules from then on were to enable mankind to proliferate, and each person born after that time would be required to make choices for or against God, and would either join God’s side or Satan’s side. That is the simple summary of human history, which is each person who is born must make choices. Each must choose to accept or reject salvation, then those who choose to accept salvation must choose to live the spiritual life God requires or reject God's plan for their life.
After God offered salvation to fallen mankind Satan’s strategy changed to focus on opposing God on the issues of salvation and also to oppose those who would accept salvation, seeking to counter any and all choices made by humans in favor of God. Since God had promised a Messiah to provide salvation to mankind, Satan’s new plan was to prevent the Messiah from completing the mission of reconciling man to God. Therefore Satan became highly focused on shutting down the Messiah. Satan reasoned that if the Messiah were prevented from fulfilling His mission, God would be a liar and no better than Satan. Then mankind could only turn to Satan for help. That would make the appeal trial a draw, and Satan and his angels would not be put into the Lake of Fire.
Satan's strategy to thwart the Messiah took several forms, some quite unusual. They included attempts to kill off all mankind, corrupt the lineage of mankind, to kill the Jews since the Messiah would come from Israel, to kill the Messiah once revealed, to disqualify the Messiah, and to get the Messiah Himself to sin and fall. Let's take a look at each of these.
We know from the Bible that some angels did not follow God’s defined rules for the angelic conflict and were imprisoned in several places including the Abyss, under the Euphrates River, and in Tartarus, and they remain there at this time. 1 Peter 3:18 “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit. 19 After being made alive, he went and made proclamation to the imprisoned spirits [fallen angels]— 20 to those who were disobedient long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built.” We see that some of the fallen angels violated God’s rules for the appeal trial of Satan, and were imprisoned for it. This was what happened in Satan’s first ploy to corrupt the lineage of the Messiah and prevent Him from being born a true human. His ingenious and outrageous plan is outlined in Genesis chapter 6, and involves fallen angels fathering children with human women. As outlandish as this may seem, the plan nearly succeeded in corrupting the humanity of the world. At one point, only eight humans remained true humanity, namely Noah, his wife, and their three sons and wives. The rest of the people on earth were half human, half angel. This is possible since the souls of man and angels are exactly the same. And the angels were capable of sex, so male fallen angels were capable of fathering children with human women. Genesis 6:2 says: "the sons of God [fallen angels] saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. 4 The Nephilim [half angel, half human] were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God [fallen angels] went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown." This is certainly one of most amazing deep mysteries of the Bible, that fallen angels tried to corrupt the lineage of the Messiah by having children by human women, and those children were essentially the ancient heroes we had thought were merely legends and myths, people like Hercules, Achilles, Ajax and others. These "Nephilim" were renown for great feats of strength and superhuman achievements in sports such as in the ancient Olympics when they set records which have never been broken. This was the reason for the Great Flood and the ark. The Flood wiped out all half human/half angel "Nephilim" creatures and allowed mankind to continue as truly human, and protected the human lineage of the Messiah who needed to be fully human to pay for the sins of humanity.
So that was an ingenious and outrageous plan. Very bold and also very stupid. The fallen angels who fathered these Nephilim children went to prison for violating God's rules for the angelic conflict. The fallen angels involved are still there, under the earth, in prison. All the Nephilim were wiped out by the Great Flood, which was the reason God sent that flood, and only eight people were saved who were all true humans and also believers. As the passage above says, after the cross Jesus went to tell those fallen angels they had failed, and to inform them that He had provided salvation despite their evil efforts to corrupt humanity. This is also why the Apostle's Creed says Jesus "descended into Hell", meaning He went to where these fallen angels were imprisoned in a part of Hades/Hell apart from the human unbelievers and delivered His message to them, that they had utterly failed. And since they had failed, they had been in prison for several thousand years for nothing.
After this scheme failed, Satan turned to countering individuals who were faithful to God, such as Job. Satan asked to be allowed to severely test Job, and God allowed it as long as Job was not killed in the process. Job had some successes and failures during the rigorous testing by Satan, but in the final analysis Job proved that a person who stuck with God’s plan despite intense suffering and unfair adversity would be taken care of by God. And Job ended up better off than when he started. So Satan decided there were other options he should pursue instead.
Satan learns from history as it unfolds since he is only a creature and therefore cannot foretell the future. So when he saw God forming a group of humans called the Jews as His own people to spread the message of salvation and to keep the scriptures, Satan became intensely focused on destroying them. The history of the Jews is one of Satan bringing intense pressure on the Jews to distract them from God’s plan, and to generally seek to destroy them. The developing Scriptures, which Satan has carefully read and memorized, showed that the Messiah would come from among the Jews. This became the focus of Satan’s plan, namely to wipe out the Jews and prevent the Messiah from being born. And it is interesting to note that Satan believes the Bible. For him it is his intelligence system to try to thwart God’s plan. Satan has engaged in numerous attempts to eliminate the Jews, including Egyptian slavery, ancient regimes which conquered the Jews such as Assyria and Babylon, and numerous anti-semitic nations throughout history. All have failed. But Satan is not done with this plan. His best efforts are yet to come, and it will be called the Great Tribulation.
Satan, being a great student of the Bible, knew the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem and live during the time announced in Daniel chapter 7, which Daniel revealed would be 483 years after the decree of Artaxerxes Longimanus to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem starting in 445 BC. Satan knew He was coming, and tried to head Him off. He used Herod the ruler of Judea who ordered all Jewish babies under age two to be killed when Jesus was under two years old. But Jesus had been taken to Egypt to live until the danger passed. The Wise Men who met with Herod gave the family of Jesus gold, which enabled them to live out their time in Egypt. The Wise Men were called such because they understood Daniel chapter 7 and other Bible prophecies, and knew when the Messiah was coming and that He would be born in Bethlehem. Many think the Wise Men were three stargazer/astrologers who just happened to follow a shiny object. They were wise because they understood the Word of God. They knew when Jesus was to be born, and where, so they looked for a sign from God to proceed to where He was located, and it was provided to them. God’s standard for wisdom is what the Bible says, and the Bible calls them wise because they knew the prophesies from the book of Daniel.
Once the Messiah was born and survived the initial attempts to kill Him, Satan focused on keeping Him from fulfilling His mission to provide salvation. Once He was revealed by John the Baptist, Satan knew who He actually was, and then Jesus was tempted by Satan as described in Matthew 4:1-11:
"Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2 After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. 3 The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” 4 Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” 5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. 6 “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written: “‘He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’” 7 Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” 8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. 9 “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.” 10 Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’” 11 Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him.
We covered the details of the temptation of Jesus in a previous chapter, but the key here is that it was a part of the strategy of Satan to get Jesus to fall just as Satan and Adam and Eve had fallen, to show that Jesus would sin just as all others had done. This would have shown that if even the Messiah had fallen, then Satan should not be punished for doing the same thing. But Satan failed at his attempts to lure Jesus into sin, so he had to try to stop the Messiah in some other way.
Satan could not afford to give up. A looming eternity in the Lake of Fire refocused him to continue his efforts. He threw everything at Jesus he could muster. He had Jesus' friend John the Baptist beheaded. He foc