THE DEVIL VERSUS DIVINE DUEL
“But woe to the earth and the sea,
because the devil has gone down to you!
He is filled with fury,
because he knows that his time is short.”
Revelation 12: 12.
Mark 4: 39 indicates Jesus’ deity, and his continuous struggle with his opponent, the Devil. Continuous? Yes. History actually is typified by the struggle between God and the Devil. When the kings of Egypt menaced Israel, tried to eradicate her, then it was not Israel, but the ‘child’ that was the target. When centuries later Jerusalem was destroyed, and the entire population exiled, that too was all about the child that had not yet been born.
The history of the world basically is the unending duel between Good and Evil, between the Divine and the Devil, who has been pursuing Jesus from Paradise to the present.
Here is an example.
The twelve disciples were doing what they do best: Sail the rough waters of the Sea of Galilee. Experienced sailors they are, not easily frightened, they suddenly were exposed to a storm of the century, and thoroughly afraid, call out for divine help.
Divine help?
Yes, Jesus is there, asleep, so, desperately afraid – and that means something for these professionals, grown up on the ups and downs of the waves – they think they are about to drown. Then Jesus does an unusual thing: he talks to the waves and the waves oblige, because their motions were induced by Jesus’ opponent: the Devil.
When Jesus ‘rebuked’ the waves that threaten to drown him and his 12 disciples, he, actually, put a stop to the Devil and his attempt to eliminate ‘the Message’, all part and parcel of the age-old struggle between evil and good.
More intensity evident today.
That battle is now intensifying. With the Devil thrown out of heaven, and landing feet first on earth, everything in the human sphere is affected to an immense degree: Satan, banned from God’s presence, uses his defeat to start a new activity. From now on, world events will be more frightening, accelerate with greater ferocity, assume more ghastly proportions, drag millions along in a danse macabre, speed relentlessly to chaos and social upheaval.
The Almighty Human?
Today we see an immense increase in human power. It almost seems as if God for centuries has blindfolded humanity to prevent it from seeing all the planetary powers and possibilities, and then, suddenly, God rips away the blindfold, so that the one perspective after another opens up. This wild, unrestrained progress of human thought and technical prowess comes with a good dose of triumph, but also with visions of frightening nightmares. We read the harrowing words – applicable right now – “Woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you.”
Enter Climate Change.
That is all too evident in The Climate. Every morning I receive an update from ARCTIC NEWS. I will share with you yesterday’s communication:
Temperature anomalies for February-March 2025 over the Arctic were as much as 20°C higher than 1951-1980, as illustrated by the image on the right.
The fact that these anomalies occurred at a time of year when little or no sunlight was yet reaching the Arctic indicates that the cause of these very high anomalies is extremely high ocean heat.
This rapidly warming Arctic Ocean is quite shallow, and covers zillions of tons of Methane, 100 times more lethal than Carbon Dioxide (CO2). Once this is released, Global Warming will kill all that lives and moves and has a being.
That’s precisely what the Devil has in mind: Destroy, destroy, destroy. Climate Change is one way; nuclear war is another. We, the human race, now have the power to annihilate what God in Genesis 2 called ‘good’ seven times. We – with rare exceptions – are participants in this process, because the outcome for our way of life is anything but good. When God destroyed the world in which Noah lived, he promised not to repeat such an event, knowing that this time we – guided by the Devil – would do so.
Hope.
The Devil thought that when Jesus was killed, he had won the battle. And then the impossible happened: “Up from the grave he arose!”.
What was true for Jesus, will become also true for the cosmos. God loves his Son: he loves his cosmos equally well: Revelation 21 will soon become reality, because Jesus is stronger than death.
Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.
There is a clear choice: the duel will end. Being the Devil’s dutiful disciple ends in death. Being Christ’s gracious co-worker brings LIFE, and that to the full.