The 35 Most Asked Prophecy Questions – Program 3

By: Dr. Renald Showers; ©1995

Right after the Fall, God made a promise to Satan – that one day he and his forces would be removed from earth forever.

Contents

God’s Promise to Satan

Showers: We’ve been tracing the conflict of the ages between the Kingdom of God and kingdom of Satan and seen how this helps us understand the ultimate purpose of history, and we noted how God must do certain things before the history of this world ends in order to accomplish His purpose for history. He must restore His theocracy to planet earth. He must crush Satan and get rid of him and his kingdom rule. He must lift the curse of man’s sin off of nature. Now, in light of the fact that God must crush Satan and get rid of him and his kingdom rule from this planet before the history of this world comes to an end, it’s very important to note that right after the Fall of man took place in Genesis 3, when God came to man and to Satan to confront them with their roles in the Fall, God made a significant promise, and it’s recorded for us in Genesis 3:15. This is what He said, and please note, He’s saying this directly to His enemy, Satan: “And I will put enmity between thee and the woman and between thy seed and her seed. It,” referring to the woman’s seed, “shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.”

This is what God was doing. God here was giving the very first promise of a man child Redeemer who would be born of woman during the course of world history. This is what He means by “the seed of the woman,” an offspring of woman, that sometime during the course of world history there would be a unique man child Redeemer, born of woman into the world, and God would say to Satan, “That man-child Redeemer will bruise” or in other words, “will crush your head.”

Now, God was using language here that fit the serpent or snake form that Satan had taken upon himself when he came into the Garden of Eden. So what God was saying to Satan was this: “The whole key to My defeating you and thereby accomplishing My purpose for history will be the coming and work of this man-child Redeemer born of woman during the course of world history. That man-child Redeemer will be my instrument to crush you and get rid of you and your forces and your kingdom rule from planet earth altogether.”

But now God went on to say to Satan that Satan would bruise the heel of the Redeemer. Again, using language that fit the serpent form that Satan had taken upon himself there, this is what God was saying. Just as a poisonous snake, if it sinks its fangs into the bare heel of a human being, if that human being doesn’t get help in a hurry, that human being will die; so Satan, as a result of his work in the world would cause the man-child Redeemer’s death. Why would this man-child Redeemer die? Well, God made clear through a revelation He gave after Genesis 3 why the Redeemer would die. Here’s the reason. If God is going to accomplish His purpose for world history, sometime during the course of world history He must get rid of the cause of the terrible predicament that man got himself into by rebelling against God in the Garden of Eden. The cause of the mess that the human race has gotten itself into is human sin. And so sometime during the course of world history God must get rid of human sin. But how could He do that? Well, again, through later revelation God made it very clear the only way He could get rid of human sin is through death. Without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin, the Scriptures say. “The soul that sins shall die,” we’re told in the prophets. Paul, in Romans 6 says, “The wages of sin is death.” A death penalty had to be paid for the sin of mankind. But the problem is, sinful man cannot offer up an acceptable sacrifice by himself unto God to cancel out his sin.

God, through further revelation, made it very clear that this man child Redeemer who would be born of woman into the world would be a completely sinless, spotless human being. And, when that man child Redeemer would die, He would die as a substitute for the human race. He would die to pay the penalty for man’s sin. This is why, then, the Lord Jesus, when He was first pointed out by John the Baptist to John’s disciples, that John said of Jesus in John 1:29, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”

So God here, in this first promise of the Redeemer in Genesis 3:15, was saying to His enemy Satan, the whole key to My crushing you and accomplishing My purpose for history will be the coming and work of this man child Redeemer born of woman into the world. Now, if you were Satan and God had just told you this would be His key to defeating you, and you wanted to prevent God from crushing you, what would you do? You would try to prevent that promised man child Redeemer from coming into the world and doing the work that God sent Him to do. And I would point out to you, that ultimately is what all the rest of Old Testament history is about. As Satan throughout the course of Old Testament history used angels, used nations, used human beings, used institutions and events as his means of trying to prevent the Redeemer from coming into the world.

Interestingly, centuries after the Garden of Eden and the Fall of man, God made a covenant with one man. That man’s name was Abraham. God made that covenant approximately around 2000 BC. The covenant is called the Abrahamic Covenant. And God made several specific promises to Abraham in that covenant. One is that He would raise up a great nation from Abraham’s seed, Abraham’s physical descendants, and the Scriptures make it very clear that great nation was the nation of Israel. Israel consists of literal physical descendants of Abraham. But God also gave this promise in the covenant to Abraham, “And through your seed all families of the earth will be blessed.”

Now, one of the major things God made through that promise and later revelation God made it clear this was true is that the promised man child Redeemer eventually would be born through Abraham’s physical line of descendants, specifically the nation of Israel. Now, again, if the Redeemer is going to be born through that specific nation, and you’re Satan and what you’re trying to accomplish through Old Testament history is prevent that Redeemer from coming, what would you do? You would go after the nation of Israel and you would try to destroy the nation of Israel before that Redeemer could be born into the world. And that’s what he was doing then throughout most of the rest of Old Testament history. And just to give an example of that.

Several generations after Abraham because of a famine in the land of Canaan where the people of Israel were living, the people of Israel migrated down to the land of Egypt. And after they had been there and prospered for a number of years, according to Exodus 1, there was a new pharaoh who came to the throne who did not know Joseph. And Satan used that pharaoh as his tool to try to annihilate Israel. That pharaoh passed a horrible decree to the effect that every boy baby born of a Jew was to be put to death. If you destroy all the males of a nation, that nation very quickly will disappear from the world scene altogether because it will have no means of reproducing itself and continuing its existence on planet earth. Satan, through that horrible decree passed by that Egyptian king, the pharaoh, was going to try to annihilate the nation of Israel from the face of the earth so the Redeemer could not come. Here’s a first in world history. Anti-Semitism, hatred of Israelite or Jewish people, started there in the land of Egypt as Satan’s way of trying to destroy that nation so the Redeemer could not come into the world. Now, when you look at God’s dealings with the nation of Israel, both in Old Testament times and New Testament times to what God projects for them in the future, God made it very clear that He chose the nation of Israel to have a unique relationship with Him, not because Israel was greater than any other nation. Moses very clearly stated that more than once in Deuteronomy. He told the people of Israel, “We were not greater in number. That’s not why God chose us.” But God chose the nation of Israel because He wanted to use that nation as a key to His accomplishment of world history. One part of the key was that through that nation the promised Redeemer would be born into the world who would do the work of crushing Satan and getting rid of him and his kingdom rule from planet earth.

In Deuteronomy 28, God mapped out ahead of time early in Israel’s history His whole future course in dealing with that particular nation, right up to the Second Coming of the Messiah. In verses 1 through 14, God told the people of Israel that as long as they would listen to and obey His commandments, He would bless them more than any other nation on the face of the earth. They would always be the head nation, never the tail nation, and He told them why He would bless them that way: in return for their obedience. In verse 10 He says, “And all people of the earth shall see that you are called by the name of the Lord and they shall be afraid of you.” God would bless them more than any other nation when they obeyed Him to arouse the curiosity of the world, “Why is this nation being blessed more than we are?” and bring them to the fact that because they have a unique relationship with the true and the living God of the universe.

But then beginning in verse 15 and going to the end of the chapter God warned the people of Israel that if they would not listen to and obey His commandments or His Word, He would curse them more than any other nation on the face of the earth. And one of the curses He pointed out was the fact, verse 49, “The Lord shall bring a nation against you from afar, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flies, a nation whose tongue you shall not understand, a nation of fierce countenance which shall not regard the person of the old nor show favor to the young.” And God went on to point out that these four nations that He would raise up against Israel would scatter them throughout the nations of the world.

And so He said, verse 64, “The Lord shall scatter thee among all people from the one end of the earth even unto the other.” And verse 65, “And among these nations shall you find no ease, neither shall the sole of your foot have rest; but the Lord shall give you there a trembling heart and failing of eyes and sorrow of mind and your life shall hang in doubt before you. You shall fear day and night and shall have none assurance of your life. In the morning you shall say, ‘Would God it were even,’ and in even you shall say, ‘Would God it were morning,’ for the fear or your heart wherewith you shall fear and for the sight of your eyes which you shall see.”

And if you know the history of the nation of Israel, you know that tragically, the greater part of their history has been characterized by the curses than by the blessings because of rebellion and disobedience against God. And so they have been scattered throughout the world for centuries and just as He said here, they would despair for life itself. You study the history of the Jewish people as they have been scattered among the Gentile nations of the world, they’ve been hounded; they’ve been persecuted more than any other particular group in all of world history. Anti-Semitism has been poured out upon them venomously in Gentile nations all over the world. The Holocaust of World War II is a very classic example. And Satan, because God allows the people of Israel to be chastened because of their rebellion against Him, Satan continues to go after them with a vengeance trying to annihilate them from the face of the earth because they still remain a key to God defeating Satan.

God has made it very clear in the Scriptures that He will not finally finish the job of crushing Satan until the people of Israel repent of their rebellion against Him and place their trust in Jesus Christ as their true Messiah and Savior. And so to Satan’s way of thinking, “if Israel must repent and believe in Jesus before God will crush me, if I can totally annihilate Israel from the face of the earth before they repent and believe…God will never crush me.”

And so today, you notice what’s happening with the nation of Israel in the Middle East. Over and over again it’s in the news because of terrorists attacking it. Islamic forces align themselves together against Israel and declare that they want to annihilate Israel from the face of the earth. And the prophetic Scriptures make it very clear that Israel’s worst days are still ahead.

But let me point this out here in the meantime. God also, after saying that He would scatter them throughout the nations for their disobedience, in Ezekiel 37, God brought the Prophet Ezekiel to a valley that was full of dry bones, and we read in verse 2 that Ezekiel says that “God caused me to pass by them round about and, behold, there were very many in the open valley, and, lo, they were very dry. And He said unto me, ‘Son of man, can these bones live?’ And I answered, ‘O Lord God, you know.’“ Now, what do these bones represent? We’re told in verse 11 that God said to Ezekiel, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel.” And He’s picturing Israel here as dry bones, scattered, oppressed, with almost no life in them whatsoever as they are hounded and persecuted by the peoples of the world. And that’s still even going on in some respects today. But then he goes on to say here, verse 4, “Prophesy unto these bones and say unto them, ‘O you dry bones, hear the word of the Lord, thus says the Lord God unto these bones, ‘Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you and you shall live and I will lay sinews upon you and will bring up flesh upon you and cover you with skin and put breath in you and you shall live and you shall know that I am the Lord.’ So I prophesied as I was commanded and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold, a shaking, and the bones came together bone to bone. And when I beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh came up upon them and the skin covered them above, but there was no breath in them.”

Now, God through the prophets foretold that toward the end of world history He would restore the people of Israel back to their homeland, the land of Israel or as the world has known it for many years, the land of Palestine. But interestingly, we’ve seen a return of hundreds of thousands of Jewish people from all over the world back to their homeland beginning in 1948 when Israel became a new nation state, independent nation state for the first time in over 1900 years. But we must recognize that Israel has returned to their homeland starting in 1948 in unbelief, without spiritual life, and that’s what’s being signified here. The bones being put back together; the flesh being put upon it; but no breath inside of it; no spiritual life inside of it. Empty spiritually. That’s the present state of the nation of Israel in the Middle East. It’s back there as a nation state, but it’s still out of joint with God; no spiritual life there.

But then God goes on to say that the time would come, verse 8, “And when I beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh came upon them, the skin covered them above, but there was no breath in them; then said He unto me, ‘Prophesy unto the wind. Prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, Thus says the Lord God, Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain that they may live. So I prophesied as He commanded, and the breath came into them and they lived and stood up upon their feet an exceeding great army.”

The prophets make it very clear that at the very end of the seven-year Tribulation period when Jesus Christ the Messiah will come out of heaven in His glorious Second Coming, according to Zechariah 12:10 Messiah will say of the Jews who are still alive, “They shall look upon Me whom they have pierced, and they will go about in great mourning, household by household, beating themselves upon the breast.” What He is saying is, the Jews who are alive at the Second Coming of Christ, when they see Him come out of heaven in His glorified form, they will finally recognize Him as their true Messiah and Savior and they will repent. They will radically change their mind toward Him and take Him, receive Him as their Messiah and Savior and that’s when life will be breathed into the nation, spiritual life, and they will be made right with God.

Now, please note something. Some people say, “What evidence do we have that there’s a God who actually exists?” Well, a great line of evidence is what God has said in the Scriptures how He would deal with the nation of Israel historically and eventually bring them back to the land, first in rebellion; but then finally, bringing them to a saving knowledge of the Messiah. In 1948 God brought them back to the land in unbelief and rebellion, just as He foretold here over 2500 years ago through the Prophet Ezekiel. That’s evidence that there is a true and living God. He has foretold He would do this with Israel and He has been accomplishing that with Israel during the lifetime of most of you who are receiving this teaching right now.

Read Part 4