How you have fallen from heaven, O star of the morning, son of the dawn!
You have been cut down to the earth,
You who have weakened the nations!
– Isaiah 14:12
It’s snake season where I live.
Our long, dry summer has driven all kinds of creatures down to the river valley in Idaho. The hills around us are scorched under the unusually abundant triple-digit days. Deer, moose, coyotes, insects, and snakes are looking for water and a cool retreat from the heat.
That means we keep a sharp lookout and watch our feet as we work outside. A few summers ago, I reached down into my flower garden to change the sprinkler and found a rattlesnake soaking up the cool water. It blended in so well and never did rattle at us. It occurred to me that I could easily have been bitten.
Sometimes the attack comes without a warning.
If, as we learned last week, Satan was the highest of the angels, what was he doing in the Garden tempting the clueless Eve? In the fourteenth chapter of the book of Isaiah, we read that he got cocky. He believed he could take the universe away from God.
For this, he lost his place in heaven and was condemned for his folly.
God told Satan:
Because you have done this,
Cursed are you more than all cattle,
And more than every beast of the field;
On your belly you will go,
And dust you will eat
All the days of your life;
And I will put enmity
Between you and the woman,
And between your seed and her seed;
He shall bruise you on the head,
And you shall bruise him on the heel.
– Genesis 3:14-15
In Revelation 12:3-9, a “great red dragon,” who is identified as “the serpent of old,” the devil, and Satan, sweeps away a third of the stars of heaven with his tail. The “stars of heaven” are probably one-third of the angels who follow Satan in his rebellion. This army of demons do his bidding as he continues his long rebellion against God.
But he is a snake already crushed.
Next week: Where Is the Devil Now?
