"The fool rages and is confident." (Proverbs 14:16)
The Devil came to this world with an anger and an intensity befitting the shortness of his time.
Woe to the inhabiters of the earth for the Devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knows that he has but a short time. (Rev 12:12)
In all his ways the Devil is stout and stubborn. But even today there are chains of restraint upon him, and he cannot help but feel these. He is also under darkness (Jude 6). What is this darkness? It implies ignorance and the inability to perceive. His own heart deceives him, his wisdom is corrupted (Eze 28:17), and he can stand bravely among the threatenings of God, as one unalarmed. The foolish angel rages and is confident, but oh, what a strange confidence is his!
Yet what must happen when the object against which he now vents his rage, is taken from him?
(When the people of God are removed to the city of God, and the plagues have destroyed all the ungodly upon the earth.) What must happen to him? He who was formerly a roaring Lion must then sit quiet.
Then there will be, as it were, a great chain upon him. (Rev 20:1-2)
How keenly then, must he feel the great restraint imposed upon him! Now his bravado disappears.
During this time, Satan suffers extremely. Since his fall his life of intense activity has banished reflection; but he is now deprived of his power, and left to contemplate the part which he has acted since first he rebelled against the government of Heaven, and to look forward with trembling and terror to the dreadful future, when he must suffer for all the evil that he has done, and be punished for the sins that he has caused to be committed. (Heaven p.118)
The Devil came to this world with an anger and an intensity befitting the shortness of his time.
Woe to the inhabiters of the earth for the Devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knows that he has but a short time. (Rev 12:12)
In all his ways the Devil is stout and stubborn. But even today there are chains of restraint upon him, and he cannot help but feel these. He is also under darkness (Jude 6). What is this darkness? It implies ignorance and the inability to perceive. His own heart deceives him, his wisdom is corrupted (Eze 28:17), and he can stand bravely among the threatenings of God, as one unalarmed. The foolish angel rages and is confident, but oh, what a strange confidence is his!
Yet what must happen when the object against which he now vents his rage, is taken from him?
(When the people of God are removed to the city of God, and the plagues have destroyed all the ungodly upon the earth.) What must happen to him? He who was formerly a roaring Lion must then sit quiet.
Then there will be, as it were, a great chain upon him. (Rev 20:1-2)
How keenly then, must he feel the great restraint imposed upon him! Now his bravado disappears.
During this time, Satan suffers extremely. Since his fall his life of intense activity has banished reflection; but he is now deprived of his power, and left to contemplate the part which he has acted since first he rebelled against the government of Heaven, and to look forward with trembling and terror to the dreadful future, when he must suffer for all the evil that he has done, and be punished for the sins that he has caused to be committed. (Heaven p.118)
