Chapter 1
The Setting of the Contest
THERE sits today on the throne of sin one who has grown old
in evil, cunning in subtlety, and cruel in deceit. He has waged war in
heaven and on earth. He filled heaven with discord and earth with death,
and both with sorrow. He challenged every purpose of God, and coveted
the throne of the Eternal, planning to rule the universe or plunge it
into chaos and ruin.
That conflict, older than man, explains the presence of every
conflict that disturbs our race today, every pestilence that afflicts
humanity, every sorrow and pain and death that tortures the children of
earth. Lucifer, the one-time covering cherub of heaven, is the Satan of
our smitten world, the demon leader of the hosts of darkness that
oppose, in this world, every purpose of God and the Saviour of men.
The throne of sin is no figure of speech, and the occupant of that
throne is no figment of the imagination. Jesus Christ called him
"the prince of this world." John 14: 30. The apostle Paul
describes him as "the prince of the power of the air, the spirit
that now worketh in the children of disobedience." Eph. 2: 2. John
the revelator designated him as "the great dragon," "that
old serpent, called the devil, and Satan." Rev. 12:9.
When the leader of revolt against the Creator was expelled from
heaven, he left with many followers,-- angels who had yielded to his
cunning sophistry and joined in his rebellion; and this world is now
their abode. Of that tremendous event, which rid heaven of the fallen
hosts and filled earth with legions bent on the ruin of God's handiwork,
the inspired writer says:
"There was war in heaven: Michael [that is, Christ] and His
angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his
angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in
heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called
the devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out
into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. . . . Therefore
rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabiters
of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you,
having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short
time." Rev. 12: 7-12.
The apostle Jude speaks of this fallen host as "the angels which
kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation," whom
God "hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the
judgment of the great day." Jude 6.
Both the predictions of Holy Writ and the great world events of today
declare in unmistakable language that the conflict between "the
prince of this world" and the Ruler of the universe is nearing its
culmination. In the conspiracy of sin against righteousness, of Satan
against Christ, of the cohorts of darkness against the hosts of the King
eternal, the occupant of the throne of sin has enlisted multitudes of
the human race. Just now these human adjuncts of the dark Conspiracy
against the purposes of the Most High are making their attack chiefly
from three directions. When their assault has reached its culmination,
God Himself will sound the death knell of sin and the overthrow of its
king and kingdom.
The forces of good and evil have met in stern struggle through all
the ages of the history of humanity. In every such contest Satan has
assaulted the principles of the kingdom eternal, but he has always found
some faithful ones whose loyalty he could not contaminate and whose
faith he could not overthrow. There was Enoch, so faithful that God
would not permit him to taste of death. There was Noah, who escaped
across the waters of the flood with eight souls only from among the
millions who peopled the earth at that time. There was Elijah, faithful
when he supposed every other soul in Israel had apostatized. There were
Daniel and his fellows, braving the wrath of the kings of the whole
earth that they might not be unfaithful to the King of kings. And then
came the Contest between Divinity incarnate and the demons and their
human dupes when the child Jesus made His appearance among men.
From the day when Satan plotted the death of the infant Jesus until
the Man Christ Jesus hung upon the cross between earth and heaven, there
was no let-up in the cruel malignity of the archconspirator. The last
stage of the conflict began at our Saviour's birth, and the forces that
will clash in its consummation are now preparing for action, marshaling
for the last acts in the long and bitter campaign. There is more
involved in this struggle than in any other that has ever taken place
upon this planet. When this war is finished, all war will be finished
forever throughout the universe of God. The question will then have been
decided for all eternity as to the rulership of this world. It means the
end of sin and all its by-products of sorrow, disappointment,
dissatisfaction, broken hopes and blighted lives, misery, desolation,
and death.
When Jesus Christ, as God's agent for the eradication of sin from
this world, met the fallen Lucifer in the dreary wilderness of
temptation in Palestine, the representatives of righteousness and
iniquity were face to face, and the destiny of the whole human race hung
in the balance. Had Jesus Christ yielded to one of Satan's temptations
there, or anywhere else, the eternal doom of the human family would have
been sealed. Jesus Christ Himself would have perished, and God's only
possible remedy for sin would have failed. The destiny of the universe
hung upon the loyalty of Him who had given up heaven and His own life to
bring peace and righteousness to this sin-smitten world. What the
loyalty of Christ meant to the world then, and means to us now, the mind
of man is utterly incapable of estimating.
But He did not fail us nor disappoint the onlooking hosts of heaven.
He met sin personified in the person of that one who had been in heaven,
one of the two covering cherubs standing by the throne of the universe.
All that evil was and could be and could do was centered
in that smooth-speaking being who posed as an angel of light while the
poison of death was hid in his every seductive word.
"Get thee behind Me, Satan," was Christ's open repudiation
of every subtle suggestion of the father of sin. It was a decisive
challenge to all the hosts of the ruler of the darkness of this world.
The contest was on. That Michael who thrust Lucifer and his fallen
angels out of heaven was meeting now in mortal combat the leader of the
evicted hosts of sin. It was Lucifer's settled purpose to force the very
Son of God into unforgivable sin or blot out His life and wreck the
universe. When he saw the Son of God at last spiked to the cross of
Calvary, he saw the completion of his age-old object; but he was only
bruising the heel of that promised Seed of the woman that was finally to
bruise his head. (See Gen. 3:15.) Satan seemed to have forgotten that
while the Christ died for the sins of the world,-- the Just for the
unjust,-- to save man from the second death, the slain One's own
personal righteousness made it impossible that His death should be
eternal. The grave holds Him for a little moment of time, and then the
bars of death's prison house are broken, and the Redeemer comes forth to
receive the approbation of the Father and to sit down beside Him on the
throne of righteousness, the throne of the universe--that throne which
Satan had coveted through unnumbered years.
But the baffled Lucifer would not admit defeat. He was determined to
slay the infant Jesus, and now he was equally determined to slay the
infant church. Through Rome pagan and then through Rome papal he had one
cruel and relentless purpose,-- to "wear out the saints of the Most
High," and blot out the church of the living God from the face of
the earth. And he very nearly succeeded. Force to secure uniformity in
religion was the policy pursued, and a church-ruled state was the
relentless instrumentality employed to that end. How many millions paid
with their lives for the practice of their faith, will never be known
until the books of God are laid open before the eyes of the redeemed.
It is not the writer's design to dwell upon the heartbreaking
cruelties of the "holy office," or the sufferings endured by
the martyrs who "loved not their lives unto the death." The
record of that work has long been written, and is easy of access to
those who wish to read. The centuries of the Dark Ages have been
literally strewn with the shattered bodies and ruined hopes of men and
women who knew the worth of a pure faith and considered no price too
high to pay for it. But that work is in the past, though the principles
that made it possible are held even today by the organization that
practised them through those dark and bitter times. The church
responsible for that cruel work still expects that "the secular
power shall swear to exterminate all heretics condemned by the church;
and if they do not, they shall be anathema."--" Church
History," Schaff, Vol. II, sec. 27.
"A heretic," says Pope Marcellus, "merits the pains of
fire. By the gospel, the canons, civil law, and custom, heretics must be
burned."-- Pope Marcellus' Decrees, Corpus Juris Canonici, part
2, chap. 18.
That attitude has never been repudiated, and whenever and wherever
that organization has the power to oppress the consciences of men as in
days gone by, it will do so. But it has not yet been able to blot out
the true disciples of the Lord. The blood of the martyrs has always
insured the perpetuation of that virile and loyal race. While that
oppressive policy has never been abandoned, save where circumstances
made it impossible, and while we shall see it revivified in the actual
climax of the great struggle, another plan has been adopted by the enemy
of souls, for this generation, that is today sweeping millions into a
snare, the most deceptive and fatal that Satan has ever employed against
mankind.
So long as Satan sits upon the throne of sin, so long as he continues
as "the prince of this world" and the ruler of the dark forces
that fell with him, the earth will continue to be the home of sorrow,
discord, deceit, pestilence, famine, war, and death; and his age-long
campaign of persecution against the true followers of the Christ will
continue unabated while he spreads his net of subtle deception over the
whole world. The several chapters of this book will show what that
deception is, and how it is operating today among the nations of men.
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