Satan's one last stand and its takers

A New York Times study from a few years back analyzed the top search terms plugged into Google over the past decade inside both the poorest and richest counties in America.

While Top Ten results for the rich people included digital cameras (No. 1 was “elph” and No. 3 was “nb-41"), the most popular terms typed in from the poor included: No. 2 "antichrist"; No. 6 "about hell"; No. 7 "the Antichrist"; No. 10 "the Rapture."

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At the end of the Bible’s prophesied Millennium Kingdom, Satan is set free for "one last stand" in which he immediately goes out into the nations and gets men to rebel against the Lord Jesus Christ, who’s been reigning as king over the entire earth from the city of Jerusalem.

“Think with me what’s happening during this age,” says Ohio preacher David Reid. “At the Second Coming, right before the Millennium is set up, there is war in heaven and Satan and his angels are kicked out. The sun’s turned to darkness and the moon’s turned to blood.

“The Lord Jesus Christ returns on a white horse with the armies of heaven.  He goes through the earth and every single person who rebels against His authority is conclusively destroyed.

“With this Second Coming all His foes are just utterly destroyed and He then ‘rules with a rod of iron’ during the Millennium Kingdom.

“Psalm 2 says to ‘kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way,’ and what happens is the Gentile nations of the earth are to come up to Jerusalem to acknowledge Him, and when they don’t, He causes it not to rain on their nation.

“When they come up to Jerusalem to worship, they go over and literally see down into the pit of hell. They literally see, ‘Wow! The worm dieth not and the fire’s not quenched! Down there’s all the people in the past who rebelled against the Lord’s authority!’

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“So then (when the thousand-year Millennium Period expires), Satan is let out of the bottomless pit and basically the entire earth says, ‘Hey, yeah, let’s go kill the Lord Jesus Christ!’

“After Christ’s wreaked conclusive havoc on everyone who’s ever opposed Him, man says, ‘Yeah, we can take Him!’ It’s just absolute, total insanity!

"So, as I reflect on why people aren’t beating down the door today (to hear biblical truth and become saved), the issue with men is men are just crazy! They’re just rebellious and ornery and the sad thing is . . .

“We conduct a prison ministry in (central Ohio) and one of the things we tell the guys is there’s only way you end up in hell. You don’t end up there because you tried really hard to be good and, instead of getting a B minus, you got a C plus and God cut off the curve right there and sent you to hell.

“You end up in hell because you made a conscious decision to reject the grace of God! Think about how tragic that is because what He did on the Cross—when He said, ‘It is finished,’ it was finished for every single human being that ever lived, and the sad reality of what happens today is the vast majority of the earth says, ‘I don’t need that; I’ll earn it myself!’ And that’s just asinine stupidity because it’s not going to work.”

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Talking about the future of the devil’s angels, Isaiah 34:4 says, “And all the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll: and all their host shall fall down, as the leaf falleth off from the vine, and as a falling fig from the fig tree.”

“When you roll up a scroll you’re through with it,” explains Jordan. “You closed it up. When it says 'the host of heaven,' it's all those God put in positions up there to run the government of the heavens and He’s now saying, ‘Your job is over.’

“You ever get laid off? Ever had your department dissolved where they say, ‘Your job no longer exists’? That’s different from getting fired. You get fired and your job’s still there; it's just that somebody else will fill it.

“When Isaiah says it’s 'dissolved,' he’s talking about, ‘All the functions they had up there, that government system’s over; God’s replaced it with His own.’

“All the ordinances of heaven and so forth are going to be replaced and all their host shall fall down as the fallen leaf off from the vine and as a fallen fig from the fig tree.

“He casts them out into the earth.  Now, here’s why: Isaiah 34:5 says, ‘For my sword shall be bathed in heaven.’ Where is God’s sword first bathed? In heaven. Verse 6 says ‘the sword of the Lord is full of blood.’

“Verses 8-10 say, ‘For it is the day of the LORD's vengeance, and the year of recompences for the controversy of Zion.
[9] And the streams thereof shall be turned into pitch, and the dust thereof into brimstone, and the land thereof shall become burning pitch.
[10] It shall not be quenched night nor day; the smoke thereof shall go up for ever: from generation to generation it shall lie waste; none shall pass through it for ever and ever.’ "

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Personal notes:

I was telling someone at church Sunday that my family never really knew why my dad, in his mid-40s, suddenly decided to close his booming private practice in Akron, OH and become a missionary doctor in the jungles of Ecuador, taking his young family (including our French poodle Mimi) with him. He paid his own way, not asking for any donations, and I know we were planning for a long stay because he sent large shipping barrels full of stuff—hundreds of phonograph records and valuable hardback books, old photos and other mementos, on and on.

As it turned out, we were only there a year and a half. My dad decided to leave after being confronted about his prescription pill use by the only other doctor at the tiny hospital in Shell-Mera—the same tiny compound of world-famous missionaries Nate Saint and Jim Elliot. We represented one of six families living there.

But back to his original decision to become a missionary. Through the missionary radio outfit HCJB he was sent to the same spot where, only 14 years earlier, Saint and Elliot, along with three other missionary men, made international headlines, even being featured in a huge spread by Life Magazine (cover headline of ‘Operation Auca’), after being speared to death by men from an ancient tribe. The American men had been trying to bring the gospel by flying to them deep in the jungle.

My mom says my dad had been living on the edge in Akron, working really long hours as he popped uppers and downers, and that he told her, “I’m not going to live much longer; I’ve got to do something for God before I die.” She said she agreed to it because she thought that by “getting away from it all,” he would calm down and straighten up, quitting the pills. Little did she know he packed a whole shipping barrel full of meds, including injectables.

Shortly after my dad died in 2001, I called Dr. Wally Swanson, referred to as Doc Wally in the movie End of the Spear, and asked him different questions about my dad’s role in Ecuador. Swanson was the director of the hospital and my dad and him conducted surgeries, etc. He actually said my dad did an enormous good by bringing down the medicines, helping save many lives.

In her book, Through the Gates of Splendor, written by Elliot’s wife, Elisabeth, she writes about her husband’s mission, “He was a young man of twenty-five, tall and broadchested, with thick brown hair and blue-gray eyes. He was bound for Ecuador—the answer to years of prayer for God’s guidance concerning his lifework. Some had thought it strange that a young man with his opportunities for success should choose to spend his life in the jungles among primitive people. Jim’s answer, found in his diary, had written a year before:

“ ‘My going to Ecuador is God’s counsel, as is my leaving Betty, and my refusal to be counseled by all who insist I should stay and stir up the believers in the U.S. And how do I know it is His counsel? Yea, my heart instructeth me in the night seasons. Oh, how good! For I have known my heart is speaking to me for God! . . . No visions, no voices, but the counsel of a heart which desires God.’

“Jim’s mood of the moment was felt by Pete . . . The two had learned to understand and appreciate each other long before, and their going to Ecuador together was, to them, one of the ‘extras’ that God threw in. Pete, too, had met with raised eyebrows and polite questions when he made it known that he was going to Ecuador. An M.A. in literature, Pete was expected to become a college professor or Bible teacher. But to throw away his life among ignorant savages—it was thought absurd.

“There remained a group of tribes that had consistently repelled every advance made by the white man: the Aucas. They are an isolated, unconquered, seminomadic remnant of age-old jungle Indians. Over the years, information about the Aucas has seeped out of the jungle . . . Whatever Jim and Pete had been able to learn about them was eagerly recorded, so that by now the very name thrilled their young blood. Would they someday be permitted to have part in winning the Aucas for Christ?”