CHRIST had no sooner appeared in the world than Hell was moved to its depths against Him. With a skill which was not lacking in persistent determination to thwart the divine purpose, Satan marshalled his forces and inspired his instruments for the overthrow of that Kingdom which was to be set up as an everlasting Kingdom—”for of a truth,” says Peter, “against Thy Holy Child Jesus, whom Thou hast anointed, both Herod, and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together” (Acts iv. 27). But Satan had miscalculated the tremendous resources of power against which he threw his hosts, and had completely under-estimated the deep, unsearchable counsels which eternal wisdom had decreed for the frustrating of every attack of the adversary, and for consummation of the great design that the God of salvation had in view. This was a conflict in which God’s glory was at stake, and the hope of a countless number of the race to which we belong. To God the issue was certain from the beginning, but to men looking on how often it appeared that the forces of darkness were to gain the day. As the Redeemer entered into the battle with the crown upon His head, conquering and to conquer, men were too ready to have their eyes diverted by the great upheavals caused by the struggle, instead of keeping them fixed upon the One who was ruling in the midst of His enemies with the assured knowledge that the issues of the day were to be on the side of eternal truth and righteousness. Viewed from one standpoint, nothing seemed so easy of accomplishment as the utter destruction of God’s great plan. He, upon whom the accomplishment of this design rested, was a weak and helpless infant, and nothing was easier for Satan than to work on the mind of one of his servants to stretch forth their hand against Jesus. When men were told that through this Child the great purpose of salvation was to be brought about, they might have said that the hopes of that countless number who were to be saved was hanging upon the breath of a helpless infant. But this is not a correct way of viewing the matter, for while it is true that the Lord Jesus was a helpless infant, it is no less true that He was the everlasting God, and no created power—angelic or otherwise—could touch that life until He gave permission. In this case, as in the case of His cause, it was hanging on the slender thread of life, but that thread, said Beza, was in the hand of God, whose power is irresistible. Satan’s attempt to frustrate God’s design was not met by the exerting of power sufficient to crush Herod, but by the use of means to render null the well-planned scheme of Satan. And when God’s time had come, He summoned the defeated tyrant into His presence to answer for his misdeeds. It was when this took place that the announcement was made—”For they are dead which sought the young Child’s life.” In these words we read heaven’s divine announcement, not only in regard to this attempt to frustrate God’s purpose, but to every attempt that has been made, is being made, and will be made to the end of time. However long the struggle may last, and however hopeless it may appear to God’s people to battle any longer, the day is coming when it may be written at the head of every chapter of history describing the conflicts against the cause of Christ—”They are dead who sought the young Child’s life.” The same words epitomise the description of the issue in the spiritual struggle of God’s people also; for, as surely as it was announced to Israel and witnessed by their very eyes—”The Egyptians whom ye have seen to-day, ye shall see them again no more for ever” (Exodus xiv. 13), so surely will it one day be fulfilled that every power that sought to destroy the life of grace in the soul will be subdued. For our present purpose, however, we intend to consider these words as conveying a message to us in connection with the opposition Christ’s cause has met, is meeting, and will yet meet in the world. The methods Satan has adopted to destroy Christ’s cause have been so varied and so incessantly supplemented by new methods the moment he discovers the old are a failure, as to indicate that there is a ceaseless vigilance and malevolent determination to crush the cause of truth if Satan can accomplish it. It is to be observed that whatever differences there may be in the plan of attack, the objective is always the same—the destruction of God’s cause—and towards that goal Satanic subtlety directs its attacks and Satanic power drives them home. The more one reads the history of the Church of God in the world with his mind fixed on this aspect of its history the more will he be impressed with the thought that it is a miracle of miracles that there is a cause of Christ in the world, and the only explanation that can be given of its existence is that the Saviour’s promise is being realised before our very eyes—”The gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” We shall now proceed to notice some of the methods Satan adopts to destroy God’s cause in the world.
I. Satan attempts to destroy God’s cause by stirring up men to put Christ to death.
This was a well-planned scheme, and though it failed in the first attempt, when Herod, under the instigation of Satan, stretched out his hand against the Lord’s Anointed, he did not give up his plan. When He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up, and read the divine promise announcing His own coming and His work, the eyes of all in the synagogue were fastened on Him, but, as He expounded the truth, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath, “and rose up, and thrust Him out of the city, and led Him unto the brow of the hill whereto their city was built, that they might cast Him down headlong” (Luke iv. 29). But, on this occasion, as at the first, “He went His way.” Time and again this plan looked like it would be carried out, but it failed. His hour was not yet come, but when that hour came—the hour and power of darkness—He was delivered over into the hands of His enemies. The demonic hatred with which Satan had drenched the hearts of men was soon to find expression in one of the most vengeful cries that ever was heard in this world, and in one of the most awful prayers that ever was made to the Judge of the whole earth—”Away with Him! Away with Him! Crucify Him!”—”His blood be on us, and on our children.” If there could be joy in hell, the devil would have felt it when that awful cry was heard on earth. It looked like at length that a decisive victory had been won. But if such a hope was ever entertained it must have been shattered by the extraordinary happenings of the resurrection morn. The One who died in weakness was alive, and now alive for ever more; and in the message He gave to His persecuted servant in Patmos—”I am He that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for ever more”—we have the divine announcement of the eternal frustration of Satan’s well-planned and seemingly successful scheme. But what has the word of God to say as to the issue of this struggle of which we have been speaking?—it declares that He made a show of principalities and powers—that He led captivity captive. And as for the men who shouted out, “Away with Him, crucify Him,” they have long since gone to their account, and the cause they tried to destroy is still in existence.
II. Satan seeks to destroy God’s cause by stirring up persecution against His people.
We may consider this subject from a three-fold point of view—(1) the persecution under the Jewish Church; (2) the persecution under the pagan power; (3) the persecution under the papal power.
(1) The persecution under the Jewish Church.
The hatred of the Jews to Christ was extended to His followers. He warned them that they were going forth as sheep among wolves. The wolf, if it could speak, even though it could reason, could give no intelligible excuse for the desire it had to destroy the sheep whenever it saw it, except that it was its very nature to do so. And when one considers the intensity of the hatred stirred up against the infant Christian Church, no natural explanation can account for its continued existence. At the time of Stephen’s martyrdom we are told that “there was a great persecution against the Church which was at Jerusalem, and they were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judæa and Samaria, except the Apostles” (Acts viii. 1). Satan, in kindling the fires of persecution to a fiercer glow, did not reckon on that scattering abroad of Christians in the regions of Judæa and Samaria. How fiercely these fires burned, and how persistent were the efforts put forth by the persecutors are clearly indicated by the words—“And Saul, yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, went unto the high priest” (Acts ix. 1), and again—“I persecuted this way,” says Paul “unto the death, binding and delivering into prisons both men and women” (Acts xxii. 4). But the blood of the martyrs became the seed of the Church, and who knows but as Saul stood by Stephen consenting unto his death as he witnessed the beautiful heavenly composure of the martyr as he passed through the cruel ordeal, that thoughts were awakened that day that were not easily silenced. The attempt to destroy the cause of God by the Jews utterly failed, and the more the church was persecuted, the more it grew.
(2) Persecution under the pagan power.
Satan now enlisted the strong arm of the civil power to crush the cause of the Most High. We do not wish to harrow the feelings of our readers here with a description of the means adopted during the Neronian, Decian, and Diocletian persecutions, but the bare mention of these is enough to chill one’s blood. But no tortures that racked the body or fiery ordeals through which gentle women and heroic men passed could stay the onward progress of the heavenly cause. Men chose to be torn by wild beasts in the Roman amphitheatres and cast into caldrons of boiling oil rather than renounce the Lord who redeemed them. Satan had not reckoned on the divine strength vouchsafed to the martyrs in the day of trial, and here again the blood of the martyrs became the seed of the Church, and Satan was utterly baffled to destroy it.
(3) Persecution under the papal power.
Satan having failed to accomplish his purpose through the Jewish Church and the pagan power, now had recourse to the so-called Christian Church as represented in the Church of Rome. This enlisting of a powerful so-called Christian institution on his side was a master-stroke of the enemy, and right skilfully did he make use of it. The diabolic ingenuity evidenced in the methods and means of torture were of such a nature that were it announced that men and women could face them without renouncing their faith, one would unhesitatingly say it is impossible, that is, if one overlooked the promise—”My grace is sufficient for thee and my grace is made perfect in weakness.” The dark dungeons that witnessed the lingering deaths of saintly men and women and the walls that heard the groans of heroic men as their limbs were racked, but heard no word of renunciation of their faith could they but speak, would have a tale to tell that would appear almost incredible. The men who planned these tortures have long since passed to their account, and the power that authorised them, drunken with the blood of the saints, is doomed to drink the cup she filled to others. What was the crime of which these men and women were guilty? Loyalty to the truth as revealed in the Word of God, and loving devotion to the Lord who redeemed them were the crimes that awakened the hatred of Satan and moved the hearts of wicked men to stamp out, if it were possible, any signs of the true cause of God in the world. At times it looked like that the enemy was to prevail, but neither the terrors of the Inquisition, nor the extirpating wars against the Waldenses and the Huguenots nor the fires of Smithfield were successful, and the cause of God came through the fiery furnace, heated seven times, with a vigour after the terrible struggle that can only be accounted for on the supposition that One like unto the Son of Man was with it in the fiery furnace. When the French King threatened to wipe out the Huguenots, he was answered with the fearless and significant words of Beza—”Sire, the Church of Christ is an anvil that has broken many a hammer.”
But persecution was not the only means Satan used to destroy God’s cause in the world. Error cleverly disguised and plausibly presented was intended as a potent instrument for the destruction of Christ’s cause in the world. The Christian Church was not long in existence when Satan began to sow his tares. (1) Legalism, with its complete subversion of the ground on which a sinner’s hope rests for eternity was a cunningly-devised scheme, and it is significant that in his Epistles the Apostle Paul gives the clearest indication of the distress caused him by this false teaching, which was not a gospel at all. He suffered more from the Christian Judaising teachers than from the adherents of the old faith, and while the doctrines of grace presented an insuperable barrier to the advance of legalism, the enemy, by a cleverly-executed move, swept the great bulk of the professing Christian world into line with this deeply laid plan. The basic doctrine of the Church of Rome is founded on this ruinous error, and thousands of Protestants are building upon this false foundation for eternity. For though at the Reformation the great truth of justification by faith was declared with no uncertain sound by the great Reformers, yet it was lost sight of in after days by many of those professing to be Protestants. But though Satan has deceived so many, he has not yet been able to stamp out God’s truth. (2) The attempt to destroy God’s cause by denying the true Deity of the Son of God was a blow struck not at the outworks of the Christian Church, but at its very heart. It looked like for a time that it was to be successful, and as Athanasius, the fearless defender of the faith, was banished, it seemed that the cause of God had fallen. But Athanasius was recalled, and the truth of God triumphed. Satan did not cease in his attempt to overthrow this great doctrine, and so down the ages the Church had to contend with Socianianism, Unitarianism, and Kenoticism. The latter theory is one of the most subtle of modern attacks on the true Deity of the Son of God, and it has been invoked as a foil against our Lord’s testimony to the Old Testament Scriptures. (3) The attack on the Scriptures in the name of learning has had an extraordinary vogue. It has entered into the high places of theological learning, and has been warmly welcomed there. Young candidates for the holy ministry have imbibed this deadly poison at the hands of their teachers, and have in turn become disseminators of the same. But, however long the tide may take in turning, the ebb will come by and bye.
If time permitted reference might be made to Evolutionism, Spiritism, Communism, Christian Science, Russellism, Seventh Day Adventism, and other members of that numerous brood hatched by Satan, but they are all destined to fail in the end.
III. Satan attempts to destroy God’s cause by introducing worldliness into the Church.
With apparent diffidence he suggests that the rules and laws of the Church are too strict—that a little yielding on the part of the Church will work to its advantage. And if this subtle suggestion is given heed to it is followed up by others in which the interests of the young figure prominently. The young, he suggests, must be kept in hand at all costs, and the best way of doing so is by introducing into the services of the sanctuary and the management of the Church as much of the world as possible. New generations need new methods, it is suggested, and the old paths by which the saints of God went on their way to their everlasting rest are said now to be out of date, and unless we have a religion that suits the men and women of the world, it will not do. If it is suggested in opposition that the way of worshipping God is not left to man, but set before us in His Word, then we are met with the subtle and deluding question—”What harm can there be in this?” Anything that wars against the spirituality of the worship of God and that deadens the spiritual life of God’s professing people ought to be shunned by them as the plague. That a determined effort is made to destroy the cause of God by infecting it with a deadly worldly spirit is plainly manifest to all who love Zion. But even this device of the enemy will be frustrated, and the attempt to smother the cause of Truth by a worldly spirit will be overthrown by Him who promised that the gates of hell would not prevail against His Church.
The Church of Christ exists in a hostile world. It is attacked on every side, but however diverse the mode of attacks, there is behind them all a governing mind, and however unrelated the opposing agencies may appear, there is no getting away from the fact that there is a co-ordination that indicates all too plainly that they are not isolated agencies working without any objective, but are all definitely shaping towards one goal—the overthrow of the cause of God in the world, and as the believer scans the field of battle his heart would fail him if he had no help but in man—his sure and all-sufficient help is in the name of the Lord.