CHRIST AND HIS ENEMY by Dr. Hanna

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Nov 3, 1881

CHRIST AND HIS ENEMY.

By Dr. Hanna

“It was on Calvary that the struggle between Christ and his great enemy reached its crisis. Satan saw the consummation of his deep-laid plan when Jesus was nailed to his cross. What triumph could be more complete? What more ignoble end could the Prince of the power of the air have wished for his enemy, than to have seen him expiring, crucified between two thieves? About the cross gathered all the rabblement of hell. “This is your hour, and the power of darkness !”

Now death saw its opportunity; and as Joab hasted, and took three darts in his hand and thrust them through the heart of suspended Absalom, so Death emptied his quiver upon Jesus as he hung upon the tree. But on Calvary the powers of darkness met their Waterloo! They wrought their will, but their apparent success proved to be their infinite disaster. On his cross our Lord Jesus spoiled them, triumphed over them, and made a show of them openly! He died, but in dying, Samson-like, he pulled down the pillars of the kingdom of darkness. He died, but at his dying cry Satan fell, like lightning from heaven. He died, but in dying he became the plague of death and the grave's destruction. He died, and they laid his body in a rocky sepulchre, and sealed the stone and set the watch:—

“Deep in the shades of gloomy death The Almighty captive prisoner lay!”

But in three days he burst his tomb, and carried away the gates and bars thereof; and through death he destroyed him that had the power of death, that is the devil; and delivered them who through fear of death were all their life-time subject to bondage.

“Vain the stone, the watch, the seal; Christ hath burst the bars of hell! Death in vain forbids him rise; Christ hath opened Paradise!”

In dying, Christ was but stooping to conquer; his sufferings were the prelude of the glory that should follow; like Gad, a troop overcame him, but he overcame at the last. To the seer of Patmos he presently appears in trailing robes of glory, saying, “I am he that liveth, and was dead; and behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death.” In the crucifixion of Jesus, Satan fulfilled the prediction: “Thou shalt bruise his heel;” but in his resurrection from the dead Christ fulfilled that other prophecy: “He shall bruise thy head.” Satan exulted at the fashioning of that cross upon which the Son of God was to be nailed, little knowing that Messiah's scaffold was to prove the mightiest engine ever reared for the destruction of his kingdom, for it is not by sword, or flame, or rod of iron, that the Ruler of this world's darkness is driven from his authority over the hearts of men; but by the power of that cross whereon Christ died.—Dr. Hanna.