The Controversy and Its Outcome.
By Max Hill
BEFORE our first parents were driven from the Garden of Eden, the Lord in His mercy promised redemption. In that promise Satan heard his own doom: “I will put enmity between thee [the serpent, the representative of Satan] and the woman [humanity], and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise His heel.” Gen. 3:15. That enmity has been manifest thru all the ages. The seed of the woman have been persecuted and afflicted; thousands upon thousands—millions—have been put to death; righteous Abel, Seth, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Samuel, David, Christ;—all these witnessed for God in the earth, were true seed of the woman. In Christ indeed was met the very fulness of the seed of the woman; and in Him was demonstrated the divine love and justice of God. He lived the perfect life; and tho sealed in a Roman tomb, that Sinless One could not be holden of death, but rose again, and ascended to heaven. There He pleads the cause of His children before the throne of God. Then, “when the dragon saw that he was cast unto the earth, he persecuted the woman which brought forth the Man Child.” Rev. 12:13. After Christ was caught up to heaven, thru pagan Rome the first persecution came; then came the persecutions of the apostate church, papal Rome, the Dark Ages witnessing for centuries the inhuman atrocities, all in the name of religion; and later still, the hand of apostate Protestantism was raised against the humble followers of the Lamb, who, tho in the minority, stood for purity of life and worship. And thus closes the controversy: “And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.” Rev. 12:17. But what shall be the outcome of this great controversy? God has said to the great apostate: “I will cast thee to the ground, I will lay thee before kings, that they may behold thee. Thou hast defiled thy sanctuaries by the multitude of thine iniquities, by the iniquity of thy traffic; therefore will I bring forth a fire from the midst of thee, it shall devour thee, and I will bring thee to ashes upon the earth in the sight of all them that behold thee. All they that know thee among the people shall be astonished at thee; thou shalt be a terror, and never shalt thou be any more.” Eze. 28:17-19. Malachi wrote (chapter 4:1): “For behold the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud [who was prouder than was Lucifer?], yea, and all that do wickedly [and he is the prince of evil-doers], shall be stubble; and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root [Satan] nor branch [his followers].” “And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone.” Rev. 20:10. This will be “in the sight of all them that behold” him, and in that destruction the universe will see only the justice of God. Had He destroyed Lucifer at the first, the sinless dwellers of God’s kingdom might have been led to believe that Lucifer had a right to stand with God, or even above Him, in government; but after all the centuries of the demonstration of the character of Satan, not one in all the universe will question. Then will the serpent’s head be wounded, and earth and heaven will be forever free from the blight of sin.