The Gospel Herald -- Promoting the fundamentals of the 1888 message.

“I seek refuge in God from the intermeddling and mischief of cursed Satan.”

(Salah, “Ta’awwudh”

The Great War Behind All Wars:
Satan’s Hatred Against Allah

When the patriarch Jacob (Ya’coub), the son of Isaac (Ishaq), was fleeing alone from home, he lay down to sleep one night as a weary pilgrim in a dangerous place, and his heart was oppressed by a sense of fear and guilt. The gracious God gave him a dream which came as a wonderful breakthrough into his human understanding. He was not alone!

As he lay sleeping on the ground at Bethel with a stone for a pillow, he saw a ladder stretching from where he was, up to heaven, and there were angels ascending and descending on it.1 Thus for the first time in his life Jacob saw beyond the shadows of this world into the reality of heaven’s nearness to us. These angels are constantly working for believers, taking their prayers up to heaven and bringing back gracious answers. Without divine revelation, we could never know what is going on, and we would miss out on the fantastic blessings that lie unseen all around us. This ladder connects heaven above with the believer below.

The war behind all wars is the attempt of Iblis (Satan) to cut that ladder from heaven to earth so that the world is left in darkness and loneliness. Those who are thus cut off are aptly described as “aliens, … and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world.”2 Satan cannot actually cut the ladder itself; but he can throw a cloud of darkness over the truth, so that for the world the ladder might just as well not be there.

This Satan (Iblis) is described in the honoured Qur’an as the angel who “was puffed up with pride, and became of the number of unbelievers.”3 He falsely accused Allah, saying, “Thou hast seduced me.” His hatred of Allah led him to say that he would fight a war against him: “I will surely tempt them to disobedience in the earth, and I will seduce such of them as shall be thy chosen servants.”4 It is he who has “sown discord between … brethren.”5

No intelligent person can doubt that there is a Satan, the source and continuer of evil in the earth. There is no evil in Allah, “Lord of the worlds, the Beneficent, the Merciful.”6 Although Allah is the Almighty One, he does have an enemy who will oppose him until the final Day of Judgment.

Man needs to understand the nature of this great conflict between Satan and Allah, and how the evil angels of Satan (evil jinns) work to foment trouble in the earth. It is impossible to have a clear understanding of life today without grasping the reality of this great war behind all wars, for this invisible conflict vitally affects every human being living on planet earth.

This mysterious war actually began in heaven, for it was there that Satan’s hatred against Allah was first brought out in the open. We find the story of the rebellion of Satan in this inspired vision:

And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.

Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say:

“Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God. …

For the accuser of our brothers, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down.7

The name Michael means “Who is like God?”8 This raises a question: Why does the Sacred Record not simply say that Satan fought against God? Can anyone be like God? There is only one God! Here we face a profound mystery of the divine revelation. The one true Allah is greater and more glorious than our poor, finite, mortal minds can grasp. The holy, invisible Allah, disclosed himself in a manifestation of himself that Satan warred against.

Satan actually staged an attempted coup against God’s government, and although he was not strong enough to overthrow him and usurp his place, Satan did succeed in getting one-third of the angels to join him.9 The holy prophet Ezekiel (Shul-Kifl) was given a view of Satan’s history under the symbol of the “king of Tyre,” a man who tried to copy Satan:

You were the model of perfection,

full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.

You were in Eden,

the garden of God, …

You were anointed as a guardian cherub,

for so I ordained you.

You were on the holy mount of God;

you walked among the fiery stones.

You were blameless in your ways

from the day you were created

till wickedness was found in you. …

You sinned. …

Your heart became proud

on account of your beauty,

And you corrupted your wisdom

because of your splendor.

So I threw you to the earth.10

Allah is too good to create someone like Satan as an enemy for us. He created a pure and holy angel whose name was Lucifer, or “Morning Star,” and who was “blameless” until he himself invented the idea of rebellion against God:

How you have fallen from heaven,

O morning star, son of the dawn!

You have been cast down to the earth. …

You said in your heart,

“I will ascend to heaven;

I will raise my throne

above the stars of God; …

I will make myself like the Most High.”11

Many have had the idea that Iblis will never die. They have assumed that evil will continue forever, supposing that there is a kind of eternal “dualism” in Allah’s universe (that both good and evil are needed to balance each other). Their idea is that although pure evil is bad, pure good is too good! There must, therefore, be a good Allah teamed up with a bad Devil who always keeps a kind of war going forever. This idea is not true.

Satan wants people to think this, because it puts Allah in a bad light. It makes it seem that he is too weak to conquer the problem of evil, and that, of course, means that evil is too strong for God. So he and Satan strike a kind of bargain between them, each to co-exist with the other, just as good people and bad people have to co-exist in this less-than-perfect world we live in.

Some even think that Satan is a member of Allah’s staff, employed by him as the “manager” of his hell-fire department. Traditional pagan religions tend to regard evil as something which is eternally entrenched in the world—probably the real reason why corruption everywhere seems to be impossible to eradicate!

The inspired Word of Allah proclaims the good news that there will be a total eradication of Satan, sin, and evil in the future. To know and understand this good news is like having a light on a dark and stormy night when you must travel a road you’ve never been on before, a road upon which there are evil people or wild animals that you fear.

One of the companions of the Messiah, Simon Peter son of Jona, was impressed with the way the Holy Scriptures give assurance to the heart of man. In a general letter to believers, he said: “We are even more confident of the message proclaimed by the prophets. You will do well to pay attention to it, because it is like a lamp shining in a dark place until the Day dawns.”12 Many, many people are deeply worried; you can see unhappy faces everywhere. To know the good news that Satan is defeated will lift a heavy burden from many perplexed hearts.

The war that Satan began in heaven has been continued on earth. This enemy deceived our first parents and persuaded them to invite him in. They had been created noble, pure, and happy, having “dominion” over “every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” They were made “in the image of God, … male and female.”13 Adam was appointed Khalifa on earth.

Unfortunately, they invited Satan in because he promised them liberty in the “knowledge of good and evil,” and aroused them to doubt the love and faithfulness of Allah.14 Before they yielded to Satan’s temptation, however, they had been honoured with this glorious “dominion”:

What is man, that thou art mindful of him? … thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet: all sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field; the fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea.15

It is clear for everyone to see that we have lost this “dominion”! Except for a few domesticated animals such as horses, camels and cattle, nature is not under our “dominion” at all. Lightning, storms, floods, earthquakes, are uncontrollable even by the scientists’ most sophisticated inventions. Even the birds fly away from us! What has caused this loss of “dominion”? Our first parents wanted something higher than they had been created to have. Satan tempted them to aspire to be “as gods,” and they chose to share his ambition to be “like the most High.”16 This was the deep sin that caused their fall; they expressed it outwardly in the open act of disobedience, reaching out to pluck the forbidden fruit and eat it.17 This sin was more than a mere act of outward disobedience; it involved Satan’s heart, and man’s heart as well.

Sin is not merely a taboo, the doing of an act that Allah has arbitrarily prohibited; it is the cherished doubt of God’s character of love, which leads to the desire to rise higher than our created position under him. There is, and can always be, only one Allah, therefore for Satan or man to desire to be “like the most High” requires that we push him off his high and holy throne and take his place. This was Satan’s ambition in his attempted coup; and when he persuaded man to join him, he brought sin and evil into the world. “Sin entered the world through one man [Adam], and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned.”18

There is no other explanation of why death is universal! A proud, unbelieving person will not wish to acknowledge this sober truth that Allah’s Word discloses, but the world is too full of evil, suffering and death for anyone to successfully deny that sin is the cause of it all. Satan’s principle of self-seeking, selfishness, and rebellion against Allah is everywhere. “The carnal mind is enmity against God.”19 This “enmity” is deeply ingrained within us, because the prophet Jeremiah wisely says, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?”20 Sin deceives us, so that we cannot even understand ourselves, except in the light of Allah’s revelation.

Since “enmity” is like a seed planted, what kind of fruit does it produce? If it is allowed to germinate in a human heart, take root and grow, everyone knows well what the fruit will be: murder or the attempt to murder. It is true that many people hate others and yet do not actually pull a trigger or poison them; and the reason is that their “enmity” is mercifully restrained by the good Spirit of God in one way or another. If that divine restraint is removed, murder always follows because “whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer.”21 The desire becomes father to the deed.

Throughout long ages, the enemy, Satan, has brought misery, sickness, hatred, wars, corruption, death, into this fair earth. He caused persecution, especially against the true worshippers of Allah, trying to wipe them from the earth. Fortunately, he could not succeed, for Allah protected his faithful believers who were always as “strangers and pilgrims” in an alien world.22 Allah counted Satan’s enmity and persecution as directed against himself. In fact, Satan’s enmity is primarily directed against God, not man. His persecution of Allah’s worshippers is an effort to persecute God in the same way that a man’s enemy may attempt to get at him by harming his children. Allah’s love for his faithful worshipers in an alien world is like that of a father for his children: “Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him.”23

Satan’s fierce hatred against Allah was yet to find a target. When our first parents invited Satan in as “the prince of this world,”24 Allah told them of the results of their sin, but he did not leave them to their ruin. He immediately showed them another facet of his divine character—that of being a Deliverer, Redeemer, and Saviour. This aspect of himself had not been known before, because sin had not yet entered his world. In addition, therefore, to being our Creator, our Father, and our God, he must become our Saviour too, or he will deny his own attributes as “Lord of the worlds, the Beneficent, the Merciful” One.

Allah wanted our first parents to hear the good news of his redemptive work as a Saviour, and to them he outlined the future war behind all wars. This revelation is in what he said to Satan:

I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.25

The woman’s “offspring” is the long-awaited Messiah, through whom Allah would redeem man’s lost “dominion” from the usurper, Satan. The great war would intensify until it became a death-grapple between Allah and Satan, for Satan would “strike his heel,” but the Messiah would crush his head. In other words, the Messiah would be wounded in the great war, but Satan would be mortally wounded and would eventually be utterly defeated and die the “second death.”26

It is clear in the honoured Qur’an that Hazrat Abraham understood the essential features of this great conflict, for it was no doubt he who passed on the details of our first parents’ mistake to the later prophets, including the prophet Moses (Musa). In Allah’s provision of a “tremendous Victim” to ransom his son, Abraham saw and understood the principle of redemption by substitute so necessary in Allah’s plan to defeat Satan forever.27

Since “whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer,”28 it is hardly surprising that Satan’s hatred of God was manifested in his attempt to murder the Messiah. It was in that desire to murder, that Satan would in fact defeat himself. He would over-reach himself, captive to his own evil impulses.

Allah was too great and too wise to destroy Satan in the beginning, for such an act would not have been understood by angels or his servants in the world and throughout the universe. Allah must patiently permit Satan to develop his malicious purposes, until it was plain for everyone to see that his new “invention” of sin is actually an attempt to displace Allah from his throne and murder him. Satan needed time to demonstrate this. Allah must not allow secret doubts to exist among his worship pers. Only by allowing the evil character of Satan to be fully revealed could the great war finally be won.

This is the reason why Allah instituted the ancient system of blood sacrifices. They revealed two important truths that his worshipers must understand: (a) Satan’s enmity against Allah would at last be brought out in the open by his attempt to murder the Messiah; (b) at the same time, Allah would redeem sinful man by his “tremendous Victim,”29 for all the ancient prophets, instructed by Allah, clearly saw that “without shedding of blood there is no remission” of sins.30 This was the truth that Abraham understood when Allah provided that substitute to die in place of his son.

In the beginning, Satan envied Adam because Allah had appointed him Khalifa, vicegerent, on this earth. Sadly, Adam foolishly listened to Satan, thus giving him an advantage. Satan’s purpose has been to wrest from Adam that honoured position of Khalifa, and the tragic evil that for thousands of years has brought sorrow and tears to so many on earth is evidence enough of his efforts. Allah’s divine plan of redemption is one of infinite wisdom: the long-awaited Messiah must wrest from Satan this usurped honour of Khalifa in order to restore it to man.

Now we have come to the time when the great battle of the ages is to be concluded. In the inspired vision which the prophet John saw, Satan fights desperately just before the end of the world, “because he knoweth that he hath but a short time. … And the dragon was wroth with the woman [the believing “offspring”] and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God.”31

Allah will win the war of the ages! “Praise be to Allah, Lord of the worlds, the Beneficent, the Merciful, Owner of the Day of Judgment.”32


Chapter 10: Why Allah Commanded Hazrat Abraham to Offer His Son

Index: In Search of the Treasure of Faith


References:

  1. Genesis 28:10-22.
  2. Ephesians 2:12.
  3. The Qur’an, 2:34; 7:11, 12.
  4. The Qur’an, 15: 31-40.
  5. The Qur’an, 12:5, 100.
  6. The Qur’an, “The Fatihah”.
  7. Revelation 12:7-10, NIV.
  8. Compare Daniel 12:1; Jude 9; and 1 Thessalonians 4:16, 17.
  9. See Revelation 12:4.
  10. Ezekiel 28:12-17, NIV.
  11. Isaiah 14:12-14, NIV.
  12. 2 Peter 1:19, TEV.12.
  13. Genesis 1:26-28.
  14. Genesis 2:16, 17; 3:4, 5.
  15. Psalm 8:4-8.
  16. Genesis 3:5; Isaiah 14:14.
  17. Genesis 3:6; The Qur’an, 2; 7:20-22; 20:120, 121.
  18. Romans 5:12, NIV.
  19. Romans 8:7.
  20. Jeremiah 17:9, NIV.
  21. 1 John 3:15, emphasis supplied.
  22. See Hebrews 11:13.
  23. Psalm 103:13.
  24. See John 14:30.
  25. Genesis 3:15, NIV.
  26. See Revelation 20:14.
  27. The Qur’an, 37:107.
  28. 1 John 3:15.
  29. The Qur’an, 37:107.
  30. Hebrews 9:22.
  31. Revelation 12:12, 17.
  32. The Qur’an “The Fatihah.