The Devil has been getting away with murder these days and few are calling him out. Except for Wall Street Journal columnist Daniel Henninger, who recently wrote a decidedly politically incorrect piece headlined, “The Devil Resurfaces in Ukraine.”
“Evil fell into disrepute years ago,” Henninger writes. “Evil implied the possibility of a devil, and both came to be seen as impediments to some forms of private personal behavior. So, we demoted evil and expanded the definitions of goodness.
“But banishing the devil came with a price, which is apparent as the world stares into the abyss of human ruin in Ukraine.”
He adds, “Vladimir Putin’s scorched-earth tactics resurrect the possibility in the world of an evil that is pure, compelling and undeniable.”
So, what’s new?
It’s been going on since the Garden of Eden. Rather than appearing as a fire-breathing dragon, the Devil first approached Eve as a beguiling, smooth-talking, jewel-bedecked serpent that was able to “negotiate” with God’s freshly minted imagers eyeball-to-eyeball.
The appalling result upon our first parents and the congenital disease of their sin continues to ripple down through the generations to this very day.
The Devil’s shape-shifting ways are evident throughout the pages of scripture, inspiring pharaohs, emperors, religious leaders and ordinary humans like Judas Iscariot, in Luke 22:2-4:
“And Satan entered Judas, the one called Iscariot, who belonged to the number of the twelve. And he left and discussed with the chief priests and officers how he was to betray Him to them.”
”And during supper, the devil having already put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon, to betray Him …,” as written in John 13:1-3.
In a one-on-one confrontation between humans and Satan, humans lose every time if they are absent of divine intervention. After all, the Devil has been around longer, is smarter and possesses powers beyond our wildest imaginations.
In modern times, the Devil might inspire a Russian autocrat one minute, a Chinese premier the next, or he may periodically influence a North Korean “emperor” to menacingly rattle his nuclear saber just to stir things up. All the while, he hides the reality of his cold-blooded serpentine nature behind legitimate human disguises.
So, how does the Devil get away with it?
Simply stated, he convinces us that he doesn’t exist. In a 2018 column, I wrote about, “the Voldemort effect,” after the villain in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books:
“Many well-meaning people in Ms. Rowling’s fictional world are so petrified of Voldemort’s evil that they do two things: They refuse to call Voldemort by name, instead referring to ‘He Who Must Not Be Named,’ and they deny that he exists in the first place … Often, in the face of unexplainable evil, our only defense is denial, which plays right into the Devil’s hands.”
Our largely postmodern academic set has helped the Devil stay anonymous by eliminating “absolutes” and redefining reality, suggesting that those widely held “truths” of yesteryear were nothing but human fabrications.
Our so-called thought leaders have skillfully morphed reality into a murky world of “issues” to be solved, rather than evils to be confronted.
Henninger observes, “Years of defining evil down have disabled the political system’s ability to act decisively when evil appears. And that puts us at personal, public and national risk … forcing a re-evaluation of evil and our response to it, and our willingness to admit its reality.”
Not to worry. Justice will prevail.
Now for the good news: Scripture promises in Revelation 20:10 that in the end, “the Devil who deceived them (the nations) was thrown into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are also; and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.”
In the meantime, the task for Christians in these “last days” is to resist and stand firm.
1 Peter 5:7-9 advises: “Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. But resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brethren who are in the world. After you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you.”
How About You?
You are not alone in all this! God, who opposes evil, still sits on the throne in Heaven and, in Romans 8:28, assures those who have committed their lives into His care that, “God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.
If God is for us, who is against us? Don’t forget, we’ve read ahead in God’s word, and we know who wins.
— D.C. Collier is a Bible teacher, discipleship mentor and writer focused on Christian apologetics. A mechanical engineer and internet entrepreneur, he is the author of My Origin, My Destiny, a book focused on Christianity’s basic “value proposition.” Click here for more information, or contact him at don@peervalue.com. Click here for previous columns. The opinions expressed are his own.