Revelation 12 (Part 10) The Fight With satan

Revelations 12:7-17


By Odon Bulamba (10th August 2007)

Revelation 12: 15, “And the serpent poured water like a river out of his mouth after the woman, So that he might cause her to be swept away with the flood”.

The dragon saw the woman flying, and thought he couldn’t catch her anymore. He thought, “I have to use a strategy, instead of using fire like other dragons, I will use water”.

We know that water represents life. The Word of God is water. Satan has found that the church of God is far from him, “people are running away from me, the only strategy I can use will be by using the Word of God and I will use it in the way that will cause the church to be broken, completely destroyed. If I use other weapons, I won’t be able to fight. Jesus gave them the power to overcome me, to win the battle. So my new strategy now will be the Word of
God”.

Now we can go back to Jesus’ word: “At the end of times, you will see lots of false prophets, lots of false teachers, lots of false pastors, lots of messengers, people who will proclaim they are Jesus among us. Many people will be led astray. Many people will get lost. Satan will never and ever use something not close to Christianity. He will use something that is similar so that people can say: “Yes. I can see there is some truth in there, let us follow it.”

Then his demons can perform miracles and these miracles will not be just simple ones, but they will shake the world, they will make everybody think: “Yes, this is God!”

How many people today worship satan without knowing it? How many people pray to him without knowing it? How many people believe today that they trust in God but they don’t know in whom they trust? And how many times we neglect the battle we have against satan? We might say: “Yes, we are in a battle field. We are fighting against the power of darkness, we are fighting satan but we actually neglect that fight. We don’t want to practise at all, we don’t realise we need training and we need to get ready. Unfortunately we keep on saying: “Yes, we are strong enough to fight against satan.”

How can we fight against him? Tell me. “Resist him and he will flee from you …” So we can see that we have everything we need. If you say:

“I don’t have faith”. Just resist and satan will be forced to say “ok”.

I will take an example. I have cocaine with me and I need someone to inject that thing in their vein. I will come to you Shari:
- “Shari, do you want some?”
- “No, I don’t need cocaine in my life”.

So I will offer that to Tyrone, Benedicte and everyone. People are free to say
- “Yes, I’ll have it”. Or
- “No”.

If you resist you will become a winner but when you don’t resist, that’s the time when you lose your battle. To resist against what exactly? Against sin. Sin doesn’t hide itself, sin is clear. When you want to lie, you will know this is a lie and you will tell a lie and you will try to varnish it, to colour it so that it will look like a true message. You know it’s a lie, you prepare it properly, and pass it on but if you decide not to lie but to say the truth, it will be the truth, no matter what people think or want to hear from you, but the truth will just be the truth.

When the idea of killing or stealing comes to you; the idea comes and you will know that this is wrong: killing or stealing is wrong. The last decision though is entirely yours: “I will do it” or “I don’t want to do it”. If you resist that will be it and the idea will know that there is no place for it here and it will leave you alone. Like David when he said: “The armour you have given me is very heavy and I can’t wear that, I will just use whatever I have”. Maybe your small faith is enough, use it and you will win the battle.

So we have different ways to win the battle provided we have the willingness to do so. Finally, verse 16 and 17 the Bible says:

Revelation 12:16 & 17, “But the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and drank up the river which the dragon poured out of his mouth.  So the dragon was enraged with the woman, and went off to make war with the rest of her children, who kept the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus”.

The earth opened and swallowed everything. If satan is trying to spread the false gospel in the life of the church, the earth must open and swallow that river. What is this earth? The earth is my body, it is your body because we come from dust. Your body will say:
- “Yes, I accept this message” or
- “No, I don’t”.

For instance, some people will say:
- “Our pastor is this man, he is a preacher. He is good and does such and such”.
- Fine. But other people will discover that the pastor serves satan (just an example). But because you are the pastor’s fanatic and you love that man, you love what he says, you will say:

- “OK. I have to go with him”. You won’t say:
- “I have to go with Jesus.”

You will decide to go with him, and say, “I have to be close to him and participle to everything he does and do whatever I am required to do”. Your body will push you.

Another example: Judah Iscariot. When Jesus told them that one of them will betray Him, everyone asked if it was them, including Judah although he knew it was him. He just asked as well to give good impression to the other disciples. And Jesus told him straight it was him. Instead of saying:

- “Look. Forgive me. I didn’t want to do it. I made a mistake, please don’t allow me to carry on”.
He got angry. He stood up and left.
- “I will prove now to you who I am. I must do it”. And he did it.

But if his body could just cool down and say:
- “I will save that warning.”

He might not have been the one who betrayed the Son of man. Sometimes also our body can’t escape God’s plan, but we have the choice to stop that river of water which comes from satan. It’s easy to know for the preacher himself when they give a false preaching.

When I was younger I went to a Catholic college. We learn there that Mary (the mother of Christ) was a virgin until the day she passed away. Mary used to go for walks with 12 stars around her head. Mary, the mother of Christ, is now standing up at the right hand of God telling God to forgive us, to go to Jesus, you have to first go through Mary.

Finally, the priest gave us a small card: on Saturday, go to the priest and repent.
- I stole $5 yesterday.
- Son, what did you do with the $5?
- Priest, forgive me. I used them for such and such.
- OK. I forgive you and God forgives you. Go in peace.

Every time you go to church, they will tell you:
- OK. Once you are in, you must look at the cross, kneel down and do this.
- What for?
- I don’t know. The preacher says something.
- Yeh, yeh. The preacher says something else:
- Yeah, yes.

When he comes in, the bell is rang.
- The Lord be with you.
- With you too. And then you sit and stand up… up and down and up and down. From the beginning of the service to the end of the service. Why all these ceremonials? The church today knows that most of them are magic ritual and people continue to do it.

Before eating the bread, we must have candles. I am not sure how many candles Jesus had that night. Let us light one, some Sundays they are yellow, others white and others red. What can we learn from all of that? Preachers are everywhere, preachers who try to contradict the Bible.

For example: who was Jesus’ father? It was surely Joseph. But if you read the genealogy in Matthew, we see that Joseph was not Jesus’ biological father, but why is he in the genealogy of Christ? Why is Jesus a descendant of David? If God had taken Mary to be in Jesus’ genealogy, because they have some physical relationship, it could be understandable. Today people are desperate to find an answer to that question… but they are questions you can never and ever answer. Tell me why you have two legs instead of four? Why do you have two ears and not one? Why do you look the way you look? Who can answer such questions? No one. Why do you have a brain instead of gold or diamond because people say gold is so valuable, it’s a treasure?

So we see that God makes things according to His will. He has the right to write and tell us whatever He needs or wants, without us challenging Him, or challenging His Word. When the river was swallowed by the ground, the woman was freed.

Korah, in the times of Moses, revolted and the ground opened and swallowed them. When the Israelites crossed the Red Sea, God Himself caused it to stop. He put a path and they crossed it.

So He is able to do anything. Don’t say that you won’t be able to do something or to fight satan, to stop his arrows because you are weak, no. God can make you able to do so, with one condition: trust in Him. This is all I can say tonight.

QUESTION:

- If the woman represents the church, and if she is in a desert, in a hard place, does that mean that the church today is in a hard place?
- Yes. There is no easy life when living for Christ. And if you want to know how hard life is, try to follow God’s instructions. You will see how hard it is. It’s really hard.