Satan’s Plan and Its Failure

One of the cherubim, whom God had fashioned with great care and loved, grew proud, coveted the throne and rose in rebellion, and together with a third of the angels he was cast out from the mountain of God. The one who had been driven out then appeared in the form of a serpent and led man to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and from that day he set about hunting down the woman’s offspring to destroy them.

The murder of Abel, the children born to the daughters of men to corrupt the human line, and the attempts to kill the Hebrew baby boys and the infants of Jesus’ day all served this one purpose. When he tempted Jesus in the wilderness, he was trying to learn whether this really was the offspring of the woman. He believed that putting Jesus to death on a cross would make him one who is cursed, but the resurrection had no place in his calculations. Even now Satan draws people into pleasure and entertainment, and he borrows the language of human rights and public health to stop worship and keep the church from gathering.

Satan’s plan to destroy the woman’s offspring failed then, and it is failing still. Unless God permits it, Satan can do nothing. When God’s people live by faith, unshaken and unafraid, the victory is theirs.