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Welcome to the Cross References podcast on the Book of Ezekiel. In this study, you learn how every small piece of the Bible tells one big story- and most importantly, how they all connect to the cross and Christ.
Whether you’re a newbie Christian or a veteran Bible reader, my goal is that God’s Word will make more sense to you after every episode.
Host: Luke Taylor
Satan’s Master Plan (and what it has to do with Christmas)
Introduction
Is II Corinthians 2:11 true for you? I sure hope so, because it’s certainly not true for most Christians.
Verses 10 and 11 of II Corinthians 2 say
I have forgiven in the sight of Christ for your sake, in order that (keep point here) Satan might not outwit us. For we are not unaware of his schemes.
Sadly- truthfully- but tragically- II Corinthians 2:11 does not apply to most Christians. Because most Christians are regularly outwitted by Satan, and most Christians have no idea about his schemes- his devices- his designs.
We like to blame Satan for a lot of problems in life. The degradation of society, the strife in our families, the flat tire I got last Tuesday, whatever happened to Marvel after Endgame…
And I think it’s a fair question to ask: what the heck is this guy’s problem? What’s his deal? How does he expect to possibly defeat God? What’s his master plan?
I find Satan to be weird, and I’d like to understand what he’s doing throughout the Bible.
Turn to Genesis 3, and let’s get weird.
[theme music]
Genesis 3-4
Welcome to Weird Stuff in the Bible, where we explore scripture passages that are bizarre, perplexing or just plain weird. This is Luke Taylor, and today we’re going to be talking about Satan’s Master Plan. And I believe I know exactly what it is.
I posed this in the intro: how could Satan ever expect to defeat an omnipotent God? I mean frankly, Satan knows the Bible better than you or I. So how could Satan expect that he has any chance of overcoming the Supreme God who created the entire universe?
And the answer is, he can’t. Unless God gives Satan the opportunity. Unless God gives Satan the chance, some kind of target to aim for. For example, if God says that His whole plan for humankind and planet Earth hinges on X, then Satan doesn’t have to destroy God to defeat God. Satan just has to destroy X.
So the question then becomes: has God done this? Has God given Satan something within his reach that he can swing for? Well, I’ll lay out my case for why I think yes, God has given Satan this- we might say- “opportunity,” and this will contextualize a lot of the storyline of the Bible for you today.
Especially the Weird Stuff in the Bible. This episode might make some of it not so weird anymore.
So let’s begin at the beginning. Let’s go all the way back to when sin entered the world in Genesis 3. You know the story; Adam and Eve ate the fruit. Adam blamed her. She blamed the snake. The snake was the devil. And God gives this prophetic utterance to those three after this happened:
Genesis 3:15 (and He specifically says this to the devil)
I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel.
And many people rightfully take this as a messianic prophecy. This is about Jesus. Two seeds are spoken of right here: a seed of Satan and a seed of the woman. We’ll talk about the seed of Satan, but the seed of the woman is obviously Jesus.
This is the first place in the Bible where God announces that a savior is coming someday. This is the first messianic prophecy. Sin has just entered the world a few minutes ago, and God is already saying, “Well now everything is all messed up. There’s gonna be struggles and pain and thorns and life sucks and then you die.” But then God immediately gives the first prophetic declaration of a future Messiah, and God does so by announcing where this Messiah will come from: the Messiah will descend from the woman.
So now we know where the Messiah is going to come from. From a human woman. That might seem obvious to us, because we already know about Christmas. We already know how God entered this world, so it comes as no surprise to us.
But let’s analyze what this declaration means to Adam and Eve. It means he’s not going to just descend from the clouds like an angel. He’s not popping out of the ground. He’s not going to be some kind of animal. He’s not getting delivered by Amazon Prime. The future Messiah will be born of the woman.
And guess what: this Messiah is gonna crush Satan’s head. That’s bad news for Satan.
But Satan also has some good news, or at least some potential good news. If he wants to stop the Messiah from coming, all he has to do is stop the human bloodline.
I mean, if you think about it, God has kind of pigeon-holed Himself into this plan to use one of Eve’s descendants as the Messiah. God could have just had the Messiah pop out of the ground at some point, if God wanted to. And that’d be pretty simple, and Satan probably couldn’t do anything with that information. God could have just said the Messiah would descend from heaven someday, and Satan couldn’t have done anything about that either.
But instead, God’s going to make it- you might say- a little more difficult for Himself. God promises to send the Messiah through humanity. He’s going to send the Messiah into the world as a baby through a human female. That’s kinda weird that God would do that, right?
Well, let’s turn the page. Eve heard this prophecy and she probably assumed when she had her first son, Cain, that he would be this Messiah that God had prophesied would come from her. That’s why it says in
Genesis 4:1
Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, “I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord.”
Cain’s name means “gotten.” She’s saying, “I’ve got the man! I’ve got the Messiah who is here to fix my mistake!”
But, of course, as you keep reading, they don’t do so well with Cain. He ends up killing his brother. And the population of the world goes down 25% at that moment.
I would imagine Satan had something to do with enticing Cain to kill Abel. I would imagine that he thinks his plan of killing off the human bloodline is off to a great start. One down, three to go. And even Eve knows now that Cain isn’t gonna be anybody’s Messiah.
Genesis 5-6
Well, as Jurassic Park teaches us, life finds a way. The human bloodline pushes forward. Adam and Eve have Seth, Seth and Cain start having kids and please don’t ask me who their wives were because I don’t really want to do an episode about that.
But humanity grows and expands. And Genesis 4 and 5 talk about all the people who were born of Cain and Seth and traces their bloodline all the way to the flood.
But why did the flood happen? And if humanity basically started over with the flood of Noah, why is the Bible even bothering to give us a genealogy of people prior to the flood?
If you’re a longtime listener of this podcast, or if you know about the Nephilim and the Sons of God, you know what happened that caused God to send a flood.
Genesis 6:1-4 say
When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, 2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. 3 Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.” 4 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.
If you're a normal, well-adjusted person, you probably read through those verses before and thought, “that’s weird,” and the moved on without really giving it a second thought. But if you’re a listener of this podcast, you’re probably not a normal, well-adjusted person.
In case you’ve never really read through this very deeply before: The Sons of God were angelic beings who manifested in bodily form on the earth. They impregnated human women and created a new race of hybrids called the Nephilim. These were humanlike in many ways, although they were taller and stronger than normal humans, and it’s likely that they had extra fingers and toes and were very bloodthirsty and dangerous.
When this started to happen, God put a countdown of 120 years. He said that in 120 years, I’m going to flood the entire planet and wipe out all this life. In that 120 years, their bloodline began to spread quickly over the face of the earth. It was starting to get to the point that fewer and fewer people were untainted by Nephilim DNA. That almost all people were getting to the point that they had some level of Nephilim bloodline.
This was a plot of Satan. The seed of the serpent was spreading. And if it got to the point that all of mankind was infected with the Nephilim bloodline, then Satan would have defeated God’s plan, because then the Messiah couldn’t have come through one of Eve’s descendants. If he can stop mankind, he can stop the Messiah.
But then this guy named Noah shows up. And Noah doesn’t have any Nephilim bloodline.
Genesis 6:9 (NKJV)
This is the genealogy of Noah. Noah was a just man, perfect in his generations. Noah walked with God.
Noah was perfect in his generations; have you ever wondered what that’s talking about? It’s talking about his bloodline. The corruption of the Nephilim bloodline hadn’t touched Noah and his kids, so that made Noah a candidate to save the human race.
Satan’s plan almost worked. He came pretty close. God wiped out the entire human race other than Noah and his family. And God gave the world a fresh start.
Genesis 12
So after the flood, Noah and his sons spread out, and Noah’s kids have kids, and their kids have kids, and you start getting a pretty good population thing going again. And once again, we’re on Messiah-watch: which of these families is going to birth the Messiah. I’m sure Satan is on the lookout for who it’s gonna be.
And in Genesis 12, God narrows the focus. God takes this man named Abraham and says this to him.
Genesis 12:1-3
2 I will make you a great nation;
I will bless you
And make your name great;
And you shall be a blessing.
3 I will bless those who bless you,
And I will curse him who curses you;
And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.
From this point on, God narrowed the scope of his prophecy. Of all the people in the world, the Messiah is not going to come from just any family and any woman. The Messiah is going to be descended from Abraham specifically. This is the promise.
And God says go to Canaan and I’m going to give you that land. So Abraham goes to that land and then immediately a famine hits and Abraham runs away to Egypt.
And the Bible doesn’t say the devil caused the famine, but it sure is convenient how the famine got Abraham out of that land that God wanted him in.
Then Abraham has two sons, Isaac and Ishmael, and God says the promise is going to go through Isaac, not Ishmael. Isaac has two sons- Jacob and Esau- and God says the promise is going to come through Jacob, not Esau. If you’re on Messiahwatch- and you know the devil is on Messiahwatch at this point- you know which person you have to watch- which descendants you need to kill- if you want to stop the Messiah from coming.
If the devil wants to stop the Messiah, he doesn’t have to worry about killing all of humanity again or corrupting their entire bloodline again. He just has to stop this family line- the family of Jacob. And so Satan’s Master Plan to stop the Messiah in the Old Testament, at this point, just becomes a plan to kill all the Israelites.
Because Jacob has 12 sons. And these 12 sons flourish and grow and have families of their own. And then they’re hit with another famine in the land that God wanted them to have, and they run away to Egypt. And the Bible doesn’t say the devil caused the famine, but it sure is convenient how it got Jacob and his 12 sons out of that land that God wanted them in.
And they’re in Egypt, and they’re there for so long that the Egyptians eventually enslave them. They’re stuck there and forced to work, and they can’t go back to the land God wanted them in. I believe this was a plot of Satan. God wanted the Israelites in the land. Satan had found a way to keep them out of it.
And while they were out of it for those hundreds of years in Egypt, Satan was laying down a minefield in the land of Israel- the so-called Promised Land. It was also known as the land of Canaan, and the Cannanites- we learn in Numbers 13- are infused with another round of Nephilim. If Israel intermingles with these Nephilim, it’s game over for the Messianic bloodline.
So we know eventually God gets the Israelites out of Egypt and leads them back to their land, and that’s why when they go into Canaan, God constantly tells them: leave nothing alive. No man, woman, boy or girl. Totally wipe them all out. This was a cleansing. Don’t tolerate the Nephilim, don’t keep any kids or women you take because they might have some of this Nephilim DNA in their system, and we have to wipe it all out; we can’t let them intermingle with us or it’s just gonna spread and there will be no possibility of a Messiah.
And it took some time, but they eventually wiped the giants out. Satan’s plans were failing.
II Samuel 7
The last of the Nephilim lasted until the reign of King David. He, of course, took down the most famous giant: Goliath. He and his mighty men also wiped out Goliath’s brothers. (You can read all about it in II Samuel 23). This isn’t just ghost stories to tell around the campfire. This was spiritual warfare, and Satan was losing. The opportunity to corrupt their bloodline is fading away. And now there are so many Israelites running around Israel, how could Satan ever going to fulfill his plan and kill all these Jews?
But then God narrows the scope of the prophecy even further. God says it won’t just be any descendant of Jacob that brings the Messiah; the Messiah will come through one specific Israelite’s bloodline:
II Samuel 7:12
When your days are fulfilled and you rest with your fathers, I will set up your seed after you, who will come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom.
So now the scope has been narrowed once again. The Messiah is going to come through David.
Let’s just recap this. Originally, God had said the Messiah would come through the seed of the woman; a descendant of Eve. So Satan tried to corrupt all the descendants of Eve. Then God wiped them away and started over with Noah. Then God said it would be through Abraham. Then God said it would be through Isaac. Then God said it would be through Jacob. So Satan tried to wipe out Jacob’s descendants. And now God has said that the promise of the Messiah would come through David, specifically. So the scope has been narrowed again.
And as you read about the kings of Israel and trace David’s bloodline through I and II Kings and I and II Chronicles, you read stories like this, when Queen Athaliah tried to cut off the Davidic bloodline. It said
In II Kings 11:1-3
When Athaliah the mother of Ahaziah saw that her son was dead, she arose and destroyed all the royal heirs. 2 But Jehosheba, the daughter of King Joram, sister of Ahaziah, took Joash the son of Ahaziah, and stole him away from among the king’s sons who were being murdered; and they hid him and his nurse in the bedroom, from Athaliah, so that he was not killed. 3 So he was hidden with her in the house of the Lord for six years, while Athaliah reigned over the land.
Wow. All the king’s sons were murdered by this wicked woman Athaliah. Except one.
This was an attack by Satan. It wasn’t just Athaliah being ambitious. She was fueled by the devil, who knew he only had to wipe out David’s bloodline because if he could stop David’s bloodline, he could stop the Messiah.
But a woman named Jehosheba saved one of the boys, a baby named Joash, and hid him away for six years. And all those years later, when he was seven, they brought him back, killed Athaliah, and crowned him king. At seven years old. And the bloodline moved forward.
Satan tried to wipe out that bloodline, he got all but one. Just one little anecdote in your bible, but it was probably the closest Satan ever came to stopping God’s plans other than Noah. He came so close. But Satan couldn’t do it. God always preserves a remnant. God always makes a way.
Every time you see someone- whether it’s Haman, whether it’s Nebuchadnezzar, no matter who- every time you see someone try to commit a genocide against the Jews, it’s a plot of the devil to stop God’s plans. And yet Satan’s schemes never work out. They just give us another great Bible story, and they usually give the Jews a new holiday on their calendar.
God even laid some more restrictions on who might be that future Messiah in the Old Testament. God said He would have to be born in Bethlehem. And when Jesus was born, Herod tried to have all the babies slaughtered in Bethlehem. Satan tried it again. Drove the promise from the land into Egypt again.
But Satan failed. Satan did not derail prophecy. Satan fulfilled prophecy. “Out of Egypt I have called my Son.” No matter what Satan schemed and planned, he was never able to stop what God wanted to do.
You might say, God kept trying to make it easier and easier for him. Just kill humanity. OK, not all of humanity, just Abraham’s descendants. Well, just Jacob’s descendants. Well, just David’s descendants.
Satan’s Master Plan in the Old Testament was to stop the Messiah, and he never could.
And that’s why I release this program for Christmas. Because Christmas means the devil failed. From the days of Adam and Eve, it was 4,000 years, and Satan tried everything he could. Enslaving the Hebrews, killing the babies, tainting the bloodline, dominating their land with giants, wiping out families- and he came real close a couple of times.
But he never won. His master plan failed. And Christmas sealed the deal.
So what is he up to now? We’ll chat about that as we wind down today…
[music]
Housekeeping/Mailbag
Well as I’ve said, this is your Christmas episode. Next week, Christmas Day is on a Wednesday, and I think you should spend that time with your family instead of listening to me. So I will not have a new episode until 2025- which will actually start on a Wednesday, so let’s start it weird.
I have some things that I’m really excited to share in the first month of next year. I basically have my next 5 lessons mapped out. I really can’t wait for 2025 to get here so I can share what I’ve been learning. Make sure you’re subscribed so you can get it!
Closing Thoughts
So the Messiah has already come. So that might cause us to wonder: what’s Satan’s master plan today:
Believe it or not, it’s the same as it was before: kill the Jews.
Now you may be wondering: wait, if Jesus has already showed up, then why would Satan still have the same plan now that he did before? Well, I’ll walk you through that.
Once Jesus showed up on the scene, Satan’s new master plan switched from killing the Jews to killing Jesus. That one actually kind of blew up in his face. I won’t spend much time on that because if you’re listening to this podcast, you know that the death and resurrection of Jesus was actually God’s plan all along.
I have only seen it once, but Mel Gibson made that movie about the crucifixion of Jesus about 20 years ago, and toward the beginning it had that scene of Jesus praying and a snake slithered up behind him, and just when you thought it might bite Jesus, he stomped on it and killed it.
We all know that probably didn’t actually happen, but I love the symbolism there of what Genesis 3 said: he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel.
Satan thought he got a win on Jesus with the cross, but of course Jesus turned that right around on him and conquered death, hell and the grave, and purchased the redemption of our bodies and our souls and a new creation.
So Satan is 0 for 2, but right before Jesus went to the cross, Jesus gave this lament over His people. He said in
Matthew 23:37-39
37 “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! 38 See, your house is left to you desolate. 39 For I tell you, you will not see me again, until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’”
Jesus has staked his second coming on the salvation of the Jewish people. The first time Jesus came to this earth, He was rejected by His own people. And this crowd ended up having Him crucified just a few days after He said these words.
I don’t have demographic information on the Jews from back then, but even today, only about 1 percent of Jewish people are saved.
I know this gets a little bit into eschatology, and I’m sure with all of you listening today, there are a variety of end times views out there. But I believe that Jesus has said He will not return again until the Jewish people collectively accept Him as a Messiah. And it’s not just based on this verse.
Romans 11:25 and 26 affirm this.
25 Lest you be wise in your own sight, I do not want you to be unaware of this mystery, brothers: a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. 26 And in this way all Israel will be saved…
Paul confirms that all Israel will someday be saved. And I believe that Jesus will not return until that happens. Because once He returns, it’s game over. But He won’t return until actually two things happen.
One, when the Gospel has been preached to everyone in the world and every person on the planet has had an opportunity to get saved. Some would say that has already happened because every country has been reached with the Gospel; others would say that some people in remote parts of the world have never even heard the name of Jesus. But
Matthew 24:14 says
And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.
So one item on Satan’s agenda is to oppose the spread of the Gospel. We all know that. But two, Satan has a way that he can stop Jesus from coming again: if the Jewish people are wiped out before they repent.
That is why you see the historic and very modern antisemitism against a people who make up a very tiny tiny portion of the global population. Why you see a completely illogical opposition to them having their own tiny little country in one sliver of land in the Middle East. It’s satanically-fueled racial hatred because if Satan can get rid of the Jews, Satan can stop the Second Coming of Christ.
It’s why you saw Hitler kill six million of them, one third of the Jewish people in the world, and he didn’t intend to stop until he got them all. Sadly, the book of Zechariah says that- in the era of the antichrist in the end times- that the antichrist will kill two-thirds of the Jewish people. But he won’t kill them all.
Zechariah also says in ch. 12, v. 10
And I will pour on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Spirit of grace and supplication; then they will look on Me whom they pierced. Yes, they will mourn for Him as one mourns for his only son, and grieve for Him as one grieves for a firstborn.
Satan’s Master Plan today is once again to kill the Jews, before they have a chance to repent and turn to Jesus. And he’ll almost succeed.
But God always preserves a remnant. God always wins. And God’s Master Plan is that the Jewish people will turn back to Him someday and accept Jesus.
Satan couldn’t stop the Messiah’s first coming, and that’s why we have Christmas next week.
Satan is trying, but I don’t believe for a minute that he’s going to be able to stop the Messiah’s second coming, either.
And so I know this was a weird subject matter to study here at Christmastime. But I truly hope it made the overall story of your Bible a little less weird.
Thanks for listening, Merry Christmas to each and every one of you, and we’ll see you in the new year on Weird Stuff in the Bible.