Perhaps you will remember a novel by Frank E. Peretti published in 1986 with the title This Present Darkness. The story involved spiritual warfare engaged in by human protagonists, and pitting God’s angels against the demonic minions. It featured prayer and biblical prescription for battle as given in Ephesians, chapter 6, verse 12, in particular.
the 1980s were certainly years that brought forth growing spiritual darkness on planet earth, just as has every decade since the Fall in Eden. The issues and events of that decade provided more than plentiful fodder for the fiction conjured from Peretti’s brain. Although the book dealt with and dwelled on spiritual darkness in a fictional way, the actual downward spiral of morality in America and the world during that timeframe more than matched that portrayed by the novelist.
On the geopolitical level, the Soviet Union became increasingly brutal in exerting dictatorship over its East European client-states. Thus, all the while its power was degrading because of the cost of maintaining and trying to further build upon its fanatic militarism. The USSR, being totally sold out to and invested in anti-God evil, suffered the weight created by communism’s ideological gravity, which pulled freedom’s light into itself in much the same way a star in the process of going nova collapses in upon itself. The last years of the decade, geopolitically, indeed imposed a dark presence.
Hatred for Israel grew in the mid-1980s as Islam’s chief terrorist organizations were found to have massive arsenals stockpiled along Lebanon’s southern border. Israel’s avowed enemies within the Arab world obviously planned an all-out assault. The Jewish state’s preemptive military action pushed back for decades the insanity that we are experiencing at present. Not only Islamist hatred, led by a nuclear-ambitious Iran, but anti-Semitism now seems an unstoppable, malignancy spreading globally by the hour.
And this is where the “present darkness,” as Peretti would have it, has become “this present madness,” as is manifestly the case in so many ways.
Satan is the most cunningly evil of all creatures, and brilliant in stratagem, as tracing his footprints while he, like a roaring lion, stalks back and forth, seeking whom he might devour, clearly shows. But, he is also now mad that is, insane— provable by truth found in God’s Word: “And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind” (Romans 1:28a).
The old serpent, the devil, who is the father of lies and hates any thought of God, has a mind that is totally incapable of seeing things as they really are. His thinking is upside down, and incorrigibly wicked.
Proof that he is mad–insane— is found in the fact that he knows the Creator of all things is omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent. God cannot lie, and absolutely knows the end from the beginning–in each and every, excruciatingly minute detail. Yet, knowing that God has foretold Satan’s ultimate destiny–that he will burn eternally in the lake of fire—Satan still thinks he will be victorious and escape his fate. That is the supremely arrogant, essence of madness.
This luciferian madness is more infectious than Ebola or any of the most such diseases one could name. Its effects, I contend, are seen most observably by considering, again, the number-one signal of where this generation stands on God’s prophetic timeline. I’m referring to the nation Israel, and to God’s chosen people, the Jews.
Specifically, I’m talking about the Christian church–a broad, evangelical, portion of which has adopted or is in process of adopting the anti-Semitism that is metastasizing throughout the world at present.
Despite God’s plain declaration that those who curse the progeny of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will suffer curses of eternal consequences, a vast number of pastors and their church bodies are taking up the rant of Palestinianism, which holds, basically, that modern Israel has no claim to God’s promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
These church leaders and their regimes that support Israel’s enemies’ right to the land God granted the Jews claim that Israel, in its modern incarnation, is illegitimate and an intruder. In this way they are falling into the same satanic trap into which the people of Hitler’s Germany fell. This is, in my view, madness that is much darker than the darkness Mr. Peretti portrayed in his best-selling novel.
It is madness that is swiftly bringing upon the world what will be the greatest judgment ever experienced by those who defy the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. True believers in the Lord Jesus Christ–who was virgin-born a Jew, ministered and did miracles as a Jew, who died on the cross and resurrected as a Jew for the salvation of all who will believe—should immediately leave any church that harbors this anti-Semitism.
This same Jewish Lord of all lords and King of all kings is coming again to rule and reign on the throne of David. It will be a Jewish throne!
Terry James Prophecy Line 
AMEN!!!!!!!!
I’ve never seen anything in the Bible that says Satan believes he can defeat God (subsequent to the Garden and God’s clear judgment). Sure, when he first stepped out of line he said he wanted to be higher than God. But again, that was at his fall. Subsequent to his fall was man’s fall where God declared Satan’s final destiny. I believe he knows where he is going. Think of the demons that Jesus cast into pigs. They knew their destiny – and that it wasn’t the right time yet.
I don’t think he’s so stupid to not believe God, as he is still under God’s control (read the first few chapters of Job) doing only what God permits. Rather than stupid, I see Satan as quite angry – bitterly, ragingly angry. in his hatred, he targets all that God loves. I believe Satan is trying to take as many of God’s beloved humans with him to the eternal lake of fire.
By the way, good point about the Genesis blessing and curse racing humanity to the final days
That synopsis is so accurate. Keeping in mind he probably knows the Bible ‘inside and out.’ I omitted ‘by heart’ as he doesn’t have one.
I tend to lean more toward Serenity’s scenario, where Satan is “mad as hell” and wants to take as many with him as he can. But on the other hand, there is evidence all thru the Bible that he still has a thin hope that he can somehow avoid his declared fate. Take the Jews. He obviously hates them with a passion and the Bible and history are full of his attempts to wipe them out. Today his spirit is behind the Islamic terror groups who all want to drive Israel into the ocean. One theory, beyond just his hated and pure evil, is that he knows from the old testament that Jesus can’t touch down on earth, and judge Satan, “until” the Jews acknowledge their sin in rejecting him. Hitler, who was obviously demonically possessed, had his “final solution” and murdered 1 out of 3 Jews living at the time as an example of one of Satan’s most horrific attempts to destroy the Jews!
Jesus can come at any time in the rapture and meet us in the clouds. But he can not come to touch down on physical earth again until the Jews repent as a people. On the near horizon, after the rapture, the Jews will face their last holocaust and in their suffering they will finally acknowledge Jesus as their Messiah. Then the world will see Elijah and Moses (Revelation Chp 11) as the “two witnesses” and 144,000 Jewish Billy Grahams!!! There will also be God’s angels flying above warning the “earth dwellers” (those “left behind”) not to take the Anti-Christ’s mark. It will be the strangest time on earth since creation! (which was about 6,000 years ago!!!)
I believe the following segment from the Old Testament refers to the Jews finally asking for their Messiah, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, to return and protect them! Hosea 5:14 to 6:3 “For I will be like a lion to Ephraim, like a great lion to Judah. (i.e – “The Lion of the Tribe of Judah” is a title for Jesus Christ!)…I will tear them to pieces and go away; I will carry them off, (i.e. the Babylonian captivity and later the dispersion in 70 A.D.) with no one to rescue them. Then I will go back to my place (i.e. heaven) UNTIL THEY ADMIT THEIR GUILT. AND THEY SEEK MY FACE; IN THEIR MISERY THEY WILL EARNESTLY SEEK ME. (i.e. “they” being the Jews) “Come let us return to the Lord. He has torn us to pieces but he will heal us; he has injured us but he will bind up our wounds. After two days (i.e. the Psalms and 2nd Peter Chapter 3 say that “a thousand years is like a day, and a day is like a 1000 years to God.”; a statement of the relativity of time three thousand years before Einstein! But also, it could be that the six days of creation ending with the creation of man represents the time allotted to mankind, with the “seventh day” the day of rest, the Millennial Kingdom of God, with Jesus ruling on the Jewish throne of David!) he will revive us. (32 AD the ascension of Christ returning to his “place” + “two days” 2,000 years = 2032 AD! may or may not mean something!???) The only thing that God holds higher than his name is his Word! Satan knows that if he can kill all of the Jews that Jesus won’t be able to come back because he can’t break his Word that he won’t return to earth UNTIL the Jews acknowledge him! He may be hanging onto that thin thread hoping that he can somehow outsmart God! (LOL) But we all know that’s impossible!
The Bible tells is that Satan is a liar and the originator the of lies (John 8:44). That’s a perfect definition of a pathological liar.
Ever hear the phrase that a lie repeated often enough begins to sound like the truth? Joseph Goebbels, who was very much Hitler’s false prophet, knew this and exploited it.
This is the likewise the case for a pathological liar, not just his audience. After a while such a person begins to believe his or her own fictions. That being said, it’s probably a safe bet that Satan is subject to this condition more than any human.
His henchman, the Antichrist, will have his own false prophet (Revelation chapter 13; 16:13) and no doubt both will be likewise afflicted with the same malady.
This explains why the devil refuses to give up and even after being locked away for 1000 years, he will still not believe that he will lose and will mount one final attempt to gain power (Revelation, chapter 20).
He is truly the worst case of a pathological liar that one can imagine!
The Bible tells is that Satan is a liar and the originator of lies (John 8:44). That’s a perfect definition of a pathological liar.
Ever hear the phrase that a lie repeated often enough begins to sound like the truth? Joseph Goebbels, who was very much Hitler’s false prophet, knew this and exploited it.
This is the likewise the case for a pathological liar, not just his audience. After a while such a person begins to believe his or her own fictions. That being said, it’s probably a safe bet that Satan is subject to this condition more than any human.
His henchman, the Antichrist, will have his own false prophet (Revelation chapter 13; 16:13) and no doubt both will be likewise afflicted with the same malady.
This explains why the devil refuses to give up and even after being locked away for 1000 years, he will still not believe that he will lose and will mount one final attempt to gain power (Revelation, chapter 20).
He is truly the worst case of a pathological liar that one can imagine!