Enmity Between Christ and Satan, January 23

And I will put enmity between ... thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. Genesis 3:15. The Lord said concerning Satan, that old serpent, that he should bruise the heel of Christ, but Christ would bruise his head. Thank God, he cannot touch the head. “With the mind I myself serve the law of God,” said the apostle. The mind and heart are enlisted in the service of Christ, while Satan has enlisted humans and fallen angels to join in his company to league against good. They can bruise only the heel, while in the very act, when Satan seems to have triumphed in putting them to torture and death, the faithful who stand in defense of the law of Jehovah are wounding the head of the great rebel. This prophecy of enmity between Satan and Christ is far-reaching. It is a delineation of an unwearied conflict between Christ and His followers, Satan and his angels, and fallen humans united in a desperate companionship to reproach, bruise, wound, and exterminate the followers of Christ to the close of time. This controversy between Satan and Christ was carried on here in this world. Satan was constantly afflicting the Son of God and creating prejudice in the minds of people. Not only were Christ's doctrines and teachings perverted, misinterpreted, and wrested from their true meaning, but falsehoods followed Him everywhere. The misrepresentations that the chief priests, Pharisees, and Sadducees poured into the ears of the people appealed to the worst passions of adulterers, fornicators, and the dishonest, exciting a burning prejudice that made it almost impossible for Him to live upon the earth for even three and a half years after His public ministry began. Why, then, Christ has said, should those who bear the truth of God to the world be discouraged and fainthearted? “If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you.” Ye “are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.” They will “revile you, and persecute you, and ... say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.”“Yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service. And these things will they do unto you, because they have not known the Father, nor me.” Satan's malignity reached its height when the Lord of Glory was crucified, and we may expect in our day that human hearts will be open to prejudice and to the falsehoods, wicked misrepresentations, and slander of those who love this kind of satanic work. It is a wisdom from beneath. It is hell-born, and its results will be as in Christ's day.—Manuscript 55, 1886.