Satan’s Third Counterattack

The Reformation had been well underway, starting with Wycliffe and his translation of the Bible into the English language. One by one, Satan saw that the truths he had successfully suppressed and altered during the Dark Ages were being restored.

Satan had attacked literal Israel and the earthly temple in the Old Testament by leading the children of Israel into idolatry. But at the cross, a transition occurred that enabled God’s message, the Gospel of Christ, to continue onward: Spiritual Israel was now entrusted with the message of a heavenly sanctuary.

Satan had to counter with a second deception—creating a counterfeit under the disguise of Christianity, ushering in the Dark Ages, a period of persecution lasting 1,260 years from 538 to 1798. Yet again, God overturned his deception, this time by restoring, one by one over a period of 500 years, the truths that had been counterfeited.

As Satan saw this deception being swept away, he would try yet again to counter, this time with a new cunning and “enlightening” deception—one so powerful that it would destroy the faith of millions, leading them to deny the very existence of God and the heavenly sanctuary altogether.

In Revelation 11:3, “It is said that for 1,260 days, the witness shall prophesy in sackcloth. Every reader knows that for ages, the Bible was forbidden to the people and locked up in the dead languages. It was even a crime, for which many suffered death, to have the Bible in the tongue of the people. It is proper that we should consider here this period of mourning in which … the witness of the Old Testament and New Testament shall be given in sorrow.” (Christianity.com)

The Scriptures did indeed do their work under great persecution during the Dark Ages as the Roman church sought to keep them out of the hands of the common people and thus keep the people in spiritual ignorance.

Since the 1,260 years lasted from 538 to 1798, this beast that would attack and “kill” the Word of God would rise to prominence sometime around the late 1700s.

No other power fits the identifying marks of this prophecy more than France during the French Revolution, which occurred from 1789 to 1799. The Roman church had long dominated France and ruled with an iron hand, sowing seeds they would reap in a bitter harvest. The French Revolution was a revolt against the leadership of France and the Catholic Church’s power in France and, ultimately, a rejection of God and the Bible.

Also known as the “Reign of Terror,” France officially rejected the notion of God, made official decrees against God and religion, and uplifted Atheism on a national level in a way unheard of before in human history. It was here that the “Goddess of Reason” was instituted as a replacement for the Bible. The seven-day week was banished, and a 10-day week was put in its place in order to remove the idea of the Sabbath. It was from this revolution that Atheism, the denial of God, began to gain the popularity it now has today worldwide … and the Bible prophesied it thousands of years before!

“A dechristianization of France started in 1793 … first with the Cult of Reason, then with that of the Supreme Being. [The foremost aim was to] defend the country and the Revolution … against the priests, who showed themselves hostile. It seemed as if the priesthood was indestructible except by the overthrow of its altars. That work was carried out by revolutionary patriotism and supported by a movement of free-thought, which had long been bred through the intolerance of the State religion, while philosophers like Voltaire stimulated and disseminated it. … Supposing the success of the National Defense had been delayed, and a liberating victory [had been delayed, too, allowing time for the masses to become more agitated] … it is a question whether the protracted Terror, considered as a dechristianizing factor, would not have dealt the death-blow to the Catholic religion in particular, nay, to Christianity in general. … When I speak of Christianity, I refer chiefly to Catholicism, but the two French Protestant Churches, the Lutheran and the Calvinistic, were also affected by the anti-religious movement of 1793.” (Preface of Christianity and the French Revolution. A. A. Aulard, translated by Lady Frazer, 1927. Ernest Benn Limited, London)

Atheism attacked the entire sanctuary in a new way. Instead of counterfeiting the sanctuary and its articles, it simply denied its existence altogether. There was no sacrifice by a man named Jesus (altar of sacrifice); He simply did not exist. There was no need for a person to be born again (laver). The Word of God was a fabrication (table of showbread). Prayer was self-talk and self-deception (altar of incense). The Holy Spirit did not exist (candlestick). The law of God was not necessary (Ark of the Covenant) as God was just a fairytale. One could indeed be holy without God. The supposed enlightened mind “proved” its superiority by rejecting religion.

It was during the Reign of Terror that Humanism began to shine in the spotlight. Man did not need God in order to be good—the same lie Satan promoted in heaven among the angels. Total sexual liberation was also promoted through the revolution as people like Marquis De Sade began to champion sexual “freedom.”

Not only did Atheism rise to nullify the Word of God and the heavenly sanctuary, but something else arose that would go hand in hand with it. A scientist by the name of J. B. Lamarck, a supporter of the French Revolution, became the first to propose the theory that species evolved from one state to another. His theory laid the groundwork for Charles Darwin to propose and popularize the Theory of Evolution.

The principles of evolution would deny the creation account of the Bible and, in essence, deny the Sabbath since evolution taught that the world evolved over millions of years and was not created in six literal days. Darwin released one of his very first writings on his theory in 1844 while Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, a work of speculative natural history and philosophy, was published anonymously in England, also in 1844—the very year in which the final truth that had been cast down during the Dark Ages, the seventh-day Sabbath, was about to be restored. Satan would use the Theory of Evolution as a direct assault upon the Sabbath and upon God.

Using these two teachings, Atheism and Evolution, Satan began to wage a war on the very existence of God. By using the counterfeit Christianity of the Roman Church, he had made God appear unjust, cruel, and vindictive. Now he would point to that false picture of God and the Bible, painted by the little horn during the Dark Ages, as the reason humanity should reject all notions of God.

This attack would prove very successful over society and those not familiar with the prophecies of Daniel and Revelation. In response, God would send out His final message of warning to the world starting in 1844—a message that would reveal the truth about the sanctuary, the character of God, and the future of the world through the prophecies of Daniel and Revelation in a way that would grip the attention of millions, even the skeptical atheist!

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