The Rebel and the Kingdoms

So the devil lied at the beginning, and he lied at the end as well, when he said, “All these have been handed over to me, and I give them to anyone I want.” For it is not the devil who has appointed the kingdoms of this world, but God — “the heart of the king is in God’s hand.” And the Word says through Solomon, “By me kings reign, and rulers hand down justice. By me chiefs are lifted up, and by me kings rule the earth.” The apostle Paul says the same thing on this subject: “Be subject to all the higher authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and the ones that exist have been appointed by God.” And again, speaking of them, he says, “He does not carry the sword for nothing; he is God’s servant, an avenger bringing wrath on the man who does evil.” Paul said this not about angelic powers, and not about invisible rulers — as some dare to explain the passage — but about actual human authorities. He shows it when he says, “This is why you pay taxes too: they are God’s officers, attending to this very thing.” The Lord confirmed it as well. He would not do what the devil tempted him to do; instead he gave orders that the tax be paid to the collectors, for himself and for Peter — because “they are God’s officers, serving this very purpose.” [a]

When man departed from God, he grew so savage that he came to look on his own brother as an enemy, and he threw himself without fear into every kind of unrest, and murder, and greed. So God laid the fear of man on the human race, since they would not acknowledge the fear of God. Put under human authority and held in check by human laws, they might reach some measure of justice and bear with one another, out of dread of the sword hanging in full view — as the apostle says: “He does not carry the sword for nothing; he is God’s servant, an avenger bringing wrath on the man who does evil.” This is also why the magistrates themselves, wearing the laws as a covering of righteousness, will not be called to account for what they do and will not be liable to punishment — so long as they act justly and lawfully. But whatever they do to overturn justice — wickedly, irreverently, illegally, tyrannically — in those very things they will perish as well. For the just judgment of God comes on all alike, and it never falls short. So earthly rule has been appointed by God for the benefit of the nations, and not by the devil, who is never at rest at all — who does not even like to see the nations behaving quietly. It was appointed so that men, under the fear of human rule, would not devour one another like fish, but that by the setting up of laws they would hold down the flood of wickedness among the nations. Looked at this way, the men who collect taxes from us are “God’s officers, serving this very purpose.”

Since, then, “the authorities that exist have been appointed by God”, it is clear that the devil lied when he said, “These have been handed over to me, and I give them to anyone I want.” Kings are appointed by the ordinance of the same One who calls men into existence, each fitted to the men who are placed under his government at the time. Some rulers are given to correct and benefit their subjects and to keep justice in place; others for fear and punishment and rebuke; and others — where the subjects deserve it — for deception, disgrace and arrogance. Meanwhile the just judgment of God, as I have already said, comes on all alike. The devil, being the rebel angel, can go only as far as he went at the beginning: to trick the human mind and lead it astray into disobeying the commands of God, and little by little to darken the hearts of those who set out to serve him, until they forget the true God and worship him instead as God.

Picture a man in revolt who seizes another man’s territory by force and harasses the people living in it, so that he can claim a king’s glory among people who know nothing of his revolt and his robbery. That is the devil. He was one of the angels set over the spirit of the air, as the apostle Paul declares in his letter to the Ephesians; and growing envious of man, he became a rebel against the law of God — for envy is a thing foreign to God. And because his revolt was exposed by man, and man became the testing of his purpose, he has thrown himself against man with greater and greater determination, envying his life and wanting to drag him into his own rebel power. But the Word of God, the Maker of all things, overcame him by means of man, showed him up as a rebel, and instead put him under man’s power. For he says, “Look, I am giving you the power to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy.” The point is that, just as he gained mastery over man by revolt, so his revolt should be stripped of its power by man turning back again to God.

It is not only by the things already mentioned that this is shown, but also by what will happen in the time of Antichrist: that he is a rebel and a robber who wants to be worshiped as God, and that, though he is nothing but a slave, he wants himself proclaimed a king. For Antichrist will come clothed with all the power of the devil. He will not come as a righteous king, nor as a lawful one under God’s authority, but as an irreverent, unjust and lawless one — a rebel, a criminal and a murderer; a robber who gathers into himself the whole of Satan’s revolt. He will do away with the idols in order to persuade people that he himself is God, setting himself up as the one idol and holding in himself the many errors of all the rest. He does this so that the people who now worship the devil through many abominations will serve him through this single idol. The apostle speaks of him in the second letter to the Thessalonians: “Unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of destruction, who sets himself against and lifts himself above everything called God or worshiped, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, presenting himself as if he were God.” So the apostle plainly points out his revolt, and that he is lifted up above everything called God or worshiped — that is, above every idol; for men do call these things gods, but they are not. And he points out that Antichrist will try, in the manner of a tyrant, to put himself forward as God. [k]

The apostle has also pointed out something I have shown in many ways: that the temple in Jerusalem was built at the direction of the true God. For Paul, speaking in his own voice, called it plainly the temple of God. And I showed in the third book that the apostles, when they speak in their own voice, call no one God except the one who truly is God, the Father of our Lord — at whose direction the temple in Jerusalem was built, for the purposes I have already described. It is in that temple that the enemy will take his seat, trying to show himself as Christ, just as the Lord also says: “When you see the abomination that makes desolate, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place — let the reader understand — then let those in Judea flee to the mountains, and let the man on the housetop not come down to take anything out of his house. For there will be great hardship then, such as there has not been from the beginning of the world until now, and never will be again.”

Daniel too looks ahead to the end of the last kingdom — that is, to the ten last kings, among whom the kingdom of those men will be divided, and on whom the son of destruction will come. He says that ten horns will grow out of the beast, that another little horn will rise up among them, and that three of the earlier ones will be torn out before its face. He says: “And look — there were eyes in this horn like a man’s eyes, and a mouth speaking great things, and its appearance was more imposing than its fellows’. I was watching, and this horn made war on the holy ones and overpowered them, until the Ancient of Days came and gave judgment to the holy ones of God Most High; and the time came, and the holy ones took possession of the kingdom.” Then, further on, in the interpretation of the vision, he was told: “The fourth beast will be a fourth kingdom on the earth, which will surpass all the other kingdoms, and devour the whole earth, and trample it down, and cut it to pieces. And its ten horns are ten kings who will arise; and after them another will arise, who will outdo in evil deeds all who were before him, and he will bring down three kings. He will speak words against God Most High, and wear out the holy ones of God Most High, and he will plan to change times and laws; and everything will be given into his hand until a time of times and half a time” — that is, for three years and six months, which is how long he will reign over the earth once he has come. The apostle Paul speaks of him again in the second letter to the Thessalonians, and at the same time announces the reason for his coming: “And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the appearing of his coming — and that one’s coming is according to the working of Satan, with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with every deception of wickedness for those who are perishing, because they did not accept the love of the truth so that they might be saved. And for this reason God will send them a working of error, so that they will believe a lie, so that all of them may be judged who did not believe the truth but consented to wrongdoing.”

The Lord also said this to those who did not believe in him: “I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not receive me. When another comes in his own name, him you will receive.” He calls Antichrist “another”, because he is a stranger to the Lord. This is also the unjust judge whom the Lord spoke of, the one “who did not fear God or respect man”, to whom the widow ran to get justice against her opponent — the widow being the earthly Jerusalem, which had forgotten God. And he will indeed do it, in the time of his kingdom: he will move his kingdom into that city, and will sit in the temple of God, leading astray those who worship him, as though he were Christ. Daniel says the same thing again: “And he will make the holy place desolate; and sin has been given in place of the sacrifice, and righteousness has been thrown down to the ground; and he has acted, and prospered.” And the angel Gabriel, explaining his vision, says about this man: “And toward the end of their kingdom a king with a fierce face will arise, one who understands riddles, exceedingly strong, full of marvels. He will destroy, and go straight on, and act; and he will bring down strong men, and the holy people as well; and his yoke will be set on them like a neck-ring. Deceit will be in his hand, and he will be lifted up in his heart. He will ruin many by deceit and lead many to destruction, crushing them in his hand like eggs.” Then he points out how long this tyranny will last, and how long the holy ones will be driven into hiding — the ones who offer a pure sacrifice to God: “And in the middle of the week,” he says, “the sacrifice and the drink offering will be taken away, and the abomination of desolation will be brought into the temple; and until the end of the appointed time the desolation will be complete.” Now three years and six months make up the half-week.

All these passages reveal to us not only the details of the rebellion, and the doings of the man who gathers every satanic error into himself, but also that there is one and the same God the Father — the one the prophets announced and Christ made known. For if what Daniel prophesied about the end has been confirmed by the Lord, when he said, “When you see the abomination that makes desolate, spoken of by Daniel the prophet” — and it was the angel Gabriel who gave Daniel the interpretation of the visions, and Gabriel is the archangel of the Maker, the same one who announced to Mary the visible coming of Christ and his coming in the flesh — then one and the same God is pointed out as plainly as can be: the God who sent the prophets, promised the Son, and called us into the knowledge of himself.