Appendix B: The Devil Cast Down

There is a reason world events have taken such a dark, inexplicable turn in recent years. The Bible reveals that reason and when it began.

Note closely this stunning prophecy in Revelation 12: “And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. … Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time” (verses 7-9, 12).

These are crucial verses. They describe war in heaven between Satan and God.

Lucifer was one of only three archangels mentioned in the Bible, the highest of all the angels God created. He worked directly at God’s throne (see Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28). But he allowed selfishness and arrogance to enter his mind and became Satan. He influenced millions of angels to think this same way, and he led a massive rebellion against God. There was war in heaven, and God struck him down from heaven “as lightning” (Luke 10:18).

Then God began a new plan through mankind. Satan used his great power to attack the minds of the very first human beings, Adam and Eve, and draw them into sin. He has influenced and deceived all their descendants ever since (see Ephesians 2:2; 2 Corinthians 4:4; Revelation 12:9).

But Satan still had access to the whole universe and to God (e.g. Job 1:6). Revelation 12:7-12 describe another war in heaven that occurred much later. Satan warred against God, and God cast him and the millions of demons to Earth—and confined them here in this end time!

Now this Earth is infested with millions of demons—led by the devil!

That meant far more trouble for this Earth: “Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea!” (verse 12). Satan and the demons hate God and His plan for His human creation. As horrible as their influence has been throughout human history, the destruction they are now unleashing on the world is unprecedented!

Satan is brimming with “great wrath”! He is in a foaming fit of rage. Why? “[B]ecause he knoweth that he hath but a short time” (verse 12). He has nothing to lose. Since that gigantic turning point when Satan was cast down, the devil’s time has grown shorter and shorter, his anger has gotten worse and worse, and his power and wicked influence have grown far stronger. This Earth has never experienced the full wrath of Satan until this end time.

Revelation 20:1-3 and other Bible prophecies show that Satan’s “short time” will terminate at the return of Jesus Christ, when he will be banished even from Earth and imprisoned in a bottomless pit. When God cast Satan down from heaven to Earth the first time, he did not have “but a short time”!

This shows that Revelation 12:7-12 is an end-time prophecy.

Since the time of Satan and the demons’ internment here, the world has grown far more dangerous, immoral and lawless. These wicked beings have targeted, attacked, corrupted and destroyed exactly the things that the Bible reveals are essential to God’s plan for man: God’s laws, God’s Church, God’s nations and God’s institutions of family, sex and morality, which reveal the incredible reason God created human beings. This wicked influence is destroying human minds and preparing to murder billions of human lives in a global holocaust!

This change has deeply affected the United States. In fact, it marked a major escalation of a violent attack on America. This malevolent spiritual army, though invisible, is very real and deadly dangerous.

To understand events in America and the rest of the world in this end time, we must understand this. Even most Christians know nothing about it, yet it has happened—in our day. Many scriptures corroborate this.

Satan was cast down at a specific time. When did this occur? As improbable as it may sound, an overwhelming amount of evidence shows that this prophecy was fulfilled at a definite time in recent history.

Satan’s First Target

For clues as to when this war took place, let’s ask: After the devil attacked God and God constrained him to Earth, where did he go? What was his first target? What then was his second target? The answers to these questions reveal a great deal about God and the devil.

Revelation 12:13 reveals the first target of Satan’s raging wrath: “And when the dragon saw that he was cast unto the earth, he persecuted the woman which brought forth the man child.” The woman in this passage, described in more detail in verses 1-2, symbolizes the Church of God.

Jesus Christ personally raised up the one true Church of God and said it would remain through seven successive eras until His return (see Matthew 16:18 and Revelation 2-3). The true Church of God does, in fact, exist! In this end time, it was led by Herbert W. Armstrong. Under his leadership, God restored the true Christian doctrines to the Church. That Church did a powerful global work. It possessed and proclaimed the truths of the Bible on a weekly broadcast on more than 400 television stations, in a newsmagazine with over 8 million subscribers, at three colleges and through many more superb initiatives.

Yet tragically, within a few years after Mr. Armstrong died, that Church and its work were destroyed! The doctrines were changed; the truth was cast down; the various projects were scaled back, undermined or canceled.^[1]

That destruction is powerful evidence of an unprecedented satanic attack. When millions of demons assault one little flock, you are sure to see startling effects. Even the world could see the enormous disaster! The sudden, catastrophic, nearly complete destruction of the true Church, starting with its principles and beliefs, reveals that Satan and millions of demons directed their rage at God’s Church. Within just a few short years, it was spiritually destroyed, and the great majority of God’s people were conquered by the devil. You really cannot explain what happened to that Church any other way.

That gives you a sense of the power these evil spirit beings have. Without God’s protection, we stand no chance against them!

One truth that Mr. Armstrong had restored was the understanding of Israel and the name of Israel (Matthew 17:11). Only the true Church, spiritual Israel, has that truth. When 2 Kings 14:27 speaks of someone trying to “blot out the name of Israel from under heaven,” or all over this Earth, the Church—which has the real understanding of the name of Israel—is the first target! When Mr. Armstrong died and Satan and millions of demons were cast down and confined to Earth, they attacked the only people who understood and proclaimed the name of Israel to the world! A spiritual Antiochus got control of God’s true Church and cast the truth to the ground—but he could not blot out the name of Israel.

Verse 13 of Revelation 12 specifically dates this prophecy. We can point to a specific time when God’s true Church was forcibly attacked by the devil. It strongly appears all this began immediately after Mr. Armstrong died on January 16, 1986.^[2]

Verses 14-16 show how Satan will continue attacking the Church right up to the beginning of the Great Tribulation. This refers to the final, violent climax of Satan-deceived human civilization. It will last 3½ years (“a time, and times, and half a time”; see also Matthew 24:21; Revelation 11:2 and 13:5, which describe the same time period as 42 months; and Revelation 11:3, which describes it as 1,260 days). Revelation 12:14 says the Church will be protected in a place of safety during that nightmarish period. But it is speaking of those few who remained faithful to God and did not cast His truth to the ground. This little remnant kept Satan from blotting out the name of Israel! These people are rewarded physically and spiritually for proclaiming God’s warning message to this world. This is why God protects them from the greatest suffering ever on Earth.

Satan hoped to blot out the name of Israel. But God will never allow that. God is going to protect His faithful people who guard the name of Israel. Nobody guards this name more than spiritual Israel, God’s true Church.

Yet the great majority of God’s people turned from God and allowed Satan to conquer them. They will experience Satan’s wrath in the Tribulation (verse 17).

This all establishes the time frame: Satan was cast down in the end time, shortly before the Tribulation. He knows his time is short, so he is moving like lightning to destroy. His first target was the Church of God, and the recent history of that Church shows the woeful results of his great wrath.

What, then, was the devil’s next target?

Satan’s Second Target

The end-time Great Tribulation described in Revelation 12:14-17 is discussed in many Bible prophecies. They show that the primary target of Satan’s great wrath is Israel. The Church of God is spiritual Israel, and the nations that descended from the ancient Israelites are physical Israel. These nations are the United States, Britain, the Jewish nation and a number of related English-speaking nations. Throughout history, God has used Israel and the nations that descended from it. Satan is focused on bringing them down.

In America, Satan has particularly attacked the principles, beliefs and history connecting our people back to the Bible and to God. Just as he destroyed the truth in spiritual Israel, he is destroying the truth about history, morality, race, sex and family in America and the other nations of Israel. By doing this, Satan has also been able to besiege the government, media, economy and military. These institutions have deteriorated rapidly since Satan was cast down. This puts the whole world in greater danger.

This world has changed dramatically since Herbert W. Armstrong died. Everything indicates that Satan was cast down around that time. That event marked a turning point in history. Now this world is on a downhill plunge to destruction! Evil and dreadful events are unfolding as never before. A vicious spirit is clearly at work.

Note the chronology: After the devil attacked the Church in verse 13 and devastated it and destroyed the people’s faith, he continues his destructive rampage on a larger scale until God has to take His faithful people to a place of safety. That also tells you that the devil is attacking three nations of Israel—America the superpower and the British peoples (prophetic Israel—the birthright nations) and biblical Judah (the scepter nation: Genesis 49:10). These nations have been blessed far more than the other Israelite nations. That is why God is punishing them more. The part of that attack that precedes the Great Tribulation is not specifically explained here, but it is in other scriptures.

America has been under attack. These prophecies reveal why.

Demonizing Robert Bork

One prominent national event that revealed the start of Satan’s destruction was the vicious lawlessness that was unleashed during the confirmation hearings of Robert Bork in 1987. President Ronald Reagan had nominated Bork to become an associate justice on the United States Supreme Court. He was a great defender of the Constitution and the law. Yet just 45 minutes into the confirmation hearing, Massachusetts Democrat Edward Kennedy took to the Senate floor and brazenly demonized him. “Robert Bork’s America,” he said, would produce back-alley abortions, segregation, censorship and midnight police raids.

It was a shocking, dishonest vilification of a man who was obviously qualified and greatly respected, even by many liberals. “There was not a line in that speech that was accurate,” Bork said. Many people agreed—but the attack still worked. Senator Kennedy and others led the way for abortionists, evolutionists, feminists, civil-rights advocates and other liberals to band together and defame Judge Bork’s reputation in an enormous smear campaign. They even aired television ads denigrating him. “They turned him into an absolute gargoyle, into a beast,” one senator said. The liberal Washington Post admitted that it was a “lynching.” Many other liberals saw what was happening too. The head of the Senate Judiciary Committee was Joe Biden, and he said he didn’t believe they could reject a man of Bork’s qualifications. But special interest groups caused him to join the attack.

Why was Robert Bork so demonized? The reason was that the radical left feared him.

Judge Bork was known for one thing more than anything else: believing in the Constitution. He was one of the most brilliant constitutional lawyers this land has produced. He was considered “a pioneer in constitutional thinking devoted to the text and original meaning of the Constitution,” as Reuters put it. He was known as a constitutional originalist or constructionist who believed in judicial restraint.

That is why the left hated him. The Constitution is the supreme law of the land. Much of it is based on biblical principles. The attack against the Constitution radically intensified in the mid-1980s, and it accelerated America’s descent into deadly, anti-God lawlessness.

Everyone had thought that when a popular president nominated a brilliant, well-qualified, passionately pro-Constitution judge to a court whose purpose is to protect the Constitution, he would be easily confirmed, even by a majority Democrat Senate. But in 1987, radical liberals despised the Constitution, and they were openly hostile enough and powerful enough to get their way. The Senate defeated Judge Bork’s nomination 58 to 42, the largest margin ever.

Many people at the time recognized that this was a major turning point in American politics. One law professor said it was “the decisive moment in politicizing the process of judicial selection” that “poisoned the atmosphere for judicial confirmations ever since.” In fact, it poisoned far more than that!

The tide turned in a big way in 1987. Law started to get a lot weaker. And lawlessness started to grow much, much stronger. Such a massive lurch toward lawlessness has a cause. This prophecy in Revelation 12 reveals that cause.

Effects on Society

So many of the evils plaguing America today trace back to the mid-1980s. Consider just a few examples.

Today, many people recognize the immense threat posed by illegal immigration and the fact that radical leftists are actively using it to weaken the country. This demographic transformation of the country’s population has been underway for more than a generation. In fact, it began with the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, which granted amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants and liberalized America’s immigration laws.

Mass shootings have become tragically commonplace in America. This is a horrific sign of heavy demonic influence if not possession! One database shows that there were fewer than five mass shootings per year in the United States until about 1988, when the number of such incidents began to notably increase. Now more than 40 mass shootings occur every year—about one every nine days.

Mental illness was ranked among the top five conditions accounting for rising health-care costs between 1987 and 2000. The United States government approved fluoxetine for medical use in December 1987, and pharmaceutical companies began marketing drugs like Prozac to “cure” depression. Prozac sales soared, but so did the number of depressed people. Today, nearly a quarter of Americans are taking powerful prescription drugs to try to improve mental health, and mental illnesses are worse than ever! Analysts have noted that a number of mass shooters have been on Prozac prescriptions.

In 1986, drug cartels opened up new drug “pipelines” between Colombia’s cocaine fields and America’s inner cities. Cocaine-related hospital emergencies rose 110 percent. Drug use in America has expanded massively, and many states have even legalized certain drugs. Before 1986, such a drugged state of our country would have been unbelievable!

Around this same time, video-game developers began working on an infamous video game featuring lifelike, realistic violence designed for teenaged consumption. Today, video games, including numerous realistic first-person shooters (often preferred by mass shooters), are an enormous industry—even more lucrative than our blood- and sex-soaked movie industry.

While our movies became more and more wicked, so too did music such as heavy metal and even more mainstream genres. An increasingly popular and even glamorized subject for our entertainment industry today is suicide. Satanic-related fashions became more and more popular, as did outright occultism and even satanic ritual abuse. Many religious people have suspected that something dramatic changed in the 1980s.

Our lurch toward lawlessness and evil can be traced back to a turning point in the mid-1980s. That is because Satan and his demons were cast down at that time and thereafter intensified their attack on America. Elites are now actively destroying the Constitution and undermining law enforcement. They are denigrating anything godly and good about American history. They are applauding and elevating the wicked and unjust. They are intentionally exacerbating social divisions. They are destroying the family, even attacking the very existence of male and female! These are Satan-inspired attacks that highlight the heightened influence of this evil spiritual force.

A Three-Pronged Attack

Biblical prophecy shows that after Satan was cast down, he retaliated with a three-pronged attack. First, he attacked God’s Church, spiritual Israel. Second, he attacked three nations of prophetic Israel in this end time, especially the lead nation, the United States. Third, he will work through the soon-to-be-resurrected Holy Roman Empire to destroy these nations militarily. That is Satan’s master plan for destroying spiritual and physical Israel—but they still have one last chance to repent before the Great Tribulation! (Amos 7:8).

Looking at these prophecies and viewing actual end-time events, it is clear the devil uses an Antiochus-type in all three phases.

The first of these end-time types of Antiochus became the head of God’s Church. The second was a political Antiochus who became America’s president. Third, Satan will use the head of a resurrected Holy Roman Empire to attack America and Britain.

All three of these Antiochus-type men work from within (one as a “lover”—Ezekiel 23) to do their destructive work. Daniel 8 shows how Satan controls all three of these men.

Also, all three try to “blot out the name of Israel” physically and spiritually. Satan wants to totally blot out that name, which represents God’s master plan for all mankind who has ever lived. Every person who enters God’s Kingdom, or Family, will have to learn and accept the name of Israel. All mankind will become spiritual Israel, which will be full of abundant prosperity, freedom and joy forever.

But a Short Time

America and the other modern nations of Israel are under vicious attack. We are losing the principles and blessings that made our nations great. We must remember that our peoples did not create those principles or those blessings: Those things came from God, for the benefit not just of the modern nations of Israel but for all mankind! That is why Satan hates them and is attacking them. And, because our people have forgotten God, He is allowing Satan to wreak terrible destruction on physical Israel, just as He allowed him to destroy spiritual Israel.

This is terrible news. But intertwined with this tragic truth is the best news you could possibly hear! That is because Satan’s attack proves not only these prophecies about God’s true Church and about the nations of Israel, but also the prophecy of Revelation 12:12 that he has but a short time. Satan was cast down in 1986, and now he has even less time before his window of opportunity closes. His throne on Earth is about to be taken away at the return of Jesus Christ! And many Bible prophecies show that His return is coming soon. Jesus Christ is going to rule Earth from His throne!

Satan’s intensifying attack is about to erupt into mass bloodshed so violent and widespread that it is impossible to imagine. This Great Tribulation is mainly the result of Satan’s great wrath. But there is a good reason he is so full of wrath. What causes him great wrath should cause us great joy. Satan’s attack against God’s Church and against the nations of Israel is his last attack before Jesus Christ returns!