Coming Like The Flood

“So they will fear the name of the Lord from the west
And His glory from the rising of the sun,
For He will come like a rushing stream
Which the wind of the Lord drives.”  Isaiah 59:19

The great enemy of our souls, “the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). Yet he also “disguises himself as an angel of light,” and so can “his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness” (2 Cor. 11:14-15). He and his servants are perhaps most dangerous when most deceptive, quoting Scripture and spiritual sentiments in a superficial show of piety, yet distorting the “Scriptures, to their own destruction” (2 Pet. 3:16), and we must use the sword of the Spirit against them.

Then there are those times when, angered that their deceptions (sometimes even their own self-deceptions) are not persuading the true people of God to compromise their stand for God’s truth and His great salvation, they resort to great pressure and overt opposition -even persecution-seeking to silence their testimony. The enemy comes in like a great flood, and the waves seem about to engulf us, and we cry with the psalmist: “Had it not been the Lord who was on our side when men rose up against us, then they would have swallowed us alive, when their anger was kindled against us; then the waters would have engulfed us, the stream would have swept over our soul” (Psalm 124:2-4).

But God is on our side, as long as we are on His side and hold fast to His clearly revealed Word. Before the demonic flood can overwhelm us, the Spirit of the Lord will lift up His standard (or, more literally, “put him to flight”), and God will prevail once again, for “the firm foundation of God stands” (2 Tim. 2:19), and “greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world” (1 John 4:4).