Working through the civil authorities, Satan has launched waves of persecution against the church from ancient times through the Reformation, the Great Awakening, times of revivals, and all during the twentieth century, in which more Christians died for their faith than in all previous centuries combined.

The church’s battle with Satan did not end with the writing of the book of Revelation. Satan continued to work both within the church and from without. He sowed seeds of corruption, heresy, strife, and schism in the visible church. He instigated waves of persecution against the visible church across the centuries.

Satan presided over the rise of prelacy, as the clergy sought to enlarge its powers and domains as bishops, archbishops, patriarchs, and popes. He fostered the growth of superstition regarding the sacraments, including baptismal regeneration, transubstantiation, and the substitution of the Mass in the place of the Lord’s Supper. He encouraged the introduction of pagan practices into Christian worship, such as the use of the vestments of the pagan Roman priesthood and the worship of pictures, crucifixes, statues, and relics of the saints. Satan inspired many to embrace false teaching about the Trinity, the natures and person of Christ, and the canon of Holy Scripture, not to mention false ideas about the life to come, such as purgatory and limbo. The corruption of the visible church and the rise of the false church were the work of Satan.

As the once-flourishing churches of the Middle East and North Africa became increasingly corrupt and weak, Satan launched a counterattack, inspiring the visions and sayings of a false prophet and rousing the tribes of Arabia to follow him as an army in a campaign to plant the religion of Islam across the map of the ancient world by force. The Christian church was crushed to the ground in many places. After a long period of slumber, Islam today has been roused again by Satan to spread its darkness into new lands and to foster a new reign of terror throughout the world.

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