In Revelation 12:10, it tells of a day when the accuser of our brethren is cast down out of the heavens. What a day! What a victory! Think of all the trouble that has been caused by the tongue of that accuser, the Devil.
It says that Satan accuses our brethren before our God, day and night. You know how thrilled God will be to have that come to an end! Nobody likes to hear constant accusations against those he loves.
But Satan does even more than just accuse us before God. He also accuses your brethren to you. And he accuses you to your brethren. And he accuses God to you and your brethren. And he even accuses you to yourself. And what a mess he creates with all his accusations!
Now put that together with the verse right before it (Rev.12:9), where it calls Satan the “great dragon, that old serpent… that deceiveth the whole world…” Now, you get a fuller picture of a ‘deceiving accuser’.
Think back to when the ‘old serpent’ was first revealed in the Bible… Genesis 3 – the garden of Eden, where he falsely accused God to Eve, of holding back something good from her… of not being honest with her… in effect casting doubt on God’s love for her. It was all lying accusations, but she listened, ate the fruit, and, Oh what a mess ever since!
The book of Job has probably the most familiar account of how Satan accuses the brethren before God. Again… a lying accusation. When he couldn’t deny the truth of what God spoke of Job… that he was a perfect and upright man, who feared God, and eschewed evil… he resorted to falsely accusing Job of wrong motives for fearing God… again, casting doubt on Job’s love for God. Then after Satan had stolen, killed, and destroyed… he proceeded to use Job’s 3 friends to accuse God AND Job.
So what’s Satan up to these days? Nothing new. Just more lying accusations against you, your brethren, and God. Trying to destroy every relationship God has created. Tearing apart marriages. Splitting families. Pitting brethren against each other. Sowing discord and division in the church. Driving children of God away from their heavenly Father. Much of it with lying accusations.
It’s not that there’s never any truth to the accusations. But whether there is actually any wrong-doing or not, Satan tries to distort it into some accusation of the heart and motives; and try to make it hopeless and permanent.
Very often, it comes down to questioning one’s love, with accusing words or thoughts like:
“God doesn’t really love you, or He would have done this, or wouldn’t have done that (whatever).”
“Your husband or wife really doesn’t love you, because if they did, they would have done this, or wouldn’t have done that (whatever).”
“You really don’t love God, because if you did, you wouldn’t have said that, or done that (whatever).”
“God, this child of yours doesn’t really love you, or they would or wouldn’t have (whatever).”
Satan’s first line of accusation is to get you to question the love of God toward you. That’s because you can’t really love God, and you can’t really love others, unless you first see the love God has for you. If you don’t know the love of God, Satan can move you pretty easily. So he tries to deny and distort God’s love. How do you think God feels about having His boundless love twisted, questioned, and doubted?
There’s not much that will wear a person down, quite like constantly having their love questioned. Think of strong man Samson. (Judges, chapters 14-16) Twice he was broken down by a woman questioning his love. Don’t you think Satan would like to break down the strength in your family and in the church, by constantly making accusations against the sincerity of your love to God and to your brethren; or the love of others toward you?
That doesn’t mean that you see no evil… like everything’s fine, and everybody’s OK. Far from it. We need to be sharp, keen, aware, and discerning. God can even give supernatural discernment, and reveal the hearts and minds of men. When that discernment is truly from God, then God’s heart will come through… love, compassion, hope, patience, mercy, forgiveness, a desire for restoration and reconciliation… and a willingness to sacrifice yourself for others, as He did for you, before you ever loved Him.
But sometimes it’s just Satan’s lying accusations disguised as spiritual discernment. If it brings anger, bitterness, resentment, contention, despair, a readiness to give up, and a determination to spare yourself any sacrifice for another… then you need to recognize it as the voice of the old serpent, trying to accuse, deceive, and destroy. We need to be very, very careful, that, even if we do see our brother stumble, or we see error, we never let Satan move us into a false accusation of that person’s heart.
It really doesn’t take much, if any, spiritual discernment to see the wrong in people. It’s a lot tougher to see your own faults. And God sees it ALL… absolutely everything, down to the very thoughts and intentions of the heart. When Satan accuses the brethren before God, of sins they’ve committed, he’s not telling God anything He doesn’t already know. The guilt may be an undeniable fact, but our Savior, Jesus Christ, also sees it all, and still stands up as our advocate with the Father. (See 1 John 2:1)
God is ‘tired’ of hearing the accusations, and ‘tired’ of seeing all the trouble those accusations are causing. Are we as anxious as God is, to have the accuser of our brethren cast down? Then it’s time to start now by casting that accuser down in our own lives.
It boils down to this: Are we feeling the same toward others, as God is feeling? Are we speaking the same thing about others as God is speaking? What does our Advocate say? What does the accuser say? Are we siding with the Advocate, or the accuser?
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