Who controls the kingdoms of this world?

 by Russell Grigg

 

The Gospel of Luke describes one of the temptations of Jesus by Satan in the following words:

And the devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, and said to him, ‘To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.’ And Jesus answered him, ‘It is written, “You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve”’ (Luke 4:5–8).

God’s relationship to Adam was, in effect, that of Supreme Commander (God) to Executive Officer (Adam).

Seeing that Jesus described Satan as “a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44), was this a legitimate claim by Satan that he controls all the authority and glory of all the kingdoms of the world and gives it to whom he will? If so, who delivered all this to him? The answers are found in Genesis.

Adam’s God-given role

When God created the world, He stated that mankind would “have dominion” over God’s creation (Genesis 1:26, 28). The first man was Adam, and so Adam was head of the human race. God’s relationship to Adam was, in effect, that of Supreme Commander (God) to Executive Officer (Adam). And in the expression and demonstration of this relationship, God required Adam to obey one command that God had given him, i.e., not to eat from one specified tree in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2:16–17).

Adam’s first task in his executive role was to give names to the animals that God brought to him “to see what he would call them” (Genesis 2:19–20). However, after Satan had persuaded Eve to eat the forbidden fruit, Adam chose to do so also. As this involved disobeying God’s one command to him, Adam thereby surrendered and transferred his homage and allegiance from God to Satan, becoming in effect, Satan’s vassal. Since then, Satan has operated as “ruler of this world” (John 12:31), albeit within the boundaries that God has set for him (cf. Job 1:12; 2:6, Luke 22:31).

Under new management

Satan was therefore able to claim to Christ that the kingdoms of the world were now his (i.e., Satan’s), and that he gives them to whomsoever he wills, and Christ did not dispute or deny these claims. In fact, Jesus referred to Satan as “the god of this world” (John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11); and the Apostle Paul similarly wrote concerning Satan that “the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Corinthians 4:4).

So, is this relevant today in our 21st-century world culture? And if so, how?

We shall discuss this relevance with reference to the role of universities in the world, most of which began as ‘God-based’ ones. However, most have now rejected this raison d’être, and are now entirely secular and teach naturalism.¹ And we will refer to the concept of ‘higher learning’ as the kingdom of academia.

The kingdom of academia

Most of the universities in Europe and North America were founded by Christian individuals or the Christian Church and proclaimed the Bible. Notable early universities for which this applied were those at Bologna (1088), Paris (1150), Oxford (1167), Cambridge (1209), Padua (1222), Naples (1224), and Edinburgh (1583), plus many others. Theology was regarded as ‘the queen of the sciences’, and instruction was usually in Latin.

Likewise, most of the renowned universities in America, including Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Northwestern, Columbia, Princeton, and Brown, were founded as religious institutions by various church denominations or ministers.

With the passing of time, and the long-since death of the founders of these places of learning, together with the emergence of long-ageism,² most universities have abandoned their Christian heritage, and become bulwarks of secularism. As such, they now teach naturalistic theories such as evolution as fact, and the big bang as the creator of the universe.

Why? The answer brings us back to the quote from the Bible in our opening paragraph. Universities, with their teaching, research, and scholarship are components of the kingdom of academia. If Satan controls this kingdom and gives it to whomsoever he pleases, we should not be surprised to see non-believers in university positions of prestige, and in control of what is taught therein.

There are many educators and scientists who have been denied tenure or fired from their academic positions for their belief in the evidence of design in nature. This is because such a belief challenges the godless idea that life is a result of random chance and evolution. A number of such cases have been documented in the 2008 movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed and Jerry Bergman’s book Slaughter of the Dissidents.³

God’s defeat of Satan

However, God has not lost ultimate control of His world, nor of the kingdom of academia. When Adam and Eve sinned, God’s word to Satan was: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel” (Genesis 3:15). This verse was God’s promise of the coming and ultimate victory of Jesus. It has been called the proto-evangelium, meaning ‘the first (or earliest) Gospel’. Concerning this verse, Charles Spurgeon wrote: “This is the first gospel sermon that was ever delivered upon the surface of the earth … with Jehovah Himself for the preacher, and the whole human race and the prince of darkness for the audience.”⁴

When Jesus died on the Cross to pay the penalty for our sins, and rose again, He defeated Satan’s power over all who believe in Jesus.

The Lord Jesus Christ is this promised “offspring” of Eve. He, the Son of God, came “to destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8). When Jesus died on the Cross to pay the penalty for our sins, and rose again, He defeated Satan’s power over all who believe in Jesus. The Apostle Paul wrote (concerning believers who are truly “in Christ”) that God has “forgiven us all our trespasses, by cancelling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This He set aside, nailing it to the cross” (Colossians 2:14). Satan’s accusations and claims of dominion are thus no longer valid against Christian believers, in the light of God’s forgiveness.

Christians, released from the power of Satan in their lives, are called to be light in the darkness (Ephesians 5:8). There are many Christian university professors and students, as well as Christian scientists, who are currently performing this mission (despite the opposition referred to above).

References and notes 

1.         Naturalism (aka materialism): the philosophy that the natural world of matter and energy is (and potentially explains) all of reality. Return to text.

2.         E.g., Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology (1830-1833), which paved the way for Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859) and his The Descent of Man (1871). Return to text.

3.         Leafcutter Press, 2008; creation.com/s/10-2-535. Return to text.

4.         Spurgeon, C.H., Sermon No. 1326, delivered on 26 November 1876, The Spurgeon Archive. Return to text.