The Great War Behind All Wars:
Satan’s Hatred Against Allah (part 5)
Allah wanted our first parents to hear the good news of his redemptive work as a Saviour, and to them he outlined the future war behind all wars. This revelation is in what he said to Satan:
I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.25
The woman’s “offspring” is the long-awaited Messiah, through whom Allah would redeem man’s lost “dominion” from the usurper, Satan. The great war would intensify until it became a death-grapple between Allah and Satan, for Satan would “strike his heel,” but the Messiah would crush his head. In other words, the Messiah would be wounded in the great war, but Satan would be mortally wounded and would eventually be utterly defeated and die the “second death.”26
It is clear in the honoured Qur’an that Hazrat Abraham understood the essential features of this great conflict, for it was no doubt he who passed on the details of our first parents’ mistake to the later prophets, including the prophet Moses (Musa). In Allah’s provision of a “tremendous Victim” to ransom his son, Abraham saw and understood the principle of redemption by substitute so necessary in Allah’s plan to defeat Satan forever.27
Since “whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer,”28 it is hardly surprising that Satan’s hatred of God was manifested in his attempt to murder the Messiah. It was in that
desire to murder, that Satan would in fact defeat himself. He would over-reach himself, captive to his own evil impulses.
Allah was too great and too wise to destroy Satan in the beginning, for such an act would not have been understood by angels or his servants in the world and throughout the universe. Allah must patiently permit Satan to develop his malicious purposes, until it was plain for everyone to see that his new “invention” of sin is actually an attempt to displace Allah from his throne and murder him. Satan needed time to demonstrate this. Allah must not allow secret doubts to exist among his worship pers. Only by allowing the evil character of Satan to be fully revealed could the great war finally be won.
This is the reason why Allah instituted the ancient system of blood sacrifices. They revealed two important truths that his worshipers must understand: (a) Satan’s enmity against Allah would at last be brought out in the open by his attempt to murder the Messiah; (b) at the same time, Allah would redeem sinful man by his “tremendous Victim,”29 for all the ancient prophets, instructed by Allah, clearly saw that “without shedding of blood there is no remission” of sins.30 This was the truth that Abraham understood when Allah provided that substitute to die in place of his son.
In the beginning, Satan envied Adam because Allah had appointed him Khalifa, vicegerent, on this earth. Sadly, Adam foolishly listened to Satan, thus giving him an advantage. Satan’s purpose has been to wrest from Adam that honoured position of Khalifa, and the tragic evil that for thousands of years has brought sorrow and tears to so many on earth is evidence enough of his efforts. Allah’s divine plan of redemption is one of infinite wisdom: the long-awaited Messiah must wrest from Satan this usurped honour of Khalifa in order to restore it to man.
Now we have come to the time when the great battle of the ages is to be concluded. In the inspired vision which the prophet John saw, Satan fights desperately just before the end of the world, “because he knoweth that he hath but a short time. … And the dragon was wroth with the woman [the believing “offspring”] and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God.”31
Allah will win the war of the ages! “Praise be to Allah, Lord of the worlds, the Beneficent, the Merciful, Owner of the Day of Judgment.”32
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