The War Against the Woman’s Offspring

The dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child he might devour it. (Revelation 12:4)

[Let us] not be outwitted by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his designs. (2 Corinthians 2:11)

The devil grinned from ear to ear in July of 2024.

His seeming setback in the Dobbs decision two years earlier now took a striking turn: The one major political party that had officially included a pro-life plank since 1976 dropped its advocacy for a federal solution to infanticide.

Abortion, and the so-called “woman’s right to choose” — and with it, apparently, a man’s right to pressure her to kill their child — is the single greatest, most egregious, most obvious moral issue in our day.

The twentieth century, the greatest century of slaughter in war and in the womb, gave us abortion on a new scale. And in the twenty-first century, at least in the United States, we’re tempted to sweep it under the rug rather than right the glaring wrong of our times. We know that abortionists are killing children. The abortionists themselves know. Politicians know. Men know. Women know. We all know.

The murder of humans, regardless of age and size, is not an issue “the states should decide” any less than slavery was. Infanticide is a reprehensible moral evil in any and every state, and in any and every nation on the planet.

We have been frogs, enjoying the warm water of late modern life, not realizing how the temperature in our pot has risen to boiling. July 2024 came and went so quietly that it showed many had already been cooked.

Signature Move of Satan

Infanticide is one of Satan’s signature moves, and we who have access to God’s word should not be unaware of the devil’s devices. Satan, we should know, is a master at asking, “Did God really say?” as he twists the meaning of God’s words, rather than outright denying them. Satan, we should know, perverts the goodness of God’s creation. And Satan, we should know, angles for gradual, almost indiscernible compromise. These are his moves. And once Satan learned of God’s purpose to send hope through childbirth, he began his rage against pregnant women.

“We know that abortionists are killing children. Politicians know. Men know. Women know. We all know.”

The focus at the center of Satan’s irrational raging is God himself in Christ entering our world, in the promised seed of the woman, to crush the serpent’s head. Abortion is not just an assault on those made in God’s image, but an attempt to murder the image of God himself: Jesus. Evil, whether in the hearts of fallen angels or depraved humans, is not only anti-God but anti-Christ. It took one form before his coming: Try to snuff out the seed. It takes another form after his coming: Destroy hope and, even in the death throes, wreak as much havoc as possible. The devil mounted a pre-Christ campaign against male children in the promised line; now he mounts a post-Christ war on all children and the hope they embody for the future Christ has secured.

When man fell at the serpent’s temptation, God declared not only curse but coming reversal. Addressing the serpent, he said,

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)

Whether Satan already knew the secret of the woman’s seed or not, now he knew. And now, even on a divine leash, he would unleash his demonic fury to cut off the woman’s offspring if he could. And oh, did the devil try: Through Cain to murder Abel. Through Pharaoh to murder baby-boy Hebrews. Through the wicked queen-mother Athaliah to wipe out the line of David. And through Herod to destroy the divine Son himself in human flesh.

Massacre at Bethlehem

Before the devil pursued Jesus with temptation in the wilderness, and before he released his full, irrational fury on Christ at the cross, Satan first tried to consume him at the incarnational threshold, at Bethlehem.

The arrival of magi, star-gazing pagan astrologers, journeying to Jerusalem from the east, must have arrested public attention. They sure had Herod’s attention when they asked, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews?” (Matthew 2:2).

Herod did not need to be possessed by Satan himself when his own soul was full of the same evil, the same anti-God and anti-Christ impulse that fills the devil’s soul. Such diabolical directions could have been whispered by Satan himself:

Go and search diligently for the child, and when you have found him, bring me word, that I too may come and worship him. (Matthew 2:8)

Remarkably, in a great ironic reversal, the pagan astrologers found the child and fell down in worship, while the acting king of Israel waited to kill the nation’s Messiah. But when the magi didn’t eventually return to Jerusalem (having been warned in a dream), the serpent on the Jewish throne no longer held his peace.

Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men. (Matthew 2:16)

In doing so, Herod revealed the same spirit that had driven the devil’s fury for centuries, only now the effort to slaughter baby boys was not a preemptive attempt to cut off the royal line but an assault on the Son of God himself dwelling among us in human flesh and blood. Herod’s fury let loose the same venom that raged in Pharaoh, the same demonic spirit that called for child sacrifices to Molech and again centuries later in the Hinnom Valley, sacrifices Psalm 106 laments as offered to demons:

They sacrificed their sons
     and their daughters to the demons;
they poured out innocent blood,
     the blood of their sons and daughters,
whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan,
     and the land was polluted with blood. (Psalm 106:37–38)

Hungry Red Dragon

Revelation 12 captures with a grotesque apocalyptic image the satanic campaign as it sweeps across the centuries. A woman who represents the people of God is ready to give birth and cries out with labor pains. Meanwhile, a great red dragon stands before her “so that when she bore her child he might devour it” (Revelation 12:4). This dragon is “that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world” (verse 9).

But Satan does not succeed: “Her child was caught up to God and to his throne” (verse 5). And what does the devil do when the anointed one has ascended and is out of reach? Does he concede defeat and sue for peace? The evil that once appeared rational now rages irrationally. He cannot change his certain fate, but still he comes after Christ’s people “in great wrath, because he knows that his time is short!” (verse 12). Even as God protects his church through trial, and even as the inevitability of the devil’s defeat sets in, he continues his assault on the woman’s offspring:

The dragon became furious with the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus. (verse 17)

Infanticide Today

Infanticide was not only a signature move of Satan until the incarnation, but the impulse is so deeply ingrained in his soul, and in all evil, that the strategy continues today.

Abortion is not simply wrong. For those who have the Book and can observe Satan’s devices, this is profoundly, diabolically anti-God and anti-Christ. The devil’s hatred for God led to his hatred of Christ, led to his hatred of the church, led to his hatred of genuine human hope — a hope embodied in every human birth.

“A human life dies, and hope dies, in the horror of abortion.”

“To us a child is born” is history’s quintessential expression of hope, a sign that real good is yet to come — in fact, the best is yet to come (Isaiah 9:6). Each new human birth represents an avalanche of hopes: who this child might grow up to be, what joys and laughter this child will occasion, what love and good deeds will be unleashed, what human injustices might be righted, what divine grace might be seen and enjoyed.

A human life dies, and hope dies, in the horror of abortion. And Satan, defeated as he is, still grins to share his misery with as many as he can before his time is done.

Satan Loves ‘States Decide’

The devil delights in “the states should decide” and in the “woman’s right to choose,” just as he did in Eden. He loves the phrase “reproductive freedom.” In the end, these will be small, passing delights. His time is short. But all of us who are within earshot of Scripture know enough to be aware of his devices.

The slaughter of the innocents in Bethlehem and the raging of the red dragon in Revelation show us that abortion is not an issue of personal choice or state choice, not for those who claim the name of the Christ that this same devil sought to snuff out at his birth.

And for the many living casualties of the abortion industry today, who share in varying degrees in its evil, we have true hope beyond the hope-killing work of abortion. The ghastly irrationality of sin against God, embodied in the dragon and buried in some measure in the souls of all sinners, does have a remedy in the very infant that Satan tried to abort: “They have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb” (Revelation 12:11).