This Means War
Prophecy - Signs
Tuesday, April 28, 2015
Wendy Wippel
The Hebrew Mazzeroth (Job 38:32) began in September (the Jewish New Year) with Virgo, presenting the God/man to come. Libra, next, gives us the reason He was needed. Scorpio brings us to the meat of the story: the central truth of human experience: God has an enemy. And the heavens are at war.
Which shouldn’t really be a surprise, because we are told that from the very beginning of the scriptures.
The enemy entered the creation that God had provided for man, and man’s experience in paradise came all too quickly to an end. Mankind was expelled from Eden and the conflict between God and Satan for control of man’s fate began.
Genesis records God’s first prophecy, describing both the conflict to come and the end result: “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.”
God purposed, as described by Virgo that His own Son, without the taint of human sin, would redeem His people by paying, as described in Libra, the price sufficient (the sacrifice of a perfect, sinless lamb, human and yet simultaneously God) which we, as corrupted and sinful beings, could not pay.
But Satan, in his pride; "I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High” (Isaiah 14:14). This defiance purposed to do everything in his power to prevent that sacrificial lamb from ever existing.
And boy, has he tried. He tried when the children of Israel were in Egypt, convincing Pharaoh to kill every male Hebrew child.
But God rescued Moses.
He tried when Ahaziah king of Judah died, and his mother Athaliah purposed to kill all of the royal line. She almost succeeded. But God made her accidentally miss one.
Joash survived.
He tried when Haman enacted laws in Persia intended to put to death the whole Jewish citizenry. But God had sleeper agent embedded in the Persian Empire, a young Jewish girl named Esther. And Esther told by her uncle, that she had become the king's favorite “for such a time as this", turned the tables on Haman.
Her story ends with Haman being hung on the same gallows, which he purposed for the Jews.
He tried when the wise men told Herod that the one born king of the Jews was in their midst, prompting the perennially paranoid Herod to order the death of every male Hebrew child. God, however, had warned one particular child’s parents, in a dream, and the baby promised in Virgo escaped to Egypt.
Jesus escaped.
He never quit trying, but ultimately God triumphed in completion of the first part of our redemption: the sacrifice lamb was, on a hill called Calvary, slain for our sins.
Doesn’t really seem like a triumph, but it was. It was the perfect execution (pun really not intended) of God’s perfect plan.
Jesus, as the time of the crucifixion approached, told His disciples, “Now My soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? ... for this purpose I came to this hour.” I never saw the flipside till this weekend. The second witness: (Luke 22:53) Jesus told the Pharisees, “when I was with you daily in the temple, you did not try to seize me. But this is your hour, and the power of darkness.”
Jesus’ hour at the cross was also the hour that the powers of evil were given the power to kill Him. The powers of evil did reign at His crucifixion, but they had no power that was not given to them. And that power was only given so that God’s ultimate purpose—our salvation—would come to pass.
The age-old conflict with Satan over man’s salvation had come to an end, and it was the death of Christ that won the victory. God, who loved mankind, gave His only begotten son so that whoever believed on Him could have eternal life.
For Satan however, who hates mankind, as Peter warned us: Be sober, be vigilant; becauseyour adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour”, it hasn’t ended. Though he lost the war, he’s still looking to maximize the casualties.
And all of this is exactly what the sign of Scorpio portrays.
The name for Scorpio, in both Hebrew and Arabic, is kerav. Fortunately, The Bible itself tells us what that word means, in Psalm 144: 1: "Blessed be the Lord my Rock, Who trains my hands for battle". Battle is the word kerav. In Scorpio, it is the age-old battle of the ages that is depicted.
Like all zodiac constellations, Scorpio has three decans (sub-constellations) that fill in the whole picture for us. The first decan, called Ophiuchus (meaning “the serpent-holder,”) is pictured as a man holding a serpent in two hands, restraining the snake from snatching his crown, which the serpent is gazing at as in envy. This man is simultaneously standing on the heart of the scorpion (the very bright, very red star Antares, which means wounded). The second decan, Serpens, is the covetous snake being held, the serpent pictured as seemingly writhing in frustration, intent on exacting man’s destruction but thwarted from his desire by his restraint by the serpent- holder Ophichius.
(As he has been, through all of earth’s history, and still is. And will be until the “one who restrains him is taken out of the way“, allowing the devil is to reign on earth once more. Again, only for God’s own purposes, and only for an appointed time.
The third decan, Hercules, shows us the certainty of the final outcome--that predicted in God’s first prophecy. Satan and the powers of darkness, with the hour given them, did bruise the Savior’s heel when He was crucified dead and buried. But He arose. And, ultimately, the devil will be crushed by that Savior, sacrifice lamb himself.
In the third decan, the mythological hero Hercules, considered the son of God (in Roman imagination the son of the God, Jupiter), a mythological figure, known in ancient cultures as the strongest mortal alive and the greatest hero ever known, reigns triumphant. Scorpio’s third decan shows the hero-- one knee down with his foot in the air as if nursing a wounded heel but nonetheless holding aloft proof of his victory, with his other foot firmly planted on the head of the enemy, the dragon (the constellation Draco).
As promised, in Psalm 91:1-16; "He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. …7 A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee.9 Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation… the dragon shalt thou trample under feet.15 He shall call upon me, and I will answer him: I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him, and honor him.16 With long life will I satisfy him, and shew him my salvation."
One star in the third decan is Guiam, which means treading under foot—a clear reference to the timing of the Lord’s final victory, “The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, till I make Your enemies your footstool.” Psalm 10:1
Aristotle wrote that the original religion of the Greeks had been lost and transformed into Greek mythology. Neander wrote that that mythology contained the fragments of a tradition, which transmitted the knowledge of the divine things, i.e., religious truth, of earlier ages.
Scorpio clearly transmits the promise from God of final victory. Though the serpent bruised the Messiah’s heel, in the end Satan will certainly be vanquished.
“For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil.” I John 3:8
That’s the theme of Scorpio. Amen?
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Subject: This Means War 
Tue Apr 28, 2015 9:27 am
