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Resist the Devil, and He Will Flee

Resist the Devil, and He Will Flee

Last updated on: September 30, 2026 at 12:00 pm by Lee Ann B. Marino

Resist the Devil, and He Will Flee 2026-08-25T01:26:24-04:00 Lee Ann B. Marino

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If you are a Christian, you will experience many great things in your walk with God. You’ll see the blessing of answered prayer. The miraculous realm will, at some point, be real to you. You’ll feel God’s presence and know He is with you. Then there will be those days of spiritual warfare, when you’ll have to resist the devil.

The days of spiritual warfare often aren’t the most fun for Christians. As a result, there’s lots of material on that topic available. Much of it comes down to what you believe. If you want to spend much of your life devil-hunting and assigning blame, it’s easy to find material suitable for such. If you want to grow in God, however, and come to a place where you understand spiritual warfare is more about standing consistent than going crazy, this is the column for you.

Woman running with her back to the camera in the wilderness

Photo by Taryn Elliott: https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-in-white-clothing-running-7866278/

Revelation 12:1-6, 10-17

A great sign was seen in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was with child. She cried out in pain, laboring to give birth. Another sign was seen in heaven. Behold, a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads seven crowns. His tail drew one third of the stars of the sky, and threw them to the earth.

The dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she gave birth he might devour her child. She gave birth to a son, a male child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron. Her child was caught up to God, and to his throne. The woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, that there they may nourish her one thousand two hundred sixty days…

I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation, the power, and the Kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Christ has come; for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them before our God day and night. They overcame him because of the Lamb’s blood, and because of the word of their testimony. They didn’t love their life, even to death. Therefore rejoice, heavens, and you who dwell in them. Woe to the earth and to the sea, because the devil has gone down to you,having great wrath, knowing that he has but a short time.”

When the dragon saw that he was thrown down to the earth, he persecuted the woman who gave birth to the male child. Two wings of the great eagle were given to the woman, that she might fly into the wilderness to her place, so that she might be nourished for a time, and times, and half a time,from the face of the serpent. The serpent spewed water out of his mouth after the woman like a river, that he might cause her to be carried away by the stream. The earth helped the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed up the river which the dragon spewed out of his mouth. The dragon grew angry with the woman, and went away to make war with the rest of her offspring,who keep God’s commandments and hold Jesus’ testimony. (WEB)

A symbolic lesson

Leaders, scholars, and historians disagree about what Revelation 12 reveals with its symbolism. Some theories include:

The woman is Israel
The woman is Mary, mother of Jesus
The woman is the church
The woman is a prophetess

…and so on and so forth. Most agree the child is a reference to Christ and the dragon to Satan,but that’s where the agreement ends. The analogy of the wilderness is as curious to many scholars as the imagery of the woman. They disagree as to just what this passage offers. I’m not going to get into all that. I believe there is some room for interpretation with the prophecy. It, more than likely, refers to more than one thing. What I see God revealing is the way this prophecy applies to more than just history. It also applies to each one of us, as God brings things forth within us, and the result therein.

The enemy comes to steal, kill, and destroy

The church is typified in the Bible as being female. Actually, the general body of God’s people has always been typified as female. There are multiple reasons why this is. In the context of what we are looking at right now, it’s because the people of God proclaim eternal life. Thus, this parallels the woman’s role in bringing forth life. Within each born again individual is the promise of life. We are here to multiply good work and bring forth something deeper and greater from all we do.

When Christ lives within you, the enemy will do everything within His power to try and stop that rule. He will tempt, test, try, and send everything conceivable to try and snatch your life away from Christ. He will also try to steal what God plants within you, preventing its eventual birth. With a nature to steal, kill, and destroy, he comes with a nature that disguises itself. Much of the time, it looks like something else, in the hopes to make you think Satan is on your side. This is all part of that same attempt to steal your life in Christ and the product of that life away from you. This forces you to resist the devil with everything you have.

Handling spiritual attack

When we face spiritual attack, we must entrust our vision to God and move to a place of contemplation and silence. We must be still. The purpose is not to abandon what God has given to us, but to let Him hold and protect it while He protects us. The fascinating imagery of the woman fleeing into the wilderness parallels Jesus when He went into the wilderness face Satan’s temptation. There, so the woman goes into the desert to face demonic attack.

In the middle of nothing, where she has no one but God to protect her, she finds divine provision. She doesn’t need to run with her child to everyone she knows, hiding and cowering all along the way. Instead, she surrenders what she has to God and receives what she needs to be safe from the enemy. Here, she can resist the devil. She values God above her own concepts of safety and self-preservation, totally trusting what God has for her to do.

Overcoming

Our study passage tells us we overcome by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony. The way we resist the devil is through these two means: the blood of Jesus and the word of our testimony. The woman in Revelation 12 has a testimony! She overcomes as she experiences God’s provision in her life. Sometimes we spend so much time running from the devil that we aren’t still long enough to receive God’s provision unto testimony!

The enemy got so mad with the woman he went and found someone else to bother. Thus the word on today – it’s time to stop running from Satan. Stand up and resist the devil! Let him flee from your presence and go bother someone else. Work on “the word of your testimony.” Don’t let Satan have what’s not his!

O victory in Jesus,
My Savior, forever.
He sought me and bought me
With His redeeming blood;
He loved me ere I knew Him
And all my love is due Him,
He plunged me to victory,
Beneath the cleansing flood.

(Eugene Monroe Bartlett, Sr.)

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About Lee Ann B. Marino

Dr. Lee Ann B. Marino, Ph.D., D.Min., D.D. (”The Spitfire”) is “everyone’s favorite theologian” leading Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z as apostle of SAFE Ministries. Her work encompasses study and instruction on leadership training and development, typology, Pneumatology, conceptual theology, Ephesians 4:11 ministry, and apostolic theology. She is author of over thirty-five books, host of the top twenty percentile podcast Kingdom Now, and serves as founder and overseer of Sanctuary International Fellowship Tabernacle - SIFT and Chancellor of Apostolic Covenant Theological Seminary. Dr. Marino has over twenty-five years of experience in ministry, leadership, counseling, mentoring, education, and business. You can read more about the author here.

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