Photo and Commentary ©2025 by Maylan Schurch
Sabbath, December 20, 2025
Though neither Shelley nor I are ones to go all-out with exterior Christmas decorations, our style being more of a modest door-wreath and a small lighted Christmas tree in an upper window, we hugely enjoy the displays of the neighbors in our development. In fact, Shelley is able to keep in mind which neighbor puts up which décor each year, which leads to such exclamations as, “I don’t see the dancing hula-skirt Santa yet,” or “That family’s doing Seahawks-colored lights this year.”
The above display is one we’re familiar with. Actually, the only part of it I normally notice is the huge green inflatable dinosaur which lies collapsed on the lawn, probably because it’s daytime and there’s no need to waste the air-pressure electricity until night-time, when the bulbs inside the “dragon” make it glow green. Then it dwarfs the rest of the lawn figurines.
But now, in the daytime, the Santa and the deer and even the Grinch seem to be rejoicing that the dragon is no longer a force to contend with!
This reminds me of one of the Bible’s most cosmically significant chapters, Revelation 12. Read it all the way through sometime, out loud and with expression.
Revelation 20:1 – 3 [NKJV]: Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, having the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. He laid hold of the dragon, that serpent of old, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years; and he cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal on him, so that he should deceive the nations no more till the thousand years were finished. But after these things he must be released for a little while.
That last sentence can be quite puzzling. Why release the devil once you’ve caught him? It’s a long but very enthralling story. For now, the good news – a few verses later the devil is destroyed:
Verse 10: The devil, who deceived them, was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone where the beast and the false prophet are. And they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.
Another puzzling sentence: tormented forever? Another long story, but the good news is that the devil will eventually be destroyed. In Ezekiel 28, the prophet predicts that the devil will finally become ashes:
Ezekiel 28:18 – 19: “ . . . Therefore I brought fire from your midst; It devoured you, And I turned you to ashes upon the earth In the sight of all who saw you. All who knew you among the peoples are astonished at you; You have become a horror, And shall be no more forever.” ’ ”
Don’t obsess about Satan by all means, but if you want to learn a bit more about what the Bible teaches about him, click the link just below: