Can Satan control time, or God alone?

Psalm 75:2 - “I Choose the Appointed Time.”

One of the main Biblical reasons the Lord has orchestrated each event in my testimony by dates and times is to make something so susceptible to human interpretation and judgment, clearly known as something done directly by His hand. 

The most detailed and timed event in the entire Bible is the flood in Genesis 7 & 8. Imagine the confidence Noah gained, knowing each event along the way was being done in precise repeating patterns of time, (40’s, 7’s and 150’s, etc.) eliminating all random chance or global warming as the cause of the great flood.  

Noah knew that the Lord was controlling every aspect of that flood.  God is very jealous regarding receiving credit for His own works, blessings, and wrath, and He will not allow anyone or anything else to take credit for them, not even so called “Mother Nature”.  The intensity of God’s desire to receive this credit is best seen in the book of Ezekiel. 

I was amazed to discover in Ezekiel, that God says the words, “They will know that I am the Lord” Fifty-four times, and only seven of those are in reference to God’s blessings.  Forty-seven of them, are related to His wrath and judgments on Israel and surrounding nations!  

Don’t miss this incredible detail!  Forty-seven instances connected to His wrath, is another perfect match to the 40’s and 7’s God used to precisely time all the events of His wrath being poured out in the Genesis flood story, and in my 2nd marriage.

Deut 32:39 “See now that I myself am He!  There is no god besides me.  I put to death and I bring to life, I have wounded and I will heal, and no one can deliver out of my hand.” 

1 Sam 2:6 “The Lord brings death and makes alive; he brings down to the grave and raises up.” 

Job 12:15 “If he holds back the waters, there is drought; if he lets them loose, they devastate the land.”

God wants us to know that nothing in this universe, especially in our lives, is happening outside of His precise control, not even the works of Satan.  Praise the Lord!  

Isaiah 41:20 – So that the people may see and know, may consider and understand, that the hand of the Lord has done this, that the Holy One of Israel has created it. 

Like the flood, which is the most dated and detailed single event in Scripture, God was making it impossible for anyone to conclude that my 2nd marriage was a random disaster, or even a Satanically controlled event, but rather was ordained of Him at every single point along the way.  God had a very important purpose in this and a beautiful mercy to all of us, once you see this! 

My testimony if full of miracles and astonishing last-minute deliverances, but it is very important to note that Satan can and does also perform many false miracles, signs, and wonders too, (2 Thes 2:9, Rev 13:13).  He has his Egyptian Magicians everywhere, especially in the so called church. 

Ah, but let us see that God has set up a standard against him, which he cannot overcome!  I have found no evidence in the Bible that Satan has any control over time, and it could be said especially in the life of a child of God.  On the contrary, the Bible clearly indicates, and thus can be taught as a sound doctrine, that time in the life of a believer is absolutely reserved for God alone. 

Psalm 75:2 You say, “I choose the appointed time.” 

 Acts 1:7  He said to them: "It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority.

If you read the Bible with this standard in mind, you cannot help but see that God puts a time on everything significant in the Scripture.  I am going to go out on a limb here and say that “time” is the greatest evidence of God in the entire Bible, not the signs, miracles, and wonders, which happen in a moment of time, but the controlling of all time up to and including the sign and wonder.  

It’s one level of power to harden Pharoah’s heart and then perform a momentary miracle leading him to let the people go.  However, it’s an entirely new level of power required to make that happen exactly 430 years to the day, which Israel first entered Egypt.  That is astonishing! 

Exodus 12:41 – At the end of the 430 years, to the very day, all the Lord’s divisions left Egypt. 

God places that “to the very day” in there for a reason.  

There are dozens and dozens of miracles, but there are hundreds and hundreds of Sovereignly controlled dates and periods in the Bible.  Even Jesus being tempted in the wilderness by Satan, for 40 days, is yet another proof that the entire event was ordained and controlled by God, NOT by the tempter! 

The control of time is clearly off limits for Satan. 

Genesis 6:3 “Man’s days will be a hundred and twenty years.”

Psa 31:15 “My times are in your hands.”

Psa 75:2  You say, "I choose the appointed time; it is I who judge uprightly.

Job 14:15 Man’s days are determined; you have decreed the number of his months and have set limits he cannot exceed.

Act 17:26  From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. 

We can even see that although God allows anti-Christ to have power over the saints and make war against them, that God has chosen in advance, how long of a period it will be for.  It will look to the people on earth, like anti-christ is in control, but the Bible and the dates tell us the real story! 

Dan 11:36  "The king will do as he pleases. He will exalt and magnify himself above every god and will say unheard-of things against the God of gods. He will be successful until the time of wrath is completed, for what has been determined must take place. 

Dan 12:11-12  "From the time that the daily sacrifice is abolished and the abomination that causes desolation is set up, there will be 1,290 days.  (12)  Blessed is the one who waits for and reaches the end of the 1,335 days. 

The dates in the Bible are not just prophetic, as in known in advance by God and His prophets, but rather they are controlled and determined by God, and then shared prophetically.  

Many people are so perplexed that God’s uses numbers often to point me to Scriptures, and also His orchestrating every single significant event in my life into precise Biblically periods, but when you read the Bible, you can see so clearly God is a God of many dates and many numbers.  Control of all time is a powerful standard of God, and when He wants humans to know He is in control of some event, He typically does it on a precise conspicuous date or in a precise biblical time period, removing all possible opinions it happened by random chance.

 Who, that is not spiritually blind, could ever see what God did with the dates and times between my 2nd spouse and her apostasy, and my godly wife Lisa, and conclude that was done by either Satan or by chance?   

Another spectacular example of this can be seen in the book of Ezekiel, where God gives a precise date, (year, month, and day) for each of the 14 times God spoke to him, or gave him a vision.  That is remarkable! 

Orchestrating His works and events into precisely timed events and dates, is clearly one of God’s top ways in which He signs His work saying, “You will know that I am the Lord and I have done this!”, and distinguishing His work, from the counterfeit works of Satan or his “Egyptian Magicians” (Exo 7:11). 

By connecting my scandalous 2nd failed marriage at every point, to the flood in Gen 7 & 8, He not only to vindicated me in the failed marriage to an apostate, but also to serve as a warning against apostasy for those who have ears to hear. 

When we see that God’s greatest external Standard, or visible Signature of His work, in the entire Bible is time, we can see the extraordinary mercy which God has given us all by taking the last 20 years of my life and controlling every major event by precise Biblical times and dates.