CHAPTER 5
PONDERING DEEP SPIRITUAL ISSUES
Can man understand God? Yes he can, in his limits, when he is spiritual and filled with all Fullness of God. (Eph. 3:19)
Our Saviour and Lord always talked to people in a simple but clear way using simple, but clear language which was on their level of understanding and using the objects of everyday life with which they were very familiar. It takes Our Master to show and describe spiritual and unseen facts in clear words while many times we find our words hopelessly inadequate to describe such things.
How can we describe in words our faith to any depth? How can we do it with our deep feelings?… or with movements of our heart and their meaning?… or with many thoughts of our mind as to their true origin or true intent?… or with some decisions of our will? Sometimes we may not know why we decided as we decided, but we did. How can we describe our fears with their origin or true meaning? We often cannot describe the movements within our own SOUL, then, how can we describe any movements within our SPIRIT? This may well lead to a surprising conclusion that WE MAY NOT UNDERSTAND OURSELVES: why we feel as we feel, why we do what we do, why we believe what we believe, why we understand as we understand or why we decide as we decide. Yet, all the answers to such unusual questions can be found deeply in our own spirit.
Let us cease from being wise and prudent and let us become as little children and ponder at least some of the mysterious issues of God as if they were quite “understandable and imaginable”. Can we do it? If we cannot do it then we will not be able to do this pondering because “to cease from being wise and prudent” may be compared to “denying our self and taking up our cross”. You see, Our Father had hid “great issues” from the wise and prudent and has revealed them unto babes! Why? Because it seemed good in His sight. (Mt. 11:25,26) Hence, our problem now is to become “as little children” so that we would be “able to receive” into our spirit and soul the revelation from Our Father. This also means that we must “empty our mind and heart” from our preconceived ideas, prejudices, previous intellectual knowledge, reasons, old understanding, beliefs, convictions and the wisdom of educated adults. Can we do it? NO, we can’t! But we may be enabled by the Lord to keep these old things “behind bars” for the time being. The Lord will not do it in one minute just before we start reading the paragraphs below, but He may start doing it slowly as we keep reading and opening our heart and mind to Him, to His Spirit.
a) OUR FATHER had created darkness and evil. (Is. 45:7) Do we know why He did that? YES, we do! But the natural mind cannot know it because it CANNOT SEE any reason for it. True? Then later on, God created Lucifer, a magnificent angelic being full of wisdom and beauty and perfect in all his ways. God created Lucifer KNOWING FULL WELL that he will corrupt himself (Ez. 28:15,17) and become Satan, His chief enemy, the father of lies, the destroyer of His Creation; KNOWING FULL WELL that there would be no hope ever for his recovery and Salvation! (Is. 14:12-15) Do we know why Our Father had created Lucifer foreknowing all these facts? YES, we do! Can we fathom such facts and SEE Our Father’s Character and understand His motives? YES, we can, if His Spirit, which searches the depth of God’s Mind shows us. (1Cor. 2:10) Is He willing to show us such unfathomable and deep mysteries? YES He is, but only to our New Man, to the Father’s son or daughter, never to our natural soul.
Did Our Father ever need Satan in His Plans, Counsels and Purposes? Do we know? YES, we do! Also, Our Father KNEW FULL WELL that He created for Himself and for His Son Jesus Christ a mountain of problems, troubles, pains and sufferings about which the natural man can have no clue whatsoever. Yet, Our Father did it! How can any human creature face these deep truths and mysteries and not fall on his knees before the Almighty God, Who had become the Father of that human creature, of his soul and of his spirit PRECISELY BECAUSE OF THESE MYSTERIES?
And how could this PERFECT Lucifer, living and serving God, his Creator in a perfect way, one “day” embrace evil and allow pride and jealousy to enter his heart and mind and will? Do we know why? We may have no clue. There was no need for him to become proud or jealous of God, to become His chief enemy. In his exalted position, intelligence, power, wisdom, beauty and perfection Lucifer was (in my vision) just under the Son of God! He was missing nothing! He had all the happiness, peace, contentment, joy and the “heavenly bliss” that he (or any man on earth) could ever wish for! True? So, why did he embrace evil and become God’s enemy? How could he bypass all his great wisdom? Can we put ourselves into Lucifer’s “shoes”? NO! It is far beyond our capacity to even imagine his life in the Presence of the Almighty God let alone try to understand it. We are trying (at least some believers do) to serve God in our sinfulness, weaknesses, foolishness, prejudices, selfishness, speculations, pride, fears and all the rest of it, hoping that we are pleasing Our God. So, how far are we from the kind of service that the perfect and sinless Lucifer had provided to God?
Nevertheless, our poor soul CAN glean from these deep facts and mysteries something very valuable. Lucifer had decided to take this road to tragedy BY HIS OWN FREE WILL, which God gave to His angels, and to man. This proves THE AWESOME POWER OF FREE WILL that God granted to His creatures. By that power we may oppose Him, disobey Him, ignore Him, refuse what He offers and become His enemies… just as Lucifer did! And we may start doing it WITHOUT BEING AWARE OF IT! I can SEE, therefore I believe that Lucifer did not foreknow in himself the awesome power and tragedy of the evil that he was embracing and the tragic consequences of that step! Had Our Father ever warned him about it? It is not recorded. What is also important for us is to realize that it is equally not recorded that Lucifer was ever given any CHANCE TO REPENT and turn from his evil ways! There has never been forgiveness of God extended to him as it is to man. Why? Is Our Father “selective” in His Grace? Can we truly answer this question? NO! We cannot answer it or comprehend it in any way. Yet, it is extremely valuable for us to register this fact for our own Christian life.
And Satan did not commit this great evil alone. He apparently deceived about one third of all the angelic host of Heaven, who later on were cast out of Heaven to the earth together with him. (Rev. 12:4,9) Those multitudes of angels had to have been tempted and deceived by Satan and thus they had made the same fateful decision of their free will to embrace evil. They were also holy and sinless and possessing free will. Neither these were given any chance to repent and return to serve God! None of them. The everlasting fire was prepared for Satan and for all his angels right from the very beginning! (Mt. 25:41) The everlasting fire was never prepared for man… though many men will end up there as well by their own free will decision. Why?
They have the same power of free will as Lucifer had, to do how they please and what suits them though they are warned about the consequences and about hell. Now, this includes us, born-again and baptized believers, who also possess this awesome power of free will as Lucifer had, to do as we please and what suits us. And we always prefer to do what pleases US and what suits US and not what suits God; and THAT IS OUR TRAGEDY!
Our Saviour and Lord always did those things that pleased His Father, Who sent Him and did not leave Him alone. (Jn. 8:29) So, realistically, how far are we from His Likeness? In our natural mind and understanding we can never be like Him because we can never see or imagine ourselves that way.
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To be continued next week in chapter 5 – part 2
brother Hanola
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