Before the Lord gives us His Truth and His own experiences from His mission on the earth, He desires to expose another deception from Satan. It might be even more shocking than the truth declared above. There are today many “mega-churches” where even tens of thousands of believers gather together “to worship”. The greater the church, the greater the success – this is a sincere belief of many believers. Mega-churches are considered as a great “success”, their leaders are admired around the world and few people would doubt that this is so. But the Lord says that these “churches” are like unto cancerous or leprous cells on a living body or like a leaven that leavens the whole lump. (1Cor. 5:6,7)
The basic character of cancerous cells is that they grow uncontrollably against all the natural limits and self-controls of any living organism. Cancer is highly destructive in that all the natural processes within cancerous cells are in time suspended and death starts to work through them into the surrounding living cells. The spiritual life and its processes and developments in mega-churches are similarly suspended and spiritual death brought in by the original carnal cells starts growing and spreading itself to thousands of others. Leprosy is the same thing in that it disintegrates the body and slowly breaks down all its living functions. Lepers could not be integrated into normal society. Do you have eyes to SEE and a heart to understand and believe this simple truth? If you have not, it may cost you your life since you may not see your own state whether your soul is spiritually living and healthy or it is cancerous or leprous and dying. I am not writing these things to scare people, but because the Lord desiresto expose these deep deceptions of Satan and warn His people. Satan knows and understands what he is doing, people don’t know; they are usually incredibly naïve. Bad news is sometimes good news, if it wakes us up and gives us the chance to see what is happening to us and to correct our course in time.
The Lord also desires that we ponder, SEE and understand the following. How could have Satan ever hoped to deceive and get JESUS to bow to him, worship him and be on his side? Do we know the answer to this unusual question? YES, we do! But before we can satisfactorily answer this question, we have to answer another simple, but profound one and it is the following: What is the difference between the Son of God and the Son of Man? We should know. Well, let us reduce the answer by stating the following. The Son of God is GOD the Son within the Trinity of God where He is also called THE WORD. (1Jn. 5:7// Jn. 1:1) As GOD He cannot be tempted by evil and He cannot sin! (Jam. 1:13)
On the other hand, the Son of Man is MAN the Son and as such He WAS tempted at all points as we are. (Heb. 4:15) He could have disobeyed His Father, He could have defended Himself, He could have lived and made decisions according to His Own Will and not always according to His Father’s Will. JESUS THE MAN COULD HAVE SINNED, IF HE WANTED!… because He was made like unto man with His free will, but without man’s sinful nature in Himself. So, HE WAS MADE LIKE UNTO THE FIRST ADAM, who also had his free will, was sinless, without sinful nature and was also the son of God! (Lk. 3:38) In THIS SENSE, the First Adam before his fall and the Last Adam were the same! But when the First Adam was tempted, he sinned, whereas when Jesus, the Last Adam, was tempted He remained without sin. Jesus declared to His Disciples: “be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” (Jn. 16:33b) This also proves that He had to OVERCOME the same things that we are facing and must OVERCOME.
Now we can answer the original question as follows. Lucifer knew the Son of God personally and, even as Satan, he retained this knowledge in himself. But now, Satan meets Jesus, the Son of Man, and he views Him exactly as he viewed the First Adam – as the same prey! But Satan never knew what was LOVE, compassion, grace, selflessness, self-sacrifice, meekness, spontaneous and unforced obedience, which the First Adam did not possess either!
Hence, Satan only counted with the great power of his deception, deviousness and of his temptations seeing himself as superior to Jesus. That’s why he used the same weapons against this “Other Adam”, which he used so effectively and successfully against the First Adam.
Satan knew, Who was born in Bethlehem and what His mission was; and he also knew that he had no other weapons to use except what he used against Adam and Eve. But since the New Testament was not yet known, Satan had no foreknowledge of what Jesus would do and how He would resist his weapons. Also, he had no true understanding of the prophecies about the Messiah from the Old Testament. So, Jesus, this Son of Man, was for Satan the same prey – FALLIBLE – made under the law! (Gal. 4:4) AND THAT WAS TRUE IN PRINCIPLE! AND THAT WAS SATAN’S HOPE which he retained until the Cross and the Resurrection of Christ. And THAT IS EXACTLY THE SAME HOPE THAT SATAN HAS FOR ALL BELIEVERS UNTIL THEY obey the Will of their Father and DIE ON THEIR CROSS to their natural soul which is Satan’s only ground of operations and victories; and until they ARE RESURRECTED and receive the New Life which is sinless! Do we SEE this crucial spiritual fact? Do we REALLY?
We do not seem to see, realize and believe that God will always accept the decisions of our will, desire or lust. He only warns us of their consequences. If we therefore desire to live our way and ignore His Word, God will accept that. If His believers desire to remain the way they are and together with their leaders ignore His warnings, God will accept that also. If people desire to remain blind, in their deceptions and believe lies, He will not argue with them nor will He persuade them. Jesus never argued or persuaded any man during His ministry on earth. He declared the Truth and left it to men to receive it or reject it. Don’t we see that? Even concerning this MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE and our cross, the Lord said clearly:
“IF any man will come after Me…” (Mt. 16:24) thereby leaving the choice to man.
Let us now SEE clearly the true nature and purpose of Satan’s weapons toward the Son of Man as it will unmask and uncover his tactics toward us, as well. Let us see and understand that there are obvious sins, vividly clear, noticeable, even logical sins as the transgressions of the law. (1Jn. 3:4) And then there are sins which are equally deadly, yet, unrecognizable and not obvious as sins, which might not be even defined as sins. Let us also see that Satan almost always tempted Jesus (directly or indirectly through men) with these non-obvious, often unrecognizable, hidden sins. Satan’s goal was not to cause Jesus to steal, murder, lie, commit adultery or idolatry and the like, but to do something – ANYTHING – even any little thing OF HIMSELF, without enquiring of His Father!
The Father sent Jesus to do the Father’s Will, (Heb. 10:7) to do the Father’s faith and pleasure. (Jn. 8:28,29) Had Jesus done ANYTHING outside of this Father’s Will, faith or pleasure – HE WOULD HAVE SINNED against His Father. (Rom. 14:23b) His destiny would have been the GREATEST TRAGEDY in this Universe! And OUR SALVATION WOULD HAVE NEVER BEEN ACCOMPLISHED! Can we fathom that? NO!
So we may not steal, murder, lie, commit adultery or idolatry, and the like, but we might sin daily, maybe even hourly by simply living our own life by our own will and always doing what “seems good, profitable, needful or wise” in our own eyes and understanding NOT ENQUIRING OF THE LORD ANYTHING! Yet, if Christ lives in us, then the life we now live in the body we OUGHT TO LIVE BY THE FAITH OF THE SON OF GOD and not by the beliefs of our natural self. (Gal. 2:20b) True? How do we fare in this area of the Word of God? MISERABLY. Fortunately, the Lord knows our frailties and weaknesses and inabilities despite our best intentions and that is why His Grace is sufficient for us (2Cor. 12:9) in all our “good intentions”.
But that is where Satan wanted to get Jesus and that is why THE SON COULD DO NOTHING OF HIMSELF! (Jn. 5:19; 8:28) I hope we see that. Go through the Gospels and find the places where Satan prepared his traps for Jesus and you should see what you might have never seen before. We, born-again baptized believers, are falling into the same traps daily, irrespective of persons. We have no clue what Grace and Forgiveness we need from God every day.
Now, the above spiritual facts do not affect or diminish God’s Power, Omnipotence, His Great Love, Grace, Mercy and Forgiveness. His Will is not affected or changed by these spiritual facts. But they do prove that it has always been the Will of God to allow people to exercise their free will and choose their own destiny, their own master and the object of their love and obedience, to choose evil or good, life or death, blessing or cursing. (Deut. 30:19) God has never changed this Principle of the free will of man even after the man believed. God will never take from us our free will and the responsibility for our own decisions whether we are pagans or born-again, baptized believers. THIS IS THE FACT on which Satan also stands and operates and has his hopes and makes all his efforts to plot his destructive tactics. Are we aware of this “little” danger in our earthly lives? NO! IF WE, therefore, act and live as if we were already with “one foot in Heaven” just because we believed in the Saviour and study and preach the Bible, we may yet be the most naïve and deceived creatures in this Universe. We even ignore warnings from Our God as if they could not apply to us! (1Pet. 5:8,9)
ANY DOCTRINE, NOTION OR EVEN A HINT THAT ANY PAGAN, WHO BELIEVES IN THE SAVIOUR “HAS ALREADY MADE IT TO HEAVEN” AND DOES NOT HAVE TO OVERCOME ANYTHING IS STRAIGHT FROM HELL. DO WE BELIEVE THIS FACT? WE BETTER!
Unfortunately, this deep deception from hell has been preached and taught and believed widely, especially in the Protestant denominations. Those that know something from the history of the Church, the beginning of Enlightenment and the “birth” of Protestantism should SEE immediately and clearly the following fact. When Satan lost his deception of the “Salvation by works and the goodness of man” (Catholic teaching), he started to bring into the “new” Protestant church a modified teaching: “Salvation by faith alone with no works needed”. This is nothing but making a sharp turn, crossing the “middle golden road of truth” and going right to the other extreme! If Satan cannot keep you from reading or studying the Bible, he will then push you to read and study it day and night until you drop dead from exhaustion… one extreme or the other… and that applies to all our life activities. So his plot with the “Salvation of man” is transparent, yet, owing to the naïvety, foolishness and depravity of man, Satan has had enormous successes with both these extreme alternative deceptions!
Since our “works of faith” may often be strenuous, time consuming, demanding even painful, their success becomes the question of our diligence, attention, perseverance and quickness as opposed to laziness, lack of interest or attention and slowness. I am persuaded that no lazy, selfish or slow person will ever rule in the coming Kingdom. The Lord is even chiding such believers saying to them:
“O FOOLS, and SLOW of heart to believe…” (Lk. 24:25a)
This also means that if it takes us “half-an-eternity” to believe simple and clear truths about ourselves and begin to work out the necessary change, then in the Lord’s eyes we are great fools and slow! The people condemned to the Lake of fire and brimstone will at some point in time also begin to see and believe – but it will be too late! They were too lazy and too slow to seek Truth and change to get Life.
One important fact about “PREDESTINATION” is as follows. I suspect that there may be very many believers who may have wrestled with this question and never understood this spiritual fact as it stands before God. The Lord says that He gave man the power of a free will and with it the ability to accept or neglect, oppose or ignore the Will of God, His desires and Commandments and to choose what the man wants. And God will never annul or disregard the will of man. But God is able to FOREKNOW WHAT MAN WILL DECIDE BY HIS FREE WILL IN THE FUTUREsince time is not a factor for God, only for man.
Therefore, God may say to one: “I have predestinated you to eternal damnation because I foresee you will keep choosing disobedience and death with your free will every time I show you the way to life eternal; and I foreknow that you will never respond to the Light of Salvation made available to you during your earthly life“.
And to another God may say: “I have predestinated you for Life Eternal for I foresee in your heart, mind and soul your free-will decision to be an Overcomer, to keep My Commandments, to deny your old life, to take up your cross which I prepared for you, to live the life of obedience to Me and to be thereby transformed to the Image of My Son.” (see also 2Thes. 2:13-15)
Hence, God never predestinates any man to anything irrespectively or independently of man’s own free-will decisions. God respects His Own Eternal Principles which He established for His Creation and predestinates us according to our own free will decisions, all of which He foreknows, and not by His Will-Desire alone.
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To be continued next week in chapter 7 – part 5
brother Hanola
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