Part 1: Journey into the supernatural

THE CHARIOTS OF ISRAEL

“8 ¶ Then the king of Syria warred against Israel, and took counsel with his servants, saying, In such and such a place shall be my camp.
9 And the man of God sent unto the king of Israel, saying, Beware that thou pass not such a place; for thither the Syrians are come down.
10 And the king of Israel sent to the place which the man of God told him and warned him of, and saved himself there, not once nor twice.
11 Therefore the heart of the king of Syria was sore troubled for this thing; and he called his servants, and said unto them, Will ye not shew me which of us is for the king of Israel?
12 And one of his servants said, None, my lord, O king: but Elisha, the prophet that is in Israel, telleth the king of Israel the words that thou speakest in thy bedchamber.
13 ¶ And he said, Go and spy where he is, that I may send and fetch him. And it was told him, saying, Behold, he is in Dothan.
14 Therefore sent he thither horses, and chariots, and a great host: and they came by night, and compassed the city about.
15 And when the servant of the man of God was risen early, and gone forth, behold, an host compassed the city both with horses and chariots. And his servant said unto him, Alas, my master! how shall we do?
16 And he answered, Fear not: for they that be with us are more than they that be with them.
17 And Elisha prayed, and said, LORD, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the LORD opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.
18 And when they came down to him, Elisha prayed unto the LORD, and said, Smite this people, I pray thee, with blindness. And he smote them with blindness according to the word of Elisha.
19 And Elisha said unto them, This is not the way, neither is this the city: follow me, and I will bring you to the man whom ye seek. But he led them to Samaria.
20 And it came to pass, when they were come into Samaria, that Elisha said, LORD, open the eyes of these men, that they may see. And the LORD opened their eyes, and they saw; and, behold, they were in the midst of Samaria.
21 And the king of Israel said unto Elisha, when he saw them, My father, shall I smite them? shall I smite them?
22 And he answered, Thou shalt not smite them: wouldest thou smite those whom thou hast taken captive with thy sword and with thy bow? set bread and water before them, that they may eat and drink, and go to their master.
23 And he prepared great provision for them: and when they had eaten and drunk, he sent them away, and they went to their master. So the bands of Syria came no more into the land of Israel.”

2 Kings 6:8-23

In this account – and at many other points in the Bible – the Scriptures tell us of forces and events in the physical realm and the supernatural realm. There was something visible and something invisible going on at the same place , at the same time, and both was important. Here, for a brief moment, the unseen veil that seperates the two realms was drawn back so that the young man could see not only the Syrian army, but also the angelic army of the Lord.

What this young man saw was not a vision, but reality. He saw real horses and real chariots on that mountain, but they existed on a different plane of reality than the physical. They could come into the natural order and effect it, but they were not part of the ntural order. They existed in an order beyond or above that of the natural, called the supernatural. They are no less real because they are invisible to man. Personally, I call it a different dimension, “the fourth dimension”, but that is if you you don’t call time the fourth dimension. We live in a three dimensional world, but there is another dimension that we can not see. Just like our ears are not equiped to hear all sounds (i.e. a dig whistle), there are also colours and other things that we are unable to see. In the passage above, the Lord took away the dimensional blockage, if you like, so that the young man could see spiritual beings. Many people believe that this can also be seen in out-of-body experiences and during consumption of certain hallusinating drugs. Here, we will stick to a biblical interpretation of this phenomena.

Because these spiritual beings are on a different plane than that of the natural and the physical, they are in their comings and goings mostly unseen and unheard by man. While this is true of the supernatural forces of God,it is also true of the supernatural forces of evil. Both are invisible, and both effect events on earth, to a degree unsuspected by most men.

Once,  king David was tempted in a certain matter and disobeyed the will of God. The Bible says: 

“15 And God sent an angel unto Jerusalem to destroy it: and as he was destroying, the LORD beheld, and he repented him of the evil, and said to the angel that destroyed, It is enough, stay now thine hand. And the angel of the LORD stood by the threshingfloor of Ornan the Jebusite.

16 And David lifted up his eyes, and saw the angel of the LORD stand between the earth and the heaven, having a drawn sword in his hand stretched out over Jerusalem. Then David and the elders of Israel, who were clothed in sackcloth, fell upon their faces.    

20 And Ornan turned back, and saw the angel; and his four sons with him hid themselves. Now Ornan was threshing wheat.”

1 Chronicles 21:15-16, 20

It was given to David and Ornan to see beyond the natural into the supernatural and to see a supernatural event that had a most immediate and momentous bearing on the safety of Jerusalem.

There are events that occur even in our time here on earth that are effected not only by what people say and do in the ntural realm, but also by what spiritual or supernatural beings say and do in the realm of the supernatural. The Bible reveals that the primary initiative in certain events of history does not proceed from the will of men, but from the will of powers beyond man in the supernatural. Since some of these powers are evil, and since their desire is to increase the sum of strife and suffering and death among mankind, it is urgent for Christians to know something about them.

THGE DOOR THAT CAN NEVER BE OPENED AGAIN

Supernaturalism in many forms has come flooding in upon Western culture in our time, creating a widespread interest in clearvoyance, psychicism, occultism, witchcraft, out-of-body travel, extra sensory perception, precognition, and various forms of mysticism or spiritism. New as they may seem, they are ancient supernatural practices that have found expressions in many cultures at various times in history.

Many people feel a sort of magnetism or fascination for the supernatural, but these things should not be entered into without some knowledge of the possible consequences even if the exposure to these phenomenons are a bare minimum. If you would not thrust your hand into a snake pit, I wouls strongly urge you not to permit yourself to be drawn into an involvement with one or other form of occultism, even in a tentive or experimental way, without knowing that it is possible for you to step over a threshold and past a door that may slam shut behind you as soon as you stand on the other side of it – slam shut so tight that nothing you can do can pry open the door so that you can get back out.

The Bible is certainly not an anti-supernatural book. It is just the opposite. It is a book filled from beginning to end with accounts of that which is supernatural. The Bible is not a book about the supernatural. The Bible is a supernatural book. It is alive, and it has a message that God uses to impart spiritual life. Synagogues and countless churches have created a tremendous void that is being filled in the most destructive ways by books that anyone can pick from a shop shelf or by movies. This they have done by denying and cutting out genuine supernatural experiences that the Bible says human beings ought to have. In Joel 2:28 we read: “And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions:“

Some people have a kind of thirst for the supernatural. It makes a difference whether they seek to quench that thirst at a well whose waters are poisoned, or at a well whose waters are pure. Supernaturalism has come to us in a rush and it’s here to stay, whether we like it or not. Wearing blinders will not help. Christians need desperately to know what the Bible says about it, before tragedy strikes homes and families who don’t know what’s happening to their young members, or why. Many lives and families have been ruined by the occult, some people have suffered for decades or been admitted to psychiatric hospitals because of it.

THE INPENETRABLE ORDER

In the creation there is a physical order and a spiritual order, both of which are real. The physical universe is natural. The spiritual order is supernatural. There are facts that may be known about both, but not by the same means. The human body and the five senses that go with it is part of the physical creation. Those senses are able to observe and take in information and facts about the natural universe – and that’s all. They cannot observe the supernatural universe. Your senses give you your relationship to the whole physical universe. They are the mediators and sentinels (guards) between you and the rest of physical creation. You know it and learn of it by using them. But there it ends. They provide you with no information about the supernatural  order. Your ears are deaf to it, your eyes are blind to it. The Bible says: “While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:18).

We know that the first part of that statement is true. The earth, the sun, the moon and the stars, the whole physical creation, will wear out. Psalm 102:25-27 says: “Of old hast thou laid the foundation of the earth: and the heavens are the work of thy hands. They shall perish, but thou shalt endure: yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment; as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed: But thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end.” The earth and everything in the physical realm “shall wax old like a garment” and “They shall perish“.

The second part of the statement says that “the things which are not seen are eternal“. Notice that the verse does not only refer to ideas, values and concepts; it refers to things.  It speaks of temporal things, and it speaks of eternal things. The contrast is not just between narural stuff and spiritual values, as though a man could say “Sure, money and clothes wear out, but love goes on forever.” It will, of course, because God is love, yet He is also Creator of a vast array of living beings and things. Every saved person will have a new body in which to live forever, one that will never wera out or know illness or fain – different from the mortal body, but a body nontheless.

“35 ¶ But some man will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come?
36 Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die:
37 And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain:
38 But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body.
39 All flesh is not the same flesh: but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds.
40 There are also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial: but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another.
41 There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for one star differeth from another star in glory.
42 So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption:
43 It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power:
44 It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.
45 And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.
46 Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual.
47 The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven.
48 As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly.
49 And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.”

1 Corinthians 15:35-49

Jesus promised that His apostles would “eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel“ (Luke 22:30). This real people sitting on real thrones eating real food. It ia all to easy to spiritualize the promises concerning the unseen and the eternal.

The natural man can not perceive spiritual things just like a standard band radio can not receive short-wave radio signals. At the time of salvation, when the Holy Spirit comes to indwell the believer, the Christian gets “tuned in” to God through man’s spiritual part (we are body, soul and spirit). This part does not get activated before we receive Christ as Saviour. Before that happens, the Bible does not make sense to us. In 1 Corinthians 2:14 we read: “But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.”

Still, even if modern man cannot comprehend the supernatural, the Lord has revealed enough of the supernatural i.e. in His creation, so that there can be no excuse not to believe in Him. Romans 1:18-20 reads: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:”

HE COMES AS WIND

Since nothing beyond the vast physical creation can be scientifically proven, we must seek another method. The natural man is bound to the naturalrealm where he has his existence. But that which which has its existence in the spiritual. Ecclesiastes 11:5 says “As thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit (wind), nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child: even so thou knowest not the works of God who maketh all.”

If that were the last word on the matter, we would be blind and unknowing forever. But that is not the last word. 1 Corinthians 2:9-12 says: “But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.”

There it is! If man is to know anything at all about the realm of the spiritual and supernatural, it must be given him by revelation. Revelation is a one-way avenue. It comes from the spiritual plane to the natural plane. It never runs the other way.

The Holy Spirit – He is a living person – dwells in the supernatural order and He the natural order unseen. There are absolutely no limits to where He can go. In the Bible He is likened, in His comings and goings, to the wind. “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit. (John 3:8). Unseen the Holy Spirit comes, unseen He goes, yet there are the effects of His wonderful presence among men.

There are no limits to what the Holy Spirit may know. 1 Corinthians 2:11 says: “For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.” The Holy Spirit takes the thruth of God, and of the spiritual realm, and conveys them according to the will of God, to men. In this He uses words primarilly, but occationally also visions (pictures) and dreams as a means of communication, so that what is revealed is made plainly intelligible to man. The only way we can interpret or understand the Bible is through the work of the Spirit. 2 Peter 1:20-21 says: “Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.”

TESTING PROPHETS AND DREAMERS OF DREAMS

Though they are the means God uses to convey His revelations to men, prophecy, dreams, or visions do not in themselves have any claim whatsoever to expressing the truth. More false prophecy is uttered in the world than true prophecy, and by no close margin. Dreams flicker through our sleep like surrealist films in montage. Visions may, and often do, come from mental derangement or from evil spirits. It is only when the Holy Spirit uses these means that the content of the prophecy, the dream, or the vision is truth.

“3 For a dream cometh through the multitude of business; and a fool’s voice is known by multitude of words.  7 For in the multitude of dreams and many words there are also divers vanities: but fear thou God” (Ecclesiastes 5:3, 7). It is especially important to understand that factual accuracy does not constitute evidence that a prophecy or a dream or a vision is from God. Factual accuarcy is not an adequate test of the divine inspiration of any prophecy.

The Law of Moses speaks this word regarding prophecy: 

“1 ¶ If there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder,
2 And the sign or the wonder come to pass, whereof he spake unto thee, saying, Let us go after other gods, which thou hast not known, and let us serve them;
3 Thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams: for the LORD your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.
4 Ye shall walk after the LORD your God, and fear him, and keep his commandments, and obey his voice, and ye shall serve him, and cleave unto him.
5 And that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, shall be put to death; because he hath spoken to turn you away from the LORD your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed you out of the house of bondage, to thrust thee out of the way which the LORD thy God commanded thee to walk in. So shalt thou put the evil away from the midst of thee.”

Deuteronomy 13:1-5

A false prophet must be distinguished from a phony prophet. A false prophet has certain supernatural powers that he uses. A phony prophet is outright fake. A false prophet may be utterly sincere and unaware of his falsity. A phony prophet knoews he is a fake. A false prophet mat practice gross spiritual deception without knowing it, because he himself is thoroughly deceived. A phony prophet knows exactly the deceptions he practices and how he practices them. He does not believe in what he is doing.

In the scripture of 1 Corinthians 2:9-13 we see that God’s Word is given to men by the Holy Spirit so that we might understand what is true and know what spiritual and supernatural gifts belong to men and women who trully believe in God and in the Lord Jesus Christ.

“9 But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.
10 But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.
11 For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.
12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.
13 Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.”

KNOWING WHAT IS

There are in the creation orders of living beings who are intelligently active but unseen by man. They are capable of thought, of speech, of volition (conscious choice), of worship, of love, or of hate. Angels constitute one of these invisible orders of beings. They are servants of God, active on behalf of His will in the universe.

The structure of reality as it is revealed in the Bible is not the same as that commonly conceived by man. God has not limited Himself to flesh and blood in creating orders of intelligent beings.

Hebrews 2:6-7 says:  But one in a certain place testified, saying, What is man, that thou art mindful of him? or the son of man, that thou visitest him? Thou madest him a little lower than the angels; thou crownedst him with glory and honour, and didst set him over the works of thy hands:“

The Bible also reveals an order of intelligent beings who are in active rebellion against God, called evil spirits or demons. The Bible declares that they are led by an intelligent personality called Satan, the devil, earlier called Lucifer – the light bringer. Whhat is set forth here is what the Bible affirms to be the case, from Genesis to Revelation, the first and the last books of the Bible. If a person fails to grasp this, he cannot understand much of the Bible, because that it is the structure of reality in which all the earthly events of the Bible – past and future – are set.

This can be ignored, but it cannot be escaped. Saying that demons do not exist in no way prevents them from intruding into the lives and the affairs of your family. The tragic fact today is that families whose members ignore large segments of this reality are becoming the victims of intelligent forces of evil whose activity they do not even vaguely suspect. This is especially true of young people, and parents are too often unprepared to cope with that which has come to harm or destroy their young.

–

Part 2: The biblical structure of reality

THE INVISIBLE GOD: “I AM”

The first and foremost description of God is that God is. There is a constant affirmation that God acts. I find it really strange that some people can read the Bible right through and leave God out of it. Today, everything is attributed to natureand man; nothing seems to be attributed to God. The presupposition of modern man is that there is no God. It requires a deliberate and selective blindness that screens out what the Bible is about.

The Bible asserts, uniformly and from beginning to end, that there are different levels of intelligent and active life: beasts, man, angels, demons, Satan, God. More are unseen than are seen. All but the beasts are intelligent agents whose actions profoundly affect human history. To smash them all down to one level of existence – the natural – is to read the Bible without resolute intelligence.

The central decleration of the Scriptures is that God is. When God comissioned Moses to lead the people of Israel, Moses wondered if the people would recognize his commission as genuinely divine. God said to Moses: “I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.” (Exodus 3:14)

Through the prophet Isaiah God said: “Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me,
Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure:” (Isaiah 64:9-10)

“In the beginning God…“ are the very first words of the Bibel. Look at Genesis 1: “And God said…” “And God saw…” “And God made…” “And God called…” “And God set” “So God created…” “And God blessed them…” “So God created man…” “And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.” The Bible is largely an account of God in action!

In Genesis and throughout the Bible we see God exercising attributes of volitition (His own will to chose) and intelligence and personality and speech of which man is capable of on a diminished scale, because man is made in Gods image (Genesis 1:26-28). God endowed the first man Adam with attributes of will and intelligence and speech so that man was like his creator.

The Bible says that “God is a spirit” (John 4:24). He is invisible and He is immortal (1 Timothy 1:17). The invisible God expressed Himself in physical creation. His creative hand is seen in the natural order. Romans 1:20 says: “For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:”

God is aspirit, invisible to the eye of man, and He dwells on the spiritual plane. He is supernatural – that is, above nature. All that we see in the natural realm, from the intricate design of the atom to the great balanced wheels of stars and galaxies, is the product of Gods creative genious and His infinite power. The Milky Way alone is a system of over a hundred billion stars.

The God revealed by the Bible is a ersonal God who reveals Himself to individual men. He deals directly and personally with women and men. He seeks them out to belong to Him. The prophet Hanani told Asa, the king of Judah: “For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him.” (2 Chronicles 19:9).

THE INVISIBLE GOD MADE VISIBLE

There is no more awsome and wonderful fact that God, the Creator, in making Himself known to man, has come to man as man. Of several means of revelation God uses to reveal the truth about Himself, the chief one is the incarnation: God coming as a man!

God Himself – theCreator – came to Israel as a man prophesied in the most expicit terms in the Old Testament. Isaiah 9:6 says: “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.” Think of that: A man born a Jew – nothing less than Emmanuel, a name that means God with us…

Never has the natural and the supernatural, the human and the divine, come together so absolutely as in the incarnation. It is the crux, the decisive center, of human history…

Today, we can learn about God by reading the Bible, but God wants more than that for you. He wants you to know Him personally, if you don’t already. God spcifically offers to come into your life in so definate a way that you will know He has come in; you will know He is there, with you and in you. It doesn’t matter who you are. “God is no respecter of persons” (Acts 10:34). The social and class distinctions means nothing to Him. After He had risen from the grave, He said: “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.” (Revelation 3:20).

Most people have heard that “God is love“. The whole passage is found in 1 John 4:7-10. Here we read: “Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.
He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.”

God created the world and man, and everything else that He created, as the expression of His generousity and love. God intends that His creation be joyously perfect. There is a glimps of this primeval state of things in the Bible. God spoke to Job: “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding. Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it? Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof; When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” (Job 38:4-7).

That is the way it was, and that is the way it ceased to be when Satan brought sin and hatred and rebellion into Gods creation, and later persuaded man to turn his back on God. Because God is love, H is consistently intolerant of everything that violates His own intention in creation. God hates evil with pure and furious hatred because He sees that it is constantly at work to destroy what He has made – at work to destroy man, to destroy families, to destroy joy. He dies not look upon it as man does, that is relatively, because He sees in not limitedly but in the whole path of its effective ruination.

ANGELS

The intelligent order of created beings who serve God is called angels. They have to do with God, and they also have to do with man. Angels are in many ways very much like men. They possess attributes of intellect and personality and will similar to those of man. Angels can speak. So like men are the angels that it is possible to sit and talk with one and not know that he is an angel, but take him for a man. Hebrews 13:2 says: “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”

Angels are spiritual beings. They dwell on the spiritual plane, above nature. They are normally invisible to man. They enter the natural order, visibly and invisibly, but it’s not their primary abode. They stand a step higher on the ladder of creation than man. Man, who is set at the summit of the natural order, was made”a little lower than the angels” in the scale of creation. David wrote “What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?
For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.” (Psalm 8:4-5)

The whole natural order, including man’s physical body, is mortal. The angels are immortal. They are not subject to disease or death.

A major difference between angels and men is their mobility. The soul and the spirit of man are perfectly united to his body, and his body is primarily bound to the earth. Thus, as a being, man is limited in his mobility (though he can increase it immensely by inventions that cooperate with the laws of nature).

Angels are in no way bound by the laws of nature. They can travel immense distances very swiftly. A physical object must move at a stated rate from one point in the natural creation to another. There is no shortcut; the whole distance must be physically travelled. A spiritual being is subject to no such necessity. Angels can enter tha natural realm. They can bumit to and obey its laws, but they can also, at will, leave it and ignore its laws and limitations. Far more significantly, angels can inhabit the natural realm without being observed and without obeying its laws. They rove, unseen, among men accomplishing their appointed work.

Angels work actively in protecting people, whether individuals or groups of people who belong to God. Psalm 91 is the great psalm of divine protection.

“11 For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.
12 They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.
13 Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder: the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet.
14 Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him: I will set him on high, because he hath known my name.” 

The protection of God is for those who love Him and trust Him and worship and serve Him.

The victories of Israel against foes and invaders often came by active intervention of unseen forces. When the huge army of Assyria, which had easily overrun a series of nations, came to take Jerusalem and the inhabitants had no military power to repel them, God intervened: “And it came to pass that night, that the angel of the LORD went out, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred fourscore and five thousand: and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses.” (2 Kings 19:35)

Jesus told of a rich man and a poor man, both of whom died. The rich man went to Hades and was in torment. “And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom” (Luke 16:22) Jesus said.

John Wesley, the English evangelist who rode through England alone on horseback for more than fourty days, once met a man who told him that he had been hiding beside the road and would have come out to rob Wesley. When Wesley asked him why he had not, the man said it was because of the men riding beside Wesley. But the evangelist had been riding alone. What the man had seen, Wesley thought, was an escort of angels.

Angels are not all equal in occupation or power. Some angels are set as rulers and leaders over other angels in the work of God. The Bible speak of angels and archangels. Two of the latter, who occupy very elevated places in the plan of God, are named. They are Michael and Gabriel.

God described Michael as the great prince who would lead the angelic forces assigned to defend Israel. In Daniel 12:1 we read: “And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people: and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book.”

The angel Gabriel appears two times in the Old Testament, and two times in the New Testament., each on errands of the highest consequence to the plan of God.

Except when they move among men as men, angels are repeatedly spoken of in terms of fire, brightness, white and shining clothing, and in the term of the fear that humans feel when they first see them. Angels also have power to destroy.

SATAN: “ADVERSARY”

Though some deny it, and few really understand it, no human being escapes evil. “Man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward,” an ancient sage remarked (Job 5:7).

Some of the biggest and hardest questions that people face boil down to the single word “why?” This was the mystery that the man Job could not fathom while he went through the searing anguish of evidently senseless suffering, though he later understood it very well.

Except to the radically self-blinded, evil in this world is an observable phenomenon. It seems to be a fact of nature, but is much more than that: evil has a source. 

As much as evil may seem unorchestrated and general among mankind, a ruling purpose lies behind it. It is part of a much larger scheme than the random aspect of its occurance normally indicates.

The Bible doesn’t hide – it expressly reveals – the fierce dynamic that lies hidden behind evil. It declares that God has an enemy and adversary: Satan. He is a being of great power, but he is in no sense a kind of dark force equal to the creator. All of the saved are going to see his power cut short, and they will outlive him by the factor of infinity!

Until that occurs, he is man’s enemy too. While we do not need to fear him, it is urgent to know what can be known about him – right up to the measure of the biblical revelation as it deals with, and unmasks, this master strategist of evil.

Satan is at work today in the world with an intensity unmatched in our experience, and the Scriptures warn that this activity will be stepped up greatly among the nations, both in degree and in velocity, as end-time events accelerate. Unless we are aware of this, we will be caught short and find ourselves unable to cope with the events that decend upon us.

The first rule of intelligent spiritual warfare and resistance to evil is – know your enemy. Know who he is, what he intends, what he does, and how he goes about it.

“Lest Satan should get an advantage of us: for we are not ignorant of his devices.” (2 Corinthians 2:11)

Satan is a living creature. He is not corporal or physical. He is a spiritual being, but that doesn’t make him any less real. The fact that he is invisible and powerful greatly serves him in the persuit of his cause. The idea that Satan is a term for a generalized influence of evil – instead of the name of a secific living personality – is a strictly antibiblical idea.

The name Satan does not speak of an impersonal influence. It speaks of a single, identifiable, distinct living being with a will, a personality, and a highly directed intelligence. Satan – the name means “adersary” – was at his vreation a very beautiful being. His beauty has been corrupted by evil, but he still disguises and presents himself to much of mankind as god.

The Bible declares that “God is a spirit.” It describes angels as “minestering spirits.” The Bible calls Satan “the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience:” (Ephesians 2:2) So Satan is a spirit – that is, an intelligent living being who is invisible to the natural eye. This briefportion tells us a great deal about him: First, that he is a prince. Second, that his domane has an important center in the atmosphere of the earth, in the envelope of air in which the earth is enclosed. Third, that Satan is active, or “at work”. Fourth, that his activity is carried out through the lives of fallen or sinful men, who are called “the children of disobedience”. It is a stark fact that Satan exercises some degree of actual authority and control over all people who have never become worshipers of the living God.

Satan’s purpose is to draw people away from God and to keep people away from Him by every means he can use. In accomplishing this, Satan finds it conveniant and strategic to conceal his own identity and his activities as much as possible from human view. He is an enemy, an adversary. Therefore he moves under the cover of secrecy.

Satan makes you question God’s Word – like in the Garden of Eden. He is the father of lies (John8:44), and he will do anything to get you away from God or hinder you spiritual growth after you get saved. James 4:7 has some inportant words for us all: “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” We are, after all, on the winning side…

THE AUTHOR OF IDOLATRY

The being the Bible calls SAs the head of the rebellion against God and against the government of God, he works using every means he can to see that God is replaced as the center of man’s desire. He does not greatly care to what secondary object or desire or pursuit a man gives his chief loyalty, just as long as it is not to God, the source of life and truth. He works constantly to divert man’s attention from God, to direct it to something else. It may be to money, property, fame, power, pleasure, success, science, art, a religious idol, a dead saint, a human leader, a false god, a political system, or anything else. Whatever it is that takes first place in a person’s life is that person’s idol, and Satan is the author of idolatry.

The thing may not be evil in itself, it may be good, but it is accursed when it takes the place of God, and it becomes the destroyer of the soul. A man who refuses to serve God and to love Him on the earth will not be allowed to serve Him in eternity. “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Mark 8:36)

Satan’s purpose – on the earth and among mankind and in the heavens – is to oppose God at every point. A chief issue on which Satan opposes God is worship. It is right that people worship God. God calls people to worship Him, and Him only. “Thou shalt have none other gods before me.” (Deuteronomy 5:7) Satan does not want men and women to worship God. He desires that they blaspheme Him, using His holy name as an oath and a curse. He has succeeded in getting vast numbers in this way to violate the third commandment continually: “Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain: for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.” (Deuteronomy 5:11)

One of the great, intended uses for the human tongue is to sound the worship and adoration of God, to sing His glory, to utter thanksgiving to Him. Satan endevours to pervert that faculty – one that seperates man from the beasts – and to cause the human tongue to be occupied in speaking out curses. It is no accident, it is by express design, that so much swearing consists of the misuse of God’s name. Swearing, when it is deliberate as well as when it is automatic and habitual, is a sign of Satan’s dominance over the persons who engage in it.

Satan lusts for worship. Because it belongs exclusively to God, he desires it for himself. He would rather have worship than anything else, but because he knows he would not succeed in getting great numbers of men to worship him – if they knew that it was what they were doing – he sets up many objects as alternatives to the worship of God. This is idolatry in its crudest form, and the world is full of it.

There is no realm in which Satan is more active than religion. As a spiritual leader, Satan has devised many forms of religion, none of which can bring a man into a relationship with the living God or release him from the grip of sin. Satan’s systems of religion are always nonredemptive. They are unable to furnish what they seemingly promise, usually either an illusory “oneness with God” or some way of man making himself acceptable to God by religious self-effort. In primiive religions he often promotes religious practices for the appeasing of various demon “gods” and forces.

Contradiction of the Word of God is another means by which Satan opposes God among men. His policy is to supress the Scriptures wherever he can – that is, wherever he can get people to cooperate with him in that purpose.

Satan sought to make his lie more acceptable to Eve by adding a promise of knowledge to it. He often sweetens his lies by promising that something good is to be gained by believing them. His method is rather like that of the fisherman who baits the hook with soething delightful and apparently much to be desired. That is his offer to the fish. But that is not his purpose. His purpose is death.

TAKING SOBER MEASURE

In the desire not to overestimate Satan, there is a tendency among some believers to underestimate him and his works, to belittle or mock him, or rather lightly to understand overcoming him. Some seem almost to think that he can be routed by a slogan.

Some attitudes are shallow and thoroughly unscriptural. They are, taken together, a travesty on the depth and sweep of satanic activity in human history. In the last century, by wars and vast annihilations and purges, the toll in human lives soared above 100 million victims of every age. Thetotality of sufferings and grief and loss and dislocations, stemming from the dynamic interaction of human sinfulness and satanic provocation, goes far beyond our capacity to comprehend.

Belivers are in by no means awed by him – in Christ we have the power and authority to overcome him, sometimes by a single act, sometimes at high cost, and we are commanded to do so. The Book of Revelation promises specific, wonderful rewards to those who do.

Have you, as I have, heard believers and even ministers mock Satan or belittle him with ridicule? As though he could be delt with by a wave of the hand or a slighting phrase from the lips! The Bible does not sanction this.

Those who most loudly and assertively boast against him often are trifling with things they know nothing about.

In Jude 9 we read: “Yet Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil he disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke thee.” What that mighty angel of God did not dare to do, we would be thoroughly unwise to venture.

No being who has stood at the head of so great a rebellion and conspiracy to overthrow God’s rule among intelligent beings should be casually or indifferently measured. The very fact that God has reserved a place called “the lake of fire” specially for Satan and his followers, and that smoke shall ascend from that place of punishment forever, gives some concept of how God looks upon him.

At earth level we would be wise to heed Peter’s warning: “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour:” (1 Peter 5:8) Don’t let him devour you!

BATTLE FOR ALLEGIANCE

The earth we live on is the chief locale, the theater in the universe, of a challenge to the supremacy of God over a portion of His creation. Its habitants are the objects of what may accurately be called a dispute between Satan and God for their obedience and worship. This conflict is so severe that the Bible calls it “warfare”, and men are very much at its center.

Satan hates that any person – that even one person – should worship God and love Him supremely. One of his desires is to show, if he can, that every person has his price, that no one loves God so well that he will allow nothing to stop him from worshiping and trusting God. That is why, at one point of history, God allowed a man  named Job to stand a severe test of affliction. God loved Job and believed that he would not fail or fall.

A series of calamities fell upon Job in a single day. These came by the direct activity of Satan, but it’s interesting to see their immediate sources. From one side, a party of Sabeans invaded his property.  They stole his animals and slew his servants. From another side, the Chaldeans formed three companies and swept suddenly down upon Job’s property in a devastating raid. Men in action, yes, but Satan in action behind them! At almost the same time, a fire broke out in the property ans shortly thereafter “a great wind came across the wilderness and struck the house”, and it collapsed, killing his sons and daughters. Natural forces, yes, but Satan in action behind them!

A key fact here is that the enemy used many instruments in his attack on Job, but he showed his hand in none of them. Job did not know the who or the why, or the what, of these losses.

“Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped,
And said, Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.” (Job 1:20-21)

One more a restriction that was on Satan in the case of Job was removed, but his life was to be spared. Satan filled Job’s body with pain and running sores “from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head”, and Job went “and sat among the ashes”. At this point Job’s wife looked at him and said: “Dost thou still retain thine integrity? curse God, and die.” (Job 2:9) It was the counsel of Satan from the lips  of his wife! Seemingly natural speech is sometimes directly prompted by a supernatural source, for a spiritual purpose. When Peter assured Jesus that He would never be killed, Jesus said “Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.” (Matthew 16:23)

There was nothing showy about what Job did, but it registered resoundingly in heaven. Job overcame  chiefly by two things – by suffering and faith. In this he was like our Lord Jesus, whose ultimate act of overcoming was to be mocked and spit on and to be nailed in blood to a Roman cross.

ORIGIN OF SATAN

In an allegorical description, Satan is spoken of in the Book of Job in these terms: “Upon earth there is not his like, who is made without fear.
He beholdeth all high things: he is a king over all the children of pride.” (Job 41:33-34)

Satan, as he now is called, was not evil at his origin. The one who now bears the name of Satan and the title of devil was in the beginning good. The living being who became the devil was beautiful in every way, in character and appearance.

The prophests Ezekiel and Isaiah tell of the origin and fall of Satan. They tell of the birth of evil desirein him, some of his activities, and they show his destiny.

“11 ¶ Moreover the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,
12 Son of man, take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyrus, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty.
13 Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold: the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created.
14 Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so: thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire.
15 Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee.
16 By the multitude of thy merchandise they have filled the midst of thee with violence, and thou hast sinned: therefore I will cast thee as profane out of the mountain of God: and I will destroy thee, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire.
17 Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty, thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness: I will cast thee to the ground, I will lay thee before kings, that they may behold thee.
18 Thou hast defiled thy sanctuaries by the multitude of thine iniquities, by the iniquity of thy traffick; therefore will I bring forth a fire from the midst of thee, it shall devour thee, and I will bring thee to ashes upon the earth in the sight of all them that behold thee.
19 All they that know thee among the people shall be astonished at thee: thou shalt be a terror, and never shalt thou be any more.” (Ezekiel 28:11-19)

This passage shows us that the being now called Satan was a created being; that he was full of wisdom; and that he was a being of great beauty; that he was perfect. Then we see that this perfect and beautiful being occupied, by the express appointment of God, a station in heaven, on the holy mountain of God.

The word “anoint” in Hebrew usage means to pour oil upon a person to consecrate that person to God or set him apart for a specific office. God had anointed this being for a special office in the highest of heaven, near the place where God’s throne is.

But Satan sinned. He fell in iniquity. He was driven out of his place of high privilege in heaven because of it. He fell because he became proud of his beauty, and that he turned from serving God and began to serve his own vanity and to seek his own glory. He let his magnificence carry him into vanity and self-pride. That turned wisdom into corruption.

This drove him to extremeties of ambition and rebellion against God. In presumption, he is without limits.

You can also read Isaiah 14:12-17 to see more. Here we see that Satan’s name used to be Lucifer (the light bringer), also called “the son of the morning“, and he tried to put himself above God. Five times he said his “I will’s”…

–

Part 3: Thieves of forever

THE ANGELS OF THE DRAGON

Just as God has angels who does His will, Satan has angels who do his will. The Bible calls them evil spirits. It also calls them demons and devils.

There is no darker reality confronting human existence than that of evil spirits. They are unseen enemies of God and of man; they are ceaselessly at wor against the will of God and against all the best interests of man. The effects of their activity are all around us today, ad the Scriptures inform us that these effects are going to be multiplied many times, and at a very rapid pace, as the prophesied events of the end-time occur – events that precede the era when the returned Lord Jesus will righteously rule on earth.

“And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron: and her child was caught up unto God, and to his throne.” (Revelation 12:5)

“And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.” (Revelation 20:4)

The term demon is foreign the Western consciousness; remote from the common Western concepts of the nature of life and being. Yet, no living person escapes the attention of demons.

Ignorance of them, just about total in the Western world, is becoing less and less conveniant in our society, because there has been a marked step-up in demonic supernatural activity in the Wetern world in recent years. We see its effects on almost every hand, but too often we are blind to its source.

All of the angels were servants of God until Lucifer, the “son of the morning”, rebelled and caused a great split among them. Most held to their loyalty to God. Others abandoned that loyalty and went after Lucifer, or Satan.

The Scriptures speak of the angels who sinned against Godd. In 2 Peter 2:4 we read: “For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment;”

Again, Jude 6 says: “And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.” The demons are angels who left their first estate, as Satan left his. It appears that some evil spirits were put in confinement. Others are scripturally described as working with their leader.

The angels who serve God and the demons who follow Satan engage in conflict. The Book of Revelation gives us a glimps of this: “And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels,” (Revelation 12:7) The dragon is a figurative term for Satan, as the next verse states. Here are seen two companies of angels under different leaders – Michael and his angels, and Satan and his angels. Michael, an archangel , is a leader of the angels of God, while Satan leads the host of angels called demons, devils, or evil spirits.

This conflict bears upon man, for both angels and demons have to do with men and women. Acting with Satan, among the demons, are other evil princes subordinate to him (Satan). They stand together in unrelenting defiance of God’s will.

“10 ¶ And, behold, an hand touched me, which set me upon my knees and upon the palms of my hands.
11 And he said unto me, O Daniel, a man greatly beloved, understand the words that I speak unto thee, and stand upright: for unto thee am I now sent. And when he had spoken this word unto me, I stood trembling.
12 Then said he unto me, Fear not, Daniel: for from the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand, and to chasten thyself before thy God, thy words were heard, and I am come for thy words.
13 But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me one and twenty days: but, lo, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me; and I remained there with the kings of Persia.
14 Now I am come to make thee understand what shall befall thy people in the latter days: for yet the vision is for many days.”

Daniel 10:10-14

ACTS OF POWER AND LOVE: SETTING VICTIMS FREE

“How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him.” (Acts 10:38)

Jesus did His liberating work by preaching, by teaching, by acts of kindness and by acts of power, including healing the sick and casting out demons.

An immensely important fact is that evil spirits can, under certain circumstances, eneter into and occupy the human body and use it as the vehicle for carrying out their own deprived intetions. They cannot do this at mere will. They must be given a basis for occupation by voluntary acts of human of human compliance with evil  – most often repeated and willful acts or a venture into some extreme and forbidden thing. (That does not mean that they always realize what they are doing. I trully believe that some open the door to evil spirits without knowing it.)

I havetalked to individuals who became Christians after their involvement in occultism or spiritism. Their experiences gave them an especially keen and painful awareness of the demonic supernatural and of the damage, trouble and torment that can come to a person by it. Often when demons and evil have greatly influenced a person in an evil way, it is possible to find one perticular point in life when the evil was given a way in into the persons life.

When Jesus gave His commishion to the disciples in Mark 16:17 we read: “And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils;” The casting out of demons was to be one part of the total ministry of the Christian church to humanity. In His three years of ministry, Jesus repeatedly engaged in casting demons out of people. Matthew 8:16 records that “When the even was come, they brought unto him many that were possessed with devils: and he cast out the spirits with his word, and healed all that were sick:” Jesus recognized them, identified them and ordered them to depart from their victims.

It is equally true that the demons recognized Him. They often made that recognition emphatically known by speaking to Him through the individuals in whom they dwelled.

This ministry of casting out demons was to continue in the church through the disciples, and indeed it did. It is part of the basic and contiuing mission of the church for the taking away of suffering, and a good many missionaries to heathen countries have found it so. We read of this in Acts 8:5-7:

“5 Then Philip went down to the city of Samaria, and preached Christ unto them.
6 And the people with one accord gave heed unto those things which Philip spake, hearing and seeing the miracles which he did.
7 For unclean spirits, crying with loud voice, came out of many that were possessed with them: and many taken with palsies, and that were lame, were healed.”

LEGION: A TROPHY OF GRACE

Whether we like it or not, whether we know it or not, there is no escaping the fact that evil spirits are at work in human society. Until the coming of the Lord, the church of Jesus Christ is appointed by heaven to be the single greatest counterforce to evil powers.

Whether the church is alive, alert and faithful, it severely crimps demonic activity in many ways just by what it is and what it does. It also has, in its armory, specific weapons of devestating efficiacy against the workings of evil powers. They are vital and not to be laid aside, but they are far from the whole. Overall, it is highly probable that more damage is done to the intersets of the evil by godly lives of consistent faith, especially those called to particular vocations in faith, than by anything else.

In Mark 5:1-13 we read a passage of scripture  that gives insight and important information.

“1 ¶ And they came over unto the other side of the sea, into the country of the Gadarenes.
2 And when he was come out of the ship, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit,
3 Who had his dwelling among the tombs; and no man could bind him, no, not with chains:
4 Because that he had been often bound with fetters and chains, and the chains had been plucked asunder by him, and the fetters broken in pieces: neither could any man tame him.
5 And always, night and day, he was in the mountains, and in the tombs, crying, and cutting himself with stones.
6 But when he saw Jesus afar off, he ran and worshipped him,
7 And cried with a loud voice, and said, What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of the most high God? I adjure thee by God, that thou torment me not.
8 For he said unto him, Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit.
9 And he asked him, What is thy name? And he answered, saying, My name is Legion: for we are many.
10 And he besought him much that he would not send them away out of the country.
11 Now there was there nigh unto the mountains a great herd of swine feeding.
12 And all the devils besought him, saying, Send us into the swine, that we may enter into them.
13 And forthwith Jesus gave them leave. And the unclean spirits went out, and entered into the swine: and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the sea, (they were about two thousand;) and were choked in the sea.”

Notice that Jesus did not deal with the evil spirits as conditions but as with intelligent beings. There are some who are fond of saying that, in this, Jesus was merely going along with the superstitions of His time, but this is not the case.

Jesus made a distinction. He dealt with conditions as conditions, and He dealt with evil spirits as evil spirits, and He knew the difference. Think for a moment of the state of the man whom Jesus met in the tombs – a man made in the image of God, though born in sin, still bearing many aspects of that likeness, as we all do, but now reduced to a pathetic captivity, a travesty on God’s design and loving intent.

Friendless and homeless, he was useless, dangerous to himself and others, utterly insane, uncontrollable, miserable. What a grief to the heart of God such a human spectacle mustbe. Roaming the tombs and mountaintops night and day, howling or making strange crying noises.How rarely he must have had anything like decent food. Jesus showed nothing but care for the man. He had not a word of reproof for him. He dealt solely with the evil spirits.

The man in the tombs was not his own master after unclean spirits had gained control. They drove him away from human society and made him a wild, restless, reckless, roaming recluse. The man had more than mere human strength. Evil spirits forced him to inflict damage to himself, and Jesus turned it all around in a few moments’ time.

Jesus went beyond the man and directly addressed the unclean spirit. The demons answered, trying to hide themselves behind the identity of the man. Evil spirits seek the closest possible identification with the person they inhabit, so that their words and acts will be mistakenly ascribed to the person. The spirits were in great fear of Jesus, and begged Him not to torment “me”.

They used the first-person singular because they still hoped to conceal their true identity. They hoped tomake it seem that the man was asking Jesus not to torment him. Plainly, Jesus had not come to torment the man, the evil spirits were doing that!

Jesus made the evil spirits leave the man, but He allowed them to go into the swine. Immediately, two things happenned:

– The man out of whom the demons had gone, sat there quietly “clothed, and in his right mind” (verse 15) 

– The pigs on the hillside, into which the demons went, immediately “ran violently down a steep place into the sea, (they were about two thousand;) and were choked in the sea.” (verse 13)

When the demons, unseen to the natural eye, entered the herd of pigs, the man was perfectly sane and rational and calm, but the pigs immediately became self-destructive, as the man had been. Real demons had gone from a real man and entered real pigs. There can be no more graphic description than this of the reality of evil spirits and the effects of demon possession.

KING SAUL CONSULTS A MEDIUM

We have noted that evil spirits work to produce definate effects in human thought and behaviour. Such effects are easily traced in the life of Saul, the first king of Israel. The Bible affirms that he was a choice young man, humble, gentile and exceedingly good-looking. 1 Samuel 9:2 says: “And he had a son, whose name was Saul, a choice young man, and a goodly: and there was not among the children of Israel a goodlier person than he: from his shoulders and upward he was higher than any of the people.”

There was no royal line in Israel (God was their King), but the people insisted on having a king (like all the other nationds) and God let them. The prophet Samuel anointed Saul for the office and gave him supernatural signs to make plain to Saul that he had been chosen by God, not man. Soon after this anointing, “the Spirit of God came upon him, and he prophesied among them.” (10:10)

The young king was greatly blessed by God. He was a modest and unassuming individual, but he was weak and only partial in his obedience to God. He began well, but through cumulative acts of disabedience, Saul lost out. The fateful transition is seen in 1 Samuel 16:14 where we read: “But the Spirit of the LORD departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the LORD troubled him.” 

The course, which had tended upward, now ran steeply downward. Saul ended asa man capable of murder. At the very end, he sank to consulting a medium.

A point came at which God withdrew His spirit from Saul and allowed an evill spirit to get to him. This change in the spiritual realm, unobservable to the human eye, brought distinct and drastic changes in Saul’s behaviour. The first effect was that the evil spirit “troubled him“, causing Saul to suffer internal agitation and unrest. That’s why David was brought to the king to play the harp, bringing soothing and rest to his troubled soul.

Saul’s immediate reaction to David was that he loved him greatly. But soon, under influence of the demon, he would show an entrirely different attitude.

“And it came to pass on the morrow, that the evil spirit from God came upon Saul, and he prophesied in the midst of the house: and David played with his hand, as at other times: and there was a javelin in Saul’s hand. And Saul cast the javelin; for he said, I will smite David even to the wall with it. And David avoided out of his presence twice” (1 Samuel 18:10-11).

The last step for Saul was a deiberate and desperate encounter with occultism (1 Samuel 28). When Saul had been persuing the will of God, he “had put the mediums and wizards out of the land” because God had commanded that these demonic sustitutes have no part with the pure worship of the Jews.

“4 And the Philistines gathered themselves together, and came and pitched in Shunem: and Saul gathered all Israel together, and they pitched in Gilboa.
5 And when Saul saw the host of the Philistines, he was afraid, and his heart greatly trembled.
6 And when Saul enquired of the LORD, the LORD answered him not, neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets.
7 ¶ Then said Saul unto his servants, Seek me a woman that hath a familiar spirit, that I may go to her, and enquire of her. And his servants said to him, Behold, there is a woman that hath a familiar spirit at Endor.
8 And Saul disguised himself, and put on other raiment, and he went, and two men with him, and they came to the woman by night: and he said, I pray thee, divine unto me by the familiar spirit, and bring me him up, whom I shall name unto thee.”

1 Samuel 28:4-8

Saul chose his words well, for he knew what he was talking about. A medium who is not a sheer fake, who does in fact make “contact” with an intelligent, invisible being, is one who works together with, or comes under control of, an evil spirit.

The woman was afraid to practice her illicit craft, but she had not given it up. Sha said to her anonymous visitor “Behold, thou knowest what Saul hath done, how he hath cut off those that have familiar spirits, and the wizards, out of the land: wherefore then layest thou a snare for my life, to cause me to die?” (verse 9)

“10 And Saul sware to her by the LORD, saying, As the LORD liveth, there shall no punishment happen to thee for this thing.
11 Then said the woman, Whom shall I bring up unto thee? And he said, Bring me up Samuel.
12 And when the woman saw Samuel, she cried with a loud voice: and the woman spake to Saul, saying, Why hast thou deceived me? for thou art Saul.
13 And the king said unto her, Be not afraid: for what sawest thou? And the woman said unto Saul, I saw gods ascending out of the earth.
14 And he said unto her, What form is he of? And she said, An old man cometh up; and he is covered with a mantle. And Saul perceived that it was Samuel, and he stooped with his face to the ground, and bowed himself.
15 ¶ And Samuel said to Saul, Why hast thou disquieted me, to bring me up? And Saul answered, I am sore distressed; for the Philistines make war against me, and God is departed from me, and answereth me no more, neither by prophets, nor by dreams: therefore I have called thee, that thou mayest make known unto me what I shall do.”

Verses 10-15

The spirit was soon telling Saul that the Philistines would conquer and that “to morrow shalt thou and thy sons be with me” (verse 19).

“Then Saul fell straightway all along on the earth, and was sore afraid” (verse 20)

It was but hours between Saul’s visit to the medium and his death. He had crossed the last line of disobedience to God. Tje very man who had put the mediums out of business ended up asking one to “consult a spirit for me”. The next day the whole house of Saul fell. Badly wounded in battle, he took his own life.

Young people need to become aware of the damage or danger they can sustain by any involvement with these demonic invetions, even when presented in the form of a game. Some time ago I came upon a news report of several teenagers in different places who did away with themselves or killed friends, apparently as a result of their involvement in a popular “game” that concentrates heavily on playera imagining themselves into situations of intense conflict with strangeothe-worldly powers. The game reportedly draws directly on witchcraft practices in some of its instruction to players.

MYSTICISM, MEDIUMS, WITCHCRAFT AND MAGIC

What is magic? One definitions says magic is “the art of producing a desired effect or result through the use of various techniques, as incarnation, that presumably assure human control of supernatural agencies or the forces of nature”. With it go magic spells, magic rites, magic words, enchantments, witchcraft, hexes, charms, so-called communication with the “dead”, and a wide variety of other practices and means. There is plenty of quackary and fakery in it, but there is also a potent realm of magic that sometimes produces real effects.

Many rituals and practices and spells and incartations have a religious character, entirely on the enermy’s side. As prayer is an appeal to heaven, based on faith in God through Christ; as intersession is prevailing with God on behalf of mankind, these practices appeal, wheter done knowingly or igorantly, to wicked spirits. Thet stirr up such spirits, give them room to manouver in, and them advantages they seek over those who engane in them, and sometimes, over other individuals or events.

Though there are heaps of it in print, I read very little, and extremely selectively in any of the litterature of occultism, magic and witchcraft while investigating these matters, because such material is a sinkhole.

Recent years have brought a rising vogue in occultism, astrology, magic, witchcraft, etc in our culture. For many decades, spiritualism and witchcraft were off in remote and obscure corners of our western life. For quite a while it was entirely the fashion in this society to hold that there were no such things as witches – individuals who practice various kinds of magic or black magic – and dare I say that anyone who had ventured to assert thar there were such individuals would have been regarded as hopelessly medieval. Now we are faced with the fact that there are witches who publicly say they are witches.

To some, the surge of of interest in withcraft and the like may seem to be a bit of a lark, a nild dabbling in the fantastic, a form of escapism, perhaps, in a crowded and perplexing age. Yet any of these ancient occult practices can open up a dangerous avenue into the supernatural for a person who becomes involved in them.

–

Part 4: The challenge to self-posession

BODY, SOUL AND SPIRIT: KNOWING YOURSELF

As living beings, you and I are set in a certain relationship to the seen and unseen worlds. Our understanding of this relationship may be clear, or murky and obscure, or even baffling, depending upon how we stand, act and live in terms of total reality – meaning all that is real and that bears on life and being and eternity.

The Christian is in a far better position to understand this, if he will exercise himself to do so, than even a brilliant, unbelieving psychologist or rational thinker. No one who beieves there is no God, or who thinks there is no devilor evil spirits, no heaven or hell, lives in reality, even if realism lies at the heart of his intentions. He lives in a severely truncated or small reality, limited to what he sees and understands, and he is not finally able to handle his true, existential situation.

We often mention the words “body, soul and spirit”. Paul puts them in a different order:

“And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Thessalonians 5:23)

It is no accident that Paul mentioned these terms in the order which he did, for that order places them in their right relationship to man’s whole being. In regard to their mutual functions it also sets them in their right relationship to each other. Finally, it places them in the right relationship to the living God. The progression as he gives it – spirit, soul and body – proceeds from the innermost to the outermost parts of a human being.

For a crude illustration of man’s nature, we might think of a peach. The core of the peach is the nut, which issurrounded by the pit, which in turn is surrounded by the fruit flesh – corresponding this order to spirit, soul and body. That gives you some picture of a man in their actual arrangement. The soul is whithin the body, and the spirit is set deeply within the soul.

The spirit is the very core of man. It is in the spirit that man has his God-given primary capacity to commune with God, who is Spirit and who must be worshipped in spirit and in truth. It is the shrine in which spiritual life is centered. The soul expresses itself through the soul. The soul, in turn, expresses itself through the physical body.

The body is the outer man, the soul is the inner man, the spirit is the innermost man. When all these three are fully alive and free of sin, and functioning in their right relationship to each other, you have a human being as God made him be.

But that is not what you find. Instead, you find human beings with all kinds of impairments and distortions and imbalances, and you find men in whom the wrong part of their being exercises undue controll over their whole being. Because of the inherited sin from Adam, we are all born with our spiritual part broken. This makes a hole inside us that we try to fill with drugs, alcohol, food, sex and anything else they can find, but these are physical or material things that can not fully fill a spiritual void. Only when a person is born again will this empty space within man be filled, as the Holy Spirit repairs the broken spiritual third part of man.

Mam, created for communion with God, was never ment to walk alone, apart from God, indipendent of his Creator. Yet, that is his condition. Just as confusion besets the body politic when lines of command are disoriented, confusion has plagued human affairs because of this dislocation.

Yet, in his lost condition, man, with very few exeptions, does not seek God. It is God who seeks man, for He has made a way of restoration for us. He has made a way back to Himself.

REALITY, “REALITY”, AND REALITY

Believers are told the glorious fact that “he who is united unto the Lord becomes one spirit whit Him.”There is no higher earthly privilege than that. The declaration comes from the middle of a warning against the immoraluse of the body and says:

“But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit. Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body. What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.” (1 Corinthians 6:17-20) 

Your body is a temple, a dwelling place, of the Holy Spirit. Though it serves you marvelously well when in health, it is meant to be a house for the Lord, a place from which worship ascends to Him. In its use, the body is to be a “living sacrifice” – daily yielded deliberately to God for the carrying out of Hid good will, according to Romans 12:1-2.

We who believe are living on two levels at once. One of those levels surrounds us nearly at all times. It is out of accord with the higher, and it bears its testimony in upon us continually. God has “raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 2:6), but our feet are planted on plain old dirt.

Like all human beings, believers live on the natural plane; we see, hear, taste, smell, and have knowledge there. But we go far beyond that. We who believe are living, by faith, on unseen reality – the reality of the existence and redeeming love and providence of God.

The devil is acutely aware of that fact, and he hates it. He is also aware that life on the natural plane and the act of living in faith are not always in smooth agreement. They clash at times in a way that pulls us between living by whart we see, and living by faith in the God that we do not see.

One of Satan’s classic tactics against believers is to try and seduce us with what I call the argument from reality – an argument against faith based upon objective, or seen, reality. It is one of his strongest arguments, and the reason it is so strong is that quite often, the thing he directs our attetion to, is, manifestly and inarguably, real. When that happens to be the case, it is what he says about it that is false.

He tries at times to pile up objective reality so high against us that it seems to mock and overwhelm our faith. The enemy, pointing at visible cicumstances, reasons or urges upon our minds the total irrelevance and powerlessness of God in our particualr situation.

His presentation od such circumstances to the mind may happen to be highly accurate or factual – in which case he interprets the facts to us in a false ot threatening way – or it may appear to be so when it is only partly so.

Since Satan is a liar, he is not entirely scrupulous about whether he comes at us with actual, or percieved, or even merely predicted reality. His purpose is do dishearten us, to avert our gaze from God on high. Never forget that powers of darkness lie to us through and about reality. They use lies as powerfully as they can to reduce our outlook at earth level to that of a practical atheist. They seek to bring us into bondage to circumstances.

“Blessed is the man whose strength is in thee; in whose heart are the ways of them. Who passing through the valley of Baca make it a well; the rain also filleth the pools. They go from strength to strength, every one of them in Zion appeareth before God.” (Psalm 84:5-7)

Satan tries to pound us down by what we see around us. He says that the visible reality is the governing and controlling factor in our situation. He assures us that faith is totally powerless with regard to it. He pressures us to surrender to the momentous or mountainous circumstances.

Denying reality, when reality is real, would be fanaticism. What we must do is to set truth over against it by faith. We must remeasure it. The thing is so close to us it seems bigger than God, but faith gives it right proportions under God.

There is at times a battle within the human soul to assert faith. Quite often, in fact, the main battle of the Christian’s life is not so much to accomplish a certain thing as it is to maintain unbroken faith in the face of all appearences and feelings, contradictions, adversities and delays.

Remember David and Goliath. David took Goliath’s measure by faith. “And David spake to the men that stood by him, saying, What shall be done to the man that killeth this Philistine, and taketh away the reproach from Israel? for who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God?” (1 Samuel 17:26) David knew that God was with him, and that God could make him conquer any enemy.

NATURAL TO SUPERNATURAL – GLIMPSES OF THE WIDER PICTURE

You are endowed with certain faculties – mental, physical, emotional and spiritual. Each is a gift from God. He wants you to enjoy full control and command of those faculties for all their right uses, up to the limits imposed by the fact motality.

The enemy does not. If he can steal your victory and peace in the maner previously described, he may at some point seek to cut in against your full, free governance of some area of your being.

It is easy enough, even for believers, to take those faculties for granted, since they are ours so naturally, yet the fact is that they are far beyond any price. They deserve to be guarded. Those who do so often find themselvesin the keenest and freest enjoyment of them through many decades and even late in life.

That is in line with the Creator who gave them. Evil spirits take a contrary aim. They seek at times to impede or encrouch upon a person’s own power over his actions and thoughts and even physical functioning, to hinder or impair these to whatever degree they can.

In making man in his own image, the Creator meant for humans to have domination over the whole earth – it’s creatures, territories and resources. Man was told to “fill the earth and subdue it”, to “rule… over all the earth” and “over every living creature” – an adventure to be freely enjoyed in daily fellowship with God (see Genesis 1:26-30).

To rule well over the realm to which he was appointed, man had first, under God, to be able to rule himself. Man was made to be a balanced, rational, creative, healthy, able, productive, loving and – without the the least strain – holy being.

When God’s enemy found the way to infect man with the poison of sin, he brought a threefold divine curse – upon himself, on man and on the earth. Out of it came sorrows, pains, hardships, limitations, disease, rebellion and death. Much that blights both the social and natural landscapes simply reflects man’s badly damaged – and spiritually opposed – capacity for true authority – which is embedded in self-rule.

In this crisis, God did not vacate man’s primary position of authority over the earth. In fact, He specifically renewed it with Noah and his family after the flood (see Genesis 9:1-3). Though we sometimes use it perversely, even destructively, we exercise it all the time to great personal and collective advantage.

Never picture God as just waiting for the grand climax. Through the risen Christ, the living Word, and the Holy Spirit, He is undoing the undoer now. He is setting people free every day! Jesus came to loose the bands of wickedness and to let the opressed go free.

God’s strategy against all evil – in which He invites us to have a dynamic part – is so grand in scope, and total in content that it will finally lift all human beings who are willing to have it so out of the region of death and sin and suffering forever and establish them as coheirs with Christ, not over earth only, but over the entire creation (see Romans 8:17, Galatians 4:7, Revelation 5:9-10, 22:3-5).

GUARDING THE ENDOWMENT

Parables sometimes pass before our eyes.

Consider two brothers, a little over a year apart i age, reared in the home of a gospel minister. Both had able minds and unusually strong bodies. Both were ace students who went through high school as if it were an ice-cream eating contest, running up virtually unbroken strings of A’s. Both got admitted to Yale.

To that point there could not have been a greater equality between them of upbringing, of opportunity and achievment. Both had received Jesus and had given good evidence of changed lives in their teens. Yet one, after a brief brush with shaky faith, recovered and decided to go the way of the Lord Jesus.

The other slipped almost imperceptibly away from faith and drifted into rebellion just as he entered into  college. It took barely a year for him to be sadly adrift and unable to deal in practical terms with life.

Fifteen years after they entered college, the slightly older son had a prime education, a bright and pleasant outlook on life, and he was fruitfully engaged in teaching. He had also developed a good ministry to university students.

The slightly younger son was a wasted being. His education was cut short, his mind was clouded and unable to deal effectively with reality. He rarely was able to work, and then only at low-demand,part-time jobs, and he was a grief and a burden to his loving and patient parents.

He was generally disinclined to talk, all drawn up within himself and darkened, yet he ought to have been a first-rate guy. He had lost primary control over parts of his being. That fact was outwardly visible at all times.

This is not to say that all unfaithfulness to the Lord has equal and observable immediate consequences; it does not. But in this case darkness closed in fast and stole away parts of what had,prior to then, been in his free control.

Jesus once exclaimed: “If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!” (Matthew 6:23)

Just as there is a steep downgrade for the rejecter of that given light, so there is a swift upgrade for the sinner who repents.

I know a young man who, if you saw him today, you might think to be as fine looking as it is  possible to be. He has a face that looks like a piece of chisled sculpture, he glows with happiness and he is engagingly vital. Yet only two years earlier, this young man was so under the power of sin that he had no dwelling. He lived in misery out on the sidewalks and, as he graphically puts it, “I smelled”.

What hope was there for this near-wreck, in bondage to something he had to have that was destroying his body and being?

Five times he went into a hospital for detoxification, and he got the full treatment each time. But when he came out he was soon sucked back into what had taken him over.

One day someone handed him a piece of Scripture on the street – just words on paper, some might say. But when he read it, light came  flooding in!

Those words gave him a glimpse of Someone he had never known, the liberating Jesus. As he reached out to the Saviour, his inward being was filled with new understanding – and new power.

Satan had this guy halfway down to the grave, a captive to a destroying substance, a slave in an evil kingdom. You should see him now! What men who tried their best was helpless to do, Jesus did in hardly any time at all!

The key question is how do demons succeed in putting into practical effect their program for man? There has to be a basis for them to do so. There are five major avenues through which evil spirits gain a certain access to, and a degree of advantage over, human beings:

* Through sin.

* Through unbelief or belief in lies.

* Through false religion, false worship, or occult practices.

* Through alcohol, narcotics and hallucinogenic drugs.

* Through giving vent to extreme emotions.

When a man’s will gives way repeatedly to temptations to sin, a basis for demonic activity in his life exists in that area. Temptation is the most common work of evil spirits and, as it proves effective, it may be succeeded by more severe stages of demonic activity – oppression og possession.

A believer who fails to guard his heart and mind and allows himself to reveive an evil influence from any source need to recover spiritually by turning straight away from it in an act of obedience to God, thereby taking himself out of the devil’s trouble zone. If that is not done quickly, and influence takes hold on the individual, then confession and repentance will be needed.

GETTING TO THE NITTY-GRITTY

When the whole army of Israel was paralyzed with fear at the threats and boasts of Goliath, the “ruddy and handsome” teenage shepherd, David, could have come on the scene and prayed up a storm for the Lord to overcome that surly giant and deliver Israel. David could have prayed day after day after day after day about it.

Instead he quickly sized the situation up with pricise spiritual accuracy – “Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God?” – that is faith speaking – and David went at the giant directly “in the name of the Lord allmighty”, slung a stone at him and put a sudden, final end to all his false, intimidating power (1 Samuel 17:4-12, 26, 40-52).

God acted with and for David as that young man acted in faith against the precise center of the crisis. The fear-paralysis that had stopped the Israeli army cold was broken, and that army came surging out of its trenches to chase the fleeing enemy troops.

God is ever pleased to act for those who act in faith for Him. If David, no matter how well motivated and sincere, had done anything other thanwhat he did, no change in that situation would have resulted. The problem was Goliath and his defiance of Israel and of God; so Goliath had to be dealt with frontally, directly, quickly.

Saints can wear themselves out and considerably deepen their adverse condition if they do anything but the one thing that has to be done, the one thing that specifiically targets the problem itself and goes against it to conquer it. Lesser actions, if you strip them down to their essence, might be called a holy avoidance of the actual issue.

David did not, thank heaven, chase off to three seminars in three cities on how to overcome the enemy, learning every theoretical thing there is to know about it and a lot more. He did not buy the best six books on overcoming and study them down to the finest points until he knew them nearly by heart. He did not obtain the three most outstanding series of tapes on overcoming by three of the best Bible teachers of his day, and, though he prayed, he did not pray until he had worked himself up into a lather.

Praying, even lengthy praying, is in many cases good, but the instant it becomes a substitute for doing the thing that has to be done, it becomes a holy exercise, largely void of real faith, and itis likely to lead to some etreme of largely empty self-exertion.

DRUGS AND THE SUPERNATURAL

There is a direct and mysterious relationship betewwn certain chemical agents and the supernatural. Certain drugs can carry the user into the realm of demonic experience. We can call them chemical-supernatural agents because these drugs can, and often do, introduce people into the reality of the supernatural realm.

That is not a mere assertion. It is a fact based on the written testimony of many individuals who have directly experienced it.

A person who takes such chemicals into his body opens up avenues into his inner being for the working of evil spirits. He also opens his body, particularly his nerves and muscular system, to functional interference and to physical damage.

Alcohol, narcotics, and hallucinogens are potent elements for cutting in on a person’s own control of his body and mind. Powers of darkness therefore widely promotetheir use among populations of the world. Some narcotics are central to tribal religious practices: they provide a shortcut to the supernatural.

That is no secret; it is an advertised and well-known facet of the narcotics experience. William James, author of The Varieties of Religious Experience, who is said to have used nitrous oxide as an hallucinogenic agent, wrote:

“Our normal waking consciousness… is but one special type of consciousness: whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different… No account of the universe in its totality can be final” which ignores them.

James stressed that the existence of theses forms “forbid a premature closing of our accounts with reality”. Timothy Leary, who for a time acted as the “high priest of LSD”, the mass evangelist of dope among young people, spoke beguilingly of “consciousness ecpansion”.

When he formulated his passion for drug-induced experiences into a cult, he sinificantly called it the League for Spiritual Discovery – for LSD, a high powered, extremely dangerous hallucinogetic drug. He promoted it, alongg with peyote and marijuana, for what he called “sacramental use” in reaching altered states of consciousness.

The claim is often madde that reaching such levels of consciousness is good, broadening, beneficial, liberating. A closer loook shows that it is quite the opposite.

There are pleasures of a sort that is available, and there are terrors too. Evil spirits are able to produce stunning supernatural effects, unsuspected dimensions of the weird, full of colour and radiance and silvered lightning – and they are equally able to produce extremes of terror and chaotic, crashing misperceptions. Therein lies the difference between a so called  “goood trip” and a “bad trip”.

In closing of this chapter; I will not dwell too much on drugs and its use within religion. I think it is obvious to the born again believer that one is not to get involved with such practices.

–

Part 5: Called to conquer

GOD, GOVERNMENT AND THE SUPERNATURAL

To this point, you have received an initial grounding in supernatural realities as the Bible reveals them.There has been some first-grade understanding with some glances at college-level knowledge.

That might be all you need, but I will follow up this study with new studies later.

There is no escaping the fact that the two kingdoms are in conflict with each other on this earth on which we live. That fact has consequences reaching from the individual heart, to the family, to our culture, to the nation, and out to the world scene.

That conflict will continue and will intensify as both kingdoms bid for the allegiance of men and clash over the course of history. Both will reach their ultimate heights of realization on this earth in the form of governments with worldwide authority.

Satan’s great thrust against mankind, the Scriptures plainly say, will be by tyranny of a highly unified, virtually worldwide government under his sway. At its head will stand a counterfeit Christ the Bible calls “the Antichrist” and “the man of sin”. Energized by satanic power, he will affix himself upon the deceived mankind, and will speak and act in utter defiance of God.

Never think that Satan is uninterested in government. It interests him highly. It will be the means by which he finally imposes his will on much of humanity. He will seek totallt to impose himself between God and mankind by means of government, and to cut mankind off from God by it. Spiritually, on this earth, that will amount to a near total eclipse of God. Like any eclipse, it will be brief.

The Scripture describes the Antichrist as one who “opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.” His arrival on the world scene will create such a sensation and “whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish“ (2 Thessalonians 2:4, 9-10)

If you know the Bible, you undoubtedly are aware of this future prospect. The point here is not that it will happen, but rather what it tells us about our enemy. The fact is that he will ultimately accomplish this short-term takeover tells us what he pushes for.

He is not justy waiting for that day. He is straining toward it and seeking to bring it in. Understanding that can help us deal realistically, effectively, and spiritually with the world in which we live.

Satan is always at work to project and advance the interests of his evil kingdom to the maximum obtainable limits; one of the vehicles he seeks to ride is human government as a way of usurping and overthrowing lawful authority.

Never think that God is uninterested in government. Government is His idea. He ordained it for good (Romans 13:1-7). A governimg authority is “God’s servant to do you good“, we are told, and, “He is God’s servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.“

A ruler’s God-appointed role is to make room for what is good, protect law-adiding citizens and to punish and stop evildoers. Knowing its power to effect conditions across a whole society, Satan seeks to twist and pervert government so that it does the opposite – actually punishes and persecutes the godly while protecting and elevating evildoers.

We should pray for our governments…

PEACE BY CONQUEST

The fateful relationship between government and the supernatural is sometimes readily evident, and sometimes not. Moses was given supernatural power by God to overcome the resistant will of a headstrong Pharao and also to overcome his wonder-working magicians, whose powers were occultic and set agaist God’s purpose to liberate His people.

Daniel is a book of the Bible that portrays the life of a godly man who worked at the  very touch-points of the government and the supernatural. Daniel, a Hebrew exile in Babylon, was a prophet. Yet he spent all of his adult life as a high government official in two great Gentile kingdoms, Babylon and Persia. In each he stood successfully and fearfully for righteousness and truth.

Daniel received remarkable revelations from God concerning a series of future kingdoms and governments all the way forward to the governments ofthe Antichrist and of the Lord Jesus Christ.

You can see the transition from the short-lived government of the Antichrist, based totally on presumption and evil, to the everlasting reign of the Messiah in Daniel 7:8-14.

Daniel shows the rise of the Antichrist, his blasphemous boasting on the earth, events going on in heaven, the sudden death of the Antichrist – then “one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him. And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed” (Daniel 7:13-14).

Satan is ambitious to rule. He seeks to do so on the earth through a series of evil men, antichrists, leading ultimately to the Antichrist, who will almost as completely embody satanic evil in human form as Jesus Christ embodied divinity and truth.

According to 1 John 2:18 “antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists“. The final Antichrist will be a religious and a political figure who will also control the world economy (see Revelation 13:16-17).

The powers of darkness gain a measure of control on the earth by locking into human sinfulness at the level of government. Satan knows, as God’s enemy and man’s enemy, that the single most powerful instrument for the suppression of truth, and of persecution against believers and the church is government when it is perverted, because it holds nearly total authority. So he goes for government, aware that government, twisted to evil, can multiply evil and darkness and death as nothing else can.

James 3:5-6 says: “Even so the tongue is a little member, and boasteth great things. Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth! And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell.”

Hitler, a satanic messenger to his people, boasted of great things. His tongue was set on fire by hell, and it, in turn,set the cycle or course of nature on fire. A sudden attack of blasting destruction and death swept across the continent. Europe went into flames.

Out of one man’s wicked designs, eventually tens of millions died, and graves were dug across the face of Europe. How awsome is the power of government for evil when it is seized and held by evil men!

Our spiritual enemy is not playing games with mankind or with history. He is in dead ernest, and he works as widely and as wickedly as he can against God and man.

Our enemy has a policy for this world, and he has a strategy to back it up. If we can see what that  strategy is, we will be able to take steps to overcome it. Satan, through his demonic agents, is “the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience” (Ephesians 2:2). This speaks of his spiritual access to sinners and their susceptibility to him. He uses them to carry out his will, as far as they will allow him to.

He does all he can to inspire, energize, and propel sinners forward to be publicly influential for what pleases him, to make a mark on their time. Then he does all he can to lull the believers into inaction or less-than-adequate, to call them down from their highest privileges in Christ, to make them less then they actually can be for God in their generation.

His two-pronged attack is to maximize the one while minimizing the other. It is to lift up evil (whether raw or flagrant, or delicate and philosophical) and exalt it, and to keep righteousness in a corner. It is to activate unbelievers in his cause, while inducing passivity in believers. He invites us to enjoy the peace short of the battle line, so that we will not know the true peace of conquest.

Jesus said: “Take heed that ye be not deceived: for many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and the time draweth near: go ye not therefore after them“ (Luke 21:8).

We need wisdom and strength to do right.

“To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne”(Revelation 3:21).

It is beyond our strength, but not at all beyond our reach. In Christ we receive the power to conquer even while we are in our earthly bodies. If that were not true, He would never have told us to arise and do it!

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THE END