Many Christians
Living A Life Of Defeat Due To:
By Larry A. Magnello
· Defeated when they are ignorant that they are involved in a dangerous, and vicious invisible war.
· Defeated when they do not know Satan’s strategies.
· Defeated when they do not that this is not a game it is serious business.
A graduate in the school of deception and evil. A world is at stake and man is the battle ground. Man is the object of his schemes, his destructive devices, and his ambition. Earth is the favorite scene of his exploits. He is at the cradle of every baby, and he has much to do in shaping each person’s character and determining his destiny.
[John 8:44] “The DEVIL...he was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because THERE IS NO TRUTH IN HIM.”
There is much truth that needs to be learned about the devil, and no age needs the plain, unvarnished truth about him more than this generation.
We need the light of that truth as a WARNING, as an INCENTIVE TO VIGILANCE, and an INSPIRATION TO EFFORT. We Need knowledge about the enemy, his character, presence, and power in order to arouse men to action. THIS KNOWLEDGE IS VITAL TO VICTORY.
WHEN THE DEVIL FELL, OTHERS FELL WITH HIM. [Revelations12:4] He took 1/3rd of the angels with him when he fell. His intelligence far superior to that of man. The Holy Spirit said through the Apostle Paul that we need the “MIND OF CHRIST” to stand against his intelligence and strategies. [2Corinthians 2:16]
2Peter 2:11 “YET EVEN ANGELS, ALTHOUGH THEY ARE STRONGER AND
Our minds do not even come close to the strategies of evil, when he walks about as a ROARING LION [ANGRY & VICIOUS], seeking whom he will destroy.
He destroyed 1/3rd of the angels of heaven that had a superior intelligence compared to that of man.
Peter had a demonstration of Satan’s power when Peter denied Jesus and swore and cursed him. “Simon, behold SATAN HATH DESIRED TO HAVE YOU, THAT HE MAY SIFT YOU AS WHEAT.” [Luke 22:31] Peter was forewarned, but he did not really understand how powerful his enemy was.
After Peter learned through bitter defeat just how dangerous his enemy was, Jesus said to Peter, “FEED MY SHEEP, FEED MY LAMBS”. Only a person that knows how dangerous the enemy is can be given a job to shepherd the sheep. He will have his eyes open at all times and be acutely aware of his senses to warn the sheep and the lambs.
Jesus prayed, “that thou shouldst keep them from the EVIL ONE.” [John 17:15] Then Jesus taught his disciples to pray, “Deliver us from the EVIL ONE. [Matthew 6:13] This prayer is one of conflict, peril, warning, and safety.
John said, “The WHOLE WORLD is in the power of the EVIL ONE.” [1John 5:19] John knew that he lived in the enemies’ camp. This is why God said that He would be a refuge to us. We could go to our secret place, as did Moses and the children of Israel of old, when they stayed in their homes while the destroyer went about in Egypt to kill the first-born.
Jesus called him “the Prince of this world,” Jesus Christ recognized Satan’s royal power and ruling authority over evil in this world.
Battled hardened Apostle Paul portrayed the Christian as a soldier in war that had to take up his armor daily and be courageous in this ongoing warfare. Paul said that a Christian should not get himself entangled in the civilian affairs of this life. He knew that by renewing your mind with the things of civilian life of those that are controlled by Satan’s Rulers of Darkness, which the Christian would let down their guard in the land of false peace, and be destroyed by Satan’s Army of Devils.
Satan wears many disguises, but his OBJECTIVES lie in only one direction. He is double-faced, but never double-minded, never undecided, vague, or feeble in his purposes or ends. He does not attack people aimlessly. He has a plan, a purpose, and a strategy to control people and nations. He controls and manages people, and fallen angels, and demons. He is the embodiment of all evil.
Satan sows the earth with evil people that do his bidding. “Ananias, why hath Satan filled your heart [spirit] to lie to the Holy Spirit?” Satan employs men to lie to God when God’s Holy Spirit is in a Christian meeting or service. “And supper being ended the DEVIL having now put into the heart [spirit] of Judea Iscariot, Simon’s son to betray Him.” [John 13:2]
Satan could not stop Paul, only to HINDER him at times by raising up crowds that stoned Paul to death, only to have God Almighty raise Paul from the dead. Satan employed evil men as his agents to rob him and leave him left naked in Asia.
Paul lived in a land of “people that walked in darkness...that dwell in the land of the shadow of death.” [Isaiah 9:2]
Paul’s commission was “to open their eyes and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified [set apart] by Faith to Jesus Christ.” [Acts 26:18]
When Paul would not stop turning people from the Kingdom of Darkness to the Kingdom of light, Satan had to find a way to draw Paul out from that protective hedge of angels of fire that God had placed around Paul’s life.
Satan, the master strategist that deceived 1/3rg of Heaven’s Angels, found out that He was dealing with a “faithful priest that would do all that was in God’s heart and mind” [1Samuel 2:35]. So Satan conceived of a plan to make the people worship and adulate God’s man, thereby causing God to remove his hedge of Angels from around Paul’s life.
When Paul moved in the revelational gifting of the Holy Spirit, the people started turning their eyes on Paul instead of Jesus. Paul was becoming the object of worship and God would not tolerate anyone stealing His Glory and Praise. After all, Satan tried to steal God’s Glory and it cost him everything in life, so why not plant some people that were ministers of Satan in the Christian crowds of people and then command these servants of Satan to transform themselves as ministers of righteousness with smooth tongues to whisper thoughts into the people’s ears with such craftiness and stealth that the Christians would not even know that they were being the very tools that Satan was using to tear down that hedge of angels around Paul’s life.
Satan succeeded, and sent a Fallen Angel to beat down, torture, and torment Paul in the Spiritual Realm. Satan did not have to use his demonic evil supernatural power. He used every day Christians to destroy the man of God.
Paul would at times rebuke the people publicly not to worship and sacrifice to him while he preached in Lystra. Then came Satan’s evil ministers from cities far away to lie and accuse Paul of vicious things, which had insisted the people to stone Paul to death.
Satan whispered in a young man’s ear to call Jesus “Good Teacher what must I do?” But Jesus rebuked him publicly by saying that only God was good. Jesus would not steal the Glory from God the Father. Yet today we turn on Christian television, or go to a Christian service and they spend 5 to 10 minutes praising the man of God with compliments and adulations.
Satan may be the prince of this world, but there is another side of his personality. He is the author of unbelief, rebellion, sin, and unrighteousness.
Satan has lots of experience: tireless energy, and he is a great influential force in manipulating not only man, but also nations and governments that rule mankind. Men and devils are his agents of choice to withstand righteousness and benevolent ministries to the poor, tired, downcast, downtrodden, lonely, and he enjoys his role of turning people into mournful people.
Isaiah prophesied that the people that lived in Jesus’ time, “lived in the shadow of death”, [Isaiah 9:2]. Jesus said that the last generation on the earth would be eight times worse than the generation that He was living in, [Matthew 12:46]. Jesus said that the demons of Satan would cause this to come to pass and that Satan would turn the world into the days of Noah, and the days of Lot.
Satan has lots of experience in this business of destroying mankind and nature. By his sinister schemes he clokes himself as to be a non-existent thing in our generation, and raises up scientists to give explanations of all the damage that he does in mankind and nature.
Satan infuses thoughts and suggestions to people’s mind and then hides his origin from the deceived. He put into King David’s mind to number Israel, thereby provoking the wrath of God, which caused an angel to kill 70,000 people. Satan knew how to destroy David’s army without ever killing them himself. He influenced Ananias and Sapphira to lie to the Holy Spirit. Satan tried to stop Jesus from going to the Cross at Calvary.
Satan is blasphemous, arrogant, and presumptuous, and at other times he comes as a lamb in order to cloak his real nature. He slanders God to men and infuses into their minds distorted thoughts about God. He has the New Agers believing that Lucifer is another side of God. He has deceived these people into believing that the real Born-again Christians are the Anti-Christ, and that they must be eradicated from the earth.
The devil doesn’t mind that you preach the word, only don’t do it in the Spirit of God and expose his kingdom for mankind to see. Satan acquired the power of death and created in men a fearful bondage to it. Jesus works to destroy him [Satan] who had power of death, that is, the devil.
Satan will wreck an empire at any time to kill a man of God. He sent the Assyrian Army to destroy Elisha and failed. He fills the mind of Judas, and he inflames and hurries him on to his infamous purpose. He fills Peter with an arrogant pride, which tries to inject human views into the purpose of Christ instead of God’s purpose.
Satan came to the weak, exhausted Son of God with an air of concern. How innocent is Satan’s suggestion that Jesus use His power to relieve His hunger! Jesus knew that Satan stood before him in the guise of handsome young man [Visions Beyond the Veil by H.A. Baker children saw it in a vision].
When Satan was the anointed cherub that stood next to the throne of Jesus, as a throne guard; he received trillions of bits of information in his conversations with God. He spent infinity communicating at billions of words per second, mind to mind, with God Almighty. He has been around longer than the existence of the Universe. He was created before the angels were created.
1] FLESH
2] PRESUMPTION
3] WORLDLY
4] SPIRITUAL REALM
1] In [Ephesians 2:1-3] The Apostle Paul learned from the Holy Spirit that Satan controlled the course of this world by controlling the Rulers of Darkness that lived in the children of disobedience. These demonic beings cause people to have lusts of the flesh, which caused mankind to fulfill their desires of the flesh and of the mind. For doing these evil things, God called them the Children of His Wrath.
2] He comes to mankind in the form of friendly, sympathetic, and inviting. He tempts the man of God to take a shortcut in the things of God. Presumption seeks to take man devised methods, which are easy, sentimental, and material instead of God’s lowly way of godly sorrow, strict, self-denial, and prayerful surrender.
The conflict of Jesus with Satan is not incidental, accidental, or casual. It was well planed and essential and vital to Satan not to lose mankind and the world in his bondage.
In the Garden of Gethsemane, Satan stands out and reveals his true nature: Jesus says in prayer while wrestling against the demonic supernatural power of Satan, “My soul is exceeding sorrowful even unto to death”, [Matt. 26:38] “Because “this is Satan’s hour and the power of darkness”, [Luke 22:53] Why? “For the Prince of this world cometh, and hat nothing in Me”, [John 14:30].
In this hour the devil uses a different method to destroy Jesus. Before he was kind and benevolent in the wilderness offering the most pleasant, attractive, and satisfying ministries to the flesh. Now in the garden, The lamb is transformed into a roaring lion who is maddened and desperate.
Satan comes to many Christians in the fierceness and power of the lion when the gentle inducements fail.
3) Satan controls this world by Fallen Angels that are the World Rulers. Their job is to manipulate governments in order to blind the eyes of man away from God. Education is another mighty world ruling force that these world rulers control. These teachings that they implement into societies are called doctrines of demons. The Christian is called to renounce this world evil system and to live a separate lifestyle.
The move of television, Internet, telephone, and radio were tools of Satan to influence societies and to sway them into man centered philosophies of what life is all about. The telephone has become a tool of evil that has brought about more gossip and evil conversation to spread lies, rumors, and to malign people. The Church over the years stood against these advanced scientific tools that God gave mankind, and by speaking out against them, the people who rejected Jesus took over and used these scientific tools to spread Satan’s Kingdom on Earth.
4] [John 3:6] The spiritual subversion comes in the form of substituting the spiritual thing with the fleshly thing. Satan retires men of God from churches to be replaced by men that use natural means instead of spiritual means to accomplish God’s will for His people.
The Church may have a holy preacher, a man of great prayerfulness, of great grace, filled with the Holy Spirit. Satan will use any method to retire him and put in a man who does not pray, but who is eloquent and popular. A man that increase the size of the church and the size of the money coming into that church.
A church can be led by Holy Men who are not highly cultured, but well-versed in the deep things of God; who are strong in devotion to Christ and His cause, but not wealthy or of high social position. A church may change these officers and put in men who are in every way decent and moral but who are not noted for prayer and piety. Administrators have replaced the true ministers of God’s heart.
At this point, Satan is doing his deadliest and most damning work. The reason that this work of his is so dangerous is that it goes unnoticed, unseen, producing no shock, and exciting no alarm.
The watchman [prophets] are to watch and guard the doors of the church to see what is coming from afar, to bless, or destroy the Body of Christ. But Satan filled the his ministers of righteousness who operated in familiar spirits, to take over the Christian world as act as God’s prophets. Now no one wants anything to do with the real prophets of God which are few in number and do not have international recognition and they are hidden and work without all the publicity as the false prophets.
Satan who delegates Fallen Angels to carry out his purposes and plans achieves the perversion and the subversion of the Church. When social entertainment, and not edification, becomes the desired goal, Satan accommodates them. He gives the people what they want, not what they need.
Satan is an expert in seducing the Bride of Christ from her purity and leaving her wallowing in her worldly ritualism. The Church are the believers and their families, not a building.
The Word of God does not protect the Church from the devil’s strategies, which often pervert the aims of the Church and postpone the day of its final triumph. We have had 2,000 years of the Church being in total failure of its mission upon the Earth. Every Revival that God has sent, Satan has stopped by using the members of the Born-again Church. It seems the most powerful Revivals only lasted 2 years at the most. Satan came in and promoted man. Jesus said to Satan when He was doing the works of God upon the earth, “Thou art an offense [stumbling block] unto Me; for thou savourest not the things of God, but those that be of man.” Then Jesus said that if you want the things of God, then you had better come after Me, and “deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.”
Satan is a hydra-headed monster; his attacks come in the form of many-sided facades. He does not just come in to deceive, but to kill, steal, and destroy. His supreme effort is to get control of the Church, not to destroy its organization, but to pervert its divine purpose. He silently works in the background influencing the Church board as to who to pick to be its pastor. Satan’s main aim is to make the Churchman centered instead of God centered.
Satan introduces his man as a person that has zeal for Christ’s Glory. Someone held in high esteem by the local Church that is totally ignorant of the fact that the measure he is advocating is subversive will often introduce this man. What man esteems God detests. Many want to be esteemed by many, rather than walk the path of the Cross, that Jesus said we are to walk. The proud enjoy their position of high authority and comfortable living as the hireling, and the Christians want it so, because they have set up idols in their hearts to betray God and man, and worship the things of this world that glitter, and shine, so that they can call this the good life, or the Christian life. But these things of the world are detestable in the eyes of God, and He will have his day of reckoning, and judgment will fall, and one day everyone who ever lived upon this Earth will stand before God’s judgment Throne, and for many in this Last Day of The apostate Church, will see that the Love of God and His justice is meted out accordingly, to what is recorded in the books in Heaven, which God’s angels keep for that day.
God said by the Holy Spirit through James, who was the Lord Jesus half brother, that PURE RELIGION in God’s sight is to help the widows and orphans, something that many do not teach or do, because they are blinded by the idols that is in their heart that causes them to have ears that do not hear, and eyes that do not see, thereby rendering their Christian life as an abomination in God’s sight.
Satan’s most successful method in destroying a Church is to deceive and to divert by substituting material elements of strength for spiritual. Today the Apostle Paul would never pass a Church board test, due to his prison background, the riots he had caused, and his appearance and poor clothing. Satan praises the power of human planning before church board leaders until they are dazzled and ensnared. The Church becomes worldly while boasting of her spirituality.
Wealth and prosperity may be the costly decorations that embalm and entomb the Church. True strength lies in the godliness of the Churches people and the prayers that they pray under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and not the guidance of man. Personal holiness of the members is the only true measure of strength. What the members do in their spare time will determine how powerful, spiritually the Church is. Anything short of this offends God, dishonors Jesus, and grieves the Holy Spirit away.
The biggest delusion of a Church is to judge the conditions of itself by its material prosperity or church-related activity. God judged the Laodicean church for having too much physical wealth; He said she had no spiritual wealth. The Ephesian church had fought many battles against Satan’s Kingdom of Darkness, but she had failed in her mission was about to have the Holy Spirit taken away from her, because she was not in love with Jesus as in the early days of her salvation. Remember, bigger is not better; its too impersonal. The nice exterior of the Church hides the rottenness and spiritual bareness.
God called the Church to birth Children of God, but today, she convinces mentally that people are born into God’s Kingdom. Satan’s scheme is to make the Church grow and prosper financially. After all, Wall Street has its financial guru’s, therefore the Church should have its Financial Guru’s on how to give to get or plant seed money to get more money. These are man’s methods, which come from the world system, which lies in the Evil One.
The large infiltration of unsaved people eliminates the humble, self-denying ordinances, which are an offense to the unsanctified and unregenerate hearts. Satan begins to reduce the Church to a mere human institution - popular, natural, fleshly, and pleasing to the eyes and the lusts of man. The Church now becomes what man interprets from the Bible as to what it should be, instead of the spiritual man hearing directly from God as to what God wants the Church to be.
What man wants is opposed to what God wants. Mere mental apprehension of God’s Word is exactly the way of Satan. Man’s views eliminate all the unpopular principles of the cross. The self-denial, the life of surrender, and separation from the world, separated to God and the Holy life that He has called us too. Satan makes his demonic church by turning Christ’s Church over to human leaders.
Jesus said that you only need 2 or 3 three people to have Church. He said that He would be in the midst of them. Today, Ichabod [the Glory of God has departed], has been written on thousands upon thousands of Born-again Churches [1987]. The virgins’ lamps have run out of oil, and they knew not that the Spirit of God departed.
Satan is looking for good men, honest men that do not know the deep things of God. He plans to put the unspiritual men into leadership to direct the Church. The enthronement of human leaders is the doom and seal of apostasy. God’s Church must be led by God’s Holy Spirit who communicates to the man that He has trained in the years of the wilderness life, not the years of Theology Bible School. All the leaders and commanders that God raised up in the Bible were ordinary men that were schooled by God Himself, not man.
People cry in the churches that we have to save the world for God. Jesus said that gaining the world and saving the man are opposing objectives.
Satan deludes Church leaders into thinking that their main purpose is to save society. By helping society, you are helping them into hell. By preaching the Gospel you are saving souls. To save society is a kind of religious work. The purpose of the Church is far superior to these childish dreams and fruitless philosophies. The Church [called out people of this evil system] is called to regenerate people, and sanctify people’s body, spirit, and soul.
Man’s plans have no self-denial, nor the mark of the cross on them, and all of God’s plans have death to self in them. Men’s plans have no sacrificial denial in them.
God told Amos, “Can two walk together, except they be agreed?
[Amos 3:3] The spiritual and the worldly cannot be joined together.
The original church was training schools for spiritual life. The early church took it for granted that all who came to Jesus really desired to flee from the wrath to come. They were not out to make a more prosperous and material life. They knew that the whole world system lied in the Evil One.
Satan has turned the Church into a place of an entertainment center. People go their not to hear from God, but to hear spiritual high adventure stories, or to jump and clap to worldly Christian music.
James says that friendship with world makes you an adulterer and an adulteress, and God will become your enemy. [James 4:4] If you are to walk with God then you had better know that Jesus said, “The world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.” [John 17:14] The Apostle John said, “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world,” [1John 2:15] The world is an evil system that is based on the lust of the eyes, the pride of life, and the lust of the flesh. [1John 2:16]
Child of God, you were raised in the most evil system that exists. God said that you live in the days of Noah and Lot. God destroyed the entire world of their day. Do not touch the things of the world. You are to be separate and holy unto God. This Evil System that you were born into involves worldly affairs, earthly things, riches, pleasures, and beautiful things that stir up the wrong desires. These desires that this evil system stirs up are inordinate and unnatural.
Alford’s Commentary says: “The world was constituted at first in Adam, well pleasing to God and obedient to Him. It was man’s world, and in man it was summed up. In man the world fell into the darkness of selfish pursuits. Man became materialized in spirit and dragged down so as to become worldly and sensual. The world is man’s world in his fall from God. The lust of the flesh is human nature in opposition to God. The lust of the eyes is that sense which takes note of physical things and is inflamed by them. The pride of life is the manner of worldly men whereby pride is displayed and pomp is cherished.”
John Wesley says: “The pride of life means everything that we use to generate respect from everything that we use to generate respect from other people - fancy clothing, house, furniture, and manners of living - anything which gratifies our pride and vanity. It therefore directly includes the desire for praise and involves a certain degree of covetousness.”
Satan has devils that attach themselves to your body to influence your confidence and to make you feel good that you are somebody. These devils will inject thoughts of superiority, but then their spiritual influence will sway you emotions and this pride that you generate to other people. Pride becomes a spiritual influence and it is demonic.
Passion, appetites, and pleasure are what make war. [James 4:1-3] Another reason the Church has no power, is that Satan sows rebellion among the people. If Satan can get the people to be in rebellion against God and know that they are in rebellion, then he has achieved another master deception into the Church’s lives.
Satan sowed rebellion into the people that Moses brought out of Egypt and God smote them with plagues that led to Israel’s death. Satan’s favorite tool is to work on God’s people so that God himself will judge and strike the people dead. Satan has had much great success in destroying many a godly man of God, especially the people that do miracles and cast out devils. These people think they are invisible, because they can cast out devils, but Satan is letting them have their success, for it takes their eyes off of Satan’s master plan and strategies to destroy the Man of God.
Those who serve God are the ones who demand Satan’s attention and call forth Satan’s strategies. The careless carnal half-hearted Christian knows nothing about the Devil, nor his devices.
Satan has a tailored plan for those that can cause the most damage to his Kingdom of Darkness. With Eve he makes sure that there is no apparent danger or distress. He lures her and then deceives her and then the masterstroke he traps her.
With Job, Satan uses a different tactic. He is not limited to the various types of tactics on each individual. Satan cannot get into Job’s life, because Job is surrounded by a wall of angels. A mere hedge would not stop the devil, but Angels of the Most High God can thwart Satan’s attacks. So Satan devices a way to go to God and have God remove those angels by accusing Job of being selfish in his motives. So God allows Job to be put to the test to show Satan that he is wrong.
With one blow, Satan moves swiftly. He whispers into the Sabeans to go and kill all of Job’s servants. The Chaldeans, to go and steal all of Job’s camels and livestock. Then Satan sends fire down from Heaven to burn up all of Job’s thousands upon thousands of sheep. He murders Job’s children and makes job homeless.
Satan in his deluded anger concentrates on this one man of God with affliction upon affliction, until his wife and friends have nothing to do with him.
Satan loves to distress and defame those whom he cannot deceive. He is constantly changing his tactics. To Jesus, he would be an available friend to save from Him from pain, poverty, hunger, shame, toil, and death.
David loved God with all of his heart, mind and soul. This aroused Satan to much anger and insanity. So Satan goes and sets up a plan to destroy David. David kill Satan’s champion, Goliath. Satan uses a King to murder David. Later after many victories of killing the Satan’s armies that are upon the earth, Satan sets out to destroy all of the members of David’s family. Then Satan goes out and gets David to murder one of his mighty men, to commit adultery, and treachery. David is thrown of the thrown by his son. Satan tempted David to number the children of Israel, God killed 70,000 innocent men. Satan knew how to murder the people in the Kingdom of God and how to shift the guilt upon David. Moses wrote the prescribed manner in which the census of the population was to be done, but David ignorant and tricked by Satan set out to number Israel.
Satan accomplished almost everything that he had planned for destroying David, but David loved God, and cried out to God for mercy and forgiveness and he overcame the Devil.
“To whom ye forgive anything. I forgive also...lest Satan should get an advantage of us: for we are not ignorant of his devices.” [2Corinthians 2:10-11]
The Devil is a cruel and powerful enemy. To watch him with sleeping eyes means you are asleep on guard duty. Ignorance is the main weapon that Satan uses to destroy mighty men and women of God. To escape his snare, you need to have a strong faith in the fact that your enemy Satan is seeking you to destroy. You need an intimate knowledge of him and his plans. You also need to run into him at one time and see him as he appears or as God opens your spiritual eyes. He may appear like a beautiful angel, or he may appear as Cherubim. I have seen him as both.
An unforgiving spirit is one of his devices to gain ground into your life and open up a doorway, or to close a doorway from a blessing of God. Satan is always watching and looking for a way to hold you back from the final goal, or to drive you on in your goal so that you will go farther in the work of God that you were not, called to do. Example: not all money that can be given to you comes from God; sometimes Satan will give you more money to destroy you or to cause you to build more for God than God intended. Moses had to build according to the pattern that God gave, no less and no more. [Exodus 25:9]
One of the most dangerous is to become unequally yoked with unbelievers in friendships. “What communion hath light with darkness?” [2Corinthians 6:14-15] God calls friendship with the world as adultery. [James 4:4] The Spirit of God that lives in you can have no agreements with the unsaved.
We are called to a separated life with holiness. God gives us strong commands against intimate associations with unbelievers. The person that God takes out of this world system cannot again become the friends and companions of worldly men without becoming an enemy of God Almighty.
The only way to heaven is to avoid all intimacy with worldly people. Whatever the cost, flee spiritual adultery! Have no friendship with the world. No matter how tempted you are by profit or pleasure, do not become intimate with worldly-minded people. You are called to witness to them, not become buddies.
2Corinthians 6:17 “Come out from among them.” No matter how harmless unsaved people seemed to be, they are a doorway for Satan to entrap you. “Be ye separate”. [I John 1:3] Says to have fellowship with the Father and with His son Jesus Christ. [2Corinthians 13:14 “The grace [supernatural power of God] of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the COMMUNION of the Holy Ghost, be with you all.”
[1Corinthians 10:16] “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the COMMUNION of the body of Christ?”
THEREFORE, we are not to become friends with the people of this world. We are to have fellowship with The Body of Christ [believers] and with the Father, Jesus, and Holy Spirit.
[2Corinthians 6:14] “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? And what communion hath light with darkness?
2Corinthians 6:16] “And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? For ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”
[2Corinthians 6:17-18] “Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.”
An UNDISCIPLINED LIFE readily exposes Satan’s assaults. Paul said that he had to keep under his body and life so that he would shipwreck his life. [1Corinthians 9:27] Paul did this by fasting many times in his life and also by living a separated life so not as to become entangled in the civilian affairs of life.
Peter learned that he had to be SOBER. He at one time slept and did not help Jesus pray. He really never understood the attacks of the EVIL ONE. He told Jesus that he would never desert Him after Jesus told him that Satan was going to sift him. It’s after a great fall that you come to take your enemy seriously. Peter said that the only way you can withstand the onslaughts of Satan is by faith and by always watching and praying. Each morning that you awake, you are in a vicious war with many enemies. Jesus said that we are sheep surrounded by wolves and wolves in sheep clothing.
“..But every man is tempted when he is drawn away [lured] of HIS OWN LUST [lust of eyes, flesh, world]....”[James 1:13-15] The term “drawn away” means to lure forth, it comes from hunting, or fishing. You are baited and lured away into a deadly hunters trap and Satan is the hunter of souls. His main purpose is to lure you to your death by a small piece of bait.
God says, “They that are Christ’s have crucified the FLESH, with its AFFECTIONS AND LUSTS.” [Galatians 5:24] YOU HAVE TO CRUCIFY YOUR FLESH OR SATAN WILL BAIT YOU INTO A TRAP WITH YOUR LUST GOING AFTER THE BAIT.
Your only safety is to advance through strenuous effort and fight the fight. You can never sit back and relax as if you have arrived, or the thoughts, God is protecting me. Jesus said, you would be attacked and killed for His sake. “Let us go on to perfection.” [Hebrews 6:1] Paul called the Corinthians believers, babies. At one time in their walk they turned back to carnality and lost their fighting ability. They lapsed back into entertainment with the gifts of the Holy Spirit instead of going on in their walk.
You cannot explain to carnal Christians that they were delivered as were the Israeli’s when Moses took them through the Dead Sea. There was still the wilderness life of training and hardship to prepare them for war in the land of the Giants that dwelt in the Land of Canaan. Even after the desert is crossed and the Jordan divided, there were many battles to be fought in Canaan. The final resting comes when you die and go to be with Jesus in Heaven.
If you are to overcome the Devil then you will love not your lives even death.
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