Praying to the devil

In my previous post I mentioned the cutting edge of the prayer life is to let the Spirit of the Bible infuse our requests and desires in our praying. In the strength of the pathos of the Bible writer, who wrote under the inspiration of the Comforter, our hopes and needs become injected with the power of the Highest, and then we are taken far beyond what our natural, weakened faith could ever do in getting God’s ear.

We’re talking about the living, abiding word of God, the word that is God-breathed, the expression of unutterable love. “All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field…. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever.” (Is. 40:6,8).

But we said that Satan’s greatest substitution to the true worship founded upon the word of God is the veneration of Mary.

How so?

Because praying to Mary is forbidden in the Bible. The Bible allows for only one Person to worship—God, the Father, through His Son. Since we can’t conceive of the Father, and since Christ was God made flesh and now we can identify with Him and know what divine love is through Him, we can respond in kind to the Father’s love by loving and obeying His beloved Son.

Any other object or person of worship is idolatry. Any other object or person of worship negates our inescapable condition of the need for redemption from sin. This includes even the veneration of Mary.

This is so because only the infinite divine love of our Creator/Redeemer can define sin by its contradiction to grace and love. Mary was not divine, nor is she the queen of heaven or the mother of God. One day a woman stood up in the midst of the crowds that surrounded Jesus. She must have been duly impressed by His righteous wisdom and holy love. But not accepting that He could be the Son of God, she gave her praises of Him in reference to His mother. Luke recorded the incident. “It came to pass, as He spake these things, a certain woman of the company lifted up her voice, and said unto Him, Blessed is the womb that bare Thee, and the paps which Thou hast sucked.” (Lk. 11:27). But knowing that she needed to have her faith redirected into truth and knowing where her line of thinking would end up in the church, corrupted by the prevailing pagan customs, He answered, “Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it.” (vs. 28).

Where was Christ’s emphasis? On His heavenly Father, not His earthly mother. It was also not on paying homage, but in heeding His Father’s inspired Book and obeying it.

Why does Satan hate the Bible so much? Because its very fibers resonate a principle diametrically opposed to his nature. The Bible bulges with charity and justice; it shines forth of unpretentious faith; it dispenses the joy and freedom of a clean conscience. It tells of a nation which Satan had destroyed through his cunning and which God had restored and made happy through faith and childlike obedience to His law of love and goodness. It speaks of a Creator God who remonstrated for righteousness to His wayward children of Israel. Love, self-sacrificing love was breathed into every written word of that holy book. The devil fumes that everyone who looks at it will conclude that if God could be so patient and merciful and more than fair to that wayward nation, then He will receive every reader into His bosom as well.

Being cut off from God, Lucifer knows no joy and unselfish interest of others. Being under God’s curse, he cannot be a blessing in anything he does. Bitterness personified is the devil. Bitterness, because he cut himself off from God, makes him a devil.

Because he hated righteousness, he cut himself off from the God of both righteousness and pity. That left him without his Creator’s loving-kindness and tender pity. Now, the only relief he has in his ever-suffocating misery is self-pity. And since he wants as many sinners to join with him in rebellion as possible, he sends multitudes into the same misery that plagues him. In their separation from the God of love and righteousness, they too must resort to self-pity like their leader.

Since the fall of Adam, the devil has been responsible for separating the human race from their loving Creator. He does this by leading all to pity themselves. “Me, me! Poor me!” Forgetfulness of self was the atmosphere of heaven and of Eden; thus, Lucifer’s determined purpose to keep self foremost in our thinking. Through the gift of grace, forgetfulness of self will lead back to Eden again one day. Thus, to prevent this, Satan works in sinners to keep self in full view. But the life of self-centeredness, the life of hedonism, has undesirable consequences. No one can have a happy existence by living unto himself.

However, another trap Satan has prepared. When the forlorn sinner feels remorse for the life in which he is trapped, and decides to seek forgiveness from God for his self-centeredness, Satan provides a self-centered system of religion to appease the nagging conscience, but one that continues the self-centeredness. Amazing invention! How more cunning can the serpent be?! Wrote John concerning this: “I wondered with great admiration. And the angel said unto me, Wherefore didst thou marvel?” (Rev. 17:6,7). “The children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.” (Lk. 16:8).

Without the devil’s designer religion, people would inevitably stumble upon the word of God like an oasis in the desert of self-indulgence. There they would realize conviction of sin and also a hope for the Savior from sin. “The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul.” (Ps. 19:7). In the Bible they would find a God who exemplifies unselfish service, who sets a standard that brings both shame and guilt, but also hope for a better life. Repentance would follow, and restoration to the God they had forsaken. A new creature, a new life would result.

But repentance causes the undoing of Satan’s kingdom. So he, from the beginning of human history, has given an avenue for rebels to vent their shame and sorrow without facing God’s high standard of unselfishness. Thus, in the form of worship contrived by the devil, self is given center stage. Satan’s devious religion, worldwide, has always permitted and even encouraged self to be petted and indulged by providing for its escape from the presence before the principles of God’s law that brings recrimination to the conscience.

True repentance is defined as sorrow for sin and the renunciation of it. Valid repentance accepts the harsh reality of sin; it humbly admits to the dire results of self-love and temptation. It hates the actions that have brought damage to its loving Creator. It abhors itself for its sin, in the knowledge that God loves His children and will receive all who come to Him for forgiveness.

Repentance seeks Jesus, the only true advocate between God and man, who alone can forgive and who desires to forgive sinners. “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; who gave Himself a ransom for all.” (1Tim. 2:5,6). Christ stands committed to upholding His Father’s government of righteousness, and in His presence the sinner trembles in fear of rejection. Conviction of sin takes hold and doubts build a high wall between the sinner and his Savior, hiding the possibility of acceptance from the great Mediator of mercy. But the Spirit of God is present to motivate the soul to move forward in hope to seek forgiveness of the Son.

Timidly, faith makes its case before “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” (Jn. 1:29). Hoping against hope, broken and in great need, it waits to hear of the divine sentence against it. Then the Spirit of God confirms in the soul that God accepts and forgives the contrite one which has trembled before its Maker, who lays full responsibility for its sin upon the “Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” (Rev. 13:8). The soul responds with heart-felt thankfulness to the voice of the Spirit with a new determination to obey all of God’s commandments, and rejoices to tell everyone of the Friend he has found in Jesus.

The new life in Christ is described by David: “I waited patiently for the Lord; and He inclined unto me, and heard my cry.
He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings.
And He hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God: many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in the Lord …. Then said I, Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of me, I delight to do Thy will, O my God: yea, Thy law is within my heart.” (Ps. 40:1-3,7,8).

David said he had to wait patiently for the Lord to come to his help. This trial forges faith and experience in the needy one.

But Mary veneration so subtly and smoothly substitutes for Bible religion of conviction and repentance. Mary veneration does not bring Bible truth into the exercise. Beautiful repentance never need enter there. Being humbled is neither required not desired. In the veneration of Mary there is no comparison of the sinner to God’s standard of righteousness; there is no falling at the feet of Jesus, who takes the wrath and sorrow of God due the sinner. Sin is not an issue in venerating Mary, thus neither can sorrow for sin be. Guilt never really appears; rather it is fear of punishment that has precedence. Mary feels the sinner’s pain and dismisses it before any real pain can be known by the devotee.

All the tears that flow in the worship of Mary are in thankfulness for her obviating all real shame and guilt. The soul who renders to her adoration does so because she abrogated the law and the consequences to disobedience. Basically, the venerating of Mary is the cheap way out of trouble. It voids responsibility; it excuses people from facing the music. Mariolatry makes wimps out of men by helping them evade accountability to God. This Jesus never did. Thus, Catholicism and the Bible are polar opposites; they have always been and always will be mutual enemies.

Relating to King Solomon’s surrender to his Egyptian wife’s spiritualism, Ellen White writes:

With tender earnestness David entreated Solomon to be manly and noble, to show mercy and loving-kindness to his subjects, and in all his dealings with the nations of earth to honor and glorify the name of God and to make manifest the beauty of holiness. Prophets and Kings, p. 26.

He who in his youth was endowed with discretion and understanding, and who in his strong manhood had been inspired to write, "There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death" (Proverbs 14:12), in later years departed so far from purity as to countenance licentious, revolting rites connected with the worship of Chemosh and Ashtoreth. Ibid. p. 57.

From being one of the greatest kings that ever wielded a scepter, Solomon became a profligate, the tool and slave of others. His character, once noble and manly, became enervated and effeminate. His faith in the living God was supplanted by atheistic doubts. Unbelief marred his happiness, weakened his principles, and degraded his life. The justice and magnanimity of his early reign were changed to despotism and tyranny. Poor, frail human nature! God can do little for men who lose their sense of dependence upon Him. Ibid. p. 58.

Ancient spiritualism from Egypt and Babylon extended the same provision to worship without coming in line with God’s character. Likewise, Mariolatry and its Protestant forms, along with Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and all world religions, all appeal to strong emotion as the agent to cleanse the soul from sin. But the heart of corrupt man is deceitful and desperately wicked; and his emotional exercises are empty of true sorrow for sin. God’s Law alone can prompt repentance. We cannot manufacture it, not even by staring at an image or a painting, however beautiful or religious.

All such exercises are rejected by the God of the Bible. We cannot deny the plain commandments of God and think that He will be satisfied by our designing and heeding an inferior substitute instead, one more like Satan's character. The Lord says to the self-justifying sinner, “Gird up thy loins now like a man: I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto Me.” (Job 40:7). And the prophet Habakkuk manfully stood ready expecting the Lord God to rebuke him. “I will stand upon my watch, and set me upon the tower, and will watch to see what He will say unto me, and what I shall answer when I am reproved.” (Hab. 2:1).

This is why the Bible firmly makes the man the foremost character through all its historical events and civil and religious duties. God wants manly people, men and women, which He develops through accountability and then forgiveness and confidence in His mercy. Satan seeks to destroy that manliness and holy boldness by excusing them from blame and guilt, and avoiding the grounds for forgiveness. The original Hebrew religion was a man-driven economy; God is spoken of as male. Rarely did a woman take charge. God was making a statement in all this. He was working in contradiction to the prevailing pagan religions, which from ancient times had exalted the “Queen of heaven” as opposed to their Father in heaven. (Jer. 7:18). The Hebrew religion stood up against the spiritualism which dissolved the resolution and weakened the confidence of the nations.

Spiritualism—Mariolatry, the Mass, and sacramental religion—weaken the human race at its foundation—in the spirit. Satan has sought to accomplish this from the beginning. “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!” (Is. 14:12). Through offering a woman, the “Queen of heaven,” in leiu of and to distract away from, the “King of kings and Lord of lords” and avering lawlessness over God’s authoritative Law, Lucifer has offered his intoxicating wine. “For they have healed the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace.” (Jer. 8:11). “By peace [he] shall destroy many.” (Dan. 8:25). And people will kill if this conscience-searing peace is threatened.

For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication. “And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory.
And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.
For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.
And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, My people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.”(Rev. 18:1-4).

True Bible religion makes men out of the quivering wimps whom Satan has destroyed. Forgiveness from God and acceptance upon valid God-given repentance restores the true power of manhood in men and in women who believe in the Son’s forgiveness. “As many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” (Jn. 1:12,13).

We can all have this hope-filled promise of the day we can help strengthen those weakened by false religion:
“And in that day seven women shall take hold of one man, saying, We will eat our own bread, and wear our own apparel: only let us be called by thy name, to take away our reproach.” (Is. 4:1).