Two battles to fight

Our antipathy of God and of His holy things stem from two issues: Satan’s delusions from without and our own pride from within.

 

1) When Satan persuaded us that God was violent, His motives were selfish, and His love was a fraud, we believed it all without first testing Him to see if any of it were true. Satan used the world that he had created to convince us: A) the iniquitous media which has exalted the human and obliterated the fear of God; B) the proliferated, unavoidable sights, sounds, smells, and “magic” of a sin-loving Protestant civilization which refused to be convicted by the Law of their God, to repent, and to be converted, and which has since then convinced us of the idea that all that we saw in the world was all that there was, and that faithless knowledge has had all the truth about our existence in the big universe; C) worldly family, friends, and teachers, whose opinions we accepted as perfect wisdom because we loved them more than we loved our Father in heaven, who told us to disregard God and His perfectly high standards lest those standards convict us and them of our self-indulgent lifestyles; D) science and human wisdom, which Satan took control of to prove that God does not exist; all of these have made it an easy thing for us to set aside any attempts to reconcile with our Creator.

 

2) Our own pride could not disregard the devil’s accusations of God, through his various machinations mentioned above, because we could not take a humble view of our own violent natures, our selfishness and fraudulent love. If we had only lived under God’s condemnation of our own faults and weaknesses, when Satan came to convince us that God was unjust for punishing us with consequences, we would have taken the devil’s accusations of God with a grain of salt. We would have told Satan, “Get away from me! God’s not the problem, I am!” However, the more monumental our pride, the deeper Satan’s persuasion went; and the deeper his lies rooted themselves, the deeper and more difficult the roots of our rebellion against God would be for Him to extract. Our delusion was set fast. If those lies began at the dawning of our intelligence as children, then the probability of dissolving our roots of rebellion would be almost nil. In that case, only the Eden-originated familial love could spare us from complete impossibility to know the truth about God and be saved. This has been proven again and again by the heathen nations, through their one false religion in the world. Their tormented condition and monumental pride has built higher and higher in them a Tower of Babel until God has repeatedly had to destroy those nations. As Protestantism has left its Reformation listed above, after the apostolic church did not regain its lost first love (Rev. 2:4,5), Satan took the one world ancient pagan religion, giving it the mask of Christianity, and handed it to the church.

 

But, the impure  and unrepentant church, the evil and wicked one time true spokesman to the world, was consigned to the grave by the Protestant Reformation. Yet, it has risen again from the oblivion to which God had consigned it. It is about to go into damnation and drag an apostatized Protestantism and a world of sinners into damnation with it. “The beast that thou sawest was, and is not; and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition: and they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and yet is…. And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition.” (Rev. 17:8,11).

 

Separation from God leaves the soul empty and taunted by Satan. Depending on self and its purported impeccable nature leaves an uneasiness that cannot be forever swept under the rug. The flaws of our purported impeccable nature keep popping up into the conscience and the sense grows that the truth that self has nothing in which to boast will someday be blazed abroad. The soul unconvicted by the Spirit, unrepentant toward God and unconverted to His Law has no morality, no ethics, no purity or holiness; it has no wisdom, no strength or willpower for good. And all will one day be exposed. Dependence on frail human nature for moral fiber, righteousness, and goodness is a losing and troublesome proposition. There is no rest in it, day or night. Cursed is the man who trusts in himself instead of God.

 

Until the roots of rebellion can be removed, pure happiness cannot be known. Our relationships are dulled and we go on in life without experiencing the image of God that Adam and Eve had in the garden. The love in the family is cool, and it is exhausting to achieve a happy home.

 

But, no condition is beyond the power of God. Even in the middle of the rapidly approaching perdition, many souls will see the real purposes behind the great deception. In the dense darkness that is even now covering the earth they will realize their own despicable natures and will rethink their rejection of the evidences of God’s nature seen in His humbled children. The Latter Rain will be God’s final work to undo all that the adversary has accomplished to draw God’s children away from Him. Many will abandon their former misconceptions of God and His love.

 

“The abundance of the sea shall be converted unto thee [God’s church], the forces of the Gentiles shall come unto thee.

The multitude of camels shall cover thee, the dromedaries of Midian and Ephah; all they from Sheba shall come: they shall bring gold and incense; and they shall shew forth the praises of the LORD.

All the flocks of Kedar shall be gathered together unto thee, the rams of Nebaioth shall minister unto thee: they shall come up with acceptance on Mine altar, and I will glorify the house of My glory.

Who are these that fly as a cloud, and as the doves to their windows?

Surely the isles shall wait for Me, and the ships of Tarshish first, to bring thy sons from far, their silver and their gold with them, unto the name of the LORD thy God, and to the Holy One of Israel, because He hath glorified thee.” (Isa. 60:5-9).

 

“And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising. Lift up thine eyes round about, and see: all they gather themselves together, they come to thee: thy sons shall come from far, and thy daughters shall be nursed at thy side. Then thou shalt see, and flow together, and thine heart shall fear, and be enlarged.” (Isa. 60:3-5).

 

With these precious promises, let’s begin now to accept the tormenting sorrows that we have brought upon ourselves for leaving the faith and righteousness of Jesus, the  chastisement of our peace which Jesus bore for us in Gethsemane (Isaiah 53:5; Matt. 26:36-44; Luke 22:44). Let us trust in the self-sacrificing Son, so that the wrath of God need no longer to be upon us (John 3:36). “Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time.” (1Pet. 5:6).

 

“Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the LORD is risen upon thee. For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people: but the LORD shall arise upon thee, and His glory shall be seen upon thee.” (Isa. 60:1,2).