The Big Lie

There is no truth in Satan's mouth. Truly, truly, he speaks with forked tongue...

Satan is the father of lies. Jesus said so (John 8:44). The lie was born of Satan's amour propre - his pride - his self-love - bearing the essence of the dark prince of destruction, the image and the very nature of his fallen state.

When Satan was defeated in his rebellion against the Throne of God, he established two goals - to sugar-coat God's Word effectively and bring down as many Adams and Eves as possible.

Thus his ambition for God's throne opened the way for the plunder of truth. The jealousy in Satan's heart stretched beyond vile. The hatred in his belly spewed forth  spirits of torment for the murder of babies, and the suffering of the innocent, the old and the destitute. He developed a special trap for those that put their trust in God. This was and is a subtle little thing called, "temptation," a sneaky and alluring guile that is anchored in the lie.

From the beginning it was so...

Noah was the tenth generation of God's Creation. He was born scarcely more than a thousand years after the fashioning of Adam and Eve. He would be 600 years old at the time of the Great Flood in 2345 - 2344 B.C. In that 1,000 to 1,600 years of ten generations in the earth, Satan had so corrupted the souls of men there was not one righteous to be found on the earth, except Noah. All others had gone the way of Cain, and though Noah preached for the 120 years he labored to build the Ark, they would not believe in Noah's God. They mocked, they scorned, they laughed at him - until the day Noah and his family entered the Ark, God shut the door, and it began to rain...

"And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every  imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.

"But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord" (Genesis 6: 5-7).

Imagine what it must have been like to have been among those eight persons that God elected to survive the coming storm. Imagine knowing everyone you knew and were related to were about to die. Brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, neighbors, unbelieving as they were, were sentenced to drown in a flood they had never believed was coming.

What did it feel like to be singled out? To be responsible for replenishing the earth?  The party of eight, now alone in the bleak and desolate earth, were too busy surviving the present to look to the future. So God opened the wombs. The earth had to be filled again with men, and that meant birthing babies - lots of babies. 

Thus, seeds of men and seeds of earth became partners in the resurrection of God's wondrous creation. In time the earth returned to its pristine beauty. As the seasons passed, the beasts of the fields and forests multiplied greatly, migrating across continents and filling the earth. And the sons of Noah looked to the expanses of  distant lands where they could settle and establish their own tribal generations. More than a few generations had passed when they began moving out, flourishing  and growing great in numbers and wisdom. But all was not well...

Ten generations passed in which Satan had again sown the tares of deceit in the hearts of men. False gods and false religions sprang up all over the Middle East and they spread from tribe to tribe, city to city and kingdom to kingdom. And every day the pagan dead tumbled into hell, having believed Satan's lie...

Nimrod built the tower of Babel, "whose top may reach unto heaven," and God came down to see the tower and the city. Realizing men could do mighty and abominable things because they all had the same speech and one understanding, God confused their speech with new and different languages. Thus they babbled at one another and were separated from one another. The Greek form of Babel is "Babylon," the capital city of the plains of Shinar that was also known as the land of the Chaldees. Centuries later it became the dreaded Babylonian Empire.

Thus the nations were born as God scattered the tribes of like tongues abroad from there upon the face of the earth. And thus Abraham was born and raised in Ur of the Chaldees. Today we would call him an Iraqi, but God called him a Shemite. He was a  descendant of Shem, bearer of the spiritual seed, the 10th generation from Noah who was the 10th generation from Adam who, in the beginning, on the last day of Creation, was fashioned of clay by the hands of God...

Adam and Eve were not supposed to die. Covered by the Shekinah Glory they were supposed to live forever. But the process of slowly aging and slowly dying entered their exposed flesh when the Shekinah Glory left them, in the very moment they disobeyed God. It was then that Satan grabbed the deed to earth and began his reign of terror. It was a legal move - so was the Cross that redeemed the deed - so will be the Second Coming of Christ to throw Satan into the bottomless pit...

In the days of King David and King Solomon, it was believed the dead had no awareness. It was believed they slept in the grave, awaiting resurrection, knowing nothing. Approximately five hundred years later Jesus the Christ shared the story of the rich man and Lazarus in the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 16, confirming for all time and for all who will believe, that the deceased are very much aware of their surroundings, the families they left behind, the lie they swallowed and the truth they scorned. We find a second confirmation in The Revelation and pen of John the Divine, recorded in  6: 9-11 and 7: 9-17.

Following the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, when the portals of heaven opened to receive the spirits of the Old Testament saints, there would be no more Abraham's bosom or Paradise in the regions of hell. Jesus became our comfort and our joy and God Himself will welcome us home. So it was established, after the New Covenant was sealed and Paradise was emptied, the deceased saint would go directly into heaven and the sinner would go directly into hell.

I believe the words of Jesus simply because He IS the Word and knows all things. And because He died as a man and suffered hell as a sinner, weighed down with your sins and mine, alone and without God. Yes - we can believe Jesus. And we can believe John.

Satan offered all the kingdoms of the world to Jesus in His temptation in the wilderness, if Jesus would bow down and worship him...

It was a political offer - "You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. You honor me with a bow to my authority and I will honor you as King of kingdoms in all the earth." Jesus was here to break Satan's grip on God's creation and He was here to set the captives free. He couldn't do it by making dark-of-night, back-room deals with the enemy.

He was lonely, He was hungry, He was weary and thirsty, but He would preach the Gospel with a dry throat if need be. He would preach the truth on an empty stomach if need be. In so doing, He would teach and prepare others to do the same. Men cannot live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. The truth would make men free...

Then in the Spring, three years later, the enemies of the truth accused him of lies. After six hours on the Cross, the Lamb of God committed His soul to the Father and, in the power and authority of the blood that flowed, Satan's head (authority) was thoroughly crushed.

Doesn't Jesus have the keys of hell and death? Of course He does! (Rev. 1:18) He grabbed them from Satan when he burst open his prison bars just before His resurrection from the dead. Jesus has the keys. Jesus has the deed to earth contained in the judgments of earth that were written and scrolled by God when the earth became occupied by Satan, when godless men blatantly and deliberately defiled a gullible and greedy mankind and in the process, defiled the earth.

It is the scroll of Revelations 5 with the seven seals. Only the Lamb of God has been found worthy to break those seals and loose God's wrath on the earth when the  tribulation days begin.  

Sin opens the door and gives Satan permission to come into our lives. Praise, worship and repentance will send him fleeing again. He is a charmer but he has no real strings he can pull, no real deal he can make and there are no promises he can keep...

But if Satan can get you to deliberately break just one of God's Commandments, then you are guilty of breaking them all.  Keeping these commandments is an act of obedience that is better than any sacrifice you can offer. It is saying to your Heavenly Father: "I choose to trust and obey you. I choose to submit to your ways. Teach me to always honor you."

We may fall from time to time, we are not perfect yet. But if and when we do, we will repent, pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, recharge our confidence and move on with God...

If Satan can convince men there is no God, no heaven and no hell, then on the day they die he can claim their souls - and the souls of all the people who believed them. If Satan can convince the world that the Jews and the Christians are the radical branches of a dangerous cult, he can bring about another holocaust. If he can convince a foolish world that Jesus is not the Son of God, that His Blood and His Name have no power today, that the Bible is not the final authority, then Satan can steal away millions of souls without any effort at all.

Blessed are they that have seen with their eyes and believed. More blessed are those that have not seen with their eyes, yet believe...

Lift up your hands and shout for joy. The day is coming when the liar will be apprehended and the lie will be exposed, when the blind of this world shall see this devil at last and know him for the worm that he is. They shall weep in their shame from the depths of their being and, in the Presence of God's immutable Grace, they will call upon the Name of the Lord and be saved.

Choose this day whom you will serve and declare it to the heavens and to the earth. Then go with God and do what He says. The days are racing by and the call to repentance will soon run out. When that happens, the greatest event in all history will come and go in the blink of an eye. Whom will you believe when that day comes...?