The Age-Long War Against God (Part 2)

From the beginning of time, Satan (the rebel angel) and his cohorts (fallen angels, demons) have been in continual war against God. The aim is to steal honor from God and to frustrate the efforts of God to manifest His glory, especially in the human race. Thus, Satan deceived the first woman and brought the first man to rebel against God's righteous government. Consequently, the whole human race was plunged into the condition of spiritual death and moral depravity. Then, as God promised to defeat Satan's tyranny over mankind by the Seed of the woman, Satan commenced an intense campaign to destroy that Seed. Now that Christ has come and bruised Satan's head by His death and resurrection and is building His new creation, Satan is working hard to prevent it. One of his primary devices is by the erection of counterfeit religion, particularly a counterfeit "Christianity" wherein people are allowed to continue in fundamental rebellion against God while thinking themselves to be Christians.

This brings us to the question, how may we identify and distinguish Satan's work from God's? (That is a very important question.) We must remember that God's design is to have a race of human beings (taken from every national, ethnic, and racial grouping) who will be conformed to the moral and spiritual image of His Son, Jesus Christ (Rom. 8:29), just as man was first made in God's image. This means people who will love Him and obey Him and do His will, as the Lord Jesus did perfectly while in this world. You can always identify God's people by their persevering efforts at obeying Him - 1 John 2:3,4; 5:1,2. Conversely, those people who remain under Satan's dominion may speak about God and about loving God, but in their works they deny Him being disobedient and going their own way.

This explains professing Christians who advocate all manner of sexual perversions and deviate lifestyles in direct violation of God's Law. It also explains efforts made in the name of Christ to dismantle the Divine institution of the family. God designed heterosexual marriage to be the foundational unit of human society. In marriage the husband represented God bearing delegated authority and the wife represented the human race living in happy submission to her husband. (We are speaking now about roles, not created constitutions.) Every attempt to confuse or reverse sexual roles, especially in marriage, is an attack against Divine wisdom and authority. It is not Christian, even if professing Christians do it.

Above all else, God made the human race to worship Him. Christ died that there would be a new humanity who will give Him preeminence above all things (Col. 1:18). It is peculiarly frightening to see the distortion of the public worship of God with man set in the center rather than Christ. Worship services, music, sermons, prayers, fellowship - everything made to focus on human ego, want, "need," and feeling rather than purposely fixed upon Christ. Now there are even efforts to change the Lord's Day (Rev. 1:10) to Saturday evenings so that people may use His day for their own pleasure. Whatever the rationale for such measures, they represent the time long determination to deprive God of His honor and obedience - to make God serve man instead of man serving God.

Of course, God cannot be defeated. God's purposes cannot be thwarted. But multitudes of human lives are being deceived and ruined. The judgment of God is being visited upon our generation. O, that God would vindicate Himself in mercy and once again cause His Word to be taken seriously! Have you been taken captive by Satan to do his will, even in the name of Christianity? Examine yourselves! Are the practices of your religion founded upon the explicit declarations of Christ's will or are you assuming that what you and others want to do will meet with His approval. That can be a fatal assumption. (Matt. 7:21-28)