"All that crap about the God and the Devil is so just so much gibberish and another fairytale, I'll have none of it, I am a modern person."
Right! Or very very wrong! Might even be a very significant sign that the largest marketing enterprise in the universe has paid off good dividends. The ultimate triumph of deception is keeping mankind in the absolute dark as to who really rules behind the things that seem to be going on. The deceiver designs a jungle of lesser evil to hide the great. Load fluffy toys with explosives and afghan children are blown to bits because they love a fluffy toy, even if dropped from an airplane.
I should say clearly that the ruler of the air, the usurper of authority over the present world has a limited 'best before date' stamped on him'. For a him it is. (I suppose that is the only point of agreement I will ever find from the ultra feminists of the world). Not a him in the male sex sense, but male as an "Anti Christ." One who mirrors, by deception, all that the Christ is. He is called 'the man of sin' in the writings of the christian church.
To believe in the devil is a different sort of belief than when someone says I believe in Jesus Christ. One of the most often used words in scriptures of the New Covenant is the word "to believe", and its noun, "faith". It very rarely means just "knowing about". But nearly always refers to the committance of the one who believes to the object that is believed. To believe is to trust, to rely on, to risk life for. And surely I agree, in that sense, I do not believe in the Devil at all. Nor should you. There are lots of people in the world however who literally do just that. The frightening thing is that there is a vast middle majority without a clue. " I don't believe in the devil, they say, but he may well believe in them, because they do not need to believe in him to be in his pocket." No baby born needs to know that it is in Britain to be there. "Unless you are born again, you cannot see the kingdom of God". What other kingdom is there?
The world of Drama is fascinated by the concept of man's dealings with the devil. The Mephistopheles figure is of high theatric value. Mozart introduces similar characters in the "Magic flute". If you have ever understood the plot in Goethe's "Faust" then you know what I mean. It is the baddies, the evil ones that bring the silver to the box office, not the do-gooders.
Images of the devil have been well publicized and used in many different ways. Not one of them are true portraits. (There is one such possible portrait described by the old Testament prophets) The sum total of these images has contributed to obliterate the real existence of such a twisted being from the minds of most men and relegated the idea of a horned leech thirsty for blood, goat beard, cloven hooves and all, to the comic strips. Clever bit of misinformation. Make the devil an abject object of ridicule and he will be dismissed from the 'real world' of most people's perception of reality. It does not stop him from existing or being about business as usual, in fact it helps greatly.
So what is his business?
In essence his ambition is a very straightforward one: The building of a kingdom for himself that in every respect is as good as possible, but with him as the absolute ruler and center of all attention. It is all about the feeding of the ego of one who considered himself great and good enough to challenge his creator and attempt to take the place of the un-created and everlasting God. We know of him that he once was one of the first order of arch-angels before the dawn of creation. The morning-stars sang together for joy at the handiwork of god, but Satan frowned and was caught up in a fierce jealousy, for challenging God he was forthwith thrown out of the heavenly court and was thrown down unto the earth. He is now the ruler of the 'air' over this world of ours. We are told that "the whole world is in the power of the evil one".
In order to hide his true self and make his work as free from interference as possible he appears frequently as an angel of light. He never appears as the evil one until you have sold your soul to him and can no longer get away! In fact all this ambitions are good ones from his perspective. The likelihood is that unless we have faith in a prior word of God we will agree! He wants us to be the same as he is. Angels of light, yes even divine beings without God! Free to be whatever we want to be, free from any dependence on God and free to ignore the word and will of God. He promises material bliss as he cannot give spiritual blessings. His trade idea is for men to sell their souls in exchange for influence, power, fame and fortune.
Unable to make anything new he can however imitate everything and uses mimicry to perfection. Not that anything needs to be absolutely perfect, because mankind which has lost sight of God and God's word is easily satisfied with shoddy copies of God's work. Presented with the second rate copies mankind applauds the copies and the copiers and ignores the originals and denies their Original Maker.
Case in point: after thousands of man-hours in research the "double helix" of the DNA was discovered and finally unravelled by Crick and Watson in 1953, (the unsung work of Rosalind Franklin was the basis of their work) they received the Nobel Prize for their research in 1962. I still have never heard anyone in the Nobel Prize awarding board acknowledge the maker of the DNA. Only the ones who 'found it'. They prized a print of what it might be thought to look like. They gave not even a seconds tribute to the perfectly working reality of the DNA in every living being. This is the brilliant working of the deceiver. Study a tick on an elephant and pretend you can ignore the elephant. The tick is all we need to know. When the elephant lies down some will be crushed.
The sweetness of evil.
The trouble with evil is that it never looks it. It never is bitter on the tongue, but only later in the belly. It would not fool any Eve into eating the forbidden fruit unless it was literally 'beautiful to see, sweet to eat and would make you a better person than you were already". How anything expressly forbidden can be thought of as being "sweet, fine and useful" is the topic of the Psychology of Sin. (Excellent little treatise by Oswald Chambers) But sin always begins with a deliberate denial of what God has said. The rapid forsaking of the Bible shows the result. No longer knowing what God forbids, black is turned to white and white to black in the very high places of the governments of the world.
Are the various calamities besetting the world the work of the Devil? Is war, famine, murder, landslides the footprint of the evil one? No way! Not once does the entire word of God claim any such effect for the working of Satan. Never in a single sentence do the disasters of the world become attributed to Satan. They are useful to Satan however, since they invariably lead to God being blamed for the disasters and therefore to be maligned. "The fifth Angel poured out his vial upon the Seat of the Beast; and his kingdom was full of darkness, and they gnawed their tongues from pain and they blasphemed the God of Heaven because of their pains and sores, and repented not of their deeds."
Where do all these calamities then originate? The Bible is very clear on the topic: "Whence arise wars? Do they not come from your lusts that war in your members? You are full of envy and greed, you want, want want but cannot get in any legal way, so your steal, rob murder and go to war. But you wont ask for things, because that would force you to ask according to the will of God. Submit yourselves to God and resist the Devil so that he will flee from you, as he is unable to stand before God. Draw near to God you sinners and the devil loses his grip over you." (Paraphrase and summary of James 4:1-7)
What about global warming and climate change? We are all supposed to feel guilty of having 'caused it', and because we are guilty as charged we should ransom ourselves by paying for the amount of CO2 that we leave as footprints wherever we go and whatever we do. Stop polluting and /or pay for it!
It is probably as unrivalled and deliberate a piece of deception as anyone could create who was of the most exquisite intelligence. Make everyone feel guilty, but give them no access to anyone who could forgive them their 'sin' but make them pay for it! Genial piece of evil!
What does the word of God say? Well, read 1 Kings 8:35-40, or read Deuteronomy 28, or in deed Jeremiah 5:24:"This people does not say in their heart:"Let us now fear the LORD our God, who gives rain, both the early and the late in their right time; it is He who controls the harvest times. Your sins have actually turned the seasons upside down, and they are the cause of your calamity." Your sins against God, against creation, against fellow man and against yourselves. Not the emission of CO2.
Read Romans 8:20-22 "For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are nothing compared to the glory that is about to revealed to us. For the anxious longing of the entire creation is the final revealing of the sons of God. ..for we know that the entire creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now." The evil one will have no sons of God in his kingdom. There is only one passport for those who will be accepted by him, one authorized by Satan, and will be free to those very same ones who use the word of God to turn people away from God, and who kill the Lord and all who will be his witnesses. Make no mistake, he is a liar and a murderer from the beginning to his own end. For the end will come.
The understanding of the identity and individuality of the same is a tricky one. One of my friends refused to accept the idea that the Devil is a person. He is right in doubting that. The presence of evil and malice always reduces the person and makes it less than personal if by that we mean someone who is responsible to a higher authority than himself. If there are no restraints in any being, all the evil that can be chosen is as available as all the good. But once having chosen the evil there is no turning back. So that old crafty devil is hard to align with what we mean by "a true person".
Even his names are elusive. "Satan" is simply a noun made from an activity: one who resists and opposes something or someone. It is even used of the wannabee apostle Peter as he begins to remonstrate with Jesus as he has just said that his purpose for coming into the world was to give his life for it. Peter yells, "No way is that going to happen", and Jesus answers: "Get behind me Satan, your thoughts are not those of GOD!" Oops! Anyone living, angel, serpent, man or demon who denies the word of God is by definition a true "satan".
The other word most people know is then "devil, diabolo, teufel, djävul etc" and it is another word derived from an action. It comes from the greek "dia balloo" and means to throw, hurl or cast something against someone. Hurling abuse, invectives, slander, accusations etc etc.. and so it is a generic term for one who in a frenzied whirl of anger rages against both God and the saints of God. It is also frequently used of the idols and false gods that are worshipped by people right through the entire times of the human existence. As now.
Their name is "Legion" for they are many.
Devils, yes in the plural, are known to take over the lives of individual human beings, sometimes actually taking up residence in them. They invade personalities and reduce them. They fill people with other voices at times voices forcing them to kill, maim and murder. I personally knew one such man. They are at the brunt of the work of Christ in the times of gospel events..They remain common in the world, I meet them in the mission field.. they interrupt and express behaviour patterns familiar from the gospels. Their work is the same all over: blaspheme God, frighten people away from God and call the power of God into question. They in turn are frightened of nothing, except Jesus Christ. A whole host of the angelic beings have joined Satan in his fall, and serve him as demons.
That old devil is called a number of names beyond those above. Beelzebul, Abbadon, Ruler and prince over the powers of the air, just to recall a few. Add "the god of this age", "Belial", "the tempter, the liar from the beginning" and you get the picture. Looking at the world as it is and asking the question if it shows these types of activities among men could quickly lead to the insight that there is indeed a mighty force behind the condition of the world.
The bible gives him none of the credit that he craves, that is done by God's enemies. There you have another reason why he hates the Word of the LORD God, it does not give him or his ambitions or his successes enough praise and glory. There will never be an angelic choir singing his praises, he will be totally stymied in his world rule ambition. And his end is nearer now than when I began to write this blog.
He may still have some of us killed as he has done for centuries. All he is doing thereby is sending them home to God who really don't see this world as their home anyway. But they are all gathering, dressed in white ready for the day of reckoning. And every murder done to a christian adds another line to the evidence against the evil one for the day of judgement. No wonder he goes about like a roaring lion, ready to swallow whoever is careless enough to step out of the Light of god into the darkness of him for whom utter darkness is prepared. Like so many human beings he is too occupied in the now to bother about the end.
He is the prince of the power of the air.. The atmosphere in some cities and places I have visited have been filled with almost tangible evil. Even some vicarages. When people tell me they don't believe in him it rings a bell. They have never seen the air that they breathe either, but they believe it implicitly or they would die every morning as they wake up, because of first having to check what it is that they breathe, whatever is . You do not have to believe the air to breathe it..
Nor do you need to believe in the devil to be held by him in a firm grip. But if you have no use for God or his word, if "Jesus Christ" is just one of your swear words, I dare say that you are very useful for the enemy of God. You may be enrolled in his home army reserve without knowing that you have been conscripted.
You end up in the kingdom of God by making a deliberate choice, you end up in the kingdom of the devil by not making a choice at all.
That is what the Word of God says. No apologies.
Teddy Donobauer, Doncaster Feb 1st 2017
Right! Or very very wrong! Might even be a very significant sign that the largest marketing enterprise in the universe has paid off good dividends. The ultimate triumph of deception is keeping mankind in the absolute dark as to who really rules behind the things that seem to be going on. The deceiver designs a jungle of lesser evil to hide the great. Load fluffy toys with explosives and afghan children are blown to bits because they love a fluffy toy, even if dropped from an airplane.
I should say clearly that the ruler of the air, the usurper of authority over the present world has a limited 'best before date' stamped on him'. For a him it is. (I suppose that is the only point of agreement I will ever find from the ultra feminists of the world). Not a him in the male sex sense, but male as an "Anti Christ." One who mirrors, by deception, all that the Christ is. He is called 'the man of sin' in the writings of the christian church.
To believe in the devil is a different sort of belief than when someone says I believe in Jesus Christ. One of the most often used words in scriptures of the New Covenant is the word "to believe", and its noun, "faith". It very rarely means just "knowing about". But nearly always refers to the committance of the one who believes to the object that is believed. To believe is to trust, to rely on, to risk life for. And surely I agree, in that sense, I do not believe in the Devil at all. Nor should you. There are lots of people in the world however who literally do just that. The frightening thing is that there is a vast middle majority without a clue. " I don't believe in the devil, they say, but he may well believe in them, because they do not need to believe in him to be in his pocket." No baby born needs to know that it is in Britain to be there. "Unless you are born again, you cannot see the kingdom of God". What other kingdom is there?
The world of Drama is fascinated by the concept of man's dealings with the devil. The Mephistopheles figure is of high theatric value. Mozart introduces similar characters in the "Magic flute". If you have ever understood the plot in Goethe's "Faust" then you know what I mean. It is the baddies, the evil ones that bring the silver to the box office, not the do-gooders.
Images of the devil have been well publicized and used in many different ways. Not one of them are true portraits. (There is one such possible portrait described by the old Testament prophets) The sum total of these images has contributed to obliterate the real existence of such a twisted being from the minds of most men and relegated the idea of a horned leech thirsty for blood, goat beard, cloven hooves and all, to the comic strips. Clever bit of misinformation. Make the devil an abject object of ridicule and he will be dismissed from the 'real world' of most people's perception of reality. It does not stop him from existing or being about business as usual, in fact it helps greatly.
So what is his business?
In essence his ambition is a very straightforward one: The building of a kingdom for himself that in every respect is as good as possible, but with him as the absolute ruler and center of all attention. It is all about the feeding of the ego of one who considered himself great and good enough to challenge his creator and attempt to take the place of the un-created and everlasting God. We know of him that he once was one of the first order of arch-angels before the dawn of creation. The morning-stars sang together for joy at the handiwork of god, but Satan frowned and was caught up in a fierce jealousy, for challenging God he was forthwith thrown out of the heavenly court and was thrown down unto the earth. He is now the ruler of the 'air' over this world of ours. We are told that "the whole world is in the power of the evil one".
In order to hide his true self and make his work as free from interference as possible he appears frequently as an angel of light. He never appears as the evil one until you have sold your soul to him and can no longer get away! In fact all this ambitions are good ones from his perspective. The likelihood is that unless we have faith in a prior word of God we will agree! He wants us to be the same as he is. Angels of light, yes even divine beings without God! Free to be whatever we want to be, free from any dependence on God and free to ignore the word and will of God. He promises material bliss as he cannot give spiritual blessings. His trade idea is for men to sell their souls in exchange for influence, power, fame and fortune.
Unable to make anything new he can however imitate everything and uses mimicry to perfection. Not that anything needs to be absolutely perfect, because mankind which has lost sight of God and God's word is easily satisfied with shoddy copies of God's work. Presented with the second rate copies mankind applauds the copies and the copiers and ignores the originals and denies their Original Maker.
Case in point: after thousands of man-hours in research the "double helix" of the DNA was discovered and finally unravelled by Crick and Watson in 1953, (the unsung work of Rosalind Franklin was the basis of their work) they received the Nobel Prize for their research in 1962. I still have never heard anyone in the Nobel Prize awarding board acknowledge the maker of the DNA. Only the ones who 'found it'. They prized a print of what it might be thought to look like. They gave not even a seconds tribute to the perfectly working reality of the DNA in every living being. This is the brilliant working of the deceiver. Study a tick on an elephant and pretend you can ignore the elephant. The tick is all we need to know. When the elephant lies down some will be crushed.
The sweetness of evil.
The trouble with evil is that it never looks it. It never is bitter on the tongue, but only later in the belly. It would not fool any Eve into eating the forbidden fruit unless it was literally 'beautiful to see, sweet to eat and would make you a better person than you were already". How anything expressly forbidden can be thought of as being "sweet, fine and useful" is the topic of the Psychology of Sin. (Excellent little treatise by Oswald Chambers) But sin always begins with a deliberate denial of what God has said. The rapid forsaking of the Bible shows the result. No longer knowing what God forbids, black is turned to white and white to black in the very high places of the governments of the world.
Are the various calamities besetting the world the work of the Devil? Is war, famine, murder, landslides the footprint of the evil one? No way! Not once does the entire word of God claim any such effect for the working of Satan. Never in a single sentence do the disasters of the world become attributed to Satan. They are useful to Satan however, since they invariably lead to God being blamed for the disasters and therefore to be maligned. "The fifth Angel poured out his vial upon the Seat of the Beast; and his kingdom was full of darkness, and they gnawed their tongues from pain and they blasphemed the God of Heaven because of their pains and sores, and repented not of their deeds."
Where do all these calamities then originate? The Bible is very clear on the topic: "Whence arise wars? Do they not come from your lusts that war in your members? You are full of envy and greed, you want, want want but cannot get in any legal way, so your steal, rob murder and go to war. But you wont ask for things, because that would force you to ask according to the will of God. Submit yourselves to God and resist the Devil so that he will flee from you, as he is unable to stand before God. Draw near to God you sinners and the devil loses his grip over you." (Paraphrase and summary of James 4:1-7)
What about global warming and climate change? We are all supposed to feel guilty of having 'caused it', and because we are guilty as charged we should ransom ourselves by paying for the amount of CO2 that we leave as footprints wherever we go and whatever we do. Stop polluting and /or pay for it!
It is probably as unrivalled and deliberate a piece of deception as anyone could create who was of the most exquisite intelligence. Make everyone feel guilty, but give them no access to anyone who could forgive them their 'sin' but make them pay for it! Genial piece of evil!
What does the word of God say? Well, read 1 Kings 8:35-40, or read Deuteronomy 28, or in deed Jeremiah 5:24:"This people does not say in their heart:"Let us now fear the LORD our God, who gives rain, both the early and the late in their right time; it is He who controls the harvest times. Your sins have actually turned the seasons upside down, and they are the cause of your calamity." Your sins against God, against creation, against fellow man and against yourselves. Not the emission of CO2.
Read Romans 8:20-22 "For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are nothing compared to the glory that is about to revealed to us. For the anxious longing of the entire creation is the final revealing of the sons of God. ..for we know that the entire creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now." The evil one will have no sons of God in his kingdom. There is only one passport for those who will be accepted by him, one authorized by Satan, and will be free to those very same ones who use the word of God to turn people away from God, and who kill the Lord and all who will be his witnesses. Make no mistake, he is a liar and a murderer from the beginning to his own end. For the end will come.
The understanding of the identity and individuality of the same is a tricky one. One of my friends refused to accept the idea that the Devil is a person. He is right in doubting that. The presence of evil and malice always reduces the person and makes it less than personal if by that we mean someone who is responsible to a higher authority than himself. If there are no restraints in any being, all the evil that can be chosen is as available as all the good. But once having chosen the evil there is no turning back. So that old crafty devil is hard to align with what we mean by "a true person".
Even his names are elusive. "Satan" is simply a noun made from an activity: one who resists and opposes something or someone. It is even used of the wannabee apostle Peter as he begins to remonstrate with Jesus as he has just said that his purpose for coming into the world was to give his life for it. Peter yells, "No way is that going to happen", and Jesus answers: "Get behind me Satan, your thoughts are not those of GOD!" Oops! Anyone living, angel, serpent, man or demon who denies the word of God is by definition a true "satan".
The other word most people know is then "devil, diabolo, teufel, djävul etc" and it is another word derived from an action. It comes from the greek "dia balloo" and means to throw, hurl or cast something against someone. Hurling abuse, invectives, slander, accusations etc etc.. and so it is a generic term for one who in a frenzied whirl of anger rages against both God and the saints of God. It is also frequently used of the idols and false gods that are worshipped by people right through the entire times of the human existence. As now.
Their name is "Legion" for they are many.
Devils, yes in the plural, are known to take over the lives of individual human beings, sometimes actually taking up residence in them. They invade personalities and reduce them. They fill people with other voices at times voices forcing them to kill, maim and murder. I personally knew one such man. They are at the brunt of the work of Christ in the times of gospel events..They remain common in the world, I meet them in the mission field.. they interrupt and express behaviour patterns familiar from the gospels. Their work is the same all over: blaspheme God, frighten people away from God and call the power of God into question. They in turn are frightened of nothing, except Jesus Christ. A whole host of the angelic beings have joined Satan in his fall, and serve him as demons.
That old devil is called a number of names beyond those above. Beelzebul, Abbadon, Ruler and prince over the powers of the air, just to recall a few. Add "the god of this age", "Belial", "the tempter, the liar from the beginning" and you get the picture. Looking at the world as it is and asking the question if it shows these types of activities among men could quickly lead to the insight that there is indeed a mighty force behind the condition of the world.
The bible gives him none of the credit that he craves, that is done by God's enemies. There you have another reason why he hates the Word of the LORD God, it does not give him or his ambitions or his successes enough praise and glory. There will never be an angelic choir singing his praises, he will be totally stymied in his world rule ambition. And his end is nearer now than when I began to write this blog.
He may still have some of us killed as he has done for centuries. All he is doing thereby is sending them home to God who really don't see this world as their home anyway. But they are all gathering, dressed in white ready for the day of reckoning. And every murder done to a christian adds another line to the evidence against the evil one for the day of judgement. No wonder he goes about like a roaring lion, ready to swallow whoever is careless enough to step out of the Light of god into the darkness of him for whom utter darkness is prepared. Like so many human beings he is too occupied in the now to bother about the end.
He is the prince of the power of the air.. The atmosphere in some cities and places I have visited have been filled with almost tangible evil. Even some vicarages. When people tell me they don't believe in him it rings a bell. They have never seen the air that they breathe either, but they believe it implicitly or they would die every morning as they wake up, because of first having to check what it is that they breathe, whatever is . You do not have to believe the air to breathe it..
Nor do you need to believe in the devil to be held by him in a firm grip. But if you have no use for God or his word, if "Jesus Christ" is just one of your swear words, I dare say that you are very useful for the enemy of God. You may be enrolled in his home army reserve without knowing that you have been conscripted.
You end up in the kingdom of God by making a deliberate choice, you end up in the kingdom of the devil by not making a choice at all.
That is what the Word of God says. No apologies.
Teddy Donobauer, Doncaster Feb 1st 2017
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