Revelation 12:10 Then I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, “Now salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren, who accused them before our God day and night, has been cast down.
A few years ago, I was in a debate with an atheist who had a legal background, and the Lord gave me a revelation about the tactics of the enemy. At Yeshua’s first coming, his tactic was to destroy the infant before He could grow up; [Revelation 12:4-5]. After the Lord’s death and resurrection, Satan continued his direct assault by attacking the church through persecution, which lasted through the first three centuries. The tactics of the enemy were to destroy any “eyewitnesses” of God’s goodness.
However, the faith continued to spread all the more in spite of the bloodshed of the saints, and when the devil realized he could not destroy the move of God physically, he switched his tactics to — “If you can’t beat them, join them!” His hatred achieved less success by direct murderous violence, so he adopted the tactics of a lawyer to win his objective.
Now, when a lawyer is confronted with damning evidence against his case, he seeks to get that evidence cast out in a pretrial procedure called “discovery.” The enemy applied this principle during the dark ages. Having placed his servants into the highest offices in the church, Satan substantially removed the best evidence for the truth by suppressing the Word of God, not allowing it to be read or translated into a common language which the people could understand for themselves.
Finally, in the late 14th century the Bible was translated into a common language, by John Wycliffe, and through a handful of Christian pioneers and the invention of the printing press over the next 100 years, the Scriptures became available in the vernacular of the common people during the Reformation. Then the enemy reverted to his original tactics, destroying the saints in the “Inquisition,” where anyone found with the Word of God was deemed a heretic and killed.
But in legal proceedings there is yet another tactic: when a lawyer realizes the evidence against his case cannot be suppressed in “discovery,” he seeks to introduce a mountain of new information in an attempt to overwhelm the juridical process and obscure the truth by hiding it in thousands of documents. Doesn’t this seem like exactly what has happened in our “Information Age”? We need to understand how Satan is working in our own time, and especially in our own culture.
There’s a saying I heard repeatedly growing up, with the acronym “KISS” — “Keep It Simple, Sweetheart!” As we enter into the climax of the ages, the world is being flooded with exponentially more information, let’s stay focused on the simple truth of the Gospel. Let’s not allow our lives to be overwhelmed with too much information, but rather, “KISS” the message of the gospel to the world in need of His love!
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[worthy_plugins_devotion_single_body]A recent study by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and University of California Los Angeles wanted to find out, “if you had to choose between more time and more money, what would it be?” While they found most respondents answered, “more money”, they also found that those who preferred “more time” were generally happier! When I read this article, it reminded me of a story, that I’d like to share.
The Lord spoke to Moses, who led the children of Israel out of Egypt to be desperately cornered with the Red sea before them and Pharaoh’s chariots advancing upon them from behind. Overwhelmed with terror they cry out to Moses, “It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!” Having just miraculously escaped from the miserable life of slavery, and only beginning their new life of freedom, the children of Israel were faced with the most dire threat to their existence.
Over the past few weeks, we’ve begun a series of devotions based on the Exodus wanderings of the Children of Israel, and their tragic mistakes which we can learn from and avoid. One powerful influence common to their failures was fear.
For the past two weeks we have examined lessons from the OT account of Israel’s Exodus from Egypt in hope of avoiding the errors and attitudes of the children of Israel. This week we will draw connections between the Exodus and the prophecies in the book of Revelation.
For the past two weeks we’ve been building life lessons derived from the Exodus wanderings and from Paul’s exhortations to the church in Corinth. Notice carefully that Paul says, “these were written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the ages have come”…
…that is, written for us today! – admonitions from Paul to learn lessons from the history of the children of Israel.
Paul exhorts the church at Corinth about grumbling and complaining. He reminds the believers of the judgments that befell the 10 spies who brought a bad report of the land – and were struck down by a plague, and terrible fate of Korah and those aligned with him that came against Moses and Aaron and were swallowed up by the ground under them.
Here we have a stark word. Here we see the Lord testing Israel: “He gave you manna to eat in the wilderness, something your ancestors had never known, to humble and test you so that in the end it might go well with you.” [Deuteronomy 8:16]. Yet Paul says that they put Him to the test. A great irony occurs when God is testing us, and we despise His discipline, thereby testing Him.