Life On The Highest Plane
Christ Our Captain
His (the devil's) success in the world-wide revolution in religion is a topic of daily conversation in almost every country of the world today. The devil would have no religion but devil-worship; he would do away with all authority but that of self-will. The authority of the Sovereign God, delegated to the incarnate Word and revealed in the written Word, is set aside as something obsolete in the modern world. The right of every man to be a law unto himself in all matters of religion is the basic principle in the present appalling apostasy.
This terrible condition which God so plainly predicted would be seen in the last days is clearly outlined in one passage of Scripture. In the following verses we see the full-blown flower of anarchy, debauchery and apostasy.
2 Timothy 3:1-8, "But know this, that in the last days grievous times shall come ... For men shall be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, haughty, railers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, implacable slanderers, without self-control, fierce, no lovers of good, traitors, headstrong, puffed up, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God; holding a form of godliness, but having denied the power thereof: from these also turn away ... For of these are they that creep into houses and take captive silly women laden with sins, led away by divers lusts ... ever learning and never able to come to to a knowledge of the truth ... And even as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also withstand the truth; men corrupted in mind, reprobate concerning the faith."
Against the corporate body of Christ satan is working in two very distinct and definite ways at the present time, through degeneration and through division.
First of all, he is sowing tares among the wheat. He is placing his emissaries both in the pulpit and in the pews for sole purposes of leavening the whole. He is mixing his own progeny among the people of God so as to lower the standard of the entire body of Christ. Thus Christ will be so caricatured before those in satan's kingdom that they will see no advantage in leaving it for the Kingdom of God.
satan is working through his paid and his lay agents in the professing Church to destroy the sovereignty of God; to undermine the authority of His Word; to strip Christ of His Deity, and to unseat Him from the place and preeminence of Lordship; and to lead His people away from full conformity to the image of Christ by partial conformity to the standards and fashions of the world. Thus through this degeneration within the visible Church, the body of Christ is being made impotent in the midst of the world's appalling need.
The world has its standard of what the Christian should be, and inconsistent as it may seem, it holds the Church of Christ up to that standard. A worldly-minded woman was asked by a minister's wife to become a Christian. Her response was as revealing as it was cutting, "If I should become a Christian, I could never wear the immodest clothes that you wear." The emptiness of the pews speaks of the contempt the world has for a church that degenerates into a lecture hall and a place of entertainment. A friend, who was eagerly praying for a husband's conversion, who out of regard for her went regularly to church, said, "Oh! why doesn't the minister preach Christ?" "Anything but Christ crucified, risen, ascended, exalted" is the devil's motto and he is doing his best to get ministers of the Gospel to make it theirs.
But the devil has another mode of attack upon the corporate body of Christ. He is doing a very deadly work even among the saints of God through division. When he sees that he cannot touch the spiritual man through deceiving him regarding the fundamental truths of God, or undermine his love for God, or deflect him from doing the will of God, then he works to make him so zealous in his defense of the truth, so ardent in his love for it, so set in his own particular interpretation of it, that he will not fellowship with those who, as sound and true and devoted as he, do not see and act as he does. He cannot see that "adorning the doctrine' may be as great a manifestation of real love for Christ and as potent a weapon against the appalling apostasy as "defending" it. Or perhaps in his desire for vital spirituality within the Church he has placed such emphasis upon some segment of truth that he unspiritualizes other brethren who do not give that truth the same emphasis. Thus the devil succeeds in injecting into the very vitals of Christ's body the poison of acrimonious criticism, unwarranted suspicion, unloving intolerance and bitter feeling. By weakening and dividing the spiritual forces of Christ and by turning their eyes in upon themselves rather than out upon the world lying in sin, satan gains a tremendous victory in the conflict.
But the devil goes still further and presses on in an attack upon the individual members of Christ's body who have entered into real oneness with their Lord. He sends forth his fiery darts to carry depression of spirit, delusion of mind, distraction of heart, deflection of will and distress of body.
The human spirit is the headquarters of the Holy Spirit in the believer's life and the vantage ground from which He works to carry the life of Christ out to the uttermost part of the human personality. So it is very necessary to have it untrammelled, joyous, assured. But the evil one works to inject the poison of doubt one's spiritual condition, and discouragement over one's work. Especially are Christian workers being attacked in this manner by satan.
The world today s flooded with cults. Tons of literature are sent broadcast filled with satanic propaganda. Reading rooms and lecture halls are established and everything possible is done to delude people and to seduce them from the simplicity of the faith of Christ. Earnest children of God are often caught unawares in some time of sorrow or affliction when they seek for light and comfort. These cults hold forth spurious hope through specious lies and people are ensnared. Or some through neglect of God's Word and failure to appropriate their inheritance in Christ by faith are unsatisfied in their Christian lives and turn to one of these novelties in religion hoping by some short cut to obtain what thy have hitherto not had in experience. Others who desire the deepest spiritual life are led to take some truth of God's Word and then go beyond what the Word teaches regarding it into disastrous error. Or sometimes satan seduces a Christian worker into a study of the books of these various cults under the guise of ability to save others from deception, and he thereby becomes entrapped. satan has a thousand methods suited to the temperament and circumstances of the one he is trying to ensnare. satan hates the Word of God and works against it by blinding men's eyes (2 Corinthians 4:4), by substituting his own doctrines (1 Timothy 4:1-2), by contradicting it (Genesis 3:5), by wresting it (Matthew 4:6), by taking it out of men's hearts (Mark 4:15). Above all he would keep God's children ignorant of the truth concerning himself which the Bible reveals, and of the victory which Christ Jesus has already gained over him at the Cross.
~Ruth Paxson~
(continued with # 3)
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