When God created the angels, he made Lucifer as the most beautiful and powerful of them all. He was at the beginning of time the worship leader in heaven, whose job was to lead all of creation in adoration of our eternal God. Speaking the truth and praising his divine nature, Lucifer was the one who would point all the courts of heaven to the Lord.
But, something went very wrong. You see, as with all beings created in the image of God, Lucifer was given a will to choose. Without this will to choose, no one can truly love or really be a free individual who interacts and worships the living God. Lucifer became obsessed with his own beauty and power and desired to become greater than the Living God.
Ezekiel 28 tells the story prophetically:
“ ‘You were the seal of perfection,
full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.
You were in Eden,
the garden of God;
every precious stone adorned you:
carnelian, chrysolite and emerald,
topaz, onyx and jasper,
lapis lazuli, turquoise and beryl.
Your settings and mountings were made of gold;
on the day you were created they were prepared.
You were anointed as a guardian cherub,
for so I ordained you.
You were on the holy mount of God;
you walked among the fiery stones.
You were blameless in your ways
from the day you were created
till wickedness was found in you.
Through your widespread trade
you were filled with violence,
and you sinned.
So I drove you in disgrace from the mount of God,
and I expelled you, guardian cherub,
from among the fiery stones.
Your heart became proud
on account of your beauty,
and you corrupted your wisdom
because of your splendor.
So I threw you to the earth;
I made a spectacle of you before kings.
By your many sins and dishonest trade
you have desecrated your sanctuaries.
So I made a fire come out from you,
and it consumed you,
and I reduced you to ashes on the ground
in the sight of all who were watching.
All the nations who knew you
are appalled at you;
you have come to a horrible end
and will be no more.’ ”
Lucifer’s heart became proud because of his beauty. Pride corrupted his wisdom. When we become overly confident and prideful, our wisdom becomes corrupt. We can’t think straight or see right from wrong and we can become deceived by our own pride.
And from this point forward, Lucifer, now known as Satan or the Devil, is the opposite of everything he was in heaven and in Eden. He twists the truth about God into lies to turn people away from the Lord. His strategies do not include drawing people into truth, but how he utterly distorts the truth so that God’s people will run away from Jesus to the enemy’s plans.
He is the Father of Lies and longs to be worshipped and followed. He tries to imitate the living God – Jesus Christ our Lord. Our Lord wraps himself in light, he is the light. The enemy appears as an angel of light – but is really darkness. He wants to seem good, so he can steal people away from goodness into darkness. When he destroys the people God loves, he hurts God the most.
The Lord God is patient, slow to anger, abounding in love. God’s plan is for our good – even if it means we need to walk through difficulty. God would rather us go through the fire on earth to shape us and to sanctify us, than for us to live a life of complete comfort and end up in the fires of hell for eternity. The Devil, of course is patiently scheming and unrolling a plan or strategy to destroy us. Unlike God our Father, the Father of Lies is purposely making the road to hell comfortable and pleasant. He wants as many people unawares to stay on this road, so that those who do will end up in eternal torment.
I have been thinking on this long term strategy to destroy. I have lived close to 50 years on this earth, and while I can now boast of wrinkles and a slower metabolism, I can also see how the enemy has lied to God’s people over the past half a century. It has been slow, methodical and affective.
Let’s start with pride. This, of course, was the devil’s fall. His pride corrupted his wisdom so that he fell from a place of utterly perfect beauty and purity into the lowest pit of death and destruction and lies. How does he cause a great people to fall from a solid foundation of purity and worship? The same way he fell- Pride.
Pride corrupts our wisdom. Pride comes before a fall.
I remember sitting through sermons back in the 1980’s and even in the 1990’s where men would discuss the rapture and the end times. I specifically remember one who said, “Why is America such a great and powerful nation and they are not mentioned in the book of Revelation!? The answer is simple! The devil won’t be able to convince the nations to take out the nation of Israel unless America is removed. America will need to be raptured first, so that the rest of the world will turn against Israel.”
This, my friends, is called theology built on philosophy and pride. What is the pride? That America is such a great nation of Christian virtue that it would surely be remembered in the great end times prophetic book of Revelation is surely great pride. Believers in the 1990s couldn’t imagine America becoming a nation full of wickedness and sin – even though in the 1990’s the church itself was already caving on many moral issues and compromising.
Even greater a folly is to assume that a church steeped in materialism would not fall even further. This mind-frame in the church (that nothing bad could happen to America, because we were a Christian nation) ignored the foundational FACTS and TRUTHS of scripture that sin is pregnant with death. The earth shattering truth is that James 1:13-15 is not speaking figuratively when it says, “For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.
As the church has cuddled up to sin over the past hundred years since the Roaring Twenties, each generation has fallen even further than the one before. The devil’s plan to seduce the American church into a deadly sleep has taken decades of patience. He couldn’t bring it all at once. Righteousness and truth were stripped away layer by layer, generation by generation until a general hopelessness has set in.
And now, we have a nation full young people who have never heard of the real Jesus and they are desperate to find a real answer to the pain and death in their lives. We are truly at a turning point. Will we turn to the Lord? Will the church stop relying on our own efforts and “coolness” to draw in the world or will we humble ourselves and allow Jesus to take center stage? When will we allow Jesus to truly be the savior of the world? When will we stop playing church and religion?
The enemy may have a strategy of patience, but God has a greater patience and he has all knowledge, wisdom, and power and he is everywhere. The Lord has been aware of the enemy’s schemes all along. Are we ready to partner with Jesus to bring truth to a desperate world?
From the beginning, God had a plan to rescue the descendants of Adam and Eve from their own folly and sin. He waited patiently to send his Son Jesus, fully God and fully man, to come to live a sinless and perfect life, to conquer sin and death and to remove the keys of power from the devil.
Hebrews 2:14-18 says, “Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham’s descendants. For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.”
It is time that we realize that Jesus is the answer for our sin and death. Jesus is still the answer, as he has been from the beginning of time. Everyone who puts their faith in the Son of God will be saved. Will you partner with God’s plan today? Or will you continue to be led astray by the one who is intent on destroying you by leading you into sin that seems “harmless?”
Today, if you believe in Jesus, it is the day to make a decision. Will you live your Christian life confident in your circumstances and in the kingdoms of this world that are passing away, or will you live your Christian life confident in Christ alone? If you have never trusted Christ, and you see the death and evil in the world – there is an answer. He is the true light of the world. Turn from your sin to Jesus. Give him all of it. He will take it and forgive it and make you a new creation. Do not follow a path of destruction. Follow the path of life.
If you would like further equipping in spiritual tools to learn to combat the devil’s schemes to destroy your family, see the link below for the Equipping the Saints Conference coming in November!
Revealed Ministries 