Friday, August 1, 2014

War In Your Heart # 17

Defeat Through the First Man in Eden (continued)

Black Week - in Eden (continued)

"Thou shall NOT surely die." This is the archliar's first lie to man. It is a full-sized lie, for it not only denies God's Word, but it charges God Himself with being a liar. It is such a downright, unequivocal lie that it gives the lie to God. Eve faces a choice that involves her eternal destiny as well as her immediate relationship to God; a choice that hinges upon one thing only: believing God's truth or satan's lie.

To believe the devil's lie would mean for her spiritual death; separation from God for time and for eternity. She had tampered with God's Word in saying "Lest ye die," which had reacted upon her by lessening the sense of obligation to obey His command. So she had laid herself open to believe the devil's lie. By discrediting the authenticity of the Word of God we automatically discount its authority. "The devil first makes men skeptics, then he proceeds to make them atheists." What would Eve do - believe God's truth or the devil's lie? satan must hasten to capitalize upon the ground already gained, for he has not yet won through to the victory.

The Affirmation

The devil knew from his own experience the enormity of his first lie to man - that there was no danger of God's penalty being enacted against disobedience and rebellion - for he well knew that for that very sin he had been cast out of heaven and that hell had been prepared to receive him for all eternity. He must promise them an advantage to be gained that would far outweigh the risk of the penalty of disobedience. A prize to be obtained must be held before Eve that would render God impotent to impose the penalty. He must instigate Eve to break away from the throne of God and act in self-will, even as he himself had done. In no other way could he gain control over her, which was the one thing he was seeking. So he makes an affirmation which is the key to Eve's defeat.

Genesis 3:5: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil.

"Ye shall be as God." The promise of equality with God, the very thing his own self-love and self-esteem had led him to  grasp after, with such terrible consequences! satan had attempted to ascend from creaturehood into Godhood, and he now tempts man to the same sin. Deification of the creature is the fashion of the day. satan set the fashion, and the dictators and dictatorships of  of the present day are patterned after the similitude of satan's sin.

"You, as an equal with God, will no longer be subject to His law but will be a law unto yourself. You will no longer be subservient to Him, for you will be a sovereign in your own right. Oh, there is even more in store for you than the dominion over this little earth. You have the capacity to share in the government of he universe 0 even the very throne itself." "The serpent beguiled me." Yes, by this devilish lie he beguiled Eve to renounce the beneficent sovereignty of God for abject subjection to his own satanic will. This had all along been his goal. So the archliar tells his second lie, his most dastardly and deadly; for in it he has not only struck a second time at the throne of God, but he is out to get God's first man and woman to do the same, and so to follow him in his rebellion and anarchy.

~Ruth Paxson~

(continued with # 18)

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