WE ARE NOT IGNORANT OF SATAN’S DEVICES OR SCHEMES – PART 4
That is what the bible states in one abrupt verse – 2Corinthians 2:11. But how many of these schemes can we name, the ways Satan implements his plans/schemes to bring catastrophe into the world to oppose all that God arranged for goodness and man’s salvation. Satan and his horde of demons work tirelessly to overthrow, to contaminate, to distort and to confuse, lest the light of the gospel shines through and man is converted. Satan’s time is short and as a raging lion, he moves in all of human activity with his schemes. Let us look at some more of these ways Satan uses.
[12]. SATAN WILL BE MOST FASTIDIOUS IN NATIONAL GOVERNMENTS AND WORLD BODIES
The rise of self-serving politicians and political gutless wonders who are agenda driven, is what we have among us. It causes chaos everywhere. The devil has always aimed at the top and all through history he has had such evil men ruling over nations. The best way to suppress the people is to control those at the top. The big difference between the past and the present is one verse we have quoted already in speaking about the last days of the Church age - {{2Timothy 3:12-13 “Indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. EVIL MEN AND IMPOSTORS WILL PROCEED FROM BAD TO WORSE, deceiving and being deceived.”}}
If you doubt the bible, take a look around you at the world situation. Heads of governments all over the world are failing and seemingly unable to bring in good rule. We have dictators everywhere. Surely I do not have to prove to anyone the declining state of the world.
It is not only the government of nations that are showing incompetence but the run for globalisation is strongly being implemented by bodies outside of national governments. When the United Nations was born after WW2 it was meant to be an organisation to secure world peace and the betterment of humanity. It has failed miserably, but more than that, it now is the leader in the persecution of Israel and the instrument of the New World Order, a move to bring all human beings under one control that will be socialism with denial of all rights.
I write this section a couple of days before December 2023, after Russia has been openly murdering the people of The Ukraine since February 2022, and what has the United Nations done about it? Nothing. Yet look at the constant condemnations of Israel since the Hamas attack on Israel. The UN is Satan’s body these days, really under his control.
The World Health Organisation, is the worse arm of the United Nations for evil. Check it yourselves on good Christian sites. I won’t take the time here. Check also one of the worst bodies in the world at present, the World Economic Forum (WEF). Satan has great control in these bodies with demonic men and women.
In my State a woman stood for State Parliament but her aim was not for the welfare of her constituents. She went into Parliament for just one reason only. Her agenda was to get support from her socialist/Marxist party for an abortion bill. She achieved that and legalised abortion right until the day of birth. After that she resigned. Tell me, was that a satanic plant or just “one of those things”.
We are seeing the rise of self-serving, selfish and also secretive politicians who tell you to your face one thing but intend to do the opposite. We have an era of valueless leaders, gutless politicians who are taking the nations down. This is Satan’s aim of course to weaken the whole structure at the top so the leaven of evil is perpetrated right through the system. Far too many are in Parliaments who are agenda driven, and when they are that way inclined, their agendas are usually wicked ones.
There was a time, back how many years I can’t be sure, that there was a good measure of Christians in Government and morality was far better than today and people were governed with certainty. All that has gone. Now we have wickedness covering a cloak of lies. Satan is actively pursuing the destruction of nations for that will bring about wars and death; hardship with rising cost of living; and despairing and desperate people. Satan loves death – {{John 8:44 “You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. HE WAS A MURDERER FROM THE BEGINNING, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for HE IS A LIAR AND THE FATHER OF LIES.”}}
Is there a breakdown in world society? Consider the rise in lawlessness and murders. Consider the radical Islamic protests all through the western world calling for the extermination of Israel and the establishment of an Islamic state in every nation under sharia law. Consider the enormous debts hanging over most nations that will burst very soon. Consider the growing influence of drugs and the occult and rebellion. Consider the huge arms race and the increasing potential for wars everywhere. Consider the fools deluded with climate change and reducing farming and animal numbers so famine will come. I could go on.
Have you wondered why this is? The answer is simple enough. It is CHAOS. Satan is the master of chaos. Some of you who read this may not believe in a Rapture followed by the great Tribulation but they are coming soon; right on the doorstep. In Revelation chapter 6, the Tribulation begins and the condition of the world is such that wars break out when peace is taken from the earth and tragedy follows tragedy; judgement follows judgement. You see the groundwork for that is being prepared now. National decency and goodness must decline and evil men and women in governance help bring this about.
I do not know how many years are left before the Lord returns for His Church but it is very few at the most. Everything is now set in place. If the Lord tarries this is what we will see – increasing confusion and scandal; more and deeper economic problems; more violence and lawlessness; more hatred and increasing opposition to Israel; more persecution against Christians and an increase in anti-Christian legislation.
Meanwhile, Christian, please be part of this verse and wait for your crown (it is only for those who are looking and waiting) - {{Titus 2:13-14 “LOOKING FOR THE BLESSED HOPE and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour, Christ Jesus who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds.”}}
[13]. THE ATTACK ON THE CORE VALUE GOD INSTITUTED - MARRIAGE
This open and demonic attack on true marriage is an evil that belongs to our lifetimes, as God-instituted marriage signifies the marriage bond between Christ and the Church. Long ago before even the creation of the universe, God’s omniscience knew that He would create men and women and would join them in the bond of marriage. That marriage bond reflected the more sacred bond of Christ and His Church, His Bride. That is why an attack on God-instituted marriage is so disastrous because it is a slap in the face for Christ's redeeming work for His Church.
Even in the days of secret homosexuality and sexual affairs and infidelity, no one really thought about having homosexual marriage. It was too unthinkable but here we have it today. We have legalised Sodom in our societies. We have made Gomorrah lawful with penalties for those who oppose it. This is a very serious matter. Even in our churches faithful men who uphold God given marriage and speak against homosexuality can be arrested in places. I am uncertain about the USA in this matter but it can happen here and in parts of Europe.
I see now (November 2023) where the Australian Government is trying striving to pass a Misinformation Bill and Disinformation Bill. They go together. Initially it will include anything you put online and firstly aimed at the Big Tech Social Media. If it does pass it means anything that is opposite to the Government’s agenda or takes a different view will be dealt with and severe penalties are mooted. I am not going over the top when I say that this will include speaking about homosexuality not being correct. That is “misinformation and disinformation” in the government’s view. It will penalise opposition to gay marriage and Christians speaking of social issues and I believe in a short time, it will include the Christian gospel. It will be forbidden to preach it because it will be deemed misinformation.
Christians who support traditional marriage and oppose “gay marriage” (there is nothing gay about it!) are called homophobic. That is such a misnomer. “homo” is Latin for man and phobos is Greek for fear. The word means having a fear of the male species. It has nothing whatever to do with sexuality in any way. If a person believes homosexual “marriage” is wrong he/she is branded homophobic and slurred by all manner of people groups. I believe the majority of the public supports the “gay marriage” in acceptance, and that would be because it does not affect them so they don’t care. But God cares and it all comes under Romans 1.
Satan desires the destruction of all our conservative values and has gone a long way to implement that. His agents have been planted everywhere and they are getting worse - (in the context of the last days of the Church age) – {{2Timothy 3:12-13 “Indeed, ALL WHO DESIRE TO LIVE GODLY IN CHRIST JESUS WILL BE PERSECUTED. EVIL MEN AND IMPOSTORS WILL PROCEED FROM BAD TO WORSE, deceiving and being deceived.”}}
14. THE RISE OF SATANIC DICTATORS, MURDERERS, AND TOTALITARIAN DESPOTS IN THE LAST CENTURY
The world has always had evil men and dictators. For example I touched on that today as part of a sermon. Consider the wickedness of these people in France which had the greatest mass killings of Christians of any nation in Europe - [[ Along with Jezebel, and Semiramis, the most vile and despicable woman ever to walk on the earth was Catherine de Medici. This satanically possessed woman was responsible for the death of untold hundreds of thousands of Christians. Henry II was married to Catherine de Medici and they set out with the most horrible persecutions against the Huguenots.
The priests did Satan’s work with demonic hatred. On St Bartholomew’s day, August 1572, the most barbarous massacre took place inspired by the devil and Catherine de Medici, Pope Pius 5th and Phillip 2nd King of Spain. The demonic leaders of this were the King and the Pope; and the Roman Catholic clergy inspired the populace into a fanatic frenzy and they launched against the Huguenots in a most horrific slaughter. This spread throughout the provinces in a bloodthirsty craze. One of the most sadistic murderers was the Cardinal of Lorraine. 70,000 victims were slaughtered at the hands of the Pope and his envoys in 1572 (some estimates are 100 000), and their bodies choked the rivers of France and lay over the plains. 4000 bodies were in the Seine in Paris. ]]
Yes dictators and evil men and women have dotted history – Antiochus Ephiphanes who desecrated the Jewish Temple, Herod, Genghis Kahn, and the persecuting Emperors of the Roman Empire. There are so many but they were scattered through history. In the last century there has been a concentration of them and they have been horrific on the world. These are Satan’s children and are demonically possessed. I speak of men like Stalin, Lenin, Hitler, Mussolini, Pol Pot, Mao Zedong, the Kaiser, Xi of China, Kim “the rocket man” of North Korea, Putin, among many others. That is only a small sample of what the world has produced in the last 100 or so years. Satan absolutely loves his students who follow his wicked ways with concentrated evil. They will get worse. God says so. Satan raises up such men to bring heartache, chaos and hurt to people.
Satan’s greatest delusion in the world is the little red fellow with a tail and a pitchfork, idolised at Halloween and treated with fantasy, treated comically rather than realistically. The cobra takes a beautiful form but is deadly. Do not be deceived.
Well might we ask why Satan developed these murderous dictators. The reason I think is to make the majority of people miserable, to be hurt and to be destroyed. We are not ignorant of Satan’s devices, the schemes he entails to maximise his influence so that it is taken away from the Lord. I just can’t imagine the death of hundreds of millions of human beings that the dictators above are responsible for. How great their punishment in the lake of fire will be eternally. They deserve it.
Who is the greatest man or woman of wickedness that Satan has ever raised up? Well you will not find that person in the list above. That one is still to come and it is very likely he is in the world today, unrevealed. The bible knows him as the man of sin (man of lawlessness), the beast of Revelation 13, the rider on the white horse of Revelation 6, the son of perdition, the little horn of Daniel, and perhaps more commonly, The Antichrist. This man who appears in the Tribulation after the Church is raptured, will be fully possess by Satan as if he is Satan himself. Those times will be worse than any that earth has ever known.
[15]. SATAN OWNS MODERNISM ESPECIALLY IN ROCK MUSIC
Now I touch on a very controversial subject. I am doing this because I believe it is a primary area for the devil to capture the souls of people and enchain them to his behaviour. I speak of the music world. Sometimes I feel like calling it the “noise world” or the “demonic world”.
Baroque and Classical music was built upon harmonious rhythms and beauty, all contained in mathematical principles. It gave great enjoyment to people, a calm and peace. Then along came Stravinsky with his Rite of Spring with its discords and disharmony and this is Britannica’s notes on it – [[ It is considered one of the first examples of Modernism in music and is noted for its brutality, its barbaric rhythms, and its dissonance. Its opening performance provided one of the most scandalous premieres in history, with pro and con members of the audience arguing so volubly that the dancers were unable to take their cues from the orchestra. The Rite of Spring still strikes many contemporary listeners as a startlingly modern work. ]]
We just had there a word “modernism”. To the younger mind modernism means progress and acceptance. To some more mature people modernism means decay and the breaking up of what was traditionally acceptable. It is often the trashing of values, saying that the past was not good enough and we follow a batter way today.
This thinking was helped by the psychologists, and that hard breed of humanists and atheists who wanted to tear down Christian values and bring in a new order. Kant, Freud, well known names but I think this quote from Physics Forum puts it very well - [[ “Just as we have pillars of Christian faith, the saints, so are there individuals who have become pillars of unbelief. Peter Kreeft discusses six modern thinkers who've had an enormous impact on our everyday life. They have also done great harm to the Christian mind. Their names: Machiavelli, the inventor of “the new morality”; Kant, the subjectiviser of Truth; Nietzsche, the self-proclaimed “Anti-Christ”; Freud, the founder of the “sexual revolution”; Marx, the false Moses for the masses; and Sartre, the apostle of absurdity. The articles in this series constitute background to help us understand the main personalities, and those ideas they advocated, which have led us to the secular society.” ]] (Reference: https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/the-pillars-of-unbelief-looking-at-kant-freud-and-sartre-from-a-christian-view.88210/)
Modern music and modern art and modern morality and modern literature all spring from the perverted satanic minds of the pioneering men mentioned above. I add Darwin also to the list. These men had an enormous and continuing evil influence on the world. However we were discussing the modern music world.
Nothing more mind-blowing and perverted in music, will outdo the modern rock scene. Out of jazz grew the rock beat that sprang to life in the 1950s and captivated a whole younger generation worldwide. Compared with what was to come, the 1950s rock was rather mild but it was the start. Later rock music developed into heavy metal, contemporary rock and hundreds of genres. These are just a few – “Acid Trance, Acid-House, Art Punk, Alternative Rock, Britpunk, College Rock, Crossover Thrash, Crust Punk (thx Haug), Emotional Hardcore (emo / emocore), Experimental Rock, Folk Punk, Vispop, Wonky, Pop, Progressive Metal, Psychedelic, Glam Rock, Gothic Metal, Grind Core”.
One needs to look at the LYRICS these genres promote, as well as the BANDS that perform this stuff. So many are about drugs, sex, especially homosexuality, Satanism and the occult and violence and illicit love. Bands are influenced by drugs and a very perverted lifestyle. In this modern music scene, Satan destroys the whole minds of younger generations. It is all wicked but some young Christians think they can be part of that and follow Christ. You can’t. It does not work. Do not place yourselves in Satan’s lair.
Part 5 will follow on looking at the attack on the mind, religion, Islam and more.
ronaldf@aapt.net.au
