Friday Morning Manna
March 6, 2020
Nathaniel
Fajardo email:[email protected]
Which is Deadlier: Deception or Temptation?
“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven . . . Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy name, cast out demons in Thy name, and one done many wonderful things in Thy name? And then I will declare unto them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice iniquity ”
Matt. 7: 23
Calling upon His, i.e., Jesus Christ’s name, invoking the authority and power His name, apparently doing the very works He entrusted to His disciples, apostles and followers— prophesying, which of course comprehends teaching and expounding on the prophecies, casting out demons, ah! Yes! exorcising demons out of the possessed, and doing many wonderful things, including performing miracles of course!
This has to be the complete package of being a true follower of Jesus Christ, or so they and we thought!
So, what else was lacking? What did these Christians, or followers of Christ miss? They were actually doers, not mere preachy talkers pounding away and pontificating on their religion’s “talking points!” What did they miss? What could’ve and should’ve they done but failed to?
Mark Twain famously said: “It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” Indeed! Indeed!
When Satan, tempted Eve and Adam in Eden, he appeared to them disguised as a serpent which then was “more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.” (Gen. 3: 1). Here’s how the serpent looked like so that Satan chose it to be his first medium, and why it was cursed to “go on his belly and eat the dust of the ground all your life” (Gen. 3: 14). (Itals mine)
“In order to accomplish his work unperceived, Satan chose to employ as his medium the serpent,— a disguise well-adapted for his purpose of deception. The serpent was then one of the wisest [cunning] and most beautiful creatures on the earth. It had wings, and while flying through the air presented an appearance of dazzling brightness, having the color and brilliancy of burnished gold. Resting in the rich-laden branches of the forbidden tree, and regaling itself with the delicious fruit, it was an object to arrest the attention and delight of the beholder. Thus in the garden or peace lurked the destroyer, watching for its prey.” E.G. White, Patriarchs & Prophets, p 53.
Note that Satan, “the prince” or ruler “of devils,” “the prince of this world” (Matt. 9: 34; 12: 24; John 16: 11) is also called and exposed, to all who would listen and take heed, as “the prince of the power of air, who now works in the sons of disobedience.” Eph. 2: 2. Let all beware that Satan is messing with the air we breathe, the atmosphere that envelopes the earth, and the ether which figures so prominently in these last days through which communication, technology and ideas are transmitted as well as what were once science-fiction forms of warfare and mass mind-manipulation are currently being waged!
Talking serpents, talking lizards and talking heads, etc. Note further that while the serpent was then the most dazzling beautiful animal of them all, possessed wings and fly through the air, it had no power of speech! But it turned out to be a “talking serpent,” that should have set of all the alarms on Eve’s head but wonder of wonders—she not only tuned in, listened, and responded, she went on to parley with it, evidently deceived into thinking she was speaking to a talking serpent, not Satan himself! Ensnared, the temptation-pitch with its payload of the very first and mother of end-time Spiiritualism, was launched from that forked tongue!
From having wings and power to fly through the air, the fall of the serpent is similar to the fall of Lucifer-turned-Satan—from the dizzying heights of glory to the detestable depths of inglorious ignominy! Indeed, the higher the height the greater the fall. “Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.”
“The Lord then passed sentence upon the serpent: ‘Because you have done this, you are cursed above all cattle and more than every beast of the field. On your belly you shall go, and you shall eat dust all the days of your life.” Gen. 3: 14. Since it had been employed as Satan’s medium, the serpent was to share the visitation of divine judgment. From the most beautiful and admired of the creatures of the field, it was to become the most groveling and detested of them all, feared and hated by both man and beast. The words next addressed to the serpent applied directly to Satan himself, pointing forward to his ultimate defeat and destruction: ‘I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it [the seed] shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his [the seed’s] heel.” v. 15.” – Ibid, p. 58.
From the Garden of Eden to the Wilderness of Temptation. Matt. 4: 1-11.
See Matthew 4: 1-11. In Eden, Satan used the serpent as his medium and as his disguise with the purpose to deceive Eve. Four thousand years later, in the desolate wilderness, Satan came this time disguised as an angel of light apparently sent from heaven to succor Jesus who, at day forty of His total food and water fast, was at the tipping point of His adopted humanity’s weakness. Jesus was legitimately, literally, biologically hungry—in fact, starving, at the point of death! That was how humanly vulnerable His adopted, sinless nature was in His incarnation four thousand years after the fall! Not so when Eve and Adam were deceived way back in Eden!
Wisely picking his way and knowing where and when to begin, Satan’s first overwhelming temptation to Jesus was on appetite and temperance—to yield and obey him by using His power to “turn the stones to bread” and save Himself from starving to death. Jesus could, but His test was also how completely He trusted and depended on the Father only, not Himself. Having failed on this point, Satan next turned to the temptation of presumption, the counterfeit of faith by quoting Scriptures (which he consistently did on all three—appetite (desire/lust), presumption, the” world and things of the world”— revealing how critical it is to individually know the Holy Scriptures for Satan has studied centuries before we were born and uses his lingering intellect and wisdom in devilish desperation “knowing his time is short” to misuse and misapply it to our deception and destruction!).
Now, what Scriptures did the deceiver quote? Psalms 91: 11, 12! Yes, from the very chapter which is known and accepted across the board as “The Soldier’s Psalm!” How did Satan, the chief and master false evangelist and preacher use Psalms 91? And how did Jesus, His strength failing and His human eyes bleary detect Satan in disguise? Certainly not by appearance or by tone of the voice, for he appeared as dazzling “angel of light!”
Here is where countless already have, and will continue to fail and fall even while apparently doing all the other good things cited by the Christian believers in Matthew 7: 23 but one, which is childlike, unquestioning, complete obedience. Not adequately knowing and refusing to advance and update themselves individually with the advancing light of truth, they fail to avail of its provisions to act as both the armor and sword the Word Satan’s deceptions, sophistries and temptations. They were content with what they already knew: Laodicean, lukewarm Christians.
And then two things: Satan misquoted the passage in Psalms 91 by skipping or taking away a portion of it and Eve, as his first “partner in crime,” misquoted the Creator’s command by adding to it! What a deadly combination and corrupted “teamwork” it was, still is, and will yet be in the “final, overmastering delusion” of Satan during the sixth of the seven last plagues!
Here’s what Satan said, after carrying Jesus in his hands to the pinnacle of the temple: “If Thou art the Son of God, throw, for it is written, ‘He shall give His angels charge [or concerning] over Thee, and in their hands they shall bear you up, lest you cast your foot against the stone.” Matt. 4: 5, 6. Satan was quoting an “It is written,” “Thus saith the Lord.” And mind you, just after he, appearing as an angel of light, himself bore Jesus up in his hands to the pinnacle of the temple!
How did Jesus quickly detect Satan beneath his dazzling angelic disguise and his “It is written” words? Jesus, “the Word made flesh” (John 1: 14), as our Example, Himself studied the Word which He Himself gave to His penmen during the thirty “silent years” prior to emerging to be introduced and baptized by John the Baptist and anointing as the Messiah by the Holy Spirit on the banks of Jordan in 27 A.D.! The Living Word studied the written word! It was a long preparatory period that preceded His short, three-and-a half-years work and mission on earth!
Now, what did Satan leave out as he misquoted Psalms 91? Here’s the passage (the phrase italicized is the missing one: “For He shall give His angels charge over you, to keep you in all your ways. They shall bear you up in their hands, lest you dash your foot against a stone.” Verses 11, 12.
In Matt. 4: 5, 12 we read: “Then the devil to Him up to the holy city [Jerusalem!], set Him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to Him, “If You are the Son of God [didn’t say “Son of man!”], throw yourself down, for it is written: He shall give His angels charge concerning you (“to keep you in all your ways” is dropped) and in their hands they shall bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone.” To which Jesus quickly replied, using “word of God” which is “living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword” (Heb. 4: 12), “It is written again, “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord your God,” quoting the Old Testament! Satan himself knows the rules of the conflict, the ultimate authority of both the Old and New Testaments! He knows he is defeated, again. And so he moved on to the third and last class of temptation, “the love for the world and the things of the world”—the idol of countless, including those who claim to be “virgins waiting for the coming of the bridegroom” but receive the same most fearful and saddest reply when the bridegroom, Jesus Christ, finally returns, “I know you not!”
If Satan himself understands the authority and power of the Old Testament in that he used it, and nothing else from his abyss-deep “bag of tricks” to tempt Jesus, against whom he rebelled against in heaven and lost, hoping he could defeat Him somehow on earth, and lost again—do we wonder why so many of those who profess to know God and Jesus Christ continue to fall for his age-old deceptions and temptations as well as the deadlier “unnumbered schemes” for these last days, perfected from former basic ones?
We really shouldn’t really keep wondering why. For the “New Testament only” Christian, that is to be expected. Satan is still plying the same deceptions, temptations and hellish arts that he so successfully used in causing the generations following Adam and Eve, both the wicked and the “chosen people” under the Old Testament, Mosaic dispensation to apostatize and fall. So the “New Testament only Christian” is a sitting pretty duck for the “snares of the fowler.” Ps. 91: 2. For the antinomian “the law was nailed to the cross” Christian, he automatically becomes “lawless,” and a “a law unto himself” and is pressured by the counterfeit morality and religious movements to add, enact and enforce man-made religious laws (a reprise of the voluminous man-made laws of the elders, Pharisees and Sanhedrim that drowned out the simple Ten commandments of God in Christ’s time. The troubles that came upon, from the loss of their “chosen-nation” status and standing God in Christ Jesus, and the desolations their nation suffered thereafter in the desolations inflicted by Rome and others, were self-inflicted wounds. And so will it be for those who persist in teaching others that the Decalogue has been abrogated or “nailed to the cross.” This is what we should remember: “For all must stand before the judgment seat of Christ!” Rom. 14: 10; cf. Eccl. 12: 13, 14: Rev. 14: 6, 7, etc.
But what about those whom “the greatest light ever entrusted to mortals”—the three angels’ messages—“have been entrusted to act “watchmen and light bearers to the world?” (Vol. 9, Testimonies, p. 19). What deceptions and temptations has Satan has “tailored-fit” for them in these last days? Can they quickly discern and deal with them as Jesus did in the wilderness?
Let’s ponder upon this warning: “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord God, that I will send a famine on the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the Lord, but shall not find it.” Amos 8: 11, 12.
(To be continued next week)