Spiritual authority derives from God alone, who created all things and consequently has every right to do with his creation as he sees fit. In his wisdom, our Creator delegated some of his authority to Adam, when he commissioned him to govern the earth.
So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. 28 Then God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it...” Genesis 1:27-28 (NLT)
Adam was responsible to use this God-given authority for good, just as his Creator does. Satan, who has no inherent authority, since he is also a created being, desired to have the authority delegated to Adam in order to use it destructively. Satan is a hater and loathed the humans God had created. Perhaps he had an inkling that they were destined to share God’s throne one day, something Satan tried to snatch for himself.
God gave Adam the choice to love and work in harmony with him or not. He put both the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden. He was free to eat the former but forbidden to eat the latter. The tree of life would impart eternal life; but the other one, death. Sadly, Adam and Eve chose to go their own way, swallowing the serpent’s lie that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil would make them like God, allowing them to be independent from him.
The essence of sin is found in this lust to be independent from God.
By submitting to Satan instead of God, they relinquished the delegated authority God had vested in them and turned it over to Satan, thereby becoming his slaves.
Satan uses usurped authority in a completely different way from God. Whereas the Creator imparts life and blessings, the devil only comes to steal, kill, and destroy. (John 10:10)
Once Satan acquired authority over mankind, he set about to destroy us. Since he cannot possibly harm God, he attacks men, women, and especially children, the most defenseless and guileless. He is working to deform and pervert us through sin and deception in order to eliminate as many people as possible from earth and heaven. Essentially, he is working to nullify God’s very first commandment, which is to be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth.
Those who actively serve Satan today are doing everything possible to keep people from bearing children and raising them to glorify God. Instead he is trying to kill, pervert, and recruit children into his service.
Never before have we seen such things.
Satan can employ his stolen authority and power over us when we surrender to his lies and temptations.
He must continually convince us to chose him and his ways over God and the good news of the gospel – lies over truth and death over life. A case in point is the abortion issue.
Child sacrifice was long ago enshrined in the worship of Chemosh and Molech in the Old Testament. We know from Scripture that such gods or idols represent demonic beings hiding behind the facade. (1 Corinthians 10:19-21) These evil beings have not gone away. All demons serve Satan, including those connected to Chemosh and Molech. They demand the blood of infants. People then willingly sacrificed their children in order to gain some sort of occult spiritual advantage. There is one particularly intriguing passage at which we should look.
When the king of Moab saw that he was losing the battle, he led 700 of his swordsmen in a desperate attempt to break through the enemy lines near the king of Edom, but they failed. 27 Then the king of Moab took his oldest son, who would have been the next king, and sacrificed him as a burnt offering on the wall. So there was great anger against Israel, and the Israelites withdrew and returned to their own land. 2 Kings 3:26-27 (NLT)
In this instance, evil power was released against Israel when the king of Moab sacrificed his eldest son to the devil. This man willingly killed the heir to his throne to enlist Satan’s power to defeat God’s people, which apparently was granted. This was an extreme case which we may consider barbaric, but was it any less gruesome and horrific than modern day mothers choosing to execute over 60 million of their own unborn babies in the United States alone since 1973? The king of Moab wanted victory over his enemies. What do modern Americans want? Most of the time mothers kill their unborn babies to avoid embarrassment, inconvenience, career interruptions, or economic hardship. Most of these women probably have been deceived, as was Eve, into thinking that these babies are not really human beings at all, just blobs of tissue. They do not understand that God says he knows us before the creation of the world and personally forms us in the womb. (Jeremiah 1:5) Those unborn infants may be just tissue to these mothers, but to God they are beloved children. Some have declared that they rejoice in their abortions, but many others rue having aborted their child or children. Thankfully, God offers forgiveness, if we turn to him with a repentant heart.
Not only does Satan kill and destroy, he also steals. One way he accomplishes this is through homosexuality and transgenderism. If we accept the premise that God created us to bring glory to himself and joy and fulfillment to us, how could we ever believe that he would create humans who somehow were mis-sexed or mis-gendered? It is not surprising that atheists might come to such a conclusion, since they believe humans are an imperfect accident of evolution. If we came to be purely by random chance, how can we have any confidence at all that we are what we are supposed to be? In fact, how can we have any confidence in anything? But if God created us, as the Bible records, and what he created was “good,” then we have been made perfectly in line with his benevolent will and purpose.
You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. 14 Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it. 15 You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. 16 You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed. 17 How precious are your thoughts about me, O God. They cannot be numbered! 18 I can’t even count them; they outnumber the grains of sand! And when I wake up, you are still with me! Psalm 139:13-18 (NLT)
It is obvious to any thoughtful person that our reproductive organs were given to us to bring new humans into the world. In the process they also bring pleasure, joy, and fulfillment to us, a wonderful blessing from a gracious Creator. Their chief purpose is the multiplication of humanity, as commanded in Genesis.
So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. 28 Then God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it. Reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the animals that scurry along the ground.” Genesis 1:27-28 (NLT)
It is obvious that abortion is a blatant attempt to circumvent this commandment. Homosexuality, on the other hand, is a more roundabout way to defeat God’s purposes. Sin has caused a great amount of trauma, damage, and perversion of God’s creation and purpose. As a result of Adam’s first sin, because of the nature of inheritance, we are born into this world with a predisposition to sin called the “flesh” or sin nature in the Bible. Some of us are bent toward anger, fear, alcoholism, etc.
All of us are skewed sexually by sin, some more than others. It’s all part of Satan’s evil scheme to pervert what God made beautiful.
To take the “easy” way out by claiming that God deliberately created some of us with a desire for others of the same sex makes him appear to be unjust and slanders his integrity. Sin has done this, and the lie is being propagated that this is normal and a good thing. People are enormously susceptible to lies, especially when they allow us to do what we wish. These lies are designed to convince us to give ourselves over to sin instead of resisting it with God’s help. The warning issued to Cain still stands.
You will be accepted if you do what is right. But if you refuse to do what is right, then watch out! Sin is crouching at the door, eager to control you. But you must subdue it and be its master.” Genesis 4:7 (NLT)
We all must engage in resisting whatever sin easily besets us. We all have some areas which are more troubling to us than others. In the case of homosexuality, using basic logic, God would not create people in a way that sets them up to violate his first commandment to be fruitful and multiply. This is a ploy of the devil, which seems to be gaining momentum, which must be renounced and overcome with God’s help, just like any other sinful propensity. I am not making light of this. Sin is a human condition. Overcoming it cost Jesus his life, and it will cost us as well, but with God’s help we can be victorious.
Do not let sin control the way you live; do not give in to sinful desires. 13 Do not let any part of your body become an instrument of evil to serve sin. Instead, give yourselves completely to God, for you were dead, but now you have new life. So use your whole body as an instrument to do what is right for the glory of God. 14 Sin is no longer your master, for you no longer live under the requirements of the law. Instead, you live under the freedom of God’s grace. Romans 6:12-14 (NLT)
The claim that God puts the souls of men into women’s bodies and vice versa also takes a swipe at God’s benevolence and wisdom. God would not do that, but the devil seeks to convince us that this is the case. Pagan religions have long promoted transgenderism. We know that the demons behind these false gods report to the devil. Ashtoreth, an ancient female deity whose worship and cult goes back thousands of years, claimed to have the power to transform men into women. Her followers engaged in all sorts of sexual perversion. The devil seeks to take God’s benign and beautiful purpose for sex in marriage and mutilate it into something ugly and defiling, just as he promotes the mutilation of sexual organs in the quest for abandoning how God made us to become something else.
When we rebelliously or naively abandon God and the purpose for which he created us, we open the floodgates of evil and confusion.
So God abandoned them to do whatever shameful things their hearts desired. As a result, they did vile and degrading things with each other’s bodies. 25 They traded the truth about God for a lie. So they worshiped and served the things God created instead of the Creator himself, who is worthy of eternal praise! Amen. 26 That is why God abandoned them to their shameful desires. Even the women turned against the natural way to have sex and instead indulged in sex with each other. 27 And the men, instead of having normal sexual relations with women, burned with lust for each other. Men did shameful things with other men, and as a result of this sin, they suffered within themselves the penalty they deserved. Romans 1:24-27 (NLT)
That being said, there is hope. God cannot be defeated, and his plan for the people he created will yet come to pass. That is why he sent his Son, Jesus the Messiah, to wrest delegated authority back from Satan into the hands of man once again. The Book of Revelation gloriously announces this turn of events.
Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices shouting in heaven: “The world has now become the Kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign forever and ever.” 16 The twenty-four elders sitting on their thrones before God fell with their faces to the ground and worshiped him. 17 And they said, “We give thanks to you, Lord God, the Almighty, the one who is and who always was, for now you have assumed your great power and have begun to reign. Revelation 11:15-17 (NLT)
Before Jesus ascended into heaven, he told his disciples that all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to him. (Matthew 28:18) Jesus shares this authority with his born-again people in the church. Consequently Satan no longer has authority in our lives, and his influence in the rest of the earth will soon be terminated.
When the seventy-two disciples returned, they joyfully reported to him, “Lord, even the demons obey us when we use your name!” 18 “Yes,” he told them, “I saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning! 19 Look, I have given you authority over all the power of the enemy, and you can walk among snakes and scorpions and crush them. Nothing will injure you. 20 But don’t rejoice because evil spirits obey you; rejoice because your names are registered in heaven.” Luke 10:17-20 (NLT)
Let us remember that our ultimate battle is a spiritual one (Ephesians 6:12) between the kingdom of God and the realm of darkness and evil ruled by Satan.
We understand that even though Christ dealt a death blow to Satan and his kingdom when he rose from the dead, God in his wisdom has permitted us, his people, to be part of the “clean up operation” here on planet earth. It is our Lord’s intention that we his people will have the privilege of crushing Satan under our feet (Romans 16:20), just as he used Moses to crush Pharaoh.
All will be over when Jesus appears in the clouds with great glory, just as he promised. Until then, we are living through an intense contest between two opposing kingdoms for the hearts and minds of people. Each kingdom is enlisting the consent of people to be governed by their respective kings.
God’s kingdom is enlarged as more and more people declare allegiance to the true King, Jesus the Messiah.
The gospel is a proclamation that God will forgive the rebelliousness of those who repent for serving self and Satan. He will transfer them into his glorious kingdom, if they will accept his offer to be reconciled to God through Christ.
We also pray that you will be strengthened with all his glorious power so you will have all the endurance and patience you need. May you be filled with joy, 12 always thanking the Father. He has enabled you to share in the inheritance that belongs to his people, who live in the light. 13 For he has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and transferred us into the Kingdom of his dear Son, 14 who purchased our freedom and forgave our sins.Colossians 1:11-14 (NLT)
The acknowledgement that Jesus is Lord, therefore, is the goal of the gospel and the undoing of our alliance with Satan.
As more and more people consent to be governed by the Lord Jesus, Satan’s power and authority on earth is further weakened. Therefore, the proclamation of the gospel is our greatest spiritual weapon. The door is still open for people to change sides and come back to God. Which side are you on? Time is running short. When Jesus appears in the clouds as he promised, the time for deciding will be over. Choose life and God now, before it is too late.
Prayer
O God, forgive me for allying myself with Satan. I did not understand what I was doing, but now I see. I choose to surrender my life to the Lord Jesus. I receive forgiveness for my sins, eternal life, and reconciliation to you, Father God. Thank you for giving me your Holy Spirit to live in and through me. Use me to help others escape from the kingdom of darkness. Amen.
