Genesis 3:4-5 “ Then the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’”
Sure enough, mankind’s eyes were opened to evil on that fateful day (reference above). Adam and Eve already knew the good - they did not know the evil, nor how utterly inhuman that evil could be.
But the serpent, embodied by Satan himself, wasn’t concerned about whether he was speaking truth, his interest was in destroying any good mankind might enjoy and create in them an appetite for evil. When you look around at our world today, it appears he was very successful. We even see the pinnacle of Satan’s induced appetite for evil in the now popular statement “God hates….”
There are some who claim to be a church who try to picket funeral services of fallen soldiers, little girls’ funerals (Amish girls - 2006), Holocaust memorials, and others. Their common theme is “God hates …”, and they fi ll in the blank with their choice of the week. They seem to fail to remember that the greatest and most often spoken message in scripture is “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son….”
There is someone who hates; hated in the past, hates in the present, and will hate in the future - Satan. He hates God for kicking him out of heaven and he hates mankind because God loves mankind.
And so he has been actively enticing members of the human community to question God - “Has God said…” So his hate/anti-God message has always surfaced at major events and locations. But satanic evil is showing up in every town and village, not just the big city, and sometimes it masquerades as a house of “God” (we need to remember he was kicked out of heaven because he wanted to be god). So, Satan not only wants to destroy God’s human creation, he wants to destroy God’s church.
Satan starts out as he has always done, trying to make his victims question God.
His opening remark is “Has God indeed said…?” (verse one of passage above). He tries to get us to believe that God is wrong, or lying to us. If we buy that (concerning any subject and any passage of Scripture) then soon we are heading down a very destructive path (believing each new “doubt God” lie Satan feeds us), until we could be committing an evil act on a level with that in the one-room school house in Pennsylvania (Amish - 2006). It doesn’t take too many steps toward a cli◊before a major fall happens.
Therefore, at NO time and in NO way should we ever allow our minds to question God. To question God (the ONE who is never in error, never without the facts and never lying) is to believe and follow the prince of liars, Satan himself. To follow him one step is to be that much closer to our own destruction, and unfortunately, the destruction of others.
Some may say, “Can’t I think for myself?”
Well, ask yourself this question, “Am I thinking my thoughts, or Satan’s thoughts?”
If the conclusion of your thoughts is in disagreement with the Wisdom from Above, then Satan has taken you one more step toward your own destruction. And if you really had the mind that God created you to have, you wouldn’t want to take that step.
I can remember, in my younger days, asking very stupid questions like, “God, didn’t you know this was going to happen?
Why didn’t you stop this?” These came out of my mouth when my wife and I lost our firstborn son. But God didn’t strike me dead on the spot, for He knew my grief. You may wonder how God could know my grief. He knew it at Calvary when His Son died for me and for you, for all mankind. Since He knew my grief, He knew my question wasn’t from my heart, but from my grief. He gave me time to hear His voice, and filter out Satan’s voice.
When I knew His voice, I knew He didn’t hate, He loved. And I also knew that the one who hated was the evil one. I began to learn not to listen to that evil voice, by learning to listen to God’s voice. His voice never speaks hate, it instead flows with love.
Americans today, especially true of our government (all branches, all parties), have lost the knowledge of a loving God. The military leaders tell their troops that many Christian organizations are hate groups, Chaplains are commanded to not speak in Jesus’ name, Christian churches and organizations are the targets of the IRS, and Christian prayers are cancelled in the halls of government. You can lose your job at network news because you speak positive words about Christian beliefs and bullies on school grounds are often not disciplined if the student being bullied is a Christian. In fact, teachers and administrators often discipline a student who speaks from a Bible-believing basis.
Since that dark day in my life when grief spoke questions against the One who loved me, my Father God has allowed my wife and me to adopt two children and serve as foster parents to more than 40 children. We have traveled to orphanages in several countries and our home has been a gathering place for children of all ages.
Now we get to be “grandpa and grandma” to a herd of grand-children. And best of all, I know that one day soon I will get to see my son, Timothy, who got to grow up in the coolest place. What stories he will get to tell his dumb dad.
No question about it, questioning God is dumb.
“If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him” (James 1:5).
Let us each ask for wisdom and pray that those in government halls will bow their knee and acknowledge our God of love and seek His wisdom.
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Editor’s note: Jim Duncan is the pastor of Mountain Bible Church, Mountain, Mo. He may be contacted at P.O. Box 146, Pea Ridge, AR 72751; or by telephone at 417-341-8504; by e-mail at james.ahscrolls@wildblue.
net. His Web site is www.
jamesduncan-writer.net.
Church, Pages 2 on 11/13/2013