A recent news story reported that an after-school Satan club now meets at a high school in Pennsylvania. This is not the first after-school Satan club. Others have already been established at public schools in our nation.
No surprise that one of their core issues is abortion. The Satanists teach kids that they are empowered to end the lives of unborn children. They compare abortion in Satanism to baptism or the Lord’s Supper in Christianity, a solemn ritual – outrageous!
They teach kids a song that includes lyrics saying that Satan is your friend, he wants you to have fun, and there is no hell. The song ends by saying that Satan doesn’t really exist. Sounds confusing and evil.
The Bible warns us that believers have three enemies: the ‘flesh,’ the world, and the devil (Satan). The ‘flesh’ is not a reference to our physical bodies. It is Bible terminology for the corrupt sinful desires that tempt us to disobey God and rebel against him. The ‘flesh’ threatens our peace and blessings from God.
The devil appeals to our ‘flesh,’ our sinful nature, stirring up the desire to disobey God. As followers of Jesus, however, we have crucified the ‘flesh’ with Christ. We are no longer in bondage to the sinful nature. We can choose to follow Christ instead of our sinful desires. We have God’s Spirit in our hearts empowering us to grow in our victory over sin.
The second enemy of believers is the world. In this case, “the world” is not creation, but the cultures, institutions, ideas, and attitudes of sinful humanity. This broken world is like a tide that always goes out to the sea of confusion and destruction. The devil exerts great influence on the world, using it to pull people away from God through skepticism and unbelief.
We face the temptation to be like the lost world around us instead of distinguishing ourselves as followers of Jesus, as a people with an eternal perspective. Jesus warns that the road to destruction is broad and many find it, but the path to life is narrow and difficult and only a few travel its way.
The third enemy of believers is the devil himself: Satan.
In Genesis 3, Satan makes his debut into the biblical account. He appears in the Garden of Eden and tempts Adam and Eve to disobey God by eating the forbidden fruit. Sadly, they were easy to persuade. And, sadly, people are still easily led astray by Satan and his lies.
Evil is real. It is not a human or cultural idea that we can redefine. Good and evil are defined by God. The standards for right and wrong are established and uncompromising.
Evil is powerful. We are helpless to stop it without God’s intervention. By any reasonable standard, humanity is not making progress at defeating evil. War, hatred, violence, deception, immorality, they still grow like weeds everywhere. No continent, country, community or culture is free of evil.
Evil is personal. Satan is a living personal being. He is a fallen angel who led a third of God’s angels astray and into rebellion against God. Now he wants to deceive us and lead us into tragic rebellion against God.
We cannot destroy the devil, but we can resist him and his temptations. James tells us that the first step in resisting the devil is submitting to God (James 4:7). With God’s power, we are able to stand against our enemy. Ephesians 6 urges us to put on the full armor of God so that we will stand and not be destroyed (Ephesians 6:10-20).
Once fitted with the full armor of God, we pray in the Spirit at all times with all kinds of prayers and requests. Our power to overcome is in our Lord. Let’s submit to God, resist the devil, stand against evil, and walk in victory!
May God’s Holy Spirit always inspire us and enable us,
Brother Richard
brotherrichardsblog.com 