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12-Your Adversary, the Devil - The Doctrine of Satan |
12-Your Adversary, the Devil - The Doctrine of Satan
2 Peter 1:16-2:2
If you were looking for Satan and knew only that he was disguised, where
would you go to look for him? The corner bar? The pornographic shop? The
bookie joint? The gambling den? The discotheque dance hall? Would you
think of looking in a pulpit? That is where you would find him. For,
strange as it may seem, Satan is more concerned with what you think and
what you believe than with what you do. Satan's desire is to control your
mind so that he can control your actions. Satan does not spend his time
in peripheral things; he concentrates his efforts on his goal, to control
what you believe. Therefore Satan has moved into the pulpit.
Satan has a doctrine. It is referred to in 1 Timothy 4:1 where Paul
writes: "The Spirit speaketh expressly that in the latter time some shall
depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of
demons." And doctrines of demons does not refer to doctrines about demons
but doctrines that are propagated by demons. In writing his letters to
the seven churches, the Apostle John in Revelation 2:24 says, "I say unto
the rest that are in Thyatira and as many as have not this doctrine,
which hath not known the depths [or the deep things] of Satan, as they
speak."
Preaching must stand as the most powerful influence to move and change
men that this world has ever seen. Even with all the modern means of
communication that Satan has at his disposal, there is no means of
communication that can so change the course of a man's life or his
conduct or his thinking as the divinely ordained means of preaching. One
who has been called to preach has been called to control the minds of
men. Satan will, of course, use every means at his disposal to change the
thinking of an individual. He will use high pressure public relations
tactics. He will use high pressure advertising through the printed page,
radio, and television. But, when Satan had done that, he has still not
claimed the most effective method that has ever been devised, which is
preaching.
Therefore, to propagate his false doctrine, Satan occupies the pulpit in
the guise of a minister of righteousness. He does this to dictate and to
control what men believe. Satan's method of propagating his doctrine is
described for us in 2 Corinthians 11:13 where the Apostle writes: "Such
are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the
apostles of Christ. And no marvel, for Satan himself is transformed into
an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also
be transformed as the ministers of righteousness, whose end shall be
according to their works." Reading verse 14 a little differently, we see
the emphasis that Paul intended: "Satan is transforming himself into an
angel of light; therefore, it is no great thing if his ministers also are
transforming themselves as the ministers of righteousness."
Satan, then, has a doctrine to propagate and he has a method of
propagating it. And his method is to imitate God's method. He puts men in
places where people will submit to their teaching. He gives to them the
authority that belongs to a minister commissioned, instructed and sent by
God. He then causes that deceiver to teach a false doctrine which will
grip the minds and hearts of men. In 1 John 4:2 the Apostle emphasizes
again this same fact: "Hereby know ye the Spirit of God. Every spirit
that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God; and
every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus is come in the flesh is not
of God." In this passage you observe the apostle is warning his readers
about the presence of false spirits. Now these false spirits are
teachers, men who are representing themselves as men of God but who are
energized by Satan. They come, not to propagate the truth of the Word,
but to propagate the false doctrine that Satan wants to use to blind and
bind the minds of men. And so there is a spirit that comes from God or a
teacher who is sent by God; there is also an imitator of God's minister,
one who comes with Satanic authority to deceive men.
Peter spoke of this same thing in 2 Peter 2:1: "There were false prophets
among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you who
privily [or secretly, cleverly] shall bring in damnable heresies, even
denying the Lord that bought them." These passages which we have brought
together emphasize the fact that Satan works through men who pose as
ministers of the gospel or as men of God, when in truth they are
ministers of Satan, sent by Satan, with Satan's message to deliver.
Our Lord made it very clear that Satan will never propagate truth. Satan
always propagates error. John 8:44 reads: "Ye are of your father, the
devil." This was a strong statement because Christ was speaking to the
religious leaders of His day.
They were honorable, upright, educated, respected men who had been put in
a position of authority because of their abilities in the religion of
their day. But Christ said to them, "Ye are of your father, the devil."
Christ called them that because when He came and said, "I am the Way, the
Truth, and the Life," they said that that was a lie. They told men to
follow their way, the way of conforming externally to the requirements of
pharisaism. Christ said, "I am the Truth," and they said, "No, you are a
liar; we have the truth. We got it from Moses." Christ said, "I am the
Life," and they said, "No, you have life already because you are
Abraham's physical seed. If you want to enter into fullness of life,
pattern your life according to our traditions." They called Christ a
liar. When Christ said, "I am the Son of God," they said, "You are a
devil." They denied every word that came from the lips of the Lord Jesus.
Therefore Christ said to them, "Ye are of your father the devil, and the
lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning and
abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he
speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own for he is a liar, and the father
of it." Christ was saying that Satan lied. You remember he lied when he
came to tempt Eve, and he said to her: "Ye shall not surely die." But
Christ is emphasizing more than that.
Satan not only lies, but he has the character of a liar. Satan had
inaugurated a system which is false; it is contrary to the truth of God.
And Satan is a liar not simply because he does not tell the truth; he is
a liar because he has instituted a false system called "the deep things
of Satan" that is contrary to the revealed truth of the Word of God. We
find this emphasized in 2 Timothy 3:13 where Paul says, "Evil men and
seducers [that is false teachers] shall wax worse and worse, deceiving,
and being deceived." The false teachers, then, practice deception.
Deluded and deceiving themselves, they speak delusion and deception to
control the thinking of men.
In 2 Thessalonians 2, Paul emphasizes this again as he speaks concerning
the coming of the lawless one. In verse 9 he writes, "Even him, whose
coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying
wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that
perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might
be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that
they should believe a lie."
What we are emphasizing as we gather these portions together is this:
Satan has an avowed purpose, to control the thinking of men. If he can
control their minds, he can then consequently control their actions. He
has instituted a system of deception that goes counter to the revealed
truth of God. He has transformed his ministers so that they appear as
ministers of righteousness when, in truth, they are ministers of deceit,
deception, and delusion. And he puts them in positions of authority and
responsibility so that, as men give them respect because of their
position, and submit to their teaching, they submit to the teachings of
Satan and are brought under his delusion. Consequently their lives are
conformed to his pattern.
In going through the Word of God, we find that there are certain specific
areas of revealed truth which are the subject of Satanic attack. Certain
doctrines of the Word of God Satan cannot and will not permit a man to
believe if he can possibly deceive him or delude him. Satan will concede
as much as he has to. If a man wants to respect Christ as a good teacher,
Satan will concede. If a man wants to believe that the Bible is errant
and fallible but it is a special book, Satan will concede. He will let a
man hold as much of divine truth as the man insists on believing up to
the point of certain basic essentials. And these Satan never has, never
will, and never can concede.
The first doctrine that Satan opposes is the doctrine of the authority of
the Scriptures, the doctrine of the verbal, plenary inspiration of the
Word of God which gives authority and inerrancy to this Book. Perhaps
some of these words are a little strange to you. When we say that the
Word of God is verbally inspired, we mean that God's supervision of what
was written extended to the individual words in the original text as
given in the Scriptures. God did not give men ideas that they were then
permitted to record in any generalization that pleased them. God's
inspiration extended to the individual words. When we say that the
Scripture is plenarily inspired, we mean that it is inspired in its
entirety, from Genesis right through Revelation. While all Scripture may
not have the same spiritual value, yet all is equally inspired of God. We
may not get the same doctrine out of the book of Chronicles that we get
out of the book of Ephesians, but Ephesians is no more inspired than the
book of Chronicles. It is verbally inspired; it is inspired in its
entirety.
Because God inspired the Scriptures, the Bible is without error. There is
no geographical, no historical, no scientific, no religious, no doctrinal
error to be found in the Book, because God would not be a party to
deception by propagating error. And because the Word of God is given in
its entirety by the Spirit of God and is without error, it is our
absolute and final authority in all matters of life and doctrine. What we
do and what we believe must be conformed to the Word of God or we are
following the deception of Satan. This is a doctrine that Satan hates.
In 2 Timothy 4:4 we read that the day shall come when "they shall turn
away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables." What is
the truth? It is the Word of God. Satan's first purpose is to turn men
away from belief in the integrity and authority of Scripture that rests
upon its inspiration. Many have told me that they went to college or
university with a simple faith in the Word of God that had been planted
in their minds in childhood in some church that you refer to as the
"old-fashioned kind." But as they were exposed to those educated men in
whose classes they sat, they found that their attitude toward the Word of
God was changing; and by the time their university course was over, they
completely rejected the Scriptures considering them outmoded as a means
of revelation and denying that they have any authority today. Those who
so destroyed trust in the Word of God were instruments of Satan.
They were his ministers posing as ministers of intellectual freedom, but
they were doing his work. They were propagating his doctrine and taking
away that which is the foundation of God's program. Satan cannot permit a
man to accept the authority and integrity of the Word of God based on its
inspiration. And to see how successful Satan has been in this part of his
lie system, all you have to do is to investigate the average school in
our country today dedicated to training ministers. It will be like
searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack to find a school
completely dedicated to the inspiration and the authority and integrity
of the Word of God. Such schools are "ministers of righteousness,"
systematically destroying the foundation of truth. They are emissaries of
Satan propagating his deception, his doctrine.
The second thing Satan cannot permit a man to accept is the doctrine of
the Person of Christ. The Word of God presents Jesus Christ as the
eternal Son of the eternal God. He is an uncreated one, equal with the
Father, who to redeem us became flesh and took to Himself a true
humanity, thus uniting the infinite God with a true and complete humanity
so that we might have a Saviour to die on our behalf. God at the time of
Christ's baptism certified the person of His Son by saying, "This is my
beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." But there are those who do not
hesitate to call God a liar and say that God was deceiving and deluding
men. They teach that Jesus Christ was a good man, He was an honorable
man, but He Himself was deluded and deceived. But they ask us to follow
One who Himself was deluded, who thought that He was God but was not. It
is this the Apostle John is warning about in 1 John 4:2: "Every spirit
that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God; and
every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh
is not of God; this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard
that it should come; even now is already in the world." The Apostle,
writing to that little flock where he ministered for so long, understood
the deception of Satan. Satan who cannot permit man to accept the
integrity of the Scriptures, likewise cannot permit man to accept the
fact that God states that Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of the eternal
God come in the flesh.
Along with this denial is the denial of the Virgin Birth of Christ. The
only way God could come in the flesh was to come supernaturally, to come
apart from a natural birth. The Old Testament promises that He would so
come (Isaiah 7:14). The New Testament testifies that He came born of a
virgin apart from a human father. If Jesus Christ is truly virgin born,
there is no other explanation than that He is who God said He is, and
what He claimed to be, the Son of God. So to do away with the deity of
Christ, it is necessary for Satan to undermine the doctrine of the Virgin
Birth of Christ. This is one of the doctrines of the Word of God most
commonly attacked. It is being placarded across our newspapers
continually that men in high positions publicly repudiate this doctrine,
which is binding upon those who revere the Word of God. In so doing they
are falling into the deception of Satan and have become his instruments
even though they are garbed as ministers of righteousness. They are
deceivers, and their deception is folly.
There is a third area which Satan cannot concede and will not under any
circumstances permit man to believe. That is the doctrine of salvation
based on the blood of Christ. If Satan hates the Word of God, and if
Satan hates the doctrine of the Person of Christ, the deity of Christ,
above all he hates the doctrine of the value of the shed blood of Christ.
Peter infers this in 2 Peter 2:1: "There shall be false teachers among
you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord
that bought them." Note that phrase, "denying the Lord that bought them."
This brings us to the doctrine of redemption. To redeem means to set free
by purchasing. And the purchase price according to the Word of God is the
blood of Jesus Christ. And Christ died in order that we might be set free
from the slave market of sin, that we might be delivered from bondage to
sin, that we might be delivered from the guilt of sin, that we might be
delivered from the penalty for our sins. The debt we owed to God was
death because we had sinned. "For the wages of sin is death." Jesus
Christ came to pay that debt, and He paid it in full. Jesus Christ did
not bring God into a bankruptcy court where God settled for 10¢ on a
dollar. When Christ came to pay our debt, He assumed it all. Since our
debt was death, He shed His blood. And Satan hates the doctrine of the
blood of Christ more than any other doctrine of the Word of God.
Now it is easy to see how Satan seeks to promote his doctrine. Our
doctrine is based on the authority of Scripture. When Satan seeks to
promote his doctrine, he sends one who poses as a minister of
righteousness to substitute something for the place that belongs to the
Word of God. Every false cult, sect and "ism" that exists has to
supplement the Scriptures by some added book, which they claim is added
revelation-whether it be Science and Health With a Key to the Scriptures
by Mary Baker Patterson Glover Eddy, or whether it be the Book of Mormon,
or whether it be the writings of Ellen G. White, or of Judge Rutherford
and Pastor Russell, or whether it be Papal encyclicals, or whether it be
the traditions of the fathers, the Talmud. In every false doctrine that
is propagated, the Word of God has been superseded by writings of men
which are then elevated to a position of authority over and above the
Scriptures so that they become the basis of doctrine. So Satan sets the
Word of God aside and substitutes the word of men. But it is the Word of
God that reproves and rebukes and exhorts and convicts, and not any word
that is penned by men. Therefore, when we go to men to bring them the
truth of Scripture, we must confront them with the Word of God. It is the
only thing that will do God's work.
When God presents a Person to be believed and followed, Satan's method is
to set aside Jesus Christ and rob Him of the place of pre-eminence and
focus attention on some other individual. And the vast proportion of the
earth's population today bows before some name other than the name of the
Lord Jesus Christ. Whether it be Mohammed or Buddha or Confucius or some
philosopher or some religious or political leader, it matters little.
Satan has done his work of capturing the minds of men by bringing them
into subjection to some authority other than Jesus Christ. This danger
pervaded the Corinthian church. The false teachers who came into Corinth
were not substituting another gospel. But the Corinthian church was
divided because the teachers who came into the Corinthian church were
elevated to a position above the authority of Christ so that some men
were followers of Paul, some of Cephas, some of Apollos; and the devilish
work was done.
When Satan is face-to-face with the truth that men are saved by faith in
Jesus Christ, he has to substitute some other plan of salvation. His
ministers of righteousness substitute the ordinances, persuading men that
if they are baptized and take the Lord's Supper and join a church, they
will be saved. Or if they do enough good deeds they will be saved. Or if
they are charitable and kind, they'll be saved. That is a Satanic
deception, for the truth of the Word of God is that stated by Peter,
"There is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be
saved," the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
When Satan finds an individual who is committed to these doctrines, who
believes in the verbal plenary inspiration of Scripture and its integrity
and authority, who believes that Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God,
come in the flesh to redeem us, believes that salvation is by faith in
the blood of Christ alone, does Satan leave him alone? Would to God it
were true! Would to God he would admit defeat! But Satan still continues
to work in one completely committed to these cardinal truths to so cloud
the issue that men are not confronted with the fact that salvation is by
grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone.
There are certain words that Satan hates, words like blood, saved, born
again. How easy it is, to ingratiate ourselves to an individual, to leave
these key words of the Gospel out of our vocabulary as though we could
sneak up on an individual on his blind side and somehow lead them to
faith in Christ without telling them that they are sinners, and that they
need to be saved and they can be born again by faith in Jesus Christ. A
person isn't saved because he has a nodding acquaintance with the man
Jesus. He is saved because he personally receives the Lord Jesus Christ
as his Saviour. He is not saved because he "makes a commitment to
Christ"; he is saved because he receives Jesus Christ and trusts His
blood for salvation. We can try to make the Gospel so relevant to unsaved
men, we remove the offense of the cross. We don't want to say to men,
"you are lost," because that will insult them. Of course it will. But no
man will ever come to Christ unless he realizes he is lost. He'll never
come to Christ unless he realizes he is under condemnation.
Whereas the Word of God is supposed to be biting, we have pulled all the
teeth and we are trying to masticate some people into salvation with
toothless gums. That isn't the way Paul did it. We need to be on guard
lest Satan should gain an advantage over us. The Apostle in Galatians 5
has an interesting word in verse 11: "And I, brethren, if I yet preach
circumcision, why do I yet suffer persecution? then is the offence of the
cross ceased." May we put this in plain words? The cross is a stench in
the nostrils of an unsaved man. We better beware about trying to use an
atomizer so that what is an offense smells good lest people whom we may
desire to reach with the Gospel should be deluded by Satan to believing
that the issues are different from what they actually are.
Christ said to Nicodemus, "Ye must be born again." You say "Men don't
understand that term today." Maybe they don't, but it wouldn't take you
two minutes to tell them what it means. "Men don't like to hear about
blood." No, but men must be told that they need to be saved by blood. We
who revere the Word as the Word of God, we who have respect for the
authority of the Person of Christ, and are committed to the truth that
salvation is by grace through faith based on the blood of Christ, should
not try to make the Gospel so appealing to an unsaved man, that it cannot
do its work, convicting, reproving, rebuking. If we do that, we have
become tools of the evil one.
God loved the world, and sent His Son to save the world. God now sends
believers into the world to tell men God's truth. And it must be
presented in God's way with God's authority on God's terms so that men
will realize they are lost and they need a Saviour, and that Jesus Christ
is the only Saviour. The Gospel is the power of God that can redeem. The
Gospel can bring a man low before God to recognize that he is lost,
undone, and condemned. The Gospel can give forgiveness of sins and impart
eternal life if it is presented in truth. We need to be on guard lest we
permit our adversary inadvertently to use us as an instrument to pervert
God's truth.
We say this final word to any of you who may never have received Christ
as your personal Saviours. Perhaps you have been deceived and deluded by
one of Satan's representatives. You have felt that the Scriptures had no
authority, that Christ was just another good man, that you could work out
your own salvation. On the authority of Scripture, there is only One who
can save you and He is the Lord Jesus Christ. And He will save you the
moment you say to Him, "I, a sinner, receive Christ as my personal
Saviour." It is that simple but it is that final. Will you receive Him?
Pentecost, J. D. (1997). Your adversary, the Devil. Originally published:
Grand Rapids, MI : Zondervan, 1969. (102). Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel.
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