While imprisoned for his accused seditious and radical beliefs, the persecuted Germanic leader of the Great Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther, penned these powerful words to a dignitary of the Roman Catholic Church:
"You may think that I am now powerless, for the Emperor can easily silence the cry of a poor monk like me. But, you should know that I would yet fulfill the duty which the love of Christ has placed on me. I have not the slightest fear of Hades, much less the pope and his cardinals."
Most assuredly, his daring actions attested this to be true. Brother Martin was by this time totally beyond fearing the threats of Catholics, and he was utterly, fearless, repeatedly in proclamation of the truth he saw. He was not afraid of what religious men could do to him. Yet, when the Lord revealed the deceptiveness of his own heart to him, he cried out in desperation,
"I dread my own heart more than the pope and all his cardinals. For within me is the greater pope, even my self!"
Brother Martin had eye-opening experiences and revelation from Christ Jesus that the pope's system was an apostasy. It was a religious confederation that men had formed around Rome, calling that center “Christianity.” Mystery Babylon was revealed to Martin Luther as he found Catholic leaders working death into people’s spirit by teaching wrong standards of purgatory, hell, and many other false things about spiritual matters.
Leaders of the candlestick churches have always wanted to reform their religious ideas and works into people diligently and have influenced vast generations of people. Unity was never found in the Christian churches, whereas selfish “popes” of all sorts have ruled in reformed churches, divided fellowships, forming something like the mother harlot, the mother of all denominations...Catholicism. So easily they filled their coffers with the Lord’s wealth.
The ranks of the Protestant movement are dead as well. There are ‘denominational popes’, fundamentalist ‘popes’, Pentecostal ‘popes’, ‘charismatic popes’, etc., all working at “building for the Lord”, clearly influencing the lives of the Lord's people. This is a false “Christian” system that marks people’s faith with lies.
Religious men still use the scripture to justify every old order method to “feed” the people their version, their sense of what’s right. False prophets are empowered by a spirit that fights for prominence and financial gain, promoting religious activity that casts a great veil of delusion over the eyes of the Lord’s people.
Deception still works among the brethren educated by the old system of college-educated men, where the religious factory dominates. The man of sin is the lawless one seeking to rule sovereignly over the Lord’s people. However, it was in the churches where CHRIST WAS TO BE FORMED IN OUR TEMPLE. The man of sin desires to transform himself by what he KNOWS,having many degrees of authority hung on his wall. If what he teaches opposes the Spirit of truth to express another viewpoint, his terms of veneration are not the true terms of veneration:
“Now we request you, brethren, with regard to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to Him, that you not be quickly shaken from your composure or be disturbed either by a spirit or a message or a letter as if from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. Let no one in any way deceive you, for it will not come unless the apostasy comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, displaying himself as being God." II Thessalonians 2:1-4 NASB
So many Christian meetings have become divided battlegrounds over millions of parts and pieces of knowledge. Great religious men build their own little “popedom”, demanding unquestionable submission over spiritual matters, dictating to our life and claiming to be in infallible authority. Yes, Jesus taught us false workers would be among us, masquerading as the “vicars” (substitute) of Christ. Overcomers know that often the man of sin will exercise papal powers over our lives, commenting on and controlling us with their church doctrine and judgments to hold us in that “Christian” system they have designed. Such judgments bring fear of being cut off from their system of fellowship or the threat of eternal damnation.
Never a day passes but that something puts our spiritual strength and character to the test. The presence of evil in our world compounds the density of human, soulish thinking, giving more darkness that incites the religious to indulge in fleshly methods and ideas that abound on every hand. From God’s standpoint, the TESTS that qualify His sons and daughters for great reward is to turn away from Mystery Babylon’s allurements that appear to be a comfort in our weakness, a safety from our fears.
Sons are strengthened to trust our Father’s own strength. We become aware of Him and pray for deliverance from tempting evils. What seductive temptation is advanced in church membership that flatters some with preeminent attentions ,from being called “Father,” “Pastor,” or “ Pope.” There has always been evil temptations passed in the companionship of foolish and carnal minded religious leaders. Friendship with the worldly minded is to be tempted with evil,.
Sons have godly character. They are not given to coarse and filthy speech with their business associates. Sons overcome evil influences in worldly entertainment. Sons and daughters of God overcome the evil of cheating in business or defrauding at home. Sons overcome the temptations found in hallowed traditions, seeing hrough the impressive church ceremonies of myriad good works and appeals to fund programs of the church hierarchy.
Great evil temptation is found in the candlestick churches where Christ is mixed with fleshly means and worldly methods to “serve” God. What evil temptations have worked on man’s pride to limit their spiritual walk and experience! The higher one arises in knowing God, the more sophisticated and cunning the temptations of evil become.
Where is temptation of evil lurking? Wherever a selfish MAN is exalted, there evil has access. There has been no escape from it through out history, it has corrupted all except a few Christians who overcame by the finishing work of Jesus Christ. These overcomers are taking His words as their “words of testimony, and loving not their life unto the death.”
In cases of an outbreak of disease, men try to avoid being infected by staying away from the contaminated areas. So many well-meaning men through the centuries have tried to escape the assaults of evil by leaving the activities of the busy world, fleeing into solitude like a monk. They end up promoting themselves in monasteries and convents. Others have fled the monasteries to live as hermits in the mountains, desiring to rather commune alone then be joined to some religious sect.
Through the last two thousand years a great number of informed Christians have sought escape “in the wilderness” to retreats. Yet temptations within follow them to their retreats, fierce struggles within and without staining their attempts at godliness. Yes, much has been done in vain. Even today religious men try to secure ivory towers in secluded wilderness paradises, but it lasts but a short time. The problem is WITHIN THE MAN OF SIN IN THE TEMPLE OF GOD, the antiChrist of self that Paul said was in the early church. The self, the carnal mind of man wants to be as God, an object of adoration to be revered and to rule.
Yes, an enemy has conquered humans, a wily nemesis is still an adversary to the WORD of God. Satan being desperately wicked and deceitful of spirit has adversely affected every generation of humankind, including Adam in the garden of Eden to the present. Just where does the messages of a hostile deceiving spirit work? The prophet Jeremiah unmasked where this enemy spirit works in these words of inspiration. He went on to ask a searching question:
“The heart [of man] is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, who can know it?” Jeremiah 17:9
To the enlightened mind of this prophet, the depth of iniquity of which the human heart is capable is so great that it is beyond the ability of us men to comprehend it. How many times have you heard it? We find this amazing passage of scripture points to some important things: Jeremiah did not list any exception, like saying, ‘The human heart is deceitful above all things except the devil!’ The stated record is;
"...the human heart is deceitful above all things…"
The sacred scripture is inspired by the Spirit of God, so this could not possibly have been a slip-up in understanding or something uttered before it was thought through. If the human heart is deceitful above all things, it obviously follows that there is nothing more deceitful. The heart of man is the MOST DECEITFUL THING and, as such, is the main channel of and for evil!
Jesus delivers us, expressing insight when He spoke the words:
‘There is nothing from without a man that entering into him can defile him: but the things which come out of him, these are they which defile the man.’ Mark 7:15
If there IS something from without a man that can enter into him and defile him before God, we would have to admit that Jesus taught a wrong concept. What directly qualifies us are found in the words Jesus used so often following His teachings that contained great spiritual mystery:
“If any man has ears to hear, let him hear.” Mark 7:16
"He said to them, ‘Are you so lacking in understanding also? Do you not understand that whatever goes into the man from outside cannot defile him, because it does not go into his heart, but into his stomach, and is eliminated?’ (Thus He declared all foods clean.) And He was saying, ‘That which proceeds out of the man, that is what defiles the man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed the evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, deeds of coveting and wickedness, as well as deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride and foolishness. All these evil things proceed from within and defile the man.’" Mark 7:18-23 NASB
Our adversary is a hate filled spirit with murderous intent, one which continually lies. This devil is still racing through the minds of people in this present world order, yes in the minds of its present rulers. Much has been spoken about the devil, yet few have been able to recognize his LOCATION WITHIN THEIR OWN UNCIRCUMCISED HEART! Jeremiah said that within every person has been something desperately wicked and deceitful above all things!
Jesus said when we are born from above there is nothing from without a man (not one thing) that entering into him can defile him. We should conclude THE SPIRIT OF THE DEVIL IS ACTIVE WITHIN THE INNER NATURE OF MEN, in their ATTITUDES AND INTENTS. We cannot blame our worldly environment for failure to overcome temptation! Humans contain a problem within their human hearts, their every error is categorically unimaginable as contained in the previous discourse. Who can know the deception within?
This adversary is cursed. Laid upon the serpent spirit is a bruised head from the beginning:
“On your belly you will go, And dust you will eat all the days of your life; And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel." Genesis 3:14
This judgment on the serpent speaks of infinitely more than a snake slithering along speaking to a woman. To the serpent spirit, God said:
“And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; He (Adam) shall shall bruise your head, and you shalt bruise his heel.” Genesis 3:15 NASB
The “heel” speaks infinitely more of our WALK, rather than a location on our foot, and the words “bruised head” speaks of something greater far than a mere physical headache. So, “upon your belly shall you go,” and “your head shall be bruised” paints for our understanding the picture of a serpent crawling in humiliation, in prostration, limited to earthly viewpoints, subject to move only in earthly minded people. The Psalmist uses a similar expression:
“For our soul is bowed down to the dust: our belly cleaves unto the earth." Psalms 44:25
These are graphic figures of speech which denote a prolonged prostration and a depth of subjection that is conveyed and expressed in similar terms. The very fact that the serpent can only eat dust, “dust thou art, and to dust thou shall return”, reveals that the serpent is now feeding the earthly mind of man, guiding the heart as a source of evil temptation. The serpent spirit is bruised, confined to earthy viewpoints, earthly endeavors, earthly places. He is restricted to speaking lies and operating within THE “DUST MINDED MAN” THAT IS ONLY PARTLY—OR NOT AT ALL— REGENERATED BY CHRIST.
“By the sweat of your face You will eat bread, Till you return to the ground, Because from it you were taken; For you are dust, And to dust you shall return." Genesis 3:19 NASB
How truly this accounts for the words of the great apostle Paul:
“And you hath He quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins: wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now works in the children of disobedience.” Ephesians 2:2
Ah, yes, the devil is a spirit which is already working WITHIN EVERY EARTHLY MINDED MAN! When the serpent was confined to the dust realm, man became the base of his operations, the place for the seeds of his evil activities to be planted. I do not hesitate to declare that the devil operates in NO OTHER PLACE but in earthly minded men and women, here on earth and in those departed to the unseen!
You will not meet the spirit of the devil in rocks, trees, fish, fowl, beasts, mountains, buildings, homes, caves, nor on a far-away planet, in distant galaxies, or in any other location outside of men and women. The devil that steals your car and drives off with it will be done by a man or women!
Now we all pray for deliverance from evil. The devil’s head is bruised within us, it finds no response to its promptings within our inner spiritual person. Christ has taken abode within us, revealed the truth within our inner man, so we have little difficulty with the devilish wisdom of religious minds who are vainly thinking they are right. I have beheld that devilish countenance when looking into the guy who creates factions and turbulence while practicing to be a good pastor, leader, or pope.
Deliverance from the darkened spirit of Mystery Babylon is what Christ Jesus offers us. Once our spirit is enlightened, our selfish heart is circumcised, delivered of deceitful, evil thoughts. Adam and Eve hurriedly hid themselves among the trees of the garden after falling for the devil’s lie. They partook of knowing of good and evil, trying to be like GOD. Eve was tempted with the desire to be adored, worshipped, esteemed as insightful, so she fed on the wrong food.
Man still feeds on ideas that are the wrong food. Devilish kinds of thoughts are channeled into man by the serpent spirit, usurping control inside of him to lie, cheat, and steal from others, or to murder his brother’s influence out of jealousy. Righteousness is found only in fellowship with Christ, a personal fellowship that casts out religious zeal that masks hatreds, stops many levels of lying gossip, and all backbiting criticism. We who would fight back in our own strength become like the Psalmist David when he held up his blood-stained hands before God and cried:
“Deliver me from bloodguiltiness.” Psalms 51:14
As the prayer of tortured Job wailed:
“When shall I arise, and the night be gone?” Job 7:4
We hear it in the words of the Lord’s chosen instrument, Paul, when he cries:
“O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from this dead body?” Romans 7:24
Sons look forward with hope and expectation to be released at last from all of death’s grip. This is the promised glory attainable in the scripture. The Word of God bring us to a maturity, even to His promised perfection, into the incorruptibility BEYOND THE REALMS OF TEMPTATION, STRUGGLE, TESTING, AND CHANGE. We now are like those granted further ability to:
“… put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts.” Romans 13:14 NASB
It helps to understand how the promised deliverance works in our spirit first by making us one with the Lord’s Spirit. The Spirit of Jesus is coming within us in endless perfection and absolute incorruptible character. His wholeness makes our spirit new as we are made UNCHANGEABLY PERFECT. One who repents as Christ is revealed is changed FOREVER. Our inner characteristics are constantly more perfected as His characteristics are acquired.
Christ transforms our inner person, making something new that is perfect and incorruptible, having NO NEED OF FURTHER CHANGE. Jesus is indeed unchanged, “the same yesterday, today, and forever”, alive eternally, and God has promised to do the same for us. We shall all be changed, yet each in his own rank. Now is our time to receive the divine reality that trusts what Christ injects into our hearts, processing God's salvation in us as we are responsive to His values and standards. The Lord declares:
"I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You," John 17:20-21 NASB
Through the prophet, God states of Himself:
“I am Yahweh, I change not.” Malachi 3:6
and James, the Lord's brother, testifies of the Father:
“…the Father of lights, with Whom there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning…” James 1:17
God, our Father, is not surprised by anything that happened this week, nor last year, nor in any of the past years. Known unto God are all His works from the creation of the world. God is not experimenting, God is not becoming stronger, mightier, or in need of increase of Himself in any way. God has made Jesus complete and we are "complete in Him. Jesus will not become more pure, more holy, or more righteous than He is right now. Jesus cannot be tempted with evil. The divine nature of God, our Father, has no need to be tested, tried or proven for He has already been proven beyond any question.
God is alive and He is also our Father, the omnipotent and omniscient One. HE CHANGES NOT. He is not something today that He wasn’t yesterday. He will not become something tomorrow that He is not today. He eternally has all the godly characteristics He needs without any decrease or fluctuation whatsoever. He is the ETERNAL GOD, an unending unchangeable Spirit!
Yet He has promised to make us one with Himself! We are STILL BEING CHANGED from that dark heart listening to the devil’s ideas to a spiritual man taught of the Spirit of God, making the spirit of our inner man into a priest of His Kingdom.
“And all of us...are constantly being transfigured (changed) into His very own image in ever increasing splendor and from one degree of glory to another.” II Corinthians 3:18, Amplified
For two thousand years the dispensation of the church on earth was limited to an “in-part” experience, as the Greek expresses it in scripture. God’s promise for the Day of the Lord is not so limited. He promises a maturity for us into that unchangeableness which He Himself is. When the Lord's people are exposed to the third Day, the Lord's Day, there will be supplied a complete measure that will deliver us Christians from all evil. We are to be as holy as Jesus is holy, perfect as Jesus is perfect, filled with all of his wisdom, knowing God with His knowledge of God, endued with power to do greater things than Jesus did while on earth.
Those pressing onward to a higher, more completed state are promised to be as untemptable as God is untemptable, as unchangeable as God is unchangeable — beyond any need for further testing and correction. God then has proven a people by developing an increase in a measure of our spiritual senses to detect a hungering and thirsting after His righteousness and unexplainable revelations. We too pray for God’s deliverance from evil. We expose our own heart to pray to God, as our Father:
“Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” Matthew 6:13
We are asking God to cease the plagues of Egypt’s bondages and see all the “little foxes” that spoil our inner peace and love for righteousness. Now we pray to be freed, for deliverance we cry, the final completion of our salvation from all that has gone before, a rescue into the establishment of the King’s reign. It shall work within us to save us with light determined to conquer and swallow up any remaining darkness of death in us. Death in all its forms is an enemy. We pray to not fall short of the accomplished deliverance promised, for His kingdom to come fully within us.
Christ ABIDES within us to provide a giving of the daily bread of spiritual communion which is causing our inner spiritual man to grow up into His headship. At the same time, God grants forgiveness for our every possible missing of the mark. Thank God, He has predestined a people who can hear what the spirit says and see to understand what the spirit teaches His people from within. We are changing by growing into a fuller stature of grasping the incorruptibility of Himself. We can no longer be held by mixtures of devilish deceit broadcast by the religious realms to which the church realm holds.
Our potential for glorious ascent to the throne of God in the highest heavens may be contrasted with the possibility of the tragic descent of our race into deeper depths of darkness. Alas! The earliest page of human history is blood-stained with the record of sufferings in death and corruption from which mankind has never been able to deliver himself. The disintegrating power of death has sadly destroyed the noblest efforts which human wisdom and religious works can attain.
The history of man is strewn with the wreck of broken empires and ideas. Nations and kingdoms emerge from obscurity, rise to greatness, and then crumble to decay. The glory of human legislation has perpetually been turned to shame. We humans are constantly shocked at the swift descent of public morals,and wonder how generations of offspring can so soon betray the virtues which should have been theirs from godly ancestry. Ah, the heart of man, it is so desperately wicked and who can know it?
Hallelujah! Our heart is changed by Christ! We are delivered and placed where strong and splendid, even heroic, devotion to the Father’s purposes usher a deliverance within us from the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, the greed for gain, the suffering of loss, the love of our own glory, the lust for what our eyes take in. When our life’s demands in the flesh and the glory of all the kingdoms of this world CANNOT separate us from the life of God— then the Lord's prayer is answered in us, and the hour of God's deliverance for us has come.
Now we are BORN FROM ABOVE, born of the Spirit. God has touched our spirit and we now grow to recognize our spiritual being as already being a citizen of God’s heavenlies. Our awakened spirit is being joined to the Lord's spirit, making us alive in God's oneness. We are delivered from the deceitful spirit to a pureness of heart so strong that we are no longer controlled by deceitful thoughts or ways, nor by anyone else's worldly reasoning.
We belong to Christ Jesus. The serpent meat we no longer consume, but we have been raised to feast at the Lord's table. We are raised to a seating with Christ Jesus at the right hand of the Father in heavenly places. We do not any longer think of ourselves as belonging to this present evil world or to any of its human institutions. We are citizens of a celestial, spiritual realm called Zion and are made one with all its celestial qualities.
Carnal minded men cannot understand this spiritual condition. Carnal minded men do not know of grand and glorious spiritual realities so they will always oppose the truth of it with their devilish powers. Christ taught that we will see and acknowledge the TRUTH, as it is written:
“Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him. But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit: for the Spirit searches all things, yea, the deep things of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Ghost teaches; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.” I Corinthians 2:9-10,12-13
It is a divine fact that we have been raised up by Christ and made to sit together with Him in heavenly places. These heavenly places include the third heavens where it is unlawful for man to speak:
"And you, being dead to your offenses and sins, in which once you walked, in accord with the eon of this world, in accord with the chief of the jurisdiction of the air, the spirit now operating in the sons of stubbornness (among whom we also all behaved ourselves once in the lusts of our flesh, doing the will of the flesh and of the comprehension, and were in our nature, children of indignation, even as the rest), yet God, being rich in mercy, because of His vast love with which He loves us also being dead to the offenses and the lusts, vivifies us together in Christ (in grace are you saved!) and rouses us together and seats us together among the celestials, in Christ Jesus, that, in the oncoming eons, He should be displaying the transcendent riches of His grace in His kindness to us in Christ Jesus." Ephesians 2:1-7 concordant
It is a divine certainty that a certain portion of believing Christians have been delivered from the power of darkness, and have been translated into the Kingdom of God’s dear Son:
"Therefore we also, from the day on which we hear, do not cease praying for you and requesting that you may be filled full with the realization of His will, in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, you to walk worthily of the Lord for all pleasing, bearing fruit in every good work, and growing in the realization of God; being endued with all power, in accord with the might of His glory, for all endurance and patience with joy;
at the same time giving thanks to the Father, Who makes you competent for a part of the allotment of the saints, in light, Who rescues us out of the jurisdiction of Darkness, and transports us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in Whom we are having the deliverance, the pardon of sins," Colossians 1:9-14 concordant
"For to vanity was the creation subjected, not voluntarily, but because of Him Who subjects it, in expectation that the creation itself, also, shall be freed from the slavery of corruption into the glorious freedom of the children of God." Romans 8:21 concordant
We can let the mind of the Christ dominate our thinking NOW so that our spirit is delivered from the slavery to corrupt ideas. The “one hundred and forty four thousand” represent a people that are being made alive spiritually to the third day, the third thousand year day where “enjoyers of Christ's allotment” are to get a complete measure of deliverance from evil:
“Awake, awake, put on your strength, O Zion: put on your beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city: for henceforth there shall no more come into thee the uncircumcised and the unclean." Isaiah 52:1