An episode from my distant past (1957) will illustrate Satan’s power to persuade church people that man is right and God is wrong. In Isaiah 5:20 the Lord warned that men call good evil and evil good. Both church and secular history reveal that many church doctrines are of heathen origin. See Simon of Samaria: the Legacy. My belief in the Sunday Sabbath is proof that God was right. Like me in the past, the Counterfeit Church has embraced a number of pagan beliefs, customs and “truths” and assumed that, because they were handed down from past generations, they must be God’s doctrines even though He condemns them and those who practice them. The Sunday Sabbath is a primary example.

As a child I was taken to church three times a week whenever possible. My people on both sides “knew” that Sunday was “the Lord’s Day,” and that He expected us to be in “His house” on that day. To fail to do so was a “sin” for which He would administer “guilt.” I was one of billions who had experienced such Satanic brainwashing.

In the cotton capital that is Southeast Missouri, an area called “the bootheal” because Dunklin County is shaped like one, when cotton was ready to be picked farmers would do so as soon as possible in order to get ahead of the rain. In the featured situation rain was forcasted for Monday. It was Sunday morning and we had several acres that had not been picked. My father, the most unreligious of men, offered to pay me if I would help him pick it (we had a mechanical picker) and get it to the gin before the rain came. While I was hauling a trailer load to the gin, he would be picking another load. I agreed and immediately felt the heaviness of guilt settle over me like a dark cloud. Guilt saturated my soul all that day and until the following Sunday when I finally felt “forgiven” for having gone to church. Until I came to know God’s Truth about His Sabbath I would feel guilty every time I failed to go to church on Sunday. By the same token I did not feel guilty for working on God’s Sabbath, which He forbids us to do. God was testing me to see if I would believe His Word because it is his Word, or if I would follow the teachings of Satan’s false prophets. The Sunday Sabbath and the guilt I experienced for missing church were both of Satan. We must believe what God says in His Word because 1) it is His Word, and 2) we will be judged by that Word (Jn. 12:48). Our feelings about it are irrelevant. Emotion is not a good gauge for what is good or bad. I heard about a church group that believed that drinking hot chocolate was a sin. These people along with some 2,000,000,000 others are guided by their emotions. Need proof: Try telling someone that they are serving Satan when they go to church on Sunday, observe Christmas, etc. You will see or hear emotion come to fore very quickly. The fact that God says exactly what you have just said, and that you read it to them from the Bible will have no effect on their reaction.

Throughout my deceived, Satan-serving years I obeyed him faithfully, all the while believing that I was serving God. I would occasionally hear or read about some Biblically ignorant souls who observed the Biblical Sabbath and therefore cut themselves off from God. The poor wretches were living in the past. I thank God I am now one of them. In the following postings we will examine the life of the Apostle Paul and note his emotional reaction to Satan’s temptations and situations that would make most men believe that God had totally forsaken them. L.J.