All of the blessings God has in store for man, along with all of the instructions for receiving those blessings, are recorded in the Holy Bible–the one Book all churchpersons claim to believe. However, the vast majority of them fail to receive those blessings. Instead, the banks loan money to them which enables them to have what God promised to give them; doctors and hospitals provide what God has promised to provide; an entire industry has been created to supply the drugs necessary to keep man on his feet; war is an ever-present reality world-wide, racial and economic differences divide nations, etc. Why is this true when God promises the exact opposite for those who love, believe and obey Him? Ask 100 church people that question and one will get at least a dozen answers, not one of which will be Biblically correct. But all answers will contain one indisputable “fact”: The fault does not lie with man. The cause of the disparity between God’s promised life and man’s actual life always lies with the One making the promises. When all the reasons concerning why God does not do what He promised to do are sifted through the church’s truth filters, one finds the answer to the question: GOD SIMPLY DOES NOT DO WHAT HE PROMISED TO DO. ONE CANNOT TAKE HIS WORD AT FACE VALUE. Church people “know” this because their prayers are not answered even though they are doing the only thing they are required to do: BELIEVE IN HIM. Man does what he is required to do in order to receive the written promises; it is the Author of the promises Who drops the ball.

Notice that the Serpent never told Adam and Eve not to believe in God. The unspoken lure that sealed their doom was that God was indeed God, and that He said exactly what Eve said that He said. It was just that what He said was not exactly true. God had promised death to anyone who so much as “touched” the forbidden fruit. The Serpent contended that God would never do that. Because Adam and Eve continued to believe in Him, their Creator would not kill them for disobeying Him. Their enemy promised that they could defy Him and: “You shall not surely die,” even though He had said the exact opposite. The Serpent promised them that, not only would they not die for sinning, they would be able to determine for themselves what sin actually was. For them, the wages of sin was not death, but rather eternal life, a life in which they themselves could determine right and wrong which, of course, would be in line with what they wanted to be right and wrong. In other words, their lives would be lived in self-control mode.

This is exactly what Lucifer had planned to do, but failed. Now he was preparing man to overrule the Creator of the universe for him. He knew that he could manipulate man and thereby rule the world through him. An honest comparison of God’s Word to religious man’s life reveals that the Serpent accomplished his goal. As a result, those who call themselves God’s people obey His enemy while fully convinced that they are obeying God. It is no mystery why God calls him “the god of the earth” and “the prince of the power of the air” that surrounds the earth. Man is the glove; Satan is the hand inside it.

Man is not the innocent victim of this colossal scam. Beginning with Adam and Eve, God’s most prized creation has decided his own fate by the choices he has made. It is only through belief in and obedience to God’s Instruction Book that he can make the right choices. Yet, “I didn’t know that was in the Bible” continues to be heard when the contents of that Book are brought forth. And why is religious man ignorant of God’s Word? He is told time and again that he has only to believe in the Lord in order to be at one with Him.  L.J.