Mother Eve, Satan’s first false prophet, was batting 1000.  Her first target became her first victory.  The irony is that SHE BELIEVED THAT SHE WAS DOING A GOOD THING by winning her husband to her new easy-going god and away from their Creator and His strict rules.  This was the Serpent who had pointed out that her and Adam’s original God had lied to them about the sin-death rule.  Their new god allowed them to sin and still live forever.  He had nullified God’s “fine print”–that they would die if they ate the forbidden fruit.  This should sound familiar.  This is what happens when people proclaim the Lord’s Scriptural “headlines” but reject His “fine print.”  This is tantamount to accepting His Law but ignoring the commandments that make up the Law.  Church people are prone to quoting the “headlines” while claiming that the “fine print” can be ignored.  John 3:16 is a “headline” often quoted by Satan’s false prophets when trying to win people to their religion.  “For God so loved the world ….” is proclaimed loud and often.  But you will never hear from a pulpit about His “fine print” that reveals the things one must DO in order to make the “headline” a reality.  Without them the headline does not apply.   Another popular headline is what the Apostle Paul said to the jailer who asked what he must do to be saved.  Paul replied: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved, you and your household.”  If faith in Jesus is all that is needed, why did Paul and the other apostles continually preach and write that believers had to be holy in order to receive salvation?  We see this in Paul’s letter to the church at Rome in 5:21 and 6:22 where he tells the church that salvation will be the END RESULT of a life lived in holiness, not the result of believing in Jesus.  As James 2 tells us six times, faith without works (obedience to God’s Law) is dead faith.

The Scriptures continually proclaim that faith is only the first of many steps on the road to eternal life.  Satan and his devils believe in Jesus and His Word.  They not only know God’s Word, they know it is true, and because of this, Satan is angry and his demons tremble (Jam. 2:19).  Jesus said in Matthew 10:21,22 that His saints would be severely persecuted because of their holiness, and that only those who endured such persecution until the end of their lives will be saved upon the return of Jesus to earth.  Read Hope and Salvation.  “Hope” is the key word.  Peter wrote that judgment is on-going in the church, and that “only the RIGHTEOUS will be saved, and they just barely” (1 Pet. 4:17,18).  Read the third chapter of the Apostle John’s epistle to the church.  Nobody states the Truth like John.  For example, in 3:3-8 he says ABOUT CHURCH PEOPLE that true Christians keep themselves pure, that Jesus came to take sin out of saints’ lives, that whoever sins does not know Christ, nor is he known by Him, that saints must be as righteous as Jesus is righteous, and that church people who continue to sin have Satan as their spiritual father.

When Eve told Adam what the Serpent had said about the good things that would happen upon their eating the forbidden fruit, she evidently failed to remind him about God’s warning.  With her new god’s headline ringing in her itching ears, the Lord’s fine print lost its relevance.  Her Creator had been overruled by a god whose self-pleasing options were much more pleasant than that other God’s strict commands.  Nothing has changed.  All one hears in the devil’s sin-excusing Catholic/Protestant church system is that it’s all Adam’s fault, and that God can’t “see one’s sins through the blood of Christ.”  This is what the five foolish virgins believed as they were replenishing their oil supply and trimming their wicks.  The “knew” that their sins had been washed away by Jesus, and that they would soon marry the Bridegroom who had made their sins disappear.  Reality quickly replaced revelry when they knocked on the door where the festivities were taking place.  They were told, “I do not know you.”  There was weeping and gnashing of teeth as they were cast into outer darkness.  L.J.