Continuing with part I of this series, we pick up with Satan and his angels having rebelled against God.  What is he up to?  To fully understand his rebellion against God, his plan for the future and his power, look at Isaiah 14:12-16: “How far you have fallen from heaven, O lucifer, son of the morning.  How you have been cut down to the ground, you who weakened the nations.  For you have said in your heart, ‘I will ascend into heaven; I will exalt my throne above the stars of God ….  I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north (the northern heavens where God lives); I will ascend above the heights of the clouds.  I will be like the most high.’  Yet you will be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit,  They that see you will look at you and say, ‘Is this the one who made the earth tremble, that shook the kingdoms?'”  Different Bible translations call this incredible being such things as the “crusher of nations” who “laid low the nations” and “enslaved the nations.”

As the Lord said, iniquity (Lawlessness) was found in Lucifer.  Lucifer, by disobeying God’s Law, had created another god (himself), thereby earning him a name change from Lucifer (son of the morning) to Satan, the devil (enemy of God).

Now we will return to the Book of Ezekiel.  Chapter 1 verses 16-18 conclude God’s final Words to Satan through that prophet: “Therefore I will cast you as profane out of the mountain of God, and I will cast you, O covering cherub, out of the midst of the stones of fire.”  How far Satan had fallen.  How much he had given up.  No angel was closer to the Creator of the Universe than he had been.  No being had ever been created that was as incredible in appearance and power as the former Lucifer.  The Lord continues: “Your heart (mind) was exalted because of your beauty.  You were corrupted by your wisdom and your brightness.  I will cast you to the ground.  I will lay you before kings so that they can behold you.  You have defiled your sanctuaries by your iniquity and by the iniquity of everything you have done.  Therefore I will cause you to destroy yourself from within.  I will bring you to ashes upon the ground.  All that know you will be astonished.  You will be a terror no more” (vss 17-19).

We must not dismiss Satan because he has been cast to the earth.  He is still a powerful foe to those who serve and worship the God of the universe.  Knowing that his time is short he is driven to deceive as many people as possible before Christ’s return to earth.  His primary target is the small group he does not control–God’s Very Elect, His remnant, His “little flock.”  He already has the rest of the world under his control.  To hold onto them he needs only to leave the unchurched alone and to keep the churched in his Catholic/Protestant religious system.  His focus is on God’s true, Law-keeping saints.  He wants to leave no one behind when he enters the Lake of Fire.  His success rate has been phenomenal so far.

In Ephesians 2:2 the Apostle Paul is writing to the biological Gentiles who made up the Ephesus church.  Having been converted, they had become spiritual Israelites.  He says to them: “Whereas in time past you walked after the pattern set by the world around you.  You lived in obedience to the prince of the powers of the air–the spirit that controls those who are disobedient to God.”  The prince he referred to was Satan the devil.  He was and continues to be “the prince of the powers (fallen angels–devils) of the air.  He broadcasts his temptations to mankind in the same way that a radio station broadcasts news, etc.   Symbolically, the minds of human beings are like radios, televisions and hand-held gadgets.  People who continue to listen to his voice mentally absorb what he tells them.  His voice is like leaven in that it afflicts the whole mind, which dictates all thoughts, words and acts of the listener.

Satan is the ultimate antichrist who controls all other antichrists.  Those who continue to listen to him invariably follow him, as did the angels assigned to him by the Lord.  As a result, listeners take on his spirit–the spirit of antichrist.  As it is written in I John 2:18: “even now (85-100 A.D.) there are many antichrists.”  These were people who had embraced the antichrist spirit by breaking God’s Law.  Nothing has changed.  Breaking of the 4th commandment is Satan’s universal temptation to commit iniquity (Lawlessness).  So powerful is this lure that both the churched and the unchurched world have rejected God’s Sabbath Day–the day He calls “My holy day”– and have embraced Satan’s Sunday Sabbath, the day sun worshipers paid homage to their god.  Sabbath breakers unwittingly worship and serve the same god today.

God made man a little lower than the angels (Ps. 8:5).  Angels must obey His Law.  If those above us must obey His Law, why do churchites believe they are exempt for doing so?  The usual response concerns God supposedly nailing His Law of life it to Christ’s cross.  The church masses believe that lie because they have embraced the antichrist spirit.  I show churchites where it is written that the Messiah would come to earth to “magnify the Law and make it holy” (again) and where He Himself said that He “did not come to destroy the Law, but to fulfil it,” meaning to manifest the Law to its highest measure.  Because they have embraced the spirit of antichrist, these Truths have have no effect on their attitude toward God’s Law.  Because they obey and serve Satan in this life they will one day join him in the Lake of Fire.  I will continue the work of warning them “as long as it is day, for night comes when no man can work.”  The time is coming when men will run to and fro in search of the Word of God, but will do so in vain.  L.J.