In his attempt to persuade Jesus to sin, Satan tried everything, including making Him angry.  He went so far as to cast doubt on the heritage of the miraculously-conceived Man from Galilee Who, if He had been thin-skinned, might have reacted in a hostile manner.  This would be like someone doubting the true identity of your biological father.  In other words, “IF you are not a bastard, ….”  Satan said to Jesus: “IF you are the Son of God, ….”  IF?  (Mat. 4:3).  Good try on Satan’s part, but to no avail.  Then he tried to tempt Jesus to prove His Sonship by tempting God.  Again, no luck.  Then he offered Him the world.  Same result.  The fact that Jesus did not challenge his ownership of the world tells us that this is indeed Satan’s world (2 Cor. 4:4) and will remain his world until Christ returns and assumes ownership of it by taking Satan’s best shots and remaining holy–without sin.  Having lost his war with Christ, Satan is determined to gain ownership of as many people as possible.  As Jesus warned, only a few will resist the devil’s call to join his religious world known as “the church.”

Christ’s saints follow in His footsteps in terms of world ownership and Satan’s attempt to take it from them.  Jesus ruled his own small part of the world–wherever He was at any given time.  He went where He wanted to go and did what He wanted to do.  Satan could not stop Him.  True saints operate in the same way.  They rule the part of the world where they are.  If Satan can tempt them to sin he then over their part of the world rules it and them.  Jesus tells His people that He has given them”… POWER OVER ALL THE POWER OF THE ENEMY” (Lk. 10:19).  As always, He meant exactly what He said.  We must learn, believe and act on WHAT HE SAID, which came to Him from the Father through the Holy Spirit (Jn. 14:10).  Sin prevents professing Christians from walking in that power and from overcoming Satan’s attempts to make them sin (Rev. 3:21).  Sin enables him to rule their world.  He knows that sin separates man from God (Isa. 59:2), thereby robbing him of God’s promised power over his part of the world in this life.  That part can include areas far away from where the saint is physically located.  Read 1 Cor. 5:1-5.  I have done what Paul did (vss 4,5).  I have also administered healing and cast out devils over the phone.  I have also prayed over physical items that were placed on the bodies of people.  The power in the item brought about immediate healing.  I am no different from anyone else.  We all have access to such power, IF, and only IF WE OBEY GOD.  This makes us different from church people who reject God’s Word and Satan’s word, known as church doctrine.  The results are predictable to Bible students as Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28 tell us.

This is why a visitor to earth would not be able to distinguish between the churched and the unchurched.  Whatever happens to the unchurched also happens to the churched who suffer God’s curses exactly as does the rest of the world.  They suffer the same “natural disasters,” the same “accidents,” the same diseases, for which they receive the same medical treatment, which causes them to recover (or not) exactly as do the unchurched.  Why?  Because they are not a “peculiar” people, a “holy nation” of “treasures” as the Lord commands His people to be (Titus 2:14/ 1 Pet. 2:9).  God’s people are known, not as God’s people, but as religious reprobates, as rejects from from the religious community.  Recall how the Jews, especially the religious hierarchy reacted to Jesus and the Apostles–they killed them.  Why?  Because they were peculiar, strange, different.  They bore God’s light which illuminated the darkness of the priests, Pharisees and Sadducees.  Because they did not follow the rules of the established religion, they could not be God’s people.  Jesus warns His people today, “As they have treated Me, so they will treat you.”  The truth is that the only difference between the super churchite and the thief is where they spend a couple of hours on Sunday morning.  Sin–transgression of God’s Law (1 Jn. 3:4)–separates both of them from God.  “Church is over, so let the fun begin.  The fix is in.  So sin and grin, for you’ll still win, again, and again.”   Satan temps God’s people to sin for the same reason he tempted their Messiah to sin–to keep them from inheriting what has been promised them.

Satan knew that if he could entice Jesus to commit one sin, He could not be man’s Savior and could not inherit the earth, both of which would remain his (Satan’s).  He had won the world and its human inhabitants from the first Adam by enticing him to disobey God.  If he could defeat the “last Adam” (1 Cor. 15:45) he would own it forever.  Numerous times he tried to entice Christ to sin.  One sin would suffice.  Recall that Jesus told the rich man that “one thing” (sin) would prevent him from receiving eternal life (Lk. 18:18-23).  Note that Jesus “loved him” when He heard that he had kept the Law all of his life.  But His love for the man did not prevent Jesus from rejecting him.  That “one thing” caused him to lose “everything.”  The church brags that she can sin repeatedly and “… not surely die.”  Unlike the unchurched, the wages of whose sin is death, the wages of CHURCHITES’ sin is eternal life.  Satan’s lie still works perfectly.

Satan is evil, but he is not stupid.  He knew that Jesus was capable of sinning, which is why he never stopped tempting Him.  He devoted 31 years to that effort and failed miserably.  Those same efforts are aimed at mankind, specifically the church.  God expects us to “walk as Jesus walked” (1 Jn. 2:6) and to “… overcome (Satan) even as I (Jesus) overcame (him).”  Those who do so will “… sit with Me (Jesus) on My throne” in the Kingdom of God (Rev. 3:21).  As the Apostle Peter said, judgment is ongoing in the church.  And of those within the church, “… only the righteous will be saved, and they just barely” (1 Pet. 4:17,18).  The righteous are those who obey God’s command to “Be you holy for I am holy” (1 Pet. 1:16).  They become holy by hungering and thirsting for righteousness (Mat. 5:6) and ingest God’s Word which renders them righteous and holy, the END RESULT of which is eternal life (Rom. 5:21; 6:22).

Satan knew that Christ could sin, which is why he relentlessly tempted Him.  He knew that if Jesus sinned once, mankind would have no Savior; man would remain his forever, along with the earth and its kingdoms (the world).  But Jesus overcame him.  And so must we if we are to rule the earth and the universe with Him: “To him that overcomes (Satan) I will allow to sit with Me on My throne, even as I overcame (him) and now sit with My Father on His throne” (Rev. 3:21).  Note that Jesus is addressing the Laodicean (final) era of the church–the era in which we are living.  Notice also how wicked and evil that church is: “I know your works, that you are both hot (religious) and cold (sinners) …. Because you say, ‘I am rich and have many (material) goods and need nothing (else), and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor (spiritually), blind (to God’s Word) and naked (exposed like Adam and Eve) …. (vss 15-18).  Jesus warns the church to learn about Him, believe what they learn and obey it.  He stands at the door (heart) of the fallen man and knocks (calls out).  Man must “open the door.”  God does not force His way in.  Remember the prodigal son.  His father could have found him, but he did not look for him.  The son had to return on his own because he had left on his own.  When one is shown the Truth and rejects it, that one is in deep trouble.  God will not go into the false church looking for him.  L.J.