BP 34
You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning . . . ~ Matthew 8:44
Today we are going to sit in on a university lecture–not your typical university or your customary lecture. The location today is the University of Death Valley and the topic is the Devolution of Humanity. The speaker is one of Satan’s left-hand demons. He does not have a name because one of the tragedies of utter darkness is the total loss of identity, of personhood. So, we’ll just call this figure from the dark side, the fallen one.
Let’s listen in to what he’s teaching his underlings. . .
What is the Primary Objective of darkness relative to humanity, you might ask? Is it to tempt the human bone bags into disobeying God’s (how I hate to think the Name much less say it) commands? Is it to discourage? Is it to turn their attention to transient things and distract them away from eternal things? Is it to lie to them that the Master of Light has forgotten them, or has turned His back on them? Is it to twist their view of God’s character so they perceive Him as a narcissistic wrathful deity who is unjust and untrustworthy? Is it to make them feel bad and shameful? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes and yes! All of the above!
But are any of these the Primary Objective? No, no, no, no, no and no! What? You said yes? Are you all spiritually blind fools? Well, to be honest—which I can be on rare occasion when it’s to my benefit–yes, you are.
But that’s not the point. My point is that all the aforementioned dark actions against humans are subplots of the Primary Objective but none of them alone is the Primary Objective. So, what is the Primary Objective? I’ll guillotine it down to two words.
Separation and Annihilation.
Yes, our Primary Objective is to separate men and women from their Creator and by so doing annihilate His image in them. We, as members of the principalities of darkness, are nauseated by anything and everything that God created, but especially by the only creatures in the universe who bear His image, His fingerprint: Humanity.
After all, we first hated God and His authority over us, so we joined the Rebellion, those who followed our father, Satan—unholy is his name–and staged a coup against the God of the universe.
Somehow, we lost that battle and were cast out of heaven. (Our historians have been working to rewrite that account for thousands of years. Many humans have died believing our revisionist version.)
Do all of you fallen ones remember the ancient Garden, the one where our Dark Father tempted Adam and Eve to disobey the Loving Father? What happened because of that devious temptation? The first two humans who had been made in His image disobeyed and they, like us, were sent out of the Garden. They were separated from God. Oh, joy! Die, human.
Here we encounter the Great Separation that left humanity alone in the universe. The relationship between God and those He had made in His image was not only fractured but severed. Yes! Guillotined. How I love relational distance! Primary Objective part A was achieved. Separation became the baseline position between God and His creatures.
They could never be friends again unless some miraculous intervention occurred–some type of redemption where they would be bought back from hell like a slave from a cruel master. But who would ever pay such a high price for such disloyal creatures?
But let us not forget part B: Annihilation. Our Father who art in Darkness not only wanted to separate God from men and women but also to destroy the imago dei within them. He desired, as it were, to erase the smudge that God had placed within them, to remove the divine fingerprint He had imprinted on their nature.
Here we encounter the true purpose of temptation. It is not simply to deceive humans into breaking God’s rules or to leave them burdened with guilt. To stop at that would be much too kind. Rue the day! No, the severe goal is to separate them from their Master with the end goal of annihilation. Divide and conquer is the age-old strategy.
Isolate and kill.
Exile and destroy.
Don’t you love verbs that describe the termination of the hated species?
The Primary Objective, then, is not simply to tempt the hated ones into individual acts of disobedience. It is far more than inspiring individual acts of evil. The Primary Objective is to destroy and to kill. Don’t ever forget that!
The humans are so seduced by evolution—the faulty theory that the world is progressing toward higher levels of species via blind chance and natural selection. Hahahahahahahahahahaha. What’s truly blind about this universe is that humans ignore the principle of devolution.
(Don’t you just love the letter ‘d’ in the English language? So many delicious words begin with it: Devil, demons, darkness, destroy, divorce, dying, death, deceitful, denigrate, disintegrate, blah blah blah. Well, add devolution to the list of deadly words. Yessss.)
Hades defines devolution as a degeneration or descent toward a lesser state, a worse condition. That’s what happened at the Garden of Eden, you blind fools. A man and a woman were living in God’s Presence only to degenerate and descend into unholy separation through disobedience. Darkness celebrated that day, right? Yes, there was a deadly victory on that doomsday.
But God put in place a plan to redeem His devolved creatures that bore His image. How could He? He sent His son to pay their penalty and buy them back. God loved them so much that He actually died for them. Yes, God died! How wonderful that He died! We win!
What a depressing day when He broke the bonds of death and rose to . . . life. We thought we had won the war only to discover that . . . our fates were sealed. How dark and hellish. But we love the darkness!
Since then, the Master of Light calls men and women back into relationship with Him once again to become more like Him, to evolve, to ascend. He desires to restore them to their former selves which ultimately means no more separation from Him. I despise His love.
(As much as I hate ‘d’ words, I absolutely despise ‘r’ words: restore, redeem, revelation, rescue, resuscitate, repent, righteousness, refine, rejuvenate, resurrect, blah, blah, blah.)
Meanwhile, we exist to enforce the Primary Objective, namely, to keep humans on the path of descent. It is easy to lead those downward who reject God and avoid the light altogether. They are already ensnared in a state of separation.
Talk about spearing fish in a barrel! When they are far from their Creator, they cannot distinguish truth from lies—and neither do they have any desire to know truth in the first place. Darkness is their natural habitat. They are like us! They could not even desire light if they wanted to.
It is much more difficult to enforce the Primary Objective with those who love the Master of Light–to dim the image of Him within them. Yes, the Holy One has opened their eyes to see Him so our goal can no longer be to keep them from seeing the Light but to do all we can to darken the light within them. We much prefer 25-watt bulbs as opposed to those who radiate the brightness of lightening.
So, we are here to annihilate the image of God in humans. As I said, this annihilation is easy with those who reject God. They are like a plant under a board that does not receive the sunlight. They languish in darkness. Cut off from the source of life, they will not grow but will slowly shrivel and die inside. They are on their own and must try to live in their own strength. Good!
But the problem for them is that, apart from God, there is no reason to live. If they were made for a relationship with God but do not know Him, they have missed their entire purpose in life and are reduced to walking dust. Yes! To what can I compare them? A Lamborghini used for a chicken coop.
For those who reject Jesus, it is still true that God’s image is in them. They are self-conscious, they have a conscience, they build things, they write stories and poems and music and have intelligence to exercise dominion over the earth, they are capable of altruism and care for others and morality.
But God does not live in them. He is not abiding with them. In their jars of clay, they do not carry around His very Presence.
Here we are back to the Lamborghini again. They are cars without engines. They are a shadow of what God meant them to be. Broken seashells on the beach. Dead autumn leaves blown around by the wind and then buried under ice and snow.
But do not forget this point, my demon understudies: Our objective is not simply to separate humans from their Creator and hasten them toward a descent. More than that, our goal is to annihilate them. Separated from God, the blind ones will devolve further day by day. Their descent will continue away from God’s image and the light until . . . they become animals. Blind to the ways of their Loving Father. Far from God. Alienated. Just what we want.
As our father who art in hell quoted the word of God to Jesus in the wilderness, so I quote what the word says about these devolving creatures: And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.
Don’t you just love it! Here we have a description of the end game we are striving toward: the slow but steady annihilation of God’s image in His creatures. Assist them along that downward path. Push them into that dark descent.
If they practice darkness long enough, one day they will be transformed into beasts. God’s image will be erased from their being. No longer will they desire to know right and wrong. They will simply be dedicated to choosing what they want with nothing and no one restraining them.
Do you doubt me, my stupid pupils? Do you not remember the godless descent of the men and women of Noah’s day before the flood came? Have you forgotten how the people of Sodom and Gomorrah devolved into the depths of lawlessness? What about the Canaanites? You know the darkness they reveled in day and night.
They even sacrificed their children to a false God! Imagine that—throwing their pleading, whimpering flesh and blood into the fire! Yes, they practiced sin to such a degree that it became them. Their very nature was no longer human. Hahahahahahaha. No wonder God wanted to protect His people from these beasts.
That was our work at its finest. We delivered them from the kingdom of darkness into . . . deeper levels of darkness still! They devolved from men and women created in His image until they exchanged God for idols and denied His very existence. Then darkness crept into their hearts like a ravenous crocodile and owned them. There was not a glimmer of light left in them. They hated all truth and light.
They became waterless clouds, fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted, wild waves of the sea, casting up the foam of their own shame, wandering stars for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever!
To summarize, every flaming dart we hurl at humans is for the ultimate purpose of separation and annihilation. Some humans will cross the line of no return and become irredeemable—possessions of darkness. Victory! Some will walk in the dark but will remain vulnerable to the Shepherd’s voice—curses!
Others yet will bow down before the Son of God and surrender to Him as their Master. How I despise that moment!! They are lost to us as far as ownership is concerned, but we will still fight to keep them spiritual children who play in a sandbox, distracted by fun and shiny things while some of their peers grow up to be the dreaded warriors we hate and fear.
Even though they remain beyond our reach to drag them into the nether world with us, there is a dark pleasure that comes when we prevent them from fully becoming who He desires them to be.
Make them vanilla. Keep them common. Urge them to look at the world and its pleasures. Distract them with false teaching. Undo them with shame. Starve them spiritually by dragging them away from the word, prayer, fellowship and worship. Yes, by all means, keep them from worship. We detest it when they look into His face and observe His character.
Always remember the ghastly battle cry: Separate and annihilate. Make it your death motto.
**
Designer Therapy for Life believes that there is a darkness in the universe whose aim is to separate humans from God and annihilate His image in them. So, what are those who walk in the light to do when their desire is to become increasingly like the King of Kings?
We need to be aware of darkness and know how to fight against it. Unless we want to be those children who settle for the sandbox and the shiny things of this world. So, what do we do?
In psycho-spiritual-relational practice we need to grow away from settling for comfort and ease and become uncommon. We must choose to grow. We must be intentional about our lives on this planet instead of to simply let it come to us. We must not drift with the current around us but set a course and sail!
We know what the enemy’s Primary Objective is relative to humans. What is our Primary Objective? Reduced to one phrase, we need to look up and practice His Presence.
Might we say, with broad brushstrokes and no judgment, that there are four types of people in the world? The first two are both in the position of not knowing Jesus as their savior and friend.
The first of these two does not have a personal intimacy with Jesus but still bears His image and attempts to be a good person. They may be very moral, kind, and are genuinely committed to doing what is right as far as they know the truth.
However, the Holy Spirit does not live in their hearts and they do not have the light of God’s Presence within them. They are in the unenviable position of wanting to be good but unwilling to bow to Jesus as their Master.
The second type of person does not know Jesus and they seem hell-bent on erasing His image in their heart. They actively rebel against God’s authority and are committed to practicing sin, to walking in it, swimming in it. They have no desire to be good.
These are the people who the fallen one described from Romans 1. The image of God is slowly fading from their hearts. Some of these individuals will one day slip from the ranks of humanity. They hate the idea of heaven and would rather be away from God.
The other two types of people believe in the name of Jesus and confess that He is God. Both are embossed not only with the original fingerprint of the Creator, but they also have God inside of them through the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. God lives inside their souls. They are friends of God. So, how are these two different from each other?
The first type of believer knows God but does little to grow in that relationship. Other things may distract them. Jesus is one of many spokes in the wheel of their life, not the hub that holds everything together. They do not cling to Jesus for life, desperately needing Him 24-7, but call on Him when they encounter something too big to handle by themselves. God is a spiritual IV that invigorates them every month or every year when they get dehydrated, not the oxygen they breathe every second of every day in order to live.
The second type of believer practices the Presence of God. They intentionally walk with Him, strive to obey Him, desire to know His will for their lives and purposely live to bring honor, praise and glory to His name. They read His word as often as possible (ideally, daily) because they know that the Bible is the only written word they can read that has the power to enter the deepest parts of their being and literally change them into God’s image.
They communicate often with God because He is their best friend. They talk with Him not just during some fixed prayer time, but throughout their day. As Thomas a Kempis would say, they refer all things back to God. As the Psalmist says, they thirst for God as a deer thirsts for the stream. He is their life. Cut them, and they bleed the love of Jesus. Nothing else is more important to them, not even politics.
They meet with other believers because they are convinced they are conduits to pass on God’s grace to one another and learn to love each other more and more. They want to be servants. Just as they have experienced that knowing God is essential for their growth, so they have discovered that knowing other believers is essential to their well-being. They do not want to be a single log burning in the fireplace but one of many that burn brighter and hotter together.
If you’re someone in crisis, which of the four types of people would you want to have at your side?
Remember that everyone will love something in this world more than anything else. We are all made to bow to a master.
So, what are you going to look at? What are you going to love? What will be the last thing on your mind when you fall asleep and what will be the first thing on your mind when you awake?
It’s what your heart treasures that determines which of the four positions you will inhabit. Will you value being good but be far from God? Will you choose intentional rebellion against God and devolve into being more animal than human? Will Jesus function as a God of the gaps in your life who pinch hits when you need extra help? Or will Jesus be the air that you breathe?
Darkness wants to separate you from God and annihilate His Presence within you–or severely dim it–so be ready for a fight.
Life comes down to what you look at—who you look at. You will look at something, and you will become it.
So, look up and keep your eyes on Him. There will be no separation. No annihilation. Only the joy and peace of abiding in Jesus and practicing His Presence.
For life!
Colossians 3:1 ~ If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God
Romans 12:2 ~ Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind
Hebrews 12:1 ~ Let us lay aside every weight and sin which clings to closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith
Acts 4:13 ~ Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus