Satan’s Web
Jude 1:1-13: “Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James, to them that are sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ, and called: Mercy unto you, and peace, and love, be multiplied. Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints. For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ. I will therefore put you in remembrance, though ye once knew this, how that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed them that believed not. And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day. Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. Likewise also these filthy dreamers defile the flesh, despise dominion, and speak evil of dignities. Yet Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil he disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke thee. But these speak evil of those things which they know not: but what they know naturally, as brute beasts, in those things they corrupt themselves. Woe unto them! for they have gone in the way of Cain, and ran greedily after the error of Balaam for reward, and perished in the gainsaying of Core. These are spots in your feasts of charity, when they feast with you, feeding themselves without fear: clouds they are without water, carried about of winds" trees whose fruit withereth, without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots" Raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame" wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever.”
In reading from the book of Jude, we find such wonderful things in these writings, in that God tells us that there are, among the saints of God, false believers. They are not true believers, but rather, people that Satan has put there for the purpose of corrupting the church.
The Bible tells us that every plant that the heavenly Father hath not planted shall be rooted up, and I’m persuaded to believe that we are living in the day and the hour when God is beginning to root up the tares. Jesus gave a parable, saying that a sower went forth to sow, and He spoke of how that this sower sowed good seed, and how that the good man slept, and there came forth another sower, and he also sowed seed, but this seed was bad seed. He began to interpret it to the disciples by explaining that the man who sowed the bad or corrupt seed was Satan, and that he was the enemy of God. Then, He spoke of the time when God would send forth the reapers, that they would cut down the harvest, and after it had been cut down, He would first gather together all the tares into bundles and burn them" then, He would gather the wheat into the garners.
We have what appears to be a great revival sweeping the world, and I can say, by what I understand of God, that it has been an outstanding move of God in the earth. But we overlook one thing. A lot of this great sweeping revival, or what has appeared to be revival, has been nothing more than God allowing for the harvest to be brought in, in the sense of cutting down the tares first and binding them into many denominational bundles, which are nothing but tares. There are many people that are gathered into a unit, or into a form of worship, that are nothing more than tares. God promised to do that first. A lot of people are building great empires of monetary value, and these also are tares. Jesus said this would happen, and He also spoke that it would be so close, it would deceive the very elect if possible. He promised, following this, a true revival where God, Himself, would send forth the true reapers and they would gather the true harvest, and when they gathered it together, God would take it into His garners and would keep it as meat for the master’s use.
So, we see that we must be very careful, and we must be able to differentiate between the two revivals, between what God is doing and what Satan is doing. If it is going to be so close that it would deceive the very elect, if possible, then that means, beloved friend, we are going to have to follow the instructions of Jesus by watching and praying the way He commanded us to watch and pray. Jesus said, “Watch and pray that you enter not into temptation" the spirit, indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” I believe what Jesus meant was that the flesh is weak to the things of its natural surroundings.
Man is flesh, and the Bible teaches the creature was made subject to vanity, and because this outer being is subjected to the things of this world or vanity, he has a tendency to love the things of this present world rather than loving God. We know God hasn’t robbed the creature of the things of this world. It is not God’s desire to rob the creature of the present world nor the things thereof, for God wants us to have this present world and its things. God wants us to have His acts of creation as our own inheritance" but, beloved, the one thing we fail to see is that everything in this world, at this time, is under a curse. Being under a curse, if we touch it, then we become partakers of iniquity. If we love this present world in its condition, as being under the curse, then we forfeit our rights to the world that God made holy and pure in the act of creation.
The Bible tells us that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, so we could believe in Him, that we could be redeemed, and that the world itself could be saved. He sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world, through Him, might be saved, and that God, Himself might save His creation by bringing it back to that perfect condition that it was in when God made Adam and Eve and placed them in the garden of Eden. When the Bible says, “God so loved the world,” it means that God so loved the world when God created it, or as it was in the time when He created Adam and Eve, when everything was so pure and so wonderful. There, in the garden, they had the desire of their hearts, because they had everything. God so loved the act of creation that He had brought into existence. God so loved it, but when He saw the awfulness of sin and the evil as it overtook Adam and Eve and the world, after Satan had taken it into this great web of unrighteousness, it grieved God. God was so grieved that He purposed in His heart to send forth His Son to die at Calvary, and with the blood of atonement, God would redeem, change, cleanse, purify, and restore the world unto the great garden condition that we refer to as the great millennium of God.
God has looked down upon the world through the blood of Jesus Christ, which has redeemed the world. God so loved it that He will restore it to that great wonderful age of the garden, this age that we call the one thousand year reign with God. We have a right to it, but those that reject God do not have a right to it, for the Word does tell us that, here in this world, with all of the awfulness of sin and the evil that men practice, that God has granted an allotted period of time, which He calls grace, to people who are the spiritual descendents of Esau. The world, at this present time, belongs to Esau, but we, as Christians, are pilgrims and strangers, and we are only passing through this era, for we are headed for Canaan Land. We must pay our way through this present world and our conduct must be such as would please God, and we must be a light to our generation by walking upright before God. We must not stake our claims upon this world or this life, for our inheritance is in heaven.
The Bible tells us to lay not up for ourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal, for where your treasures are, there will your heart be also.
We should not be fascinated by the things of this world. The world is like a giant spider web. Satan spins a great web, and like the dew drops of the morning when they fall upon this web and the sunlight hits the web, it sparkles so bright and so brilliant. To the youth, it really is dazzling in their sight. It is so brilliant with its beauty and radiance, but the very moment you lay hands upon it, you find out that you are fastened to the web of the world. You cannot be partakers of the world without being fastened to its system. There is no way, beloved friend. You lay hold on the things of the world and you are going to be tied to its system.
God intends for us to have the world the way He created it in the beginning. He intends for us to have the beauty of the world. Such as the beautiful streams that ripple by, the beautiful trees with their singing birds. God intends for us to have the beautiful stars, the moon and the sun. He intends for us to have all the radiance of life in its abundance, filled up and overflowing. He tells us in His Word, through the mouth of Jesus Christ, “I am come that you might have life, and that you might have it more abundantly.” The word abundant means filled up and overflowing.
John said, “Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.” He tells us here that the key to prosperity in this world, when it comes to godliness, is soul prosperity, and that all of the blessings of the Christians hinges upon one thing, and that is soul prosperity. Remember, we must be in harmony with God. He tells us that whatsoever that man doeth shall prosper if he delights himself in the laws of God. He will make us to ride upon the high places of the earth and feed us with the heritage of Jacob. We must delight ourselves in the laws of God and the things of God.
Therefore, there is one thing we must remember: the world is according to its system and we must not possess it, but we must take everything that God gives us. First, we must be sure that it is the will of God for us to have it. Next, we must understand the will of God in our life. The Bible says, “Be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of God is.” We must get the love of the world out of us and have the love of God in us. The Bible says, “If the love of the world is in you, the love of the Father is not there.” Then, when we get the love of God inward, we will have our affection on things above. We will have our conversation in heaven and God can give us all the things of this world for our use, enjoyment, or whatever it might be, and our hearts will never be tied to them. We, our spiritual inner being, will never be caught by the web of the worldly system, but we will enjoy the acts of creation the way that God intended for us to have it.
If you follow the tree of knowledge, which the system of this world follows, then you will be trained to follow after this world, and you will conform to the image of this world. You will find that your spiritual being on the inside becomes imprisoned by the powers of this world. This is because Satan is the prince of the powers of the air, and Satan, himself, is the god of this world and ruler over the electronic forces of nature. He is the spirit and ruler that is in the air or atomic powers of the elements that are going to cause destruction in this world. We must overcome that satanic power that has control of our bodies, which are formed from the dust particles of the earth, because Satan is the prince and ruler of the demonic powers of the air, which are the fallen angels, and over the atomic matter. Then, with the intellectual powers of science (Paul said, “Science, knowledge falsely so called”) he controls matter by his mind (mind over matter) in the sense of intellectual reasoning. If Satan has the power over these particles that are in the air (electrical powers), and we, ourselves, are a composition of this dust, which is made of these atomic particles, then this means that as long as we are carnal or natural, that we are bound, naturally speaking, to the gravitational powers of Mother Nature. Not only that, but we are bound by the powers of Satan and his super power through our five human senses: taste, sight, smell, touch, and hearing. Satan controls the human being. He has power over us, and the only way to escape this power is to fast, pray, and seek God in order to master this body. We must master this outer man. We must do it for Christ’s sake.
If we want this body as an inheritance from God forever, then we must leave the beastly level of life. We must be elevated to the God level. We must reach up into the heavenlies and make contact with God that we might take on the mind of Christ, which supercedes the powers of Satan and his mind. Let’s get beyond the intellectual powers of darkness and have enough understanding, faith, and spiritual power to overcome Satan and take control of this body, to change it from this beastly form, in its fallen condition, into the image of the Son of God. The Bible says, “As many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name.”
Beloved friend, it doesn’t sound very interesting when we think about forsaking the things of the world, because we are relative to them through desire, yet it sounds interesting when we consider the fact that all human beings die when they follow after the things of the world. In following after the Word of God and understanding how to conquer Satan, you and I become the power of God made manifest in human form. We overcome the power of death and we receive this body as a gift or an inheritance from God, eternally and forever. We become preserved unto eternal life" thus God seeks to free us from the world and give us all the things of creation, when we, ourselves, relate to Him from our inner being, that we might use these things and still love God.
If we don’t have God, we will then love worldly things through the passions of the body. Let us give glory to God, using our bodies and the things of this world for the glory of God as we enjoy them. Brothers and sisters, we can have them forever.
By Rev. George Leon Pike Sr.
Founder and first President of Jesus Christ’s Eternal Kingdom of Abundant Life, Inc.
Holiness Unto The Lord