7. Satanic Interference
Back to The Spiritual Essentials
The instinctive reaction of most of us is that dark forces could not possibly be a factor in the apostles’ failure to understand. These were God’s chosen; hand-picked to be the receivers and then the carriers of the divine message. Moreover, they were continually living in the physical presence of the almighty, demon-crushing Son of God. But wait . . . didn’t Satan enter into Judas? Okay, he was the solitary exception. But then there’s Peter.
Wasn’t he virtually the leader of the apostles and the one who received such revelation from God that Jesus commended him saying, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven. . . .” ( Matthew 16:17)? Yet when Jesus started talking about his future suffering, things got so out of hand that Jesus had to tell Peter, “Get behind me, Satan!”
For Peter to have received that rebuke, evil powers must have involved at the very time that Jesus was telling the apostles about his sufferings. When the devil was at work in Peter, the apostle was not slipping into obvious sin or anything likely to make an opening for the devil. On the contrary, he seemed to be expressing genuine love for the Lord by wanting to spare Jesus from suffering. (I’m reminded also of Saul who supposed he was zealously serving the Lord by persecuting Christians.)
If the enemy could influence Peter so greatly that Jesus had to issue that staggering rebuke at the very time when Jesus was seeking to reveal a new truth, we too could be subject to the deluding powers of darkness when our Lord is seeking to reveal a new truth to us. Like Peter, none of us reaches the point of being beyond the possibility of satanic influence.
Whether it be through demonic brainwashing, delusion or whatever, “the god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers,” (2 Corinthians 4:4). The god of this age is no longer our god, but he is our spiritual enemy, preying after our souls.
Since every spiritual truth that we have yet to discover and apply to our lives will make us a greater threat to the kingdom of darkness, and since our enemy is the Deceiver, specializing in blinding unbelievers from the very truth that will set them free, he will surely seize any opportunity he gets to use his well-honed tricks and blind us to new truths that we need to know.
Through our victorious Lord we are not helpless pawns when dark forces move in. Nevertheless, since no one who is deluded thinks he is deluded, we must be ever alert to that possibility and continually seek God to keep our spiritual eyes open.