The Devil Holds Sway over Earth

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Make no mistake! The world is filled with the children of the devil. It has been observed that children are basically much like their parents. Therefore, Satan’s children lie, hate, murder, and destroy. Look at the world. It should now be crystal clear WHY confusion, war, ignorance, poverty, disease, and misery abound among the nations. The fruits of human nature—Satan’s nature—are evident everywhere there are human beings.

Notice how Paul described the “last days” preceding Christ’s Return: “This know also, that in the last days perilous [dangerous] times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the POWER thereof: from such turn away” (2 Tim. 3:1-5).

While the world is filled with religion—has “a form of godliness”—it neither teaches the truth nor is the religion of God! It denies the power of the true God, as the world unwittingly worships a different being who palms himself off as the God of the Bible.

In review, the devil is also called the “god of this world,” the “prince of this world, prince of the power of the air,” and one who we saw “weakens the nations” and “deceives the whole world.” All these should have taken on new meaning.

Adam’s Fateful Choice

But how did the devil gain access to mankind? What opened the door to his influence—to his broadcast? Though covered earlier, but from a different perspective, the well-known but little understood account of the Garden of Eden holds the key:

“Now the serpent [Satan] was more subtle than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yes, has God said, You shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, You shall not eat of it, neither shall you touch it, lest you die. And the serpent said unto the woman, You shall not surely die: for God does know that in the day you eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons” (Gen. 3:1-7).

Even more than we have already seen, this account represents an astonishing—and truly far-reaching—decision. Instead of following God’s instruction, Adam took of the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” He thought that he knew better than God. He took to himself the right to decide between what was right (good) and what was wrong (evil). He thought that he could trust his own physical senses. In this way, this decision did “open his eyes” (Gen. 3:7)—but not to the things of God, which come only by receiving God’s Spirit (1 Cor. 1:9-10). Certainly, it was not God’s Spirit that entered Adam and Eve at this moment. Rather, the spirit of rebellion entered their minds for the first time. The evil spirit of Satan’s influence was injected into their minds at that moment as the very first appearance of “human nature.” This is how their “eyes were opened.”

Adam’s decision precluded at that moment any opportunity to acquire true spiritual knowledge from God. Thus, his understanding remained limited to what he could learn through the five physical senses—and left him open to Satan’s broadcast. Human nature came into being for the first time!

With this decision, Adam completely cut himself and mankind off from access to God. This other tree has been guiding the thinking of the men and nations ever since Adam’s fateful choice. We must understand what this means for you and me. For his sin of rejecting God and the Tree of Life, Adam was rejected by God and cast from the garden. And mankind was cast out with him into Satan’s world!

Satan lied to Eve, who led Adam into sin with her. He got them to reject—disbelieve!—what God had taught them in Genesis 2:16-17. The devil’s deceit brought these two adult children to believe that they no longer needed to listen to their Parent. Human nature entered. Being thrust from the garden, they were forced to fend for themselves. Having rejected God’s perfect Law (Rom. 7:12, 14) and rule—His GOVERNMENT over all creation—as guides in their lives, and having yielded to Satan and his way of sin (2 Tim. 2:25-26), they were on their own.

Because of sin, they no longer had access to God’s blessings, guidance, protection, or the gift of His Holy Spirit, which would have come by eating of the Tree of Life.

Human Nature Is Not Inherited

Grasp this! Human nature did not come from God, but rather directly from Satan the devil. But human nature is not inherited—it is acquired! Adam’s children and all succeeding generations did not “pass it on” at conception. A parent who loses an eye, hand, or leg does not produce children with one eye, one hand, or one leg. When God used one of Adam’s ribs to create Eve, it did not mean all men ever after lack one rib. The Bible refers to their son Abel as “righteous Abel.” Their disobedience did not prevent his obedience.

Adam and Eve were adult “babies.” Just like babies born today, they were pure at the time of their creation (“birth”) but were quickly exposed to a “broadcast” they were not able to resist. They were created on the sixth day of the week (Friday), rested on the Sabbath (Saturday), and were probably seduced by Satan (Gen. 3:1-6) the next day (Sunday)—at the age of two days old! Thus, again, Satan was waiting for unsuspecting and still innocent Adam and Eve.

Adam and Eve CHOSE not to listen to their Parent, God, but instead CHOSE to believe Satan’s lie that they would not “surely die.” In so doing, they rejected the rule of the government of God in their lives. Again, if Adam had obeyed God’s instruction, he could have qualified to replace Satan and restore the GOVERNMENT of God on Earth.

Let’s examine one important New Testament instruction and example of how human nature is acquired, not inherited. Paul shed important light in the following warning that he issued to the Corinthian Church: “For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his SUBTLETY, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ” (2 Cor. 11:2-3).

Paul was writing to people who lived 4,000 years after Adam and Eve. He recognized that the devil was still alive and active. The Corinthians were adults capable of being deceived (beguiled) in the same way as Eve. Paul warned them to be on guard that they not return to following the ways of human nature. Just as Eve’s nature was not evil and hostile to God before she was deceived, neither was the nature of the converted Corinthians.

Once one is called and converted, having received the Spirit of God, he has put off the old human nature of his past life. Paul also added in Ephesians 2:3, “Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were BY NATURE the children of wrath, even as others” (Eph. 2:3). These verses follow and are part of the scripture identifying Satan as the “prince of the power of the air.”

The following is the same passage from the Phillips translation of the New Testament. This particular translation accurately describes how all people have acquired human nature from Satan: “You drifted along on the stream of this world’s ideas of living, and obeyed its UNSEEN RULER [Satan is the “unseen ruler” of this world—2 Cor. 4:4—who is still operating in those who do not respond to the truth of God].… We all lived like that in the past, and followed the impulses and imaginations of our EVIL NATURE … like everyone else.”

How true! Most people simply drift along in life following whatever feelings (“impulses”) and ideas (“imaginations”) strike them from moment to moment. All of Ephesians 1:1-23 is Paul’s accounting to those brethren of their earlier calling into God’s way of life. Take time to read it, possibly using the Moffatt translation. The Ephesians had come out of the course of this world and were no longer “by nature” the children of wrath, and were no longer yielding to the “prince of the power of the air.” They had begun to actively “dis-acquire” human nature by yielding to God instead of the impulses, pulls, feelings, and temptations of Satan’s wavelength.

It would be grossly unfair of God to inject newborn babies with human nature, and then place them under His “wrath” for having it. Do you see this point? Human nature is acquired, with this acquired nature leading to disobedience to God—and THIS puts people under the wrath of God!

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