Lucifer’s Ancient
Rebellion
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“The premise
beneath all of these spiritualities
is that sin has not intruded upon the
relation between the sacred and human
nature, that human nature itself
offers access-indeed, we assume
unblemished access-to God, that human
nature itself mediates the divine.
Gone are the days when people
understood that an avalanche has
fallen between God and human beings,
that human nature retains its shape
as made in the image of God but has
lost its relationship to God and
stands in pained alienation from
Him.”
–David
F. Wells, Above All Earthy Powers, p.
164.
The New
“Spirituality” But Ancient
Rebellion Against God
There has risen in
Christendom a new
“spirituality,” which is
not really new, but is the ancient
rebellion of Lucifer himself, the
ancient rebellion of paganism and
gnosticism, a
“spirituality” which
believes in searching out the
psyche, in following the self, instead
of crucifying it. This postmodern
“spirituality” has captured
the modern religious world, welding
Romanism, the religion of human
nature, with gnosticism and paganism,
with spiritualism, with New Age, with
apostate Protestantism, with the
world. All of these powers rest on
the human psyche, on the self.
Lucifer Propounded
That the Creature Be Free to Follow
His Own Will
It was Lucifer himself
who propounded in heaven that every
creature should be free to follow his
own will instead of having his will
in submission to the great Creator
God and His law of perfect freedom
and love. It was Lucifer who
propounded that God was a tyrant
because He required all His creatures
to be in submission to His great will
revealed in His law of perfect
freedom and love.
“The law of love
being the foundation of the
government of God, the happiness of
all created beings depended upon
their perfect accord with its great
principles of righteousness. God
desires from all His creatures of
love-homage that springs from an
intelligent appreciation of His
character. He takes no pleasure in
forced allegiance and to all He
grants freedom of will, that they may
render Him voluntary service.
“But there was
one that chose to pervert this
freedom, Sin originated with him who,
sat next to Christ, had been most
honored of God among the inhabitants
of heaven. Before his fall, Lucifer
was first of the covering cherubs,
holy and undefiled. “Thus saith
the Lord God; Thou sealest up the
sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in
beauty. Thou hast been in Eden the
garden of God; every precious stone
was thy covering…. Thou art the
anointed cherub that covereth; and I
have set thee so: thou wast upon the
holy mountain of God; thou hast
walked up and down in the midst of
the stones of fire. Thou wast perfect
in thy ways from the days thou wast
created, till iniquity was found in
thee. “ Ezekiel 28: 12-15….
Lucifer Urges That
angels should Obey the Dictates of
Their Own Will
“Leaving his
place in the immediate presence of
God, Lucifer went forth to diffuse
the spirit of discontent among the
angels. Working with mysterious
secrecy, and for a time concealing
his real purpose under the appearance
of reverence for God, he endeavored
to excite dissatisfaction concerning
the laws that governed heavenly
beings, intimating that they
imposed an unnecessary restraint.
Since their natures were holy, he
urged that the angels should obey the
dictates of their own free will. He
sought to create sympathy for himself
by representing that God dealt
unjustly with him in bestowing
supreme horror upon Christ. He
claimed that in aspiring to greater
power and honor he was not aiming at
self-exaltation, but was seeking to
secure liberty for all the
inhabitants of heaven, that by this
means they might attain to a higher
state of existence.” GC 493-495.
“Not as I
will, but as Thou wilt.”
–Jesus praying to His Father in
Gethsemane. Matthew 26: 39.
In Luke,
“Not My will, but Thine, be
done.” Luke 22:42.
“If any
man will do His will, he shall know
of the doctrine, whether it be of
God, or whether I speak of
Myself.” John 7:17.
Christ Demonstrated
That God is No Tyrant, But a Servant
King
“Even as the
Son of man came not to be ministered
unto, but to minister, and to give
His life a ransom for many.”
Matthew 20:28.
It was Christ Who
demonstrated that God is no tyrant,
but the great Servant of all, by His
life and by His death on
Calvary’s cross. It is Christ
Who calls all men to personal
self-surrender to Him.
Though Satan had
declared that because God is a God of
infinite justice, it is impossible
for Him to forgive, Jesus, on the
cross of Calvary showed that God was
willing to die in order to provide a
Substitute for man, to give to every
man who in self-surrender claims Him
by faith, His very own righteousness.
He “gave His life a ransom for
many.” Matthew 20:28.
When the unfallen
universe saw Christ on the cross,
when the universe saw that Satan
wanted to kill God, sympathy for
Satan was uprooted from every heart.
“The accuser of our brethren is
cast down, which accused them before
our God day and night.”
Revelation 12:10.
On This Issue of
Surrender of the Will the Battle With
False “Christianity” Turns
It is upon this issue
that the battle with false
“Christianity” turns-the
issue of the human will. With the
human heart, be surrendered to the
sovereignty of love, to the
sovereignty of God Himself, to the
sovereignty of Christ, Who is the
Lord over all? Or will there be a
“spirituality” which
asserts the freedom of the creature
to follow his own will?
The discord that his
own course had caused in heaven.
Satan charged upon the law and
government of God. All evil he
declared to be the result of the
divine administration. He claimed
that it was his own object to improve
upon the statutes of Jehovah.
Therefore, it was necessary that he
should demonstrate the nature of his
claims, and show the working out of
his proposed changes in the divine
law. His own work must condemn
him. Satan had claimed from the
first that he was not in rebellion. The
whole universe must see the deceiver
unmasked.” GC 498.
The papacy’s
effort to “improve upon the
statutes of Jehovah” by changing
the fourth commandment of God’s
law is central to the final conflict.
Also central is Satan’s claim
that man is free to follow his own
will instead of having that will in
submission to Christ.
Today’s
“Seeker Religion” is Not
The Religion of Jesus Christ, But is
the Religion of Rebellion
The ‘seeker
religion” which has taken the
religious world by storm, which has
subverted the churches which have
amalgamated with it in order to build
mega churches, such as Willow Creek
and Saddleback, is not the religion
of Jesus Christ, but is the religion
of self, the religion of rebellion
against the will of the great God of
heaven.
Why Evil Must Be
Permitted to Come to Maturity
“Even when it was
decided that he could no longer
remain in heaven, Infinite Wisdom did
not destroy Satan. Since the service
of love can alone be acceptable to
God, the allegiance of His creatures
must rest upon the conviction of His
justice and benevolence. The
inhabitants of heaven and of the
other worlds, being unprepared to
comprehend the nature and
consequences of sin, could not then
have seen the justice and mercy of
God in the destruction of Satan. Had
he immediately been blotted out of
existence, they would have served God
from fear rather than from love. The
influence of the deceiver would not
have been fully destroyed, nor would
the spirit of rebellion have been
utterly eradicated. Evil must
be permitted to come to maturity. For
the good of the entire universe
through ceaseless ages Satan must
more fully develop his principles,
that his charges against the divine
government might be seen in their
true light by all created beings,
that the justice and mercy of God and
the immutability of His law might
forever be placed beyond all
question.
A Lesson Through
All coming Ages
“Satan’s
rebellion was to be a lesson to the
universe through all coming ages, a
perpetual testimony to the nature and
terrible results of sin. The working
out of Satan’s rule, its effects
upon both men and angels, would show
what must be the fruit of setting
aside the divine authority. It would
testify that with the existence of
God’s government and His law is
bound up the well-being of all the
creatures He has made. Thus, the
history of this terrible experiment
of rebellion was to be perpetual
safeguard to all holy intelligences,
to prevent them from being deceived
as to the nature of transgression, to
save them from committing sin and
suffering its punishments.” GC
498, 499.
All the unseen
universe is watching this rebellion
against God as it now plays itself
out in the final developments of the
drama of the ages on earth just
before the Second Coming of Jesus.
“To the very
close of the controversy in heaven
the great usurper continued to
justify himself. When it was
announced that all of his
sympathizers he must be expelled from
the abodes of bliss, then the rebel
leader boldly avowed his contempt for
the Creator’s law. He reiterated
his claim that angels needed
no control, but should be left to
follow their own will, which
would ever guide them right. He
denounced the divine statutes as a
restriction of their liberty and
declared that it was his purpose to
secure the abolition of law; that,
freed from this restraint, the hosts
of heaven might enter upon a more
exalted, more glorious state of
existence.” GC 499.
This is the very
agenda that Satan is pursuing in the
postmodern world-the idea that every
man should be free to follow his own
will.
The True Church is
Built Upon Christ Alone
The True Church is
Built Upon Christ and Obeys Christ;
It Does Not Depend Upon Man, and Is
Not Controlled By Man
“”The
head of every man is Christ.”
God, who put all things under the
Savior’s feet, “gave Him to
be head over all things to the
church, which is His body, the
fullness of Him that filleth all in
all.” 1 Corinthians 11:3;
Ephesians 1: 22, 23. The church is
built upon Christ as its foundation;
it is to obey Christ as its
head. It
is not to depend upon man, or be
controlled by man.” DA
414.
If the
Biblical Christ be not truly the true
Head of the church, Who alone is
obeyed, then it be no church at all.
To confuse our coming
out of the devil, the world, self and
sin to Him alone, with coming to the
Structure-and a Structure at that
immersed in worldliness, self-esteem,
and Jesuit Formation, is the rankest
idolatry. Christ is the head of
the church, not an ecclesiastical
hierarchy. And Christ
intends that no authority will be
known to the soul, except for His own
authority.
God’s name is
Jealous: “For thou shalt worship
no other god: for the Lord, whose
name is JEALOUS, is a jeolous
God.” Exodus
34:14
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