Edward F. Lundwall, Jr.
A Latent Stumbling Block – Part V
When one examines carefully the strategies of Satan in his temptation, one can see that he works in three points today.
1. Satan asks an idealistic question about the privileges God had given Adam and Eve. “Yea, hath God said...?” (Gen 3:1) Eve answered with what Adam had taught her. He had received it from God, but she added an additional caution--- not even to touch the forbidden fruit.
2. Then, Satan denies the consequences of disobedience: "Ye shall not surely die" (Gen 3:4) laying down the seeds of rational doubt within the human mind, and the possibility of an alternative view.
3. He follows up with an appeal to personal loss by asserting that God was denying their future privileges and pleasures. Satan asserts their fullness of pleasure and privilege would come from the disobedience of unbelief. This is Satan's gospel: "Be as you want to be; be your own god!" Satan’s character, gospel and human rationalism are found in the attitude: "This is so, because my (or human) reasoning says so!"
Throughout the ages Satan uses these strategies against all things of God in contrast with God's call to man is to bring about the obedience of faith into his character (Rom. 1:5; 16:25, 26; John 10:27; 2 Tim. 3:16, 17). It is this trust and obedience hand in hand that evidences rebirth (1 Peter 1:23) and a living functional relationship with Christ (John 10:27).
However, satanic strategies are applied to many philosophical frames of reference through which people do their thinking. Even in the Reformation, the professed philosophy of "Sola Scriptura," that is, only Scripture as the rule of faith was not consistently followed. How objectively reliable are professed Bible scholars who say that babies are regenerated by baptism and that it must be by pouring or sprinkling? (John 3) How consistent is it with scripture to insist that believers need priests to mediate between them and God when 1Timothy 2:5 tells us that there is but one Mediator between humans and God, the Lord Jesus Christ?
Yet, many base the earth’s age on the work of two Church of England priests that taught that the earth is only about 6000 years old. How reliable is the bombasts of those that preach, make DVDs, and discredit even the salvation of those that disagree? Even one of their own progenitors, Dr. Henry Morris, wrote in a footnote in his book: Studies in the Bible and Science that the creation of man could be around 15,000 B.C. (17,000 years ago) (Footnote 2, 1969 ed. 30).
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