Have Faith in God but Believe in the Devil
Do you believe in God? Do you believe in Christ? Do you believe in the Devil? I find in troubling that today, many people that claim to be Christians or have any Godly faith, totally skirt around the topic of the Devil. Just like one of those sensitive conflicts in a relationship, it is hardly ever brought up or dealt with due to the fact that we simply want to keep the peace. Keeping the peace with evil is no longer an option as the Devil is, without a doubt, stepping up his game. The Bible describes a period towards the end of time called Tribulation. This is that period when God will finally sentence the world for its sins. It is a time of contradiction, starting with peace and glory but ending with horror and world chaos. The star of Tribulation will be the antichrist, you guessed it, Satan. He will come to power using brilliant deception and shortly thereafter, all hell is going to break loose. How close are we to Tribulation? How fed up and disgusted with society is God feeling right about now? To be honest, I feel he has to be reaching his limits, our world has reached a point of no return where sin and immorality are coveted and Godly or simply strong morals and values are shunned. As believers or even nonbelievers with strong principles, we have abandoned our God and our principles to fit in. Sadly we seem overwhelmed and have given up the fight for what is good and traded it for comfort. We are at peace with the Devil and that is right where he wants us. Martin Luther King had a couple interesting quotes concerning evil. The first one goes like this: “ He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.” And I like the second one as well, it brings the heat!! “The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict.” Dr. Martin Luther King was a very wise and courageous leader!!
When Jesus Christ was walking the earth, Satan seemed to possess the souls, minds and spirits of many men and women. Christ spent a lot of his time on earth, casting out the evil spirits, healing the sick and even raising the dead. He was fighting Satan at every turn and was not afraid to talk about it. He went out of his way to show people that evil spirits did exists and even gave his disciples the power to cast them out. Did evil spirits exist back when Christ was here and then disappear after he left? I don’t think so. They are still here and getting stronger every day. Let’s talk about some events that happened a few years ago and see if we have any patterns starting to develop? Let’s start with Philip Chism. Philip was a 14 year old student who up until a few weeks before this happened, seemed like a pretty normal kid. He did have to deal with his family going thru a difficult divorce but other than that, he led a fairly normal life and had no history of violence. The Boston Globe reported a short time ago Philip stays after school to talk with his teacher, Coleen Retzer. He is seen by another student talking to himself and then shortly thereafter follows his teacher into the bathroom and rapes and kills her with a box cutter. He then puts her body in a container and takes her out in the woods. He stages her body and puts a note beside it saying “I Hate You All.” Think about that? I cannot imagine the transformation that a normal young man would have to go thru to do what he did? To kill someone with a box cutter has got to be an unbelievably horrible thing to do and looking at this kid, I just can’t see it. I also am very curious about the other student hearing him talking with himself? Was he actually talking to himself or was there another silent and invisible partner was involved? Let’s move on to Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bomber that was killed by police. The Boston Globe reported Tamerlan was tormented by voices in his head but his parents refused to get help. He confided in his mother that the voice “felt like two people inside me.” He also told friends that the voices were ORDERING him to do things, but he never explained what he was asked to do. On April 15, Tamerlan and his brother Dzhokhor, set off two homemade bombs, killing three people and injuring more than 260. I have a pretty good idea who’s voice that was and what they were telling him to do. Back in the days when Christ was around, I feel this would be a pretty clear case of and evil spirit entering a man and taking over. Why are we not looking into this sort of thing now? If you think I am crazy then go ahead and throw me under the bus but keep in mind who else you are throwing under there with me?? Next we have Aron Alexis, who was identified as the man who killed 12 people and died during a shooting rampage in the DC Naval Yard. CBS News reported for a period leading up to the rampage, Alexis was complaining about hearing voices. The police were called about an incident in a hotel room and interviewed Alexis due to a complaint. The police in their report said that Alexis complained about an “unknown party” of people he had never seen. Alex said these people had been keeping him awake by “sending vibrations into his body” by “using some sort of microwave machine.” Police also said in the report that Alex told them that he had checked out of two other hotels to try to escape the voices before checking into the Mariot. What do you think people? Was Alex a lunatic who simply needed medication or was he asking for help with something he was very scared of and didn’t understand? I think it was the latter and feel that with all of these cases, WE are the ones that don’t understand what is going on and might need to look a little more deeply into these incidents? We might need to look into hell for the answers.
I believe that I read in the Bible somewhere that the unsaved people are subject to the wills of the Devil. Considering what is going on today I would think that no one would want to subject themselves to his will as it might put you and your family at risk? The cases above all happened within of months of each other! Think about it!! I have a feeling that there are thousands of instances like the ones mentioned above over the history of time and we are looking in the wrong direction for the answers. As Christians, we might want to at least think about how Christ looked at and handled these situations. We should also try and use some of his teachings and methods to battle the hidden enemy, Satan…..