I know this post might betray a more Man-centred mindset than a God-centred one, but I`ll make it anyway. I might learn something.
At the end of the film The Passion of Christ the devil is portrayed as flailing his or her arms in rage up at the camera, designed to indicate his or her fury at being defeated by the Cross.
And yet the implication behind this website, alluded to on the opening page bottom left, is that only a small proportion of Humanity will be saved, and most likely none before the Flood (otherwise why would God have destroyed them?). Only a few will even have found what the "narrow path" is, and of those only a few will both choose it in the first place and also stay on it faithfully until their deaths.
The cynic could argue that if this was the victory, was it worth the candle? And - need the devil have felt so cheated?
I suspect others here have battled internally with this issue, Paidon, Steve 1750 and Todd for example, otherwise their posts wouldn`t take the tone that they do.
I feel bad writng all this, but I`ll be honest I love God less for it, and have major progress still to make.
The victorious Gospel
Re: The victorious Gospel
Hi Ian,
The statement of Jesus about the "few" that were finding the narrow gate was, in my opinion, essentially an evaluation of the religious climate of His own people and time. He was pointing out to His disciples that they were being called to an unpopular course of life, which most (even of their religious Jewish society) were not finding. While the same statement would hold true of many other nations and times, it is not necessary to think that Jesus was speaking more broadly than this to His Jewish disciples. Further, He made no predictions about future generations. His statement is given in the present tense, not the future tense.
I think that the victory of Christ over Satan, spoken of in scripture, is seen primarily in the historical progress of the Kingdom of God at large. The effect of the gospel in the lives of individuals is a somewhat different story. One's personal enjoyment of that victory seems to be relative to a number of variables in the individual cases—e.g.:
— the clarity of their perception of the meaning of the gospel at the time of their decision to embrace it;
—the quality of the discipleship instruction that they did or did not receive since their conversion;
—the degree to which they have allowed "the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches" to grow up like thorns and thistles to choke out the word of God in their hearts;
— the determination they have had within themselves to pursue the ingestion and digestion of the Word of God as a chief priority in their lives;
—their success or failure under diverse testing; etc.
In the best-case instances, there have been spectacular success stories involving total, immediate and permanent deliverances and life transformations that effectively illustrate the promises of the gospel in dramatic form. These cases are, no doubt, the ones that cause the devil the most grief. In the worst cases, people who identify themselves as Christians never improve, and many fall away. These cases probably give the devil some encouragement and relief from his general chagrin.
That general chagrin, I think, would afflict him as a result of his ability to take the long view of things. By nature, we do not share his (or God's) long-term perspective. We see only our lifetimes, and hear about a previous generation from our parents and elders. This means that we usually evaluate progress and regress from the standpoint of, perhaps, a single century of time that encompasses the lifetimes of ourselves and people we have known. If we happen to live during a revival, we are encouraged and it seems that the world will quickly be converted; but if we live in a period of spiritual decline, we think that the gospel has had no appreciable impact on the world, and that Jesus is the cosmic loser in His war for the souls of men.
The devil sees a bigger picture, however, spanning at least 6000 years. For the first two-thirds of this time, every race and tribe (with the occasional exception of the Hebrews) willingly and ritualistically worshipped demons. The sacrifice of infants and virgins to Satan was commonplace throughout the world. Nations carried on conscienceless wars of utter cruelty toward neighboring nations. Torture was commonplace, and not decried. Unwanted babies were exposed to the elements to slowly die. A large portion of the earth's population were victimized by a degrading and abusive slave trade, which was was conducted without compunction in every society in earth. Women were second-class humans, existing primarily to be used for the pleasure of the stronger males. Universal ignorance of the true God meant that demons could terrorize and dominate individuals and whole societies with impunity. No standard could be raised to challenge them. As John described it, 2000 years ago: "The whole world lies in the wicked one."
Of course, we might say that such conditions prevail even now, 2000 years after Christ. However, in every nation, and almost every tribe, there has been the growth of a powerful resistance movement against the kingdom of Satan. Whole sectors of the planet have nominally embraced the Christian message to the point that human sacrifices, oppression of women, the institution of slavery, senseless cruelty in warfare, and many other evils have been officially denounced and well-nigh abolished. No part of Satan's former domain has remained unpenetrated by the light of the gospel, and the progress of the Kingdom of God in the larger part of the earth's geographical mass is more rapid today than at any time previously in history. What little comfort the devil may take in the defection of foolish North Americans, Europeans and Australians from the gospel cannot possibly compare to his discouragement over the sweeping conversions of the masses in Africa, Asia and South America—to say nothing of the stubborn faithfulness of a tenacious remnant of radical Christ-followers, even in the decadent West.
We are not excited about the shallowness of the commitments of many who call themselves Christians, but even their identifying themselves nominally with the movement of the True God is a major advance over the centuries in which the whole world openly worshipped demons. We do hope for better things yet to come. However, in the spring of the year 30 AD, there were (briefly) only 120 Spirit-filled disciples in a world whose population is thought to have been, perhaps, 750 million. This means that the percentage of Christians in the world population was something like 1 in 6 million. On the Day of Pentecost, the ratio changed to 1 in 250 thousand—a 2500% increase. That may have been the largest change in percentages to be accomplished in a single day, but the number of Christians has continued to increase in proportion to world population ever since. Now, two-thousand years later, the ratio of those who nominally profess a loyalty to Christ, compared to world population, is 1 in 4. Even if only one out of a thousand professing Christians is a genuine disciple, the increase from 1 in 6 million to 1 in 4,000 would have to make the devil uncomfortable (and the percentage of genuine Christians to those who are mere professors is probably more favorable than one-in-a-thousand). Even if the future rate of conversions would be slowed down by half, the Kingdom's conquest of the whole world, by historical precedents, could be expected within a few centuries (or even decades), at the most. The devil certainly must see that "his time is short."
It is important to remember that God's program does not begin and end in our generation—nor even in our millennium. Nonetheless, the victory of the gospel can be known in the personal life of anyone who makes the kingdom of God his chief obsession (there is no other rational response to the awareness of such a kingdom). We are just now passing through a rather irrational age in the history of Western Civilization, but I do not think that human thought can be suppressed indefinitely. People who know there is a God must eventually rebel against the shallowness of the prevailing religious environment, and those who don't know God must eventually become dissatisfied with irrational answers with which the secular and other religious systems currently attempt to keep them stupefied. We have not yet seen the final revolt. I think the devil has good cause to be nervous.
The statement of Jesus about the "few" that were finding the narrow gate was, in my opinion, essentially an evaluation of the religious climate of His own people and time. He was pointing out to His disciples that they were being called to an unpopular course of life, which most (even of their religious Jewish society) were not finding. While the same statement would hold true of many other nations and times, it is not necessary to think that Jesus was speaking more broadly than this to His Jewish disciples. Further, He made no predictions about future generations. His statement is given in the present tense, not the future tense.
I think that the victory of Christ over Satan, spoken of in scripture, is seen primarily in the historical progress of the Kingdom of God at large. The effect of the gospel in the lives of individuals is a somewhat different story. One's personal enjoyment of that victory seems to be relative to a number of variables in the individual cases—e.g.:
— the clarity of their perception of the meaning of the gospel at the time of their decision to embrace it;
—the quality of the discipleship instruction that they did or did not receive since their conversion;
—the degree to which they have allowed "the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches" to grow up like thorns and thistles to choke out the word of God in their hearts;
— the determination they have had within themselves to pursue the ingestion and digestion of the Word of God as a chief priority in their lives;
—their success or failure under diverse testing; etc.
In the best-case instances, there have been spectacular success stories involving total, immediate and permanent deliverances and life transformations that effectively illustrate the promises of the gospel in dramatic form. These cases are, no doubt, the ones that cause the devil the most grief. In the worst cases, people who identify themselves as Christians never improve, and many fall away. These cases probably give the devil some encouragement and relief from his general chagrin.
That general chagrin, I think, would afflict him as a result of his ability to take the long view of things. By nature, we do not share his (or God's) long-term perspective. We see only our lifetimes, and hear about a previous generation from our parents and elders. This means that we usually evaluate progress and regress from the standpoint of, perhaps, a single century of time that encompasses the lifetimes of ourselves and people we have known. If we happen to live during a revival, we are encouraged and it seems that the world will quickly be converted; but if we live in a period of spiritual decline, we think that the gospel has had no appreciable impact on the world, and that Jesus is the cosmic loser in His war for the souls of men.
The devil sees a bigger picture, however, spanning at least 6000 years. For the first two-thirds of this time, every race and tribe (with the occasional exception of the Hebrews) willingly and ritualistically worshipped demons. The sacrifice of infants and virgins to Satan was commonplace throughout the world. Nations carried on conscienceless wars of utter cruelty toward neighboring nations. Torture was commonplace, and not decried. Unwanted babies were exposed to the elements to slowly die. A large portion of the earth's population were victimized by a degrading and abusive slave trade, which was was conducted without compunction in every society in earth. Women were second-class humans, existing primarily to be used for the pleasure of the stronger males. Universal ignorance of the true God meant that demons could terrorize and dominate individuals and whole societies with impunity. No standard could be raised to challenge them. As John described it, 2000 years ago: "The whole world lies in the wicked one."
Of course, we might say that such conditions prevail even now, 2000 years after Christ. However, in every nation, and almost every tribe, there has been the growth of a powerful resistance movement against the kingdom of Satan. Whole sectors of the planet have nominally embraced the Christian message to the point that human sacrifices, oppression of women, the institution of slavery, senseless cruelty in warfare, and many other evils have been officially denounced and well-nigh abolished. No part of Satan's former domain has remained unpenetrated by the light of the gospel, and the progress of the Kingdom of God in the larger part of the earth's geographical mass is more rapid today than at any time previously in history. What little comfort the devil may take in the defection of foolish North Americans, Europeans and Australians from the gospel cannot possibly compare to his discouragement over the sweeping conversions of the masses in Africa, Asia and South America—to say nothing of the stubborn faithfulness of a tenacious remnant of radical Christ-followers, even in the decadent West.
We are not excited about the shallowness of the commitments of many who call themselves Christians, but even their identifying themselves nominally with the movement of the True God is a major advance over the centuries in which the whole world openly worshipped demons. We do hope for better things yet to come. However, in the spring of the year 30 AD, there were (briefly) only 120 Spirit-filled disciples in a world whose population is thought to have been, perhaps, 750 million. This means that the percentage of Christians in the world population was something like 1 in 6 million. On the Day of Pentecost, the ratio changed to 1 in 250 thousand—a 2500% increase. That may have been the largest change in percentages to be accomplished in a single day, but the number of Christians has continued to increase in proportion to world population ever since. Now, two-thousand years later, the ratio of those who nominally profess a loyalty to Christ, compared to world population, is 1 in 4. Even if only one out of a thousand professing Christians is a genuine disciple, the increase from 1 in 6 million to 1 in 4,000 would have to make the devil uncomfortable (and the percentage of genuine Christians to those who are mere professors is probably more favorable than one-in-a-thousand). Even if the future rate of conversions would be slowed down by half, the Kingdom's conquest of the whole world, by historical precedents, could be expected within a few centuries (or even decades), at the most. The devil certainly must see that "his time is short."
It is important to remember that God's program does not begin and end in our generation—nor even in our millennium. Nonetheless, the victory of the gospel can be known in the personal life of anyone who makes the kingdom of God his chief obsession (there is no other rational response to the awareness of such a kingdom). We are just now passing through a rather irrational age in the history of Western Civilization, but I do not think that human thought can be suppressed indefinitely. People who know there is a God must eventually rebel against the shallowness of the prevailing religious environment, and those who don't know God must eventually become dissatisfied with irrational answers with which the secular and other religious systems currently attempt to keep them stupefied. We have not yet seen the final revolt. I think the devil has good cause to be nervous.
Re: The victorious Gospel
Hi Steve,
All your replies impress me, but that one blew me away.
I would address two points:
1 -
2 -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lORCuR84-_8
What chance is there that that bemused and frightened little girl is going to stay in the Faith? This salvation matter is surely more complex than any human can formulate.
Thank you again for the reply. I should print it out and put it on my wall!
All your replies impress me, but that one blew me away.
I would address two points:
1 -
When the new Christian picks up the Bible for the first time and reads it for his first "Quiet Time" he is acutely aware that he is holding "the Word of God" in his hands and that this Word will speak directly to him about his life. All of the Bible is seen from the perspective of "what is God trying to tell me through this?" But when read in this manner, it is liable to set off all kinds of horror-reactions in the poor reader`s head. "What did I let myself in for when I raised my hand in the meeting last night?" The new Christian has no historical context in which to place the words he is reading. And may recoil from the severity of much of it. I remember it well, 35 years ago. Thank you Steve for providing that historical context in your teaching. But there is much damage to be undone in people like me who never read the Bible in that way.— the clarity of their perception of the meaning of the gospel at the time of their decision to embrace it;
2 -
I think this is highly relevant and thank you for recognising its importance. If everyone were to come under your wing at the outset then they could count themselves fortunate indeed. These poor family members are unfortunately under this woman`s wing:—the quality of the discipleship instruction that they did or did not receive since their conversion;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lORCuR84-_8
What chance is there that that bemused and frightened little girl is going to stay in the Faith? This salvation matter is surely more complex than any human can formulate.
Thank you again for the reply. I should print it out and put it on my wall!
Re: The victorious Gospel
I'm glad it was helpful, Brother! You are always so appreciative and encouraging!
Re: The victorious Gospel
Ian, her chances go up if people ernestly pray for her. I know of a woman who when she was a little girl, was in this little girl's same horrible circumstance. I believe this woman is faithful today at least in part because someone prayed for her---for decades.[Ian quote to Steve Gregg] If everyone were to come under your wing at the outset then they could count themselves fortunate indeed. These poor family members are unfortunately under this woman`s wing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lORCuR84-_8
What chance is there that that bemused and frightened little girl is going to stay in the Faith? This salvation matter is surely more complex than any human can formulate.
I thought of a verse. "However, this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting." Matthew 17:21. I hope this helps.
Take care,
Selah*
Jesus said, "I in them and you in Me, that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that you have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me." John 17:23
Re: The victorious Gospel
Ian, a couple of posts back, I answered your question about the chances a scared (of religious fanatical behavior) little girl could remain faithful to Jesus. At the time, I thought you might feel let-down to hear such an answer--"...pray..." but what I wanted to communicate was this quote:
"You can do more than pray, after you have prayed, but you can never do more than pray until you have prayed." A. J. Gordon
The point that I was hoping to make is that prayer is the beginning of every miracle; it is the foundation for God's will to be accomplished, whether in a scared child's life or in a global event. I hope you are not discouraged to read the answer to the little girl's delimma is prayer (at least that is my answer).
This next quote really encourages me to keep praying. I hope it encourages you too.
"Where there is much prayer, there will be much of the Spirit; where there is much of the Spirit, there will be ever-increasing prayer."
Andrew Murray
"In prayer, it is better to have heart without words, than words without heart. Prayer will make a man cease from sin, or sin entice a man to cease from prayer. The spirit of prayer is more precious than treasures of gold and silver. Pray often, for prayer is a shield to the soul, a sacrifice to God, and a scourge for Satan." John Bunyan
Ian, this one below is awe inspiring! Just think, strangers who are Christians can join with other strangers to realize how wonderful it will be for that little girl to spend eternity with God. Then as we worship and pray, we really can expect miracles to happen in this little girl's life.
Each time, before you intercede, be quiet first, and worship God in His glory. Think of what He can do, and how He delights to hear the prayers of His redeemed people. Think of your place and privilege in Christ, and expect great things! Andrew Murray
Do you believe God will answer prayers of salvation?
"You can do more than pray, after you have prayed, but you can never do more than pray until you have prayed." A. J. Gordon
The point that I was hoping to make is that prayer is the beginning of every miracle; it is the foundation for God's will to be accomplished, whether in a scared child's life or in a global event. I hope you are not discouraged to read the answer to the little girl's delimma is prayer (at least that is my answer).
This next quote really encourages me to keep praying. I hope it encourages you too.
"Where there is much prayer, there will be much of the Spirit; where there is much of the Spirit, there will be ever-increasing prayer."
Andrew Murray
"In prayer, it is better to have heart without words, than words without heart. Prayer will make a man cease from sin, or sin entice a man to cease from prayer. The spirit of prayer is more precious than treasures of gold and silver. Pray often, for prayer is a shield to the soul, a sacrifice to God, and a scourge for Satan." John Bunyan
Ian, this one below is awe inspiring! Just think, strangers who are Christians can join with other strangers to realize how wonderful it will be for that little girl to spend eternity with God. Then as we worship and pray, we really can expect miracles to happen in this little girl's life.
Each time, before you intercede, be quiet first, and worship God in His glory. Think of what He can do, and how He delights to hear the prayers of His redeemed people. Think of your place and privilege in Christ, and expect great things! Andrew Murray
Do you believe God will answer prayers of salvation?
Jesus said, "I in them and you in Me, that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that you have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me." John 17:23
Re: The victorious Gospel
Thank you Selah for the quotes. You got through to me! Not just regarding my outlook on other people`s lives, but on my own too.
Re: The victorious Gospel
Thanks for posting the questions. It's been good for me to consider them.Ian wrote:Thank you Selah for the quotes. You got through to me! Not just regarding my outlook on other people`s lives, but on my own too.
Jesus said, "I in them and you in Me, that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that you have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me." John 17:23
Re: The victorious Gospel
Selah you wrote:
It bothered me a lot - really nice New Age people contrasting with her, the rigid tyrant-ruler of all those around her, but it occurred to me that CS Lewis addressed this in his "Nice people or new men" chapter in Mere Christianity. I found it helpful though not the last word on the issue. Either way, judging by the multitude of contemptuous comments on youtube from around the world, it did much damage.
I sat through and cringed through all the parts on youtube pertaining to this "experiment" (though I`m sure the producers well knew sparks would fly bringing these two families together). Looking at the wider picture I didn`t conclude that she was "adversely influenced" in the way that your Bible verse quote implies. She`s an imbalanced woman saddled with a hysterical temperament and with the all-too-common Christian affliction of uncontrolled self-righteous anger masquerading as justified righteous indignation. And to tear up the cheque and then later accept it anyway... well, that blew to pieces what credibility she could have had. And she thought she had "sown a seed" in the New Age family!I thought of a verse. "However, this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting." Matthew 17:21
It bothered me a lot - really nice New Age people contrasting with her, the rigid tyrant-ruler of all those around her, but it occurred to me that CS Lewis addressed this in his "Nice people or new men" chapter in Mere Christianity. I found it helpful though not the last word on the issue. Either way, judging by the multitude of contemptuous comments on youtube from around the world, it did much damage.