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ARE YOU COOL LIKE SATAN OR COOL LIKE JESUS?
Every once in a while, an ad for a TV show will pop up on my screen while I’m browsing the internet. The themes of the shows likely have to do with my online activity with this blog and my internet searches on all things God, so every now and then I’ll get an ad for a show about Satan. The actor playing that role (who in their right mind would play such a role? But maybe I’ve answered my question right there…) – the actor playing the role is classically good-looking in a bad-boy kind of way, and he’s usually shown wearing aviator shades. The “look” the creative producers are going for, I’d wager, is “cool”. I’ve never seen the show and have no intention of watching it, but that’s what I can figure from the ads that appear every now and then: “Satan is cool; watch this show about Satan being cool, and you’ll be cool, too!”
I’ve never really thought of Satan as being cool. When I was an atheist, I didn’t believe Satan existed any more than I believed God existed, so I didn’t spend any time thinking about Satan’s personality. Then, as soon as I was born-again, I knew that Satan was the last thing from cool. Slippery, yes; slimy, yes; to be avoided at all costs, yes; but cool, definitely not.
To the world, cool usually means a good-looking rebel who bucks the established order without breaking a sweat and wins all the goodies (including the good-looking mate) in the end. But this is not my version of cool. To me, cool implies fearlessness, a consistent and constant state where nothing ruffles you, where no amount of provocation sways you from your convictions. It also usually involves an attractiveness that is not necessarily based on looks but on charisma. I’ve known “cool” people who were not great-looking but strongly compelling. You overlooked their lack of looks (in fact, you didn’t even notice it) because their engaging personality made up for it.
Cool, in my books, also implies a quiet heroism based on doing the right thing and never backing down, regardless of the consequences. Someone who’s “cool” is also a quiet hero, someone who has your back, though you might not know it. Only later do you find out what was done for you, what was arranged behind the scenes, what deals were made and threats neutralized. All of this was done for you but never spoken about. Just done as a matter of course because that’s what cool people do, that’s what quiet heroes do, that’s what people who do the right thing for the sake of doing the right thing do. That, to me, is a cool person.
So if you apply these character traits to Satan, you’ll see he’s the last thing from cool. But there is someone we know well and are getting to know better and better every day who does fit that description to a “T”.
His name is Jesus the Christ.
When he was in human form on Earth, Jesus was a cool guy in the truest sense of the word. Nothing fazed him. He never panicked. He could care less what people thought of him. And he feared only God. In fact, he looked at each and every situation not through the eyes of man but through the eyes of God. He saw the big picture but missed none of the details. He was incredibly strong in mind, body and spirit. He never caved to pressure or worried about public opinion.
At the same time, Jesus was intensely sympathetic, empathetic, sensitive, and passionate. He was no automaton and not in any way hard-hearted. Every choice he made, he explained why he was making it and he constantly made reference to scripture to back up his words.
We are to be like Jesus in everything we do. Not as cheap knock-offs, but as genuine followers remaining authentic to who we are (as God made us), while taking our cue from Jesus on how to respond to situations and people.
Being cool doesn’t mean you don’t occasionally lose your temper or cry (Jesus did both). It means that your response to a situation is warranted. We mourn with those who mourn, but we don’t wallow in tears of self-pity. We correct those who are teaching a false gospel (using forceful correction, if necessary), but we don’t get malicious with them. We occasionally have to overturn a few tables to get people’s attention, but we don’t resort to overturning tables on a daily basis. Like Jesus, we should do all things in good measure, and all according to what the situation calls for.
That’s being cool.
After he started his ministry work, Jesus was a rebel and an outcast from mainstream society, including mainstream religion. While the religious establishment continued to preach a doctrine of exclusionism, Jesus opened up God’s salvation to all people. While the religious establishment continued to preach an eye for an eye and hatred of one’s enemies, Jesus taught that we are to return unkindness with kindness and to love and bless our enemies. This new doctrine was incomprehensible to the religious establishment. It still is today.
The mainstream values of finding a job, getting married, having children, buying land, building a house, acquiring wealth and possessions, and dying at a ripe old age were also not part of the new doctrine preached by Jesus. Those he called to follow him left their jobs, spouses, children, land, houses, wealth and possessions to live a nomadic existence of itinerant preaching that was likely going to end in a gruesome death at a young age. All of this Jesus required of his followers because it was what God had required of him, and Jesus’ followers are to do everything that he does, using him as the example. And, like the doctrine of loving your enemies and turning the other cheek, this doctrine of living a nomadic existence as an itinerant preacher with no possessions beyond the clothes on your back is also incomprehensible to the religious establishment today. They think it doesn’t apply to them.
Being authentic to who we are as individuals while at the same time following Jesus’ example of how to respond to people and situations requires only one thing from us: putting God first. If we genuinely put God first in our lives, we will have no problem following Jesus in everything we do. When we’re called to ministry training, we will without a second thought walk away from our jobs, families, property and possessions, just like Jesus’ first disciples.
And most importantly, we will learn how to be cool, not as the world sees cool, but as Jesus was authentically cool during his time on Earth. Satan might have the appearance of cool, but he is all too aware of what awaits him when his time is up, and it terrifies him. Jesus has no such terror. He knew during his time on Earth the glory that awaited him in Heaven if he stuck to his allotted course, and it motivated and inspired him. Being terrified was never part of who Jesus was.
So – are you cool like Satan (that is, superficially cool, but underneath terrified) or are you cool like Jesus (authentically cool, and underneath still cool)?
I hope you’re cool like Jesus.
And just so you know, Jesus is just as cool now as he ever was. All the power and good looks he gained when he arrived in Heaven haven’t gone to his head. He’s still the same cool guy he was on Earth, only now he’s perfected and glorified, as we will be, too, if we stay our allotted course.
VOTE FOR JESUS
It should be of no surprise to any born-again believer that the events of the world perfectly align with scripture. We know from Daniel and Revelation that the world’s populations are marching steadily towards global totalitarianism or what is popularly known as the “new world order” or “one world government”. Make no mistake about it – this is Satan’s kingdom that is in the final stages of being set up, to be ruled over by what Paul called “the man of perdition” and Daniel referred to as the “King of the North”. This is not Jesus’ thousand-year reign, though it will someday be sold to nominal Christians as such. (more…)
LAZARUS
In Dante’s Inferno, Satan is imprisoned in the lowest pit of Hell. He is held in place not by chains but by the ice of a frozen lake which was formed by his tears and fanned frozen by his perpetually moving wings. Other condemned beings are in the lake with him, frozen in various agonizing contortions. When viewed from outside Hell, Satan appears to be frozen upside down.
Cryonics is the ‘science’ of preserving living organisms (such as human bodies) by freezing them in liquid nitrogen. The human “patients” are frozen upside down.
(You can’t make this stuff up.)
The human patients are frozen upside down and stored in a pod with up to three other patients and/or a couple of severed heads. What drove them to agree to such an extreme form of live burial is the hope that someday they’ll be brought back to life and made “whole” by future medical advances.
Cryonics patients are considered legally dead but not actually dead. They are dead insofar as their heart has stopped beating, but they are not beyond resuscitation. They could be resuscitated, but instead their blood is drained and replaced with antifreeze. And then they’re hung upside down like a bat out of Hell and immersed in liquid nitrogen to freeze them solid.
The Egyptians were going for the same effect with mummification. The aim was to preserve the body toward some future resurrection and immortality. The mummies were entombed in a sarcophagus much like cryonics patients are entombed in a pod, which is for all intents and purposes a high-tech sarcophagus. Cryonics enthusiasts can only hope that cryonics will prove at least marginally more successful than mummification.
In ancient Egypt, it was mostly the so-called 1 percent who were mummified – the rich and famous; the pharoahs and their wives: maybe even some popular entertainers. Today, cryonics clinics take everyone, but given the price attached to the procedure, it’s mostly the 1 percent who can afford it.
The part that gets me about cryonics is that the patients are not actually dead. I was dead but not actually dead when I went through the process of being reborn. That’s when God gave me the chance to make a choice between forgiving and not forgiving. When I chose to forgive, I was exorcised of demons and then brought back to life. Lots of people are declared legally dead (or “brain dead”) and then come back to life. Legally dead is not actually dead. Believe it or not, people hanging upside down in liquid nitrogen are not actually dead.
Before I was born again, I used to suffer from frequent bouts of sleep paralysis. This was an ongoing occurrence from the time I was a child. As I grew older, I started to see figures sitting just beyond my full range of vision. I knew these figures were really there because, unlike figures in my dreams (which I saw with 20/20 clarity), the figures that appeared in my sleep paralysis episodes were blurry (I am almost legally blind). All I could make out was that the figures were clothed in black and had red eyes. I know now that these were demons, but at the time, as an atheist, I had no context for understanding who or what they were. I hated the sleep paralysis episodes, and dreaded each time they occurred. I have not had any since being born again 17 years ago.
Sleep paralysis is a horrible state to be in. You try to move, but you can’t. You’re frozen, trapped inside your own body. You can’t even scream. Imagine if cryonics were similar to sleep paralysis. Imagine if you’re in a state that is lucid enough to experience spiritual encounters like in sleep paralysis, but that you can’t communicate this to anyone because you can’t move. This, to me, would be a form of Hell on Earth.
Organ donors allegedly experience this very type of Hell on Earth. Donors who are declared brain dead may not in fact be actually dead. To bypass this inconvenience, and given that the organs are the most viable when the heart is still beating, doctors administer a drug that paralyzes the donor’s body so that the organs can be harvested as quickly as possible. No anesthetics (pain killers) are administered, just paralysis drugs. Opponents of this practice (including doctors and nurses who formerly supported organ transplantation) allege that some donors can actually feel their body being cut open and their heart, liver, pancreas, eyes, etc., being removed. They allege this because the deceased patients, who have been declared legally dead because they are allegedly brain dead, respond to the incisions by quickened heart and respiration rates and try to pull away from the scalpel; some even thrash around even after being administered paralysis drugs. I suggest that the terms “excruciating” and “terrifying” would not be sufficient to describe what these poor souls are experiencing, and yet this practice happens every day and has the seal of approval of most health care systems the world over.
Organ donation is, in effect, not that far removed from ancient rituals that saw sacrificial victims being held down while their still-beating hearts were ripped from their chests. The old practice required people to hold the victim down, whereas the new practice relies on paralysis-inducing drugs. “The more things change….”
When Satan is finally let loose from his prison, his second coming will in fact create genuine Hell on Earth. At that time, there will be very few believers remaining and everyone else will be damned. The damned will proudly bear the highly visible mark of Satan, and the believers will bear the invisible seal of God. The Age of Mercy will have ended (meaning, no more conversions) and the Age of Judgment will be in full swing. This is not a world I want to be part of.
And yet, the not-quite-actually-dead patients frozen upside down have willingly agreed to the cryonics “treatment” with the hope of some day returning to what they imagine will be a medically advanced world. The book of Revelation paints quite a different picture of future Earth, but sadly I doubt whether any cryonics enthusiasts are familiar with the New Testament.
Raising people from the dead was a hallmark of Jesus’ ministry; Satan and his demons often mimic what Jesus did, so raising cryonic patients from the dead would be right up their ally.
Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead after he was four days in the grave. He let Lazarus stay dead for four days to show that he was actually dead, not just legally or brain dead (or, as Martha described it, “stinking” dead). Many people began to believe Jesus was the Messiah after he brought Lazarus back to life.
Cryonics patients anticipate a significantly longer entombment than four days. I can only imagine what kind of spiritual state these resurrected people will be in, if and when they are brought back to some semblance of life some day.
I can only hope and pray that I’m not here to find out.
HEAVEN SIXTEEN
Acts of terror, regardless of who perpetrates them, all have the same final outcome: the reduction of freedom. This means less freedom of movement, less freedom of association, less freedom of speech, less freedom of the press, and so on. The initial gut-level response to terror is almost always fear and the desire for revenge, but the long-term fall-out is always – ALWAYS – less freedom. Think of how the Patriot Act has stripped Americans and their allies of freedom since 9/11. From this, we can assume that all acts of terror have as their ultimate aim the reduction and curtailment of freedom.
Likewise, from this, we can assume that whoever is ultimately behind all acts of terror is someone who wants to take away our freedom and thereby control us.
God gave every one of us free will and has never asked for it back. Paul said that all things are possible, but not all things are good. That’s why God engraved his laws on our hearts and set the Ten Commandments in stone, so that we would always be able to discern the good within the possible, regardless of how beguiling the temptation was to do bad. But God still permits us to do bad, if that’s what we choose to do. He does not intervene in our freedom either to do good or to do bad, but he does try his hardest to persuade us to choose the good.
That is free will.
Given this reality, it must therefore be someone who is opposed to God who is behind terrorist acts. Anyone who wants to forcefully remove or curtail the freedom of others is not mirroring God’s way and is not acting as God’s ally. In other words, they do not respect our God-given free will. We know, from Jesus, that the world is under Satan. So whoever is working behind the scenes to perpetrate terrorist acts with the ultimate aim of controlling the population is working for Satan, as are all those who willingly agree to have their freedoms curtailed in direct response to terrorism.
The New Testament mentions “the synagogue of Satan” a few times. This is in reference to “Jews who call themselves Jews but are in fact not”. Muslims call the United States “the great Satan”. These references to Satan point to power strongholds in the world at any given time. The truth is that all people, regardless of where they live or what religion they espouse, are under Satan unless they are born-again followers of Jesus. Born-agains are in God’s kingdom on Earth and have pledged their allegiance to God. Those who have not done so are defacto worshippers of Satan and thus automatically fall under Satan’s jurisdiction.
So what does this mean for acts of terrorism like the one unleashed on Paris on Friday the thirteenth of November, 2015? It means that Satan is behind these acts, regardless of who gets the finger pointed at them. It means more freedom will be forcefully removed and also willingly forfeited. It means that the world on Saturday the fourteenth of November, 2015, is less free than it was the day before. It also means Satan’s control of the world is expanding.
Satan goes by many names and wears many hats. His favourite disguise is The Invisible Man because he fancies himself to be like God. He and his minions slip in and out of people’s minds, beguiling them to act in ways that they know in their heart is wrong. Sadly, most people give into them.
The only way to win people back from Satan is to do as Jesus told us to do: love our enemies. We need to pray for the human perpetrators of terrorism as much as we pray for those who suffer from their acts. We need to pray, not curse them. If we find them, we need to imprison them, not torture or kill them. We need to give them time to repent of their acts, in the same way as God gives us time. We do not repay an eye for an eye, but nor do we just let them get away with their crime. Jesus says not to overcome evil with evil but to overcome evil with good. He also says that praying for our enemies is like pouring hot coals on their heads. So pour away, my friends. Pour away!
It may be, from all the prayers pouring out of us, that even one evil-doer may some day turn, just as I did and just as you did.
This is how we win people back from Satan and in so doing make the world safer and freer.
GET THEE BEHIND ME, CHANGE!
During his ministry years, Jesus had a tumultuous relationship with Peter. Even while granting him heavy responsibilities, Jesus submitted “the Rock” to numerous public chastisements. In one of the more extreme confrontations, Jesus calls Peter “Satan” and lambasts him for thinking as man thinks, not as God thinks. This outburst must have been confusing for Peter and for the other disciples, as Peter had simply been pledging to protect Jesus when Jesus explained what was waiting for him in Jerusalem. And vowing to protect people is good, isn’t it?
Not when it’s against God’s plan.
We born-agains all have a bit of Peter in us, wanting earnestly to serve God and follow Jesus and yet occasionally taking on the role of Satan without realizing it. I doubt that Peter was aware that he was acting like Satan when he offered to protect Jesus, just as we’re not away that we’re acting like Satan when we want to, for instance, make the world a better place.
“Change!” is the new rallying cry of political parties, governments, youth-oriented organizations and much of the globalized masses, and with it comes the pledge to “make the world a better place”. But do we really mean when we say we want to make the world a better place?
What we’re implying is that the world could be better than it is. Surely there’s nothing wrong with that statement. We’re all working on improving ourselves, so why not improve the world, too?
Working to improve yourself is one thing; it implies a decision of your own will to work on yourself. It implies an action that you choose, followed by a consequence that’s specific to you. To get better consequences for yourself, you choose to do better actions. However, when you impose this mode of thinking on the world, you attempt to override the consequences of other people’s actions. What you’re in effect saying is: The consequences of other people’s actions are not suitable. But what you’re really saying is: God’s justice is flawed and therefore God’s justice is imperfect and needs to be changed.
As born-agains, we know that God’s justice is perfect. We know that we live in “the best of all possible worlds” because God gives us exactly the consequences to our actions that we’ve earned. If anything, he mitigates (lessens) the consequences we suffer out of love for us, to the extent that mitigation is warranted (e.g., we are unaware that what we are doing is wrong, or we do something out of a “blind rage” or in an extreme emotional state). God’s mitigation (or mercy) is reflected in the most civilized of the world’s courts, and it should also be reflected in us.
God’s justice is perfect. If we accept this statement as self-evident, then we necessarily have to see the rallying cry for “Change!” as a howl from the pit of hell. God never changes; his truth and justice are as perfect today as they have ever been or will ever be.
God
Does
Not
Change.
As the old adage goes, you can’t improve on perfection. If God’s justice is perfect, then the only way to make this profoundly flawed world a better place is to make better choices yourself, and in that way improve your own outcomes. But when you try to change or mitigate the consequences of other people, you simply shift the earned outcome to another circumstance. They get what’s coming to them sooner or later, one way or another.
A clear example of “shifting outcomes to another circumstance” is the evolvement of disease. The proponents of modern Western medicine like to gloat that numerous diseases have been eradicated through medical interventions, but what they don’t add is that in eradicating certain diseases, others have either become more virulent or more widespread. Bacteria-caused diseases and conditions are getting harder and harder to treat due to the evolvement of bacteria that is now resistant to antibiotics. At the same time as Western medicine is claiming higher “survival rates” of cancer victims, more and more people are contracting the disease than ever before. People are living longer (allegedly, although Methuselah might not agree with that assumption) through improved health care and sanitary conditions, but their quality of life is questionable, given that most older adults experience multiple diseases and conditions, which only increase as they grow older. Is it really an improvement to live to the age of 90, if you spend the last decade of your life confined to a bed in a long-term care institute?
Whenever you hear the rallying cry “Change!”, you need to add “…the more things stay the same” and “Get thee behind me, Satan!”. God’s justice is perfect; it cannot be improved. The only change you can make is in yourself. You cannot impose change on others; if you try, all you do is shift consequences to another circumstance.
Peter wanted to protect Jesus, but Jesus needed to undergo the arrest, torture and crucifixion in order to fulfill scripture as the Messiah. I’m not saying to ignore the beaten-up guy along the side of the road like the priest and Levite did in the Good Samaritan parable. What I’m saying is to wait for God to show you who to help and when to help them. These people will come to you, trusting that you can help them. God will have sent them. This is how Jesus healed: he could only help those who came to him and who trusted him to help them. The people of Nazareth didn’t trust him and therefore were not healed.
Wait for God to show you who and when to help. Rather than blindly following the world’s Satanic cry of “Change!”, wait for God, like Jesus did.
And in the meantime, make better choices.
ARE CHRISTIANS MINIONS OF SATAN?
“Resistance is already victory.” – David Crowley, assassinated truth soldier and director of Gray State
Jesus tells us that the world is under Satan. We don’t have to look very far to see that Jesus is right about this, as he was in all things. If the world is under Satan, then who are Satan’s minions?
The list is very long and includes the usual suspects, such as all governments and the puppets that front them, the United Nations, the World Bank, the international banking system, the Vatican, the shadow governments (the NWO, the illuminati), alpha-numeric clubs like the CIA and MI6, freemasons, mainstream religions, run-of-the-mill Satanists, millionaires and billionaires, media moguls, Hollywood, Bollywood, international charities, televangelists, and so on. These are the big players, but any agency or organization that wields control over other people and guides them to do the opposite of God’s expressed will is doing Satan’s bidding, so that’s pretty much everyone except maybe you and me.
KIDDING!
Or maybe not.
We know from scripture that Satan’s chief characteristic is lying. Jesus calls him the “Father of Lies” and states that when he lies, he is speaking his own language. At the core of all lies is the desire to control a situation or a person. Lies misrepresent reality in order to control a person’s response to that reality. Lies are a means to tempt you to make choices that you wouldn’t otherwise make so that you’ll fall from grace and lose your place in heaven, just like Satan.
As born-agains, we know the 10 Commandments are from God. They are unquestionable and have zero exceptions. There’s no fine print stating the Commandments are to be considered null and void under certain circumstances, and yet many professed Christians live as if there were such exemptions, arguing for their right to kill someone in defense of their person or property. The right to kill in self-defense is glorified and reinforced in TV show after TV show, Hollywood movie after Hollywood movie, and in high-profile court cases. As born-agains, we know there are no exceptions to God’s directive not to kill people, but how many Christians kill in the name of self-defence, or in defence of their property, or in defence of their country, or in defence of freedom? How many Christians are in fact minions of Satan?
Christians should not kill people. Full stop. Period. Christians should also not condone the killing of people through “support our troops” or pro-abortion / pro-euthanasia / pro-right-to-die campaigns, or by supporting capital punishment. Christians should not take the directives of their country’s Constitution or laws as being of higher authority to them than God’s directives. The Constitution and laws are written by Satan’s minions with the express purpose of tempting you to choose Satan’s way instead of God’s way. Make sure your life’s choices reflect God’s will, not Satan’s.
God said: Thou shallt not kill. Jesus said: Put down your weapons; those who live by the sword, die by the sword. Satan’s lies are all around you, sugar-coated and served up on a silver star-spangled platter as unassailable civil and human rights. Learn to discern the lies from the truth, Satan’s voice from God’s voice.
Killing people, under any circumstance, is wrong.
Yes, the world is under Satan and the worldly powers-that-be are his chief minions. We born-agains, however, are not under Satan’s authority. This was Jesus’ great achievement – enabling the establishment of God’s kingdom on Earth. It’s here. It’s now. We’re living proof.
So make choices that reflect Jesus’ hard-won and glorious victory. If your country asks you to do or support something that is against God’s laws, refuse to do it, even if it means your death.
Jesus says: “Those who endure to the end will be saved.”
Resistance is victory.
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 