Welcome to a firm foundation presented by Princeton ministries with Dr. Ken Smith. This is Carol Smith, Ken’s wife. Please enjoy.

In this world, there is a being. He is neither a beast nor a human, and yet he utilizes both humans and beasts for his purposes. He is a character, a being who at one time in the church’s history was spoken about extensively with long treatises, long studies, long sermons, preached and taught about this being. But in recent years, theologians, ministers, have become rather silent on the subject of this being. He is only whispered about. His name is seldom mentioned within the church. Seldom is he prayed against. Seldom does a Christian understand the battle that he is involved with this being. And as we go into the world unknowing, we engage in a spiritual warfare. And suddenly, from behind a bush, totally unexpected, he attacks.

And Christians return once a week to the safety of the church when spiritually, their arms have been pulled from the socket, when their chest has been cut deep by the wounds and afflictions and plans and schemes of this being. No military commander can direct his troops successfully if he does not understand his enemy. And if a military general says, we will go on land and the enemy is on sea, then he’s a fool. The church has been silent on the adversary, the devil, Satan. And yet, in scripture, we are told to be aware of his schemes, to know his plan. Do you know anything about Satan? His plan to seek and devour as many Christians as he can. That’s what I want to talk with you about today.

Whether we realize it or not, there is an active play that is being daily worked by God. There are three characters in the play. There is God himself. There is man. But there is a third character who the scripture speaks extensively about, and that is Satan. The first act of the play began when Satan revolted against God. The second act is when Satan sought to cause man to fall and to disobey God. The third act was when God presented his son Jesus Christ, to pay for the sins of the world and to pull from the clutches of Satan men and women whom God had ordained from the beginning of time, who had come to a knowledge of him. There is a final act in the play that has yet to occur.

That is the ultimate destruction of Satan, where he will, according to scripture, be cast into an abyss, a bottomless pit, and all those who enjoy his company will spend eternity there with him. Who is Satan? Well, first we know that he is the deceiver. We read in Genesis three where Satan questioned Eve about her knowledge of God’s word. And when he discovered that Eve knew what God had revealed. Satan at that moment lied. He said to her in verse four, you shall surely not die. He took the word of God, which was clearly understood by Eve, and he simply turned it on its head. And he exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and he tried to cause a deception. And that is one of the schemes continually of Satan to this day.

The deceiver, he causes us to get our eyes over to the right, when in reality the action is further to one side or the other. He’s a deceiver. I remember in the air force, as a pilot, we would often see a flock of birds ahead of us. And it was always the concern of a pilot that he would take one of those birds into his engine and cause the plane to stall. So anytime on take-off, you would see some birds immediately. Your first response was to pull to the left or right to dodge them. There’s only one problem. The bird that kills a pilot or is ingested into the engine, it is not the bird who you can see. It is the bird who senses, hundreds and thousands of feet away, the oncoming approach of an aircraft.

And what that bird does is he goes ballistic. He takes his wings and he simply covers himself and he falls down out of the sky. And if per chance, the trajectory should be the same and that bird should hit an engine, it will stall the engine. If it should hit the canopy of the plane, it will behead a pilot. The pilot is concerned with his eyes on birds that he can see, when in Reality it’s the deceptive bird, the one that he can’t see, that will really do the harm. Satan is like that. He is a deceiver. He causes us to focus our eyes one thing or another to the exclusion of other truths of God’s word. And when he does that, there is a great possibility for evil to occur. But also, we know from scripture that Satan is a perverter.

His purpose in talking with Eve was to pervert the truth. Satan said, God does know that in the day that you eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened and you will be as God’s, knowing good and evil. What Satan was really saying, in effect, was, God really hasn’t revealed his whole word. God really doesn’t want you to be happy. God really doesn’t want you to be fulfilled. God really doesn’t want you to be like him. And so Satan, from the beginning, devised the scheme of perverting the truth. That perversion runs to this day. The perversion that is talked about, of the church. Why you don’t want to go to the church. It’s full of hypocrites. That is a perversion of Satan.

The church, in fact, is filled with people who are sinners, who have been reclaimed by Christ and continue to struggle between that old nature and the new nature. But to tell someone that they should not go to church because it is full of hypocrites is to pervert the truth. And that is the work of Satan. Also, we know that Satan is an imitator. In Genesis three, the imitation that he wanted Eve to see was in the day that you shall eat thereof you shall be like God. Satan all the way through scripture is an imitator of the truth of God. We read about Satan even being an imitator of the light of God. We read about him as being an imitator coming in a vision.

So the person would think that in fact they are talking to God through a vision, when in fact it is the imitator, Satan to whom they are speaking. But also the work of Satan in this world is to promote lawlessness. Satan is very interested in chaos, confusion. Whether it is in the home where there is a lack of understanding of the direction of that family, or in a society where there is just continual bickering back and forth between one form of legislation or another with very little being accomplished. His interest is lawlessness, confusion. In the last days, the scriptures teach, Satan will be very interested in causing all forms of disobedience, disloyalty, immoral forms of living, so that the world in fact will become lawless. Now, what is it specifically that Satan opposes?

Well, as we look at scripture, we see that in fact there are three things that he opposes. The first is he opposes God’s word. Whatever God has spoken, Satan seeks to destroy it and turn it on its head. He seeks to oppose God’s word. Second, Satan opposes the person of Jesus Christ and the blood of Christ. Wherever Jesus is spoken about, wherever his atoning death and blood are spoken about, Satan opposes those truths. He opposed God when heard God say, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. Those words brought great distress to Satan and anytime the name of Christ is uttered, it brings great distress to him. But also Satan opposes the concept of death and judgment. He is interested in deceiving people into a sense of everything is going to turn out fine. No need to worry about tomorrow.

Certainly no need to worry about eternal life, heaven, hell. No need to worry at all. The story is told fictitiously about three junior devils who came to Satan himself and they had been working a scheme to cause men to no longer follow the living God. First young devil came up and he said, I’ve got a plan. What we’re going to do is we’re going to tell everybody in the world there is no God. What do you think? And Satan just laughed. He said, don’t you understand? All they have to do is look at creation and they will know that there is a power, that there is a God. That’ll never work. We’ve tried it. It doesn’t work. So the second devil came. He said, I’ve thought about it long. I’ve got a plan. What we’ll do is we’ll tell them Jesus Christ never came.

Satan laughed again. He said, my friend, don’t you realize the word of God is distributed all over the world? It’s the most distributed book in the world. There are more copies of it. Why? We’d have to destroy all of those, and then we’d have to destroy all of the Christians. It won’t work. They know there was a Jesus Christ. So the third devil came forward and he said, I have a plan. I’m not going to suggest that there is no God, nor am I going to suggest that there is no Jesus Christ. What? I’m going to suggest there is no hurry to believe in him. And Satan thought that was a good one. You see, the idea, no hurry. Don’t worry.

When in fact none of us knows from this moment if a boiler will explode in the basement of this building and we will all be ushered into the presence of the Lord within minutes. Or if you’ll get in your car and a drunken driver will sideswipe you. None of us knows, but Satan wants you to believe. No hurry. Don’t commit your life to Christ. And if you’re a follower of Christ, don’t be that concerned about obeying him, because there’s always tomorrow that you can obey him. Satan tempts us through three means. He always uses the same three. The first is related to our mind. That’s where he begins. He begins by planting an idea in our head.

And that is the reason in Philippians four eight that the apostle tells us, finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report. If there be any virtue, if there be any praise, think on these things. The apostle knew that the seed that Satan places is first in our thinking. That is the reason why pornographic material is so dangerous, because it puts into the mind certain thoughts. We know that across the country now there is a tremendous interest in home video recorders. 70% of the recordings that are made for home use are pornographic. The Lord is concerned about what we think, what we see that enters our mind, because that is where Satan begins.

The second direction of Satan is that he goes from the mind to the heart, according to scripture, which is our emotional center, where suddenly it is not just simply an idea, but now it has an emotion with it. It’s something we want to do. And that is the reason. In proverbs 4:23, we are told, keep or guard your heart with all diligence. And finally, the last step that Satan uses. Once he has controlled our mind, once he has controlled our emotions and caused us to want to do something, he then helps us do it in the flesh. And Romans 13:14 tells us, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh. So Satan begins in the mind. He then takes the emotions and causes us to want something.

And then he gives us opportunity in the flesh to be disobedient to the Lord. How can we combat Satan? Well, first, we need to realize that he is defeated according to scripture, that according to scripture, Jesus Christ is in control of the believer. And so we do not wrestle with a power that has total power, because Jesus Christ has that total power. Second, we are told to resist the devil, to flee from him. Do you know those places where you ought not to be? Do you know those thoughts that you ought not to think because of material that has been brought into the home? The scripture tells Christians, flee him, resist him. Don’t do it. Don’t bring it into your mind. But also, we must understand Satan.

For we are told in 2 Corinthians 2:11 that we are not to be ignorant of his designs, of his plans. We must know how he works. And finally, we must give no opportunity to him. We must always be on guard. He is, in fact, a roaring lion who would seek to maim you, to maim me in the service of Christ. Perhaps the greatest area that Satan is concerned with is trying to persuade people that it is not as simple as simply trusting in Christ that would bring eternal life. He resists that truth. I remember at 20 years old, having wrestled with all of the questions of the Christian faith, simply kneeling in the office of Bob Cook, who is the president of King’s College. And there together we knelt by a couch, and I simply said, Jesus Christ, forgive me of my sins.

Send your holy spirit. Make me new. I trust in you. No earthquake, no great emotion. But within a year or two of becoming a Christian, I met people who began to tell me how they became followers of God. I remember one man who said, I was driving through a fog on the parkway. And I prayed to God if he would just simply show a light, that I’d trust him. And do you know what happened? I can’t explain it. There was a light. And my life has changed. And I’ve trusted ever since that there’s a God. And I thought to myself, I’ve never seen that light. Then I remember another prayer meeting. Where a girl told me that she had trusted in God. And I asked, how did that happen? She said, one night I had a vision. Something appeared to me, angel.

And it simply told me, trust. And I’ve trusted in that ever since. And I believe in God. And I thought to myself, I’ve never seen a vision like that. I’ve never seen that light. Is it really that simple just simply to trust in Jesus Christ with all of my might to experience new life? The scriptures tell us, if we confess that Jesus is the Lord, that he was raised from the dead, you shall be saved. These things have been written that you may know that you have eternal life. I can’t help but think that the deceiver has been very busy. Causing people to believe in everything and every form of religion. Except the simple story of Jesus Christ, who died, who rose and is sitting today at the right hand of his father.

And on that final day, my friend will come and stand before God. And God will simply ask, what do you trust in? And they’ll say, I trust in that light. Do you remember that fog on the highway? And you came. It was a light. I trusted you. And God will say, I did not appear to you in that light. And then another voice will appear from the depths of hell. And his hand will reach up and grab that person by the leg. And pull him gently but purposefully and say, don’t you understand that according to scripture, I was able to appear as a light? You trusted not Christ, but you trusted an imitation of him. And then my friend will come and say, I trust in a vision. I don’t understand it, but that’s why I believe in God.

And then from the depths of hell, Satan himself will reach for another. And pull him to be with him for eternity. As he would say, don’t you know? I can appear. I can appear as a false vision. I can appear as a light. And then I’ll come. Why should you come into my heaven, God? I’ve never seen a light. I’ve never had a vision. All I remember, 20 years old, I bowed, bent my knee, and said, Jesus Christ, forgive me of my sins. Make me new. I trust in you. Come to the place that I have prepared for you. There is a devil. According to scripture.

His desire is to deceive, to imitate the truth, to cause even Christians to stumble, to be maimed, and not to realize that he is concerned about your mind, he is concerned about your emotions, and he is concerned about your body, your flesh. Flee the devil. Be on guard.

Watch thank you for listening to a firm foundation presented by Princeton ministries. This programming is supported by you, the listener. You may go to our website, princetonministries.org, or send your donation to Princeton ministries Post office Box 2171 Princeton, New Jersey 8543. That’s Princeton Ministries Post office Box 2171 Princeton, New Jersey 8543. The Lord bless you and Dr. Smith looks forward to hearing from you. We would like to thank Rones web development company for making this webcast possible. You can find their link at the bottom of our website, princetonministries.org.