A Spanish
proverb says, “Where God has His church the devil will have his chapel.” So it
often seems. Matthew 17:1-13 records an awesome scene – the transfiguration of
Christ. The apostles Peter, James and John must have been left almost
breathless as they beheld what Peter would later describe as Jesus’ “majesty”
(2 Peter 1:16b). It was truly a “mountain-top experience.” Then comes Matthew
17:14-21. Read it and you learn while Jesus was on the mountain top with Peter,
James and John, the devil was at the foot of the mountain doing his devilish
thing! When Jesus and the three apostles came down to the multitude, Jesus was
approached by a man whose only son, in fact his only child (Luke 9:38), was
possessed by a demon. The father begged Jesus for mercy because “my son is an
epileptic [King James Version lunatick] and suffers severely.” Read the account
and you will see that the demon had really messed up the boy’s life. Thank God
you also read that Jesus had the power to cast the demon out and the son was cured!
Let us switch
gears now. Conservative Bible students believe that demons are no longer
directly active and “possessing” people in the same way they did in the first
century era. That power was a part of God’s overall scheme to validate Jesus
Christ as God’s Son and the apostles as God’s authentic and certified
spokesmen. They did so by “casting out” the demon, thus confirming both God’s
message and His messengers as authentic (see Hebrews 2:1-4; Mark 16:17-20). Demon possession was thus a
temporary phenomena fitting a larger purpose, as were miraculous gifts (1
Corinthians 13:10-11; Ephesians 4:11-14).
In contrast, the devil and his diabolical power and ability to tempt and
destroy human lives and souls is not temporary! The devil is not only alive and
well, but very, very active (see 1 Peter 5:8, etc.). To deny his reality one
must refuse to believe the Bible’s inspired testimony and dismiss outright a
daily flood of evidence that he is real and still on the prowl, seeking to
“steal, kill, and destroy” the souls of human kind (John 10:10a). The following
poem (from an author unknown to me) is worth thinking about:
Men don’t
believe in a devil now As their fathers used to do. They forced the door of the broadest creed To
let his majesty through. There isn’t a
print of his cloven foot Or a fiery dart from his bow To be found in the earth or the air
today, For the world has voted it
so. /
They say he doesn’t go round about
As a roaring lion now, But whom
shall we hold responsible For the
everlasting row We behold in home and
church and state To the earth’s remotest
bound, If a devil by a unanimous vote Is nowhere to be found? / Who
is mixing the fatal draught That palsies
heart and brain, And loads the bier of
each passing year With ten hundred
thousand slain? / Who blights the bloom of the land today With the breath of fiery hell, If the devil isn’t and never was? Won’t somebody rise and tell? / Who
dogs the steps of the toiling saint, And digs the pits for his feet? Who sows the tares in the fields of time Wherever God sows His wheat? The devil was voted not to be, And of course the thing is true, But who is
doing the kind of work the devil used to do?
/ Won’t somebody step to the
front forthwith, And make his bow and
show How the frauds and crimes of a
single day Spring up? We want to
know. The devil was fairly voted out, And of course the devil’s gone, But simple people want to know Who carries his business on?
-- by Dan Gulley,
Smithville, TN
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