Recall that Jesus went on a 40-day fast in the wilderness during which He faced some major temptation by the devil himself. Among those temptations, Satan took Him to a high mountain where he supernaturally showed Him …all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said unto Him, “All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will give it. If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine” (Luke 4:5-6).

In resisting the temptation to power and glory, Jesus did not deny or debate what the devil said. He did not refute that the devil was able to give all the power and glory of the kingdoms of this world over to whomever he wished. Jesus said instead that we are to worship and serve God alone. The fact is that when Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden, they delegated power in this world over to the devil. The devil became “the god of this world (this age)” (2 Corinthians 4:4).

In Christ’s First Advent, He came as the suffering Savior, drawing us to come voluntarily to Himself in grace through faith. He said, “My kingdom is not of this world…” (John 18:36). But the Bible also speaks copiously of His Second Advent, in which Christ comes as Judge and King to reign over this world forever!

We should not be surprised that the world is still in the hands of the devil. We are yet awaiting the “fullness” of our “adoption”, the resurrection of our bodies, the consummation of our salvation (Romans 8:18-23, Philippians 3:20-21, 1 Corinthians 15:50-54). This is the literal truth of a biblical worldview. Just like a literal creation account, there is occurring a literal unfolding of history per biblical prophecy and foreknowledge, with future expectation of the fullness of our redemption and reign of Christ.

Last month I mentioned Joseph Goebbels, the genius propagandist of the Nazi regime of the 1930s and 40s. I mentioned his famous quote about how if you tell a lie often enough, people, including yourself, will really start to believe it. There are numerous cases of lies told so often that people believe them no matter how much they stretch credulity.

For example, Clayton Lake State Park in northeast New Mexico is one of a number of State and National Parks and Monuments in the U.S. which showcase dinosaur footprints or other dinosaur evidence. Clayton Lake State Park has trackways of well-defined dinosaur footprints about which one official sign says: “More than 500 fossilized footprints made by at least 8 kinds of dinosaurs are visible on the lake’s spillway. These tracks were embedded in the mud over 100 million years ago when most of New Mexico was a vast sea.” (Photo: Public Domain)

True that they are dinosaur footprints – but 100 million years ago?! There’s the big lie – couched in partial truths. It defies all our intuition and experience and calculations about erosion of soil and rock formations. But the big lie of evolution is told so often, with long ages that are incomprehensible to us, most people don’t even question it!

Joseph Goebbels also observed the following at the apex of Nazi power during the struggle of World War II (“Nazi” stands for the official title, “National Socialist German Worker’s Party”): “National Socialism is a religion. All we lack is a religious genius capable of uprooting outmoded religious practice and putting new ones in their place. My Party is my Church.” He also said, “The war we are fighting until victory, or the bitter end, is in its deepest sense a war between Christ and Marx. Christ: the principle of love. Marx: the principle of hate”.

The Nazis famously ridiculed the Christian principle of love, embracing instead evolution’s “survival of the fittest”.  In the end, Joseph Goebbels died for the lies he believed. He and his wife, Magda, committed suicide, and they killed their five young children as well. Many others killed themselves in the Berlin bunker where Hitler also committed suicide as the Allied forces closed in during the month of May 1945.

Once again, truth is critical because lies will deceive us – even to a most “bitter end”.  And once again, the Bible is God’s precious gift to us, holding the plain sense truth about mankind, this world, and its Maker – and about the precious yet awesome beauty of God in Christ given in love for us!

The Bible reveals that the kingdoms of this world are under the control of our great hate-filled adversary, the devil. C.S. Lewis famously said it well: “Enemy-occupied territory – that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful King has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.” Our work as Christians is, indeed, in a great sense, the work of “sabotaging” the works of the devil – under the leadership of the “rightful King”!

Cultural Marxists continue their “war against Christ” – as Goebbels keenly observed. Like the Nazis and other Socialists of recent history, they seek, as Goebbels put it, to “uproot” the status quo of civilization, informed as it is by a biblical worldview. And then they desire to build it back “better” into their vision of a State-sponsored socialist utopia. This is the formula of the dialectic materialist progress that Marx described in his famous writings. Tear down, then rebuild a utopia with loyalties to the State, not the biblical God. And Marx saw a wonderful ally, the biological counterpart to his social and economic theories, in Darwin’s theory of evolution. In the world’s institutions today, evolution continues its grip. And we see many other growing anti-Christ lies being foisted upon us through constant repetition as well.

The moral, philosophical, and cultural pollution of this world, the flesh, and the devil – with all their inherent frustration, infirmity, hate and despair – rubs off on everybody. We “groan within ourselves, waiting” in “hope” of our complete redemption promised in the Bible. The Bible calls this “Looking for that blessed (happy) hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13). It is a “purifying hope” as well (1 John 3:2-3) because it takes our focus off the cares of this world and puts them on the joy of the victorious union with our Savior at His second coming! This world is not our home.

As hymn writer Fanny Crosby put it in “He Hideth My Soul”:

               When clothed in His brightness transported, I rise,

               To meet Him in clouds of the sky.

               His perfect salvation, His wonderful love,

               I’ll shout with the millions on high!

Biblical truth says that Christians must recognize, expose and “sabotage” the utter evil that is present in this world while abiding in the purifying hope that our final reality gloriously transcends it all! This is what you are doing through your prayers and continuing support for the mission our great Creator has given us for this age!

Photo: Clayton Lake State Park Dinosaur Track –Clayton, New Mexico (PD)

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