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LifeLink Devotional

Friday, June 11, 2021

We are nearing the end of a universal war that has been in progress since before the creation of the world. It is the battle between God, the Sovereign Creator and Ruler of all things, and all His created beings that are capable of rational thought. The war is being fought over the souls of people on the battleground of belief. The conflict is between two belief systems. The first is that God is God and that He is loving and good. The second is that we are our own gods, and that we are better at managing our own lives to produce good.

The primary combatants are God and Satan. The battle is not over the knowledge of God’s existence; Satan and all his demons believe that God exists. The fight is about whether God is True and Good, and able to be trusted to rule in such a way that we are fully loved and accepted and fulfilled in life. Atheists and agnostics are not really striving to prove there isn’t a God, but they are seeking to prove that they themselves are god.

One of the tactics used by the enemies of God is to renounce the truth of the Gospel by discrediting all spirituality. Jean Meslier (1664-1729) served as a Catholic priest for 40 years, but after his death was discovered to have written the very first book-length philosophical essay promoting atheism.

Meslier says all religions are human inventions:

“All the laws and orders that are issued in the name and authority of God or the gods are really only human inventions… invented by shrewd and crafty politicians, afterward cultivated and multiplied by the false seducers and charlatans, then accepted blindly by the ignorant, and finally supported and authorized by the laws of the princes and rulers of the earth who used these human inventions to keep a tight rein on the community of men and do with them what they wanted.”

In contrast to that statement, the Apostle Paul states in his God-inspired letter to the churches of Galatia,  “For I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man’s gospel.”(Galatians 1:11)

Paul did not invent the Gospel, nor did he receive it from men; but he personally received the Gospel from Jesus Christ. Both his message and his apostolic ministry were divinely given. Therefore, anybody who added anything to or took anything away from Paul’s Gospel was in danger of divine judgment, because that Gospel was given by Jesus Christ from heaven.

The war for truth is being fought on many battlefields in the church today. Is Jesus God? Did Jesus rise from the dead into an eternal body? Is the Bible the inspired revelation of God without error? And the list goes on. But one thing is common in all the debates and deconstruction of Biblical truth: they are all an attempt to validate man as his own god and conform God to our imaginations. The single motivation behind man’s attempt to rediscover truth is to agree with Satan that we should be gods of our own lives.

Every one of us has a choice to believe in a god – either one of our own making or the One who made us. It is a decision with eternal consequences. Choose wisely.

Pastor John