The devil took Jesus to a high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.
He said to him, Luke 4:6, “All this power will I give you, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and whomsoever I will give it.”
He looked south to the lifeless waters of the Salt Sea and Egypt. He looked towards the north and east where the Holy City Jerusalem stood and beyond to the great planes of Megiddo and the borders of Lebanon. Then he looked to the west, where the great waters of the Mediterranean Sea washed up on the shores of boundless Islands and nations.
Was the devil’s temptation too fantastic to have been suggested to Jesus? Was this an impossible promise by the tempter? But is it not also remarkable and unthinkable that we have witnessed events in the twentieth century that gave substance to the devil’s temptation? Christians and Jews should have taken the devil’s words seriously. There was a way by which he would become the master of his world.
Before the eyes of the civilized world, beginning in AD 1917 and ending in April 1945, one man would rise from the ashes of a defeated, humiliated, and discouraged Germany. Without resources, authority, and enormous political forces raging against him, the devil’s purposes and passions burned in one man, Adolf Hitler. He would follow the visions of imperial conquest that he came within a hairbreadth of being the ruler of all Europe and final authority and judge of the destinies of the civilized world.
A world of ‘difference stands between Adolph Hitler and Jesus Christ, but one fact gave meaning to Satan’s temptation to Jesus. There was a limit to what Hitler accomplished on his own. And there was a complete plausibility in the tempter’s words to Jesus that there would be no limit to what he could have accomplished if Jesus had bowed down and worshipped him.
The Lord would not pay the devil’s price, but Adolf Hitler did. And there is a man Scriptures refer to as the antichrist waiting in the wings who will be willing to pay the price. Others throughout the generations have been willing to pay the fee that the end does justify the means and that God does not intend us to be too honorable, righteous, and moral about how we get what we want so long as we can claim that we have a good purpose in getting it.
The coming of the antichrist, his high priest, and the tribulation promised by God will have deadly consequences for billions of lost souls.
Signs of the time: Specious “isms,” and man-invented faiths have won many fanatic loyalists. The Christian community has become slow --- acting as though our clocks are the evidence of truth and not the word of God. We live in an age of defection; few there are that will endure. Here’s my question. Has the Christian community become desensitized to the new signs and their significance? Have we failed to warn people sufficiently? And are we adequately instructed them on how to be saved? We know a storm is coming; the signs are all around us. Have our clocks become the evidence of truth and not the word of God?
Your thoughts
He said to him, Luke 4:6, “All this power will I give you, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and whomsoever I will give it.”
He looked south to the lifeless waters of the Salt Sea and Egypt. He looked towards the north and east where the Holy City Jerusalem stood and beyond to the great planes of Megiddo and the borders of Lebanon. Then he looked to the west, where the great waters of the Mediterranean Sea washed up on the shores of boundless Islands and nations.
Was the devil’s temptation too fantastic to have been suggested to Jesus? Was this an impossible promise by the tempter? But is it not also remarkable and unthinkable that we have witnessed events in the twentieth century that gave substance to the devil’s temptation? Christians and Jews should have taken the devil’s words seriously. There was a way by which he would become the master of his world.
Before the eyes of the civilized world, beginning in AD 1917 and ending in April 1945, one man would rise from the ashes of a defeated, humiliated, and discouraged Germany. Without resources, authority, and enormous political forces raging against him, the devil’s purposes and passions burned in one man, Adolf Hitler. He would follow the visions of imperial conquest that he came within a hairbreadth of being the ruler of all Europe and final authority and judge of the destinies of the civilized world.
A world of ‘difference stands between Adolph Hitler and Jesus Christ, but one fact gave meaning to Satan’s temptation to Jesus. There was a limit to what Hitler accomplished on his own. And there was a complete plausibility in the tempter’s words to Jesus that there would be no limit to what he could have accomplished if Jesus had bowed down and worshipped him.
The Lord would not pay the devil’s price, but Adolf Hitler did. And there is a man Scriptures refer to as the antichrist waiting in the wings who will be willing to pay the price. Others throughout the generations have been willing to pay the fee that the end does justify the means and that God does not intend us to be too honorable, righteous, and moral about how we get what we want so long as we can claim that we have a good purpose in getting it.
The coming of the antichrist, his high priest, and the tribulation promised by God will have deadly consequences for billions of lost souls.
Signs of the time: Specious “isms,” and man-invented faiths have won many fanatic loyalists. The Christian community has become slow --- acting as though our clocks are the evidence of truth and not the word of God. We live in an age of defection; few there are that will endure. Here’s my question. Has the Christian community become desensitized to the new signs and their significance? Have we failed to warn people sufficiently? And are we adequately instructed them on how to be saved? We know a storm is coming; the signs are all around us. Have our clocks become the evidence of truth and not the word of God?
Your thoughts
