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Part
22 DELIVER
US FROM EVIL “After
this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven...lead us
not into temptation, but deliver us from evil” (Mat. 6:9,13).
Armed with the knowledge that God has ordained the pathway of
temptation, testing and proving for each of His sons, the question
follows: Why are we taught to pray, “Lead us not into temptation”? It
seems to ask the impossible. We are sure that Jesus never bids us to offer
petitions that, from their very nature, can never be fulfilled. There can
be no mistake in thinking that our Father leads us into positions where
our faith, hope, obedience and love may all be put to the test. But the
question remains, and with full force. Ought we to pray to be kept from
such circumstances and conditions? Ought we to want to avoid the great
occasion that may greatly try us? Ought we not, as James desired us, to
rejoice when we are called upon to pass through such experiences, and for
the reason he gives, that such occasions of trial breed in us the
qualities of divine steadfastness and spiritual maturity? Ought we to pray
for escape from such processes that transform us in nature and character?
Yet such a prayer seems to be asking that we might escape
temptation. Not the greatest saint that ever lived could be exempt from
it! Nor for the Lord Jesus Himself in His earthly life was this possible!
And we should not suppose that His only temptations were those He faced in
solitude following the forty days in the Judean wilderness. There were
others that beset Him throughout His life and ministry, and some at least
— perhaps the temptation to abandon His work in the face of hostility
and seeming failure — He bore in common with His disciples. “Ye are
they,” He said to them near the end, “which have continued with me in
my temptations.” How, then, can we ask to be spared that which is, in
fact, inevitable? What do we really mean when we say, “Lead us not into
temptation”? THE EVIL WITHOUT AND WITHIN
As we see the end of the age approaching and as the rule of man
with all its turmoil and distress rushes toward its conclusion, the earth
is filled with violence, as in the days of Noah, and evil men and seducers
wax worse and worse, as the apostle prophesied. Evil abounds on every hand
and we often include in it not merely the wrong-doing but the whole realm
of suffering, pain, misfortune, calamity, disease and death. These are one
and all evils to us, and we shrink from them because they blight our joy,
poison our happiness, crush our dreams, dash our hopes, thwart our plans
and injure our physical and mental well-being.
Yet evil runs deeper than any of these. As Jesus was in the world,
so are we in the world, and it is an evil world facing us on every side.
Therefore we need a power beyond our natural selves to help us through the
temptation that it may not overpower us. DELIVER US FROM EVIL! We know
what was in the mind of the Son of God. To Him evil meant one thing. Not
the evil of sorrows, calamities, sickness, accidents, crime, drugs,
hatred, persecution, war and tragic events which the world calls evil. The
problem is not
Some months ago Terry and Tykie Crisp beautifully expressed this
truth in one of their excellent writings. They wrote: “While imprisoned
for his radical, and accused seditious beliefs, the persecuted Germanic
leader of the Great Reformation, Martin Luther, penned these powerful
words to a dignitary of the Roman Catholic Church: ‘You may think that I
am now powerless, for the Emperor can easily silence the cry of a poor
monk like me. But, you should know that I would yet fulfill the duty which
the love of Christ has placed on me. I have not the slightest fear of
Hades, much less the pope and his cardinals’. Most assuredly, his daring
actions attested to this fact! By this time, he was totally beyond the
fear of being deceived by them; and he was utterly fearless in his
proclamation of the truth! He was no longer afraid of what man could do to
him, either in spirit or by deed! “Yet,
when the Lord revealed the deceptiveness of his own heart to him, he could
not help but cry out in desperation of spirit, ‘I dread my own heart
more than the pope and all his cardinals. For within me is the greater
pope, even Self’! What an eye-opening revelation! While it is true that
there are ‘popes’ of many descriptions...not only in Catholicism, but
also in the ranks of Protestantism, as well...denominational ‘popes’,
fundamentalist ‘popes’, pentecostal ‘popes’, charismatic
‘popes’, etc., etc., all moving under the same spirit, and all trying
to lord over the lives of others, to ‘feed’ their sense of power, or
for the sake of personal gain...our chief concern should not be on these.
There is one who dwells in our midst, who poses the greatest threat of
delusion to us, and that is the old ‘pontiff’ himself, Adam! It is he
who seeks to rule sovereignly in the temple, who desires to transform it
into his own little ‘Vatican’! It is he who demands unquestionable
submission to his dictates, who claims to be the sole infallible authority
in our earth, who masquerades as the ‘vicar’ (substitute) of Christ!
And you can believe that as often as we will allow him, he will exercise
his ‘papal powers’ over our lives, commenting on and controlling every
aspect of human existence!” — end quote.
Never a day passes but that something puts our spiritual strength
and character to the test. The presence of evil in our world, the
incitement to indulge the flesh, abounds on every hand. From God’s
standpoint these are TESTS — but these allurements to sin appeal to
weakness and evil in our own hearts, and so to us they become
“temptations”. There is temptation in the seductive advances of a
woman or the flattering attentions of a man. There is temptation in the
companionship of foolish and worldly friends. There is temptation in the
coarse and filthy speech of associates. There is temptation in worldly
entertainment. There is temptation in business, in the home, at work, at
play. There is temptation in the hallowed traditions, impressive
ceremonies, good works and appealing programs of the religious systems.
There is temptation in the means and methods of the flesh — even in our
serving of God. There are temptations of pride and presumption inherent
right within our walk in sonship. The higher you go in God the more
sophisticated and cunning the temptations become. Where is it temptation
does not lurk? Wherever man is, there temptation is. There seems to be no
escape from it.
Men try to avoid infection, in case of an outbreak of disease, by
staying away from the infected area. So men through the centuries tried to
escape the assaults of temptation by leaving the busy, evil world and
fleeing into solitude. Some buried themselves in monasteries and convents.
Dr. Zodhiates tells of a time when he visited a monastery on the
Others have fled to rural areas, to live as hermits. Some joined
religious communes, and a number, even in this walk of sonship, have
escaped to wilderness retreats. But it was all in vain. Temptation
followed them to their retreats, and many were the fierce struggles within
and without. You see, my beloved, you may leave the world and all its
problems behind, but the inescapable fact remains that when you arrive
secure within your ivory tower, or at your secluded wilderness paradise,
it is but a short time until you discover with dismay that the most real
and powerful problem of all you have brought along with you — YOURSELF!
Learn this and you will understand a great mystery — the problem is not
with your environment, it is not with anything outside of you; the problem
is YOU! If there was no evil and if there were no evil people anywhere in
the vast universe, you would still be tempted by the evil in your own
heart, for “every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust,
and enticed” (James
Humankind has an enemy — a wily nemesis, an adversary, described
in God’s Word as desperately wicked, deceitful above all things. This
enemy has adversely affected every generation of humankind from the garden
of Eden to the present. Just who, or what, is this inimical deceiver? The
prophet Jeremiah unmasked this enemy in these words of inspiration: “The
HEART is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked,” and he went
on to ask the searching question, “who can know it?” To the
enlightened mind of this prophet, the depth of iniquity of which the human
heart is capable is so great that it is beyond the ability of man to
comprehend. How many times have you heard it? Someone perpetrates an
unbelievably ghastly crime; like the ax murders of an entire family by a
young lad barely in his teens, or the brutal murder of a father and a
mother by a teenager a few years ago, who buried them in a shallow grave,
and then repeatedly drove a tractor over the site, in an attempt to cover
the crime — and yet relatives, close friends and near neighbors all
said, in a state of bewilderment and shock, “But he was such a nice,
quiet, decent boy!”
A motion picture some years ago portrayed the dual lives led by a
judge, who had two families, some distance apart! He had “married” two
different women, was actually living with each for a certain number of
days each week; would then disappear, as if he had some important
responsibilities in a distant town, when in actuality he was going to
spend the remainder of that week with a second family! Obviously, each
wife thought she knew this man thoroughly! After all, just how well do you
know your own spouse? Interesting, isn’t it? We feel we truly know our
husbands, wives, children; our closest and dearest friends. But according
to the Word of God we don’t even know ourselves! We, perhaps above all
people, are most often deceived by our own hearts! There is a deeper part
to all of us — a part that only God knows!
A friend has so aptly written, and I have shared this a few times
before, but am compelled to set it before you once again: “We should not
find this so amazing a passage of scripture if it were not for one
important thing. Jeremiah did not list an exception, saying, ‘The heart
is deceitful above all things except the devil!’ He merely stated that
the heart is deceitful above all things, PERIOD! Since Jeremiah spake by
the Spirit of God, this could not possibly have been a slip of the tongue
or something uttered before it was thought through. If the heart is
deceitful above all things, it naturally follows that there is nothing
more deceitful. The heart of man, then, is the MOST DECEITFUL THING IN THE
WORLD!
“There is no doubt whatever in my mind that Jesus had this very
scripture in mind when He spoke the words recorded in Mark 7:15-23.
‘There is nothing,’ He said, ‘from without a man that entering into
him can defile him: but the things which come out of him, these are they
which defile the man.’ Having said that, He uttered the statement that
so often followed His teachings when there was contained in them a great
mystery. ‘If any man has ears to hear, let him hear.’ If we will be
honest with ourselves, we will have to admit that we have fostered and
taught for generations a concept that directly contradicts the words of
Jesus Christ, for we have, indeed, declared that there IS something from
without a man that can enter into him and defile him. We have called him
Satan (an adversary), and so he is! We have called him a murderer and a
liar, and so he is! We have had much truth about him — but the one thing
we have NOT known about him is his LOCATION! We have said that he was
without — Jesus said that he is within! If there is nothing from without
a man (and in the Greek that reads: not one thing) that entering into him
can defile him, then we must conclude that satan’s activity is not
without, but within.
“As we continue to read this passage, we hear Jesus say, ‘For
from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries,
fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit,
lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: all these
things come from within and defile the man.’ Every sin category
imaginable is contained in this discourse. Every thing that a man could
ever think or do that is evil is said by Jesus to come — not from
outside of man but from within!”
This carries us back to the curse laid upon the serpent in the
beginning: “Upon your belly shall you go.” This judgment speaks of
infinitely more than a literal snake slithering along upon his fleshly
belly. God also told the serpent, “And I will put enmity between thee
and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy
head, and thou shalt bruise his heel” (Gen. 3:15). Just as the
“heel” speaks of infinitely more than a location on the foot, and the
word “head” speaks of something greater far than a mere physical head,
so, “upon your belly shall you go,” paints for the eyes of our
understanding the picture of the serpent crawling in humiliation,
prostration, limitation, and subjection upon the ground. The Psalmist uses
a similar expression in Psalm 44:25, “For our soul is bowed down to the
dust: our belly cleaveth unto the earth.” These are graphic figures of
speech that denote a prolonged prostration and a depth of subjection as
could never be conveyed or expressed in normal terms.
The very fact that God states that the serpent was to crawl upon
his belly reveals that he is now lowered into the dust-realm, into the
nature of man, and confined to the earthy, restricted to action upon and
expression through the MAN OF DUST. How truly this accounts for the words
of the apostle in Ephesians 2:2, “And you hath He quickened, who were
dead in trespasses and sins: wherein in time past ye walked according to
the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air,
THE SPIRIT THAT NOW WORKETH IN THE CHILDREN OF DISOBEDIENCE.” Ah, yes,
the evil spirit is IN MAN! When the serpent was confined to the dust
realm, man became the base of operation for his activity. I do not
hesitate to declare to you that you will find satan operative in NO OTHER
REALM in the whole universe! You do not meet the devil in rocks, trees,
fish, fowl, beasts, mountains, rivers, valleys, caves, nor on far-away
planets, in distant galaxies, aboard flying saucers, nor in any other
object or location outside of man. You don’t have to worry about the
devil stealing the keys to your car and driving off with it! But you may
need to be concerned about the devil in men doing so! You need not fear
the devil breaking into your house with a gun and blowing your brains out,
but the devil in men has done so many thousands of times! The devil will
never come as a hideous spirit creature in a funny red suit to seduce or
rape your wife, but the devil in some man may surely attempt it. I must
tell you frankly that I have not had any problem with that devil out there
someplace, but I have had a great deal of difficulty with that devil whose
countenance I behold when I look in the mirror! DELIVER US FROM EVIL
“Deliver us from evil.” This is the last petition in the
Lord’s Prayer and, to my mind, the whole prayer has been one tremendous
crescendo by which we are brought from realm to realm and from glory to
glory to the grand finale, the mighty climax, the wondrous consummation,
and glorious end of all that goes before. DELIVER US FROM EVIL! The number
seven was sacred, and this, the separate, seventh petition in the Lord’s
Prayer, comprehensively sums up and fulfills the rest.
It voices a universal longing. There is not one of us that has not
at some time prayed for deliverance, if not with our lips, then with our
hearts. It is a prayer that is older than human history. It is as old as
man. It is as old as sin and suffering and tears. But though so old, it is
as new as the last item you read in the daily paper. It is as new as your
latest breath. It is a prayer that we can never cease to pray as long as
we live in a state of limitation, growth, change and development unto
perfection. Deliverance — that is what Adam and Eve were seeking when,
in the consciousness of their guilt, they hurried to hide themselves among
the trees of the garden. It was the longing of the Psalmist as he held up
his blood-stained hands before God and cried, “Deliver me from
bloodguilltiness.” It was the prayer of tortured Job as he wailed,
“When shall I arise, and the night be gone?” We hear it on the lips of
the great apostle Paul as he cries, “O wretched man that I am! who shall
deliver me from this dead body.” It is a cry that looks forward with
hope and expectation to release at last, the attainment of the goal, that
glorious place of life, maturity, perfection, and incorruptibility BEYOND
THE REALM OF STRUGGLE, TESTING, AND CHANGE. We are putting on eternal
life, immortality. “Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ.”
It will help us to understand what deliverance from evil signifies
when we see what the scriptures mean when they teach us that the life of
God is eternal life. The life of God is indeed eternal, but we have
received that life injected into time and mortality, so that the inworking
of that life through the processings of God is experienced in relation to
time rather than eternity. Let me explain. Anything that is absolutely
eternal is not only unending, but is also UNCHANGEABLE. Anything that
changes in any way is not eternal, for in the change some characteristic
is left behind and a new one acquired. In every change something ends and
something else begins, at least in form. That which dwells in an eternal
state knows NO CHANGE. Change is possible only in that which is limited,
imperfect, or not fully developed. The Lord declares of Himself, “I am
Yahweh, I CHANGE NOT” (Mal. 3:6), and the inspired apostle testifies of
Him, “with Whom there is NO
God is never surprised. God has not learned anything this week, not
last year, nor in the past several trillion years. If God learned one
thing today, it would destroy Him. He would no longer be the omniscient
One who knows the end from the beginning, for known unto God are all His
works from the creation of the world. God does not experiment. God does
not become stronger, mightier, or increase Himself in any way. God cannot
become more pure, holy, or righteous than He is. God cannot be tempted
with evil. The eternal, unchangeable nature of God has no need to be
tested, tried or proven for He has already been tried to the utmost and
proved beyond any question. God is the omnipotent and omniscient One. He
CHANGES NOT. He is not something today that He wasn’t yesterday. He will
not become something tomorrow that He is not today. He eternally is all
that He is without any decrease or increase or fluctuation whatsoever.
Therefore He is the ETERNAL GOD! It means more than unending, it means
unchangeable, and therefore unending!
But we, in our spiritual life, are STILL BEING CHANGED! “And all
of us...are constantly BEING TRANSFIGURED (changed) into His very own
image in ever increasing splendor and from one degree of glory to
another” (II Cor.
When all the holy sons of God come to that place where they are so
strong and so splendid in their strength that nothing can move them from
their heroic devotion to the Father and His purposes; when they know that
neither the cares of this world, nor the deceitfulness of riches, nor gain
nor loss nor love nor glory nor the lust of the eyes nor the pride of life
nor the demands of the flesh nor all the kingdoms of the world can seduce
them from the life of God nor shake their faith — then the prayer is
answered and the hour of the manifestation of the sons of God is
wonderfully nigh at hand. THE BONDAGE OF CORRUPTION
One of the amazing features of human experience is man’s capacity
for ascent and descent. No creature of God throughout the vastnesses of
infinity is capable of ascending to such heights and descending to such
depths as is man. The carnal mind has never been endowed with the ability
to measure the limits of man’s upward reach, for “the natural man
receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness
unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually
discerned” (I Cor.
Victor Hugo once wrote, “Perhaps I am the tadpole of an
archangel.” While the words were written in jest, as a reflection on the
humble origin of man according to the theory of evolution, the sublime
truth is that they understate the case. Man is not destined to ascend to
heights angelic. Man is not programmed to become either angel or
archangel. The man Christ Jesus is Himself the revelation of man’s
destiny and of Him it is written, “Being made so much better than the
angels, as He hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than
they. For unto which of the angels said He at any time, Thou art my Son,
this day have I begotten Thee? And again, I will be to Him a Father, and
He shall be to me a Son? And again, when He bringeth the first begotten
into the world, He saith, Let all the angels of God worship Him. But to
which of the angels said He at any time, Sit on my right hand, until I
make Thine enemies Thy footstool?” (Heb. 1:4-6,13).
“Now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we
shall be: but...we shall be like Him,” proclaims the Word of God.
Divinity through sonship to God is the limit of man’s ascent. He may be
like the Son of God who is God, blessed forevermore. Sons of God must
learn to think of themselves as a totally different sort of people. We are
indeed a peculiar people, for we have been begotten again unto a living
hope by the resurrection of Jesus from the dead and have become new
creatures in Christ Jesus, very sons of very God. We have been lifted by
Christ into a heavenly realm and all our behavior and ambitions have
altered their course. So much are we become inhabitants of a new sphere
that we discover that we are no longer citizens of this present evil
world. We have acquired a new citizenship in a celestial realm, both
experiencing and enjoying the rights of citizens in that higher world.
When I have traveled on occasion to a foreign country, it didn’t
take very long to recognize that I was not a citizen of that country.
Generally I was treated with genuine courtesy and warm hospitality and
made to feel much at home; but I knew that I was not at home, and because
I was not a citizen, I was excluded from a great many rights and
privileges. It was when my plane landed again in
But now we have become citizens of a new land, even a heavenly
country, and we ought to think of ourselves as citizens of the heavenlies,
inhabitants of the city that hath foundations, whose builder and maker is
God. Far too often Christians sing about heaven as a future hope or a
distant reality. Such songs as, “Won’t It Be Wonderful There,”
“When We All Get To Heaven,” “How Beautiful Heaven Must Be,” and
“In The Sweet Bye And Bye,” patently deny our new birth into the realm
of God and our citizenship in the Kingdom of Heaven. We are no longer
citizens of earth. Every man is a citizen of the land where he was born.
We have been BORN FROM ABOVE and are now citizens of the heavenlies. We no
longer dwell upon the earth, but have been seated in Christ at the right
hand of the Father in heaven. We should not think of ourselves as
belonging to this present evil world or any of its human institutions, but
citizens of the celestial realm with all its supernal glories. Carnal
minded men cannot understand realities so grand and glorious as these and
will oppose with all their human power any thought of heaven as a present
possession. Only the spiritual mind sees and acknowledges the truth as it
is written: “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into
the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love
Him. But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit: for the Spirit
searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. Now we have received,
not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might
know the things that are freely given to us of God. Which things also we
speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy
Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual” (I Cor.
2:9-10,12-13). It is a divine fact that we have been raised up with Christ
and made to sit together with Him in the heavenlies (Eph. 2:1,6). It is a
divine certainty that we have been delivered from the power of darkness,
and have been translated into the
Man’s immense capacity for ascent is matched only by his vast
capacity for descent. The potential for the glorious ascent to the throne
of God in the highest heaven may be contrasted only with the possibility
of a tragic descent into the darkest of the deepest depths. This was the
mistake that the prodigal made. This is the mistake that Adam made in that
long ago beginning. Alas! the earliest page of human history is stained
with the record of the fall, from which mankind has never been able to
deliver himself. The disintegrating power of sin has been sadly proved,
through all the centuries, in destroying the noblest structures which
human wisdom can erect. The earth is strewed with the wreck of broken
empires. Nothing abides. Kingdoms emerge from obscurity, rise to
greatness, and then crumble to decay. The glory of human legislation is
perpetually turning to shame. We are constantly shocked at the swift
declension in public morals, and wonder how a degenerate offspring can so
soon betray the virtues which should have been their inheritance from a
godly ancestry.
The specter of the prodigal brings us face to face with life’s
oft-repeated tragedy of descent into degeneracy. Someone has said, “No
known animal possesses such a capacity for degradation as man.” Those
who have encountered human nature on its darker side are forced to assent
to that statement. The prodigal’s descent to the level of the swine
pens, and Adam’s descent into the horrors of sin and death and hell,
throw much light upon both the process of degeneration and the penalty of
degeneration. We see it in the world today where millions of men and women
are brought to ruin daily; where murder and killings and deception and
cruelty and greed and drugs and passion destroy everything; where nations
strike out to destroy one another; where people work each other’s
destruction; where all is dark and torrid. You see, precious friend of
mine, if a man is not rising upward into the image of God, he is sinking
downward into the image of the devil. Every man is either ascending or
descending. There is no standing still.
The question of perpetual motion has obsessed a great many minds
through the centuries. Some men have worked themselves almost up to the
point of insanity in a vain effort to discover or produce perpetual
motion. Their great mistake has been that they have confined their
experiments to the realm of physics. Better success will attend their
efforts when they explore the realm of human nature. In the moral and
spiritual realms perpetual motion not only exists but is the prevailing
law. There is little else than perpetual motion. Man is moving spiritually
all the time — either up or down. It is a serious matter to face such a
truth as this. It means that every night after a day of ceaseless activity
a man may sit in silence and contemplate the proposition that he is in
some degree either better or worse than when the day began. The important
thing to consider is not so much where we stand, as it is the DIRECTION WE
ARE MOVING.
Someone shared the following illustration — a little chapter from
human life that pathetically emphasizes the truth of which I now speak. A
man who was getting prematurely old because of many years of dissipation,
looked through his red-rimmed eyes to his faithful wife to whom he had
often given the promise to live a better life. He was in a repentant mood
and for a moment at least appreciative of the sorrows and sacrifices
caused the good wife because of his drinking, carousing and running
around. He said to her: “You’re a clever woman, Jenny; a courageous,
active, good woman. You should have married a better man than I am,
dear.” She looked at him a moment and thought of the far-off day of
their marriage and of the man he used to be, and then answered sadly but
sweetly, “I did, James.” Many an unfortunate woman married a better
man than she is living with today, because though the man is the same in
name, he is worse than he was, worse than he ever expected to be, because
sin has rapidly and persistently forced him to a sad extreme of
degeneracy.
What a delightful world
We see, do we not, how in nature all things are disintegrating. The
Biblical term for this is corruption. The Greek word for corruption is
PATHORA meaning “to destroy by bringing into a worse state or inferior
condition.” We all understand this on the physical plane as year by year
our bodies change — skin sagging, hair graying, bones becoming brittle,
joints stiffening, stamina decreasing, degenerative disease setting in
culminating in the final catastrophe — death. The whole creation has
been subjected to the bondage of corruption. “For the creature was made
subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of Him who hath subjected
the same in hope. Because the creation itself also shall be delivered from
the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of
God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain
together until now” (Rom.
“The whole creation groaneth...” The word “groaneth”
signifies to sigh, to pray, to be moved with inward feeling. Creation is
depicted as a slave in bondage, groaning in its captivity, crying out to
be free. Today the world is full of broken hearts, the hospitals are
crowded, the cemeteries are being filled, and all nature is groaning under
its bondage to corruption and death. You go down to the seaside and you
can hear the sob of the waves, you go to the mountains and you can hear
the low sigh of the wind in the tree tops. Can we not hear the sigh and
groan of nature in the meow of the cat, in the yelp of the dog, in the
shriek of the captive, in the bleat of the sheep, in the lowing of the
cattle, in the roar of the lion, in the hiss of the serpent, in the cry of
the vulture, in the hoot of the owl, in the wash of the sea, in the rush
of the storm, in the tremor of the earthquake, and in the exclamation of
all human sorrow and pain?
When we think of corrupt people, we think mostly of wicked sinners.
According to our theology, corruption involves alcohol or drug abuse,
adultery, fornication, or consorting with prostitutes, cheating, policemen
on the take, politicians that can be bought, businessmen involved in shady
deals, gambling, homosexuality, murder, rape, incest and other such wicked
deeds. We narrow down corruption to mean wild passions and
life-controlling lusts. Yet we have failed to understand how God looks at
corruption! God’s definition goes much deeper than the passions of the
flesh. The word corrupt, as I have pointed out, denotes “a change from
what is solid and good to something that is putrid and decaying.”
Corruption signifies something that once was whole and well — but now it
isn’t, because decay and putrification have set in.
The very nature of man is corruptible. Paul referred to this fact
when he admonished the saints at
This condition of corruptibility is so universal and unvarying that
it was formalized more than a hundred years ago by scientists into a
fundamental law now called “The Second Law of Thermodynamics.” This
law states that “all systems if left to themselves, tend to become
degraded or disordered (deteriorate).” The Second Law of Thermodynamics
is diametrically opposed to the theory of evolution. It is impossible for
creatures left to themselves to evolve into better, larger and stronger
life-forms while at the same time all of creation is in the process of
deterioration. Physical systems, whether watches or suns, eventually wear
out. The trillions of blazing infernos that make up the billions of
galaxies scattered throughout the vast expanses of the unbounded heavens
are one and all burning themselves out though it takes billions of years
for some of them to be reduced to cinders. The earth itself is gradually
slowing down in its daily revolutions and orbit around the sun. All
organisms grow old and die. Everywhere there is decay, deterioration and
death. Empires rise upon the ruins of earlier empires, but ere long
themselves collapse, disappearing forever from the stage of history. The
Law is true! ALL SYSTEMS ARE IN THE STATE OF BECOMING DEGRADED, DISORDERED
AND DETERIORATED. Nothing escapes this process in the natural world. The
Law is universal and all-inclusive. Everything is on a downward spiral
into oblivion. That is what corruption is — the inexorable downward
spiral into dissolution from which no physical thing is able to escape.
Now here is something that you possibly have never heard before.
THE SECOND LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS HAS BEEN SUPERCEDED AND TRANSCENDED. This
has been accomplished by a people now living upon the earth. The
“corruption barrier” has been broken! The apostle Peter first spoke of
it in II Peter 1:4, “Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and
precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine
nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through
lust.” “Having escaped corruption” — what a word that is! What
does it mean? While meditating on such things one day the words were made
real to me in a way I had not hitherto seen. It seems clear to me that
those who have “escaped corruption” have escaped from the inevitable
DOWNWARD SPIRAL into sin, darkness and death. That does not say that such
are now perfect, fully conformed into God’s image, and have glorified
bodies. Not at all. It says that we have escaped the irresistible sucking
power of the downward movement and now have begun to ascend instead of
descend. By being made partakers of the divine nature we have experienced
a REVERSAL OF DIRECTION so that now we are headed upward instead of
downward. It is not so important to consider where we are standing, as it
is the DIRECTION WE ARE MOVING.
Few of us look in the mirror and come to the conclusion of Hall of
Fame quarterback Joe Namath. During his heyday as a player, Namath wrote a
book titled I can’t wait until tomorrow . . . ‘Cause I Get
Better-Looking Every Day.’ As egotistical as that title sounds, it can
help us see how those who have been given power to become the sons of God
should view themselves in the lifelong process of becoming like Him. In
order for us to be conformed into the image of the Son, we need to keep
getting better every day.
Rather than becoming worse and worse, those who have been quickened
and made alive in Christ are becoming better and better! In place of
sinking into ever-increasing darkness, the light of God is shining
brighter and brighter. Instead of intensifying fear and deeper confusion
we are blessed with increasing peace, greater faith and stronger vision.
No longer are we on the path of the prodigal, sinking into the stench and
want of the pig-pen, but we are returning to Father’s house, being
changed from glory to glory to receive again our inheritance. Halleluyah!
We are no longer on our way down — we are on our way UP! We are not
getting worse, we are getting better! I tell you the truth — I am a
better man today than I was five years ago, ten years ago, or forty years
ago! We are not getting weaker, we are getting stronger! We are not
sinking into death, we are rising up into life and immortality! If you are
walking in Christ in the Spirit today, my beloved, you are a better man or
woman today than you ever were before. Even if your change seems
imperceptible, you are on your way up. WE HAVE ESCAPED CORRUPTION! Oh, the
wonder of it!
As the end of this age descends upon us and as the darkness of the
evening covers the earth as it did in the days of Noah, there is an
ever-increasing conviction within that those elect of God who are to
attain the blessedness of manifested sonship will experience more and more
the wonder of breaking through to the heavenly realms of light and life
until that glad day finally comes when they shall be completely
transformed into the likeness and power of Christ Jesus the Lord and,
being filled with all the fullness of God, they will dwell no more on
human planes but will walk with Christ in the glory of the resurrection,
spirit, soul and body. Mortal minds are incapable of understanding or even
imagining the glory that God is preparing for the age into which we are
even now entering, but that purpose will find its expression in the
manifestation of the sons of God. DELIVERANCE BY OVERCOMING
“Deliver us from evil,” that must be our prayer. Do you
remember that sentence in Christ’s great intercessory prayer? “I pray,
not that Thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that Thou
shouldest keep them from the evil.” We are in the world, and we have no
right even to wish to leave it. It is the coward who runs away, locks
himself up in some monastic cell, in an effort to be holy. It is no less
the coward who longs and prays for the “rapture” as his escape from
this evil empire. The place for the sons of God is IN the world. That is
what Jesus prayed for. He prayed that God would not take His sons out of
the world. Those who cherish the thought of spending eternity in some
far-off heaven somewhere have never seen the beautiful hope of sonship.
But the world is full of evil, evil that presses itself, forces itself
upon us at every turn. From that evil we must ask God to deliver us. We
have been forgiven. We have been quickened by God’s Holy Spirit. We want
now complete deliverance from sin and death. We want to be emancipated
from their power. We want to be rid of their foul stains. We want to grow
in righteousness, in truth, in grace, in power, in life, in victory, and
to become conformed into the image of God’s Son.
Let your mind grasp this truth: The way to be delivered from evil
is to completely and eternally OVERCOME EVIL. We are called to reign with
Christ from the highest heaven. Such all-embracing majesty is far too vast
for my feeble understanding, yet I know by the Spirit that the body of
Christ is in practical preparation for the explicit purpose of UNIVERSAL
DOMINION. But how can a man rule over principalities and powers and
universes if he is unable to rule his own spirit? “He that ruleth his
own spirit is better than he that taketh a city” (Prov.
To “overcome” means TO COME UP OVER THAT WHICH IS OVER YOU. The
term implies the existence of obstacles in the pathway of the
righteousness, peace, and joy of the
One can never become an overcomer while running from the battle. I
never cease to be amazed at the number of believers who want to go through
life without ever coming up over the things that are over them. Every time
a hard place comes, the carnal mind drags them further and further into
spiritual, emotional, and mental bondage. They look for a way out. These
folk will run to the next town, the next church, the next job, the next
friendship...whatever is convenient. They refuse to mature. Anything
negative or challenging that crosses their will is avoided with scheme
after scheme energized by the fleshly mind that is hostile toward God.
Some who read these lines are running. Do you know what you will find when
you stop? The thing that you have tried to escape is STILL THERE. You
carried it with you. It is within you. The moment you stop running and
face the issue, the wisdom of God is going to catch up with you and help
you to become an overcomer. Turn to God with sincerity, and let Him help
you and deal with you. The great tests and trials that we encounter are
not necessarily what bring about our development as New Creatures. The
little things, the everyday experiences, the nitty-gritty where the rubber
meets the road, is where the real trials, the true testings, take place.
This is the soil where the
Others, if they do not evade or run from the problem, seek
“deliverance” from it! There is a vast difference between what certain
Charismatics and Pentecostals call deliverance, and the Kingdom principle
of overcoming. What most people call deliverance today is an easy escape
out of their pressures, weaknesses and problems, not an overcoming.
Overcoming means to GAIN THE VICTORY OVER THE SITUATION, whether it be
within or without. In the “deliverance” practiced by many today God
takes something away from you, as you would take a knife from a child.
There is value in that for babes. God does take knives from children! But
that sort of deliverance has nothing to do with maturity or sonship. For
sons, carnality is not to be “cast out” like a demon; it is to be
overcome and brought into subjection to the mind of Christ. In overcoming
God’s sons are being processed so that they will know the cause and deal
with the root of the trouble within themselves. The knife is not taken
away — you learn how to use the knife! That is real deliverance. The
dealings and processings must be thorough, until HIS IMAGE be formed in
us.
Do you feel overwhelmed with weaknesses, faults, problems and
bondages? Then let me show you how to discover the CHALLENGE that lies in
every obstacle. I promise you that if you look for the challenge, you will
find it, and then you will be able to turn the stumbling-stone in your
pathway into a stepping-stone to the throne! Within every obstacle there
lies a challenge — an opportunity to overcome! This is the point I want
to make loud and clear. For if you want to overcome as Jesus overcame, you
will need to tap into the dynamics of this principle. The only force that
can cause weakness and failure is a challenge that is mistaken for a
problem. But there will be no failure when we can discover the challenge
in the problem, grab hold of it, and use it as a stepping-stone to higher
ground. On the other hand, we can never overcome anything as long as we
allow some horrendous problem to blind us to the divine challenge that is
inherent in every obstacle. In our Father’s great school of sonship, in
His effective training program for the future rulers of the world and the
universe, He knows just exactly which obstacles to place in our pathway
for our development and processing. If we try to use our faith to “move
the mountain out of the way,” such action will not bring us to the place
where faith can be perfected to OVERCOME the mountain — scale its
heights, climb over it, and conquer it. Ah, my precious brother, sister,
would you “move the mountain” by faith or would you conquer the
mountain and bring it under the dominion of the
“DELIVER US FROM EVIL!” This prayer reaches far deeper than the
mere request to be kept out of evil’s way. It is not removal from the
presence of evil, not a “rapture” to paradise on some distant planet
called heaven that is sought, but a mighty change in our STATE OF
The whole creation is joining with us in unutterable groans and
birth pangs, earnestly looking forward to its release with ours, out into
full and free and eternal inheritance. EVERY CREATED THING is waiting,
looking anxiously and with a kind of universal travail — waiting for
what? A great manifestation of the gifts of the Spirit? More missionaries?
More Bibles and gospel tracts? Greater evangelistic crusades? Another
televangelist? Or are they waiting for the combined efforts of all
churches to get together in an all-out assault against sin, sickness and
evil? Are they travailing for another preacher, another ministry, another
revival, or even another “sonship” Convention? NO, NO, A THOUSAND
TIMES NO! Creation is not waiting for any of these things to take place.
The whole creation, without exception, is waiting for the manifestation of
the sons of God which is that FULL SONSHIP, THE TRANSFORMATION OF OUR
BODIES (Rom.
The journey to the throne of the universe begins in that small and
undistinguished place where you are. The It is there that the prayer is finally and eternally answered — “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil!” Amen. So be it. Halleluyah! By J. Preston Eby. [ENTER TEXT OF WRITING / SCRIERE HERE] |
Other Writings in This Series:
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