What The Devil Did Next

 From the very beginning Satan has hated humanity. He will come to us humans as an 'angel of light', a proponent of freedom and a champion of rights. This is a true Pandora's box to open in the modern context. I must resist wading in to this and instead stick to the subject of my blog. In calling out his schemes there will possibly be only 3 or 4 broad themes, though they are all interconnected like threads on a spiders web. I will lay out the first 2 because they are virtually inseparable.  1. The Image of God. It is vital, in a way I never understood as a young Christian, that we understand humanity bears the creator's stamp like nothing else in all creation does. In his image, male and female, he made them.  Not only did he make us in his  image, but then he made himself in our  image, when God The Son took a human body. He was born human, died human and was raised human. The firstborn of all creation. A human sits on the throne of heaven at The Father's righ...

 The Apostle Paul famously wrote, of the Devil, in his second epistle to the Corinthians, For we are not unaware of his schemes~ 2 Cor 2:11 But it strikes me that, as much as possible, Satan is a stealth operator. It is strange really, when you consider the effects of his dominion and influence. Paul says elsewhere, the acts of the sinful nature (the very things the Devil wants to bring about) are obvious   (Gal 5:19). They are sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery, and where we see the increase of these things through societal changes and cultural endorsements, we can assume that his hand is at work. It is obvious, and yet, despite the paradox, at the same time there is a subtlety to how he works, a kind of hiding in plain sight. The Devil himself is not responsible for all the sin we see but ' The Spirit of the Air is at work in the son's of disobedience (Eph 2:2). You see, wherever people are disobeying God (and that means everywhere)  there is a scheme of Sa...