04 - Forces in Conflict

The means which Satan has most successfully employed to further this object of blinding men’s minds is to promote numerous humanitarian, reformatory, remedial and benevolent enterprises, and thereby to render the age as illustrious as possible, thus commending it to good people, whether saved or unsaved. By this means he deceives Christians to the true nature and tendencies of the age, throws them off their guard, and even enlists their efforts and money in schemes of betterment which, so far from leading sinners Christ, tend rather to show them how to build up their “self-respect” and “self-reliance.” The preaching of the Gospel, on the contrary, tends to break down and destroy all self-respect and self-reliance; and its work is not complete in any individual soul until that result is fully accomplished.

Thus, even Christians are deceived in large numbers, and are induced to contribute to the glory of this age and to the success of the great purpose of the god of this age. It is not in the resorts of the vicious, nor even in the doings of a frivolous and Christless society, that Satan’s great power and ingenuity are displayed, but in the temperance movements reformatories and philanthropies of the age, and in the pulpits from which the gospel of the world’s progress and betterment is preached to the entire satisfaction of “the world,” which occupies the pews, and of the god of the world who occupies his seat of empire, with his associated powers, principalities and world rulers in the heavenly places (Eph 6:12,R.V.) For the spiritual conflict of the age consists in this: The Spirit of God aims to convince the world that it needs Christ; the spirit of the world aims to convince it that it can get along very well without Christ, and that it is making splendid progress in that direction. The Spirit of God witnesses to believers that all their needs are fully supplied in Christ, that they are dependent on the world for nothing, and that their place is outside the world-system. The spirit of the world testifies to believers that Christ does not supply every need, that they must seek part at least of their help and of their gratification from the world, and he calls their attention loudly to its many innocent pleasures and pursuits, and to its many helpful expedients, seeking to persuade them that their place is in the world trying to improve it. For, the spirit of the world aims to make the world better. The Spirit of God aims to convince the world of sin. These aims are directly opposed to each other. Everyone can readily decide for himself which of them he is assisting.