High Treason
The sin of Adam was the crime of High Treason. God had conferred upon him the legal authority to rule the Universe. This Universe-wide Dominion was the most sacred heritage that God could give to Man. Adam turned this Legal Dominion into the hands of God’s enemy, the Devil. This sin is unpardonable! High Treason has been so considered in all ages of the Human. Adam’s transgression was committed in the white light of abso¬lute knowledge. He was not deceived by the Devil. He understood the steps that led to this awful crime. His wife, Eve, was deceived, but Adam became the Benedict Arnold of Eternity. “For Adam was first formed, then Eve; and Adam was not beguiled, but the woman being beguiled hath fallen into transgression.” I Timothy 2:13-14. He knew God; he knew Satan; he knew the result of the un¬thinkable crime he committed.
Man suddenly becomes mortal. Man becomes death-doomed, Satan’s servant. He is born again.
He is more than a sinner; he is sin. A new Nature enters into him.It is not the nature of God but of this enemy, the Devil. A similar nature is breathed into the Animal Kingdom, devilish, cruel, and malignant. Man’s spirit undergoes a change; he has become a partaker of the Satanic nature, spiritual death, and he dies spiritually.
He suddenly becomes a hater of God; his whole nature is rebellion toward God. He loses fellowship and legal standing with God. He loses his love and receives hatred and revenge; he loses his faith and receives hesitating, halting, stumbling unbelief. He loses his rest, peace, and joy. He is driven from the garden
With no approach to God, Save with bleeding sacrifice. Whose blood drips on the sod.
When God created man He gave him the choke of eating the fruit of either the Tree of Life or of the Tree of the Knowledge of good and evil.
One would have united him with God; the other, with the Devil. One would have given him Eternal Life and immortality For his body; the other, spiritual death and mortality for his body.
Adam had the privilege of becoming God’s child; he forfeits it and becomes the Devil’s.
Did Adam have a legal right to barter his dominion? Yes, though we question that he had the moral right. This answers these age-old questions: Why has God not disposed of the Devil if He has the power to do it; why has He permitted Satan to rule the earth and cause so much misery, if He is God Almighty. Adam evidently had a legal right to transfer this dominion and authority into the hands of the enemy. God has been obliged through the long period of human history to recognize Satan’s legal standing, and legal right and authority, and on this ground,and this only, can we understand the legal side of the Plan of Redemption.
SATAN’S DOMINION
We have come to one of the most interesting features in the Plan of Redemption, Satan’s Dominion over Creation. We have shown how Satan obtained this authority; let us now note some facts in regard to it. The careful student of the Scripture will notice the perfect Justice of God. He is Almighty, but He has never taken advantage of Satan. Adam had legally transferred to him the Authority with which God had invested him. This Authority was Time-limited.
Had God not been absolutely just He would have dispossessed Satan and punished Man then, but instead of that His Grace makes provision for Humanity’s Redemption, showing His Love to Man, based upon perfect Justice. We remember that when Jesus began His ministry, directly after He was baptized He was led away by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the Devil.
The Devil said to Him, “If Thou be the Son of God, command this stone to become bread”; Jesus said unto him, “It is written that man shall not live by bread alone.” Then the Devil led Him up and showed Him all the Kingdoms of the inhabited earth in a moment of time. This he might have done by simply pointing to the Roman Eagle, the badge of Rome’s world power. And the Devil said to Him, “To Thee will I give all this authority, and the glory of them; for it hath been delivered unto me, and to whomsoever I will, I give it. If Thou therefore wilt worship before me, it shall all be Thine.”
Now mark, Satan came to Jesus and declared to Him that the authority and glory of the inhabited earth had been delivered unto him and that he could give it to whomsoever he willed.
If the Devil lied to Jesus and Jesus did not know that he lied, Jesus was but a man and not the incarnate Son of God as we have believed. If the Devil lied to Jesus and Jesus knew he lied; then it was not a genuine temptation. We believe that the Bible is true and it was a bona fide temptation. If that be true, then Jesus recognized that Satan had authority and dominion over the kingdoms of the human race, authority which he could transfer at will to whomsoever he wished.
This is a hideous fact to contemplate: That the human race has been under the Dominion of the Devil, that his Dominion is a legal Dominion, and that God is unable to break it until such time as the Adamic lease so-called, expires.
Jesus, moreover, not only recognizes Satan’s authority at the opening of His ministry but also speaks of him in John 14:30 as the “prince of this world,” A literal rendering would read like this: “Now is the crisis of this world; now shall the prince of this world be cast out.” Satan here is recognized as the political head of the human race and of the kingdoms of the world. It does not seem necessary to attempt to defend this point.
In 2 Cor. 4;3-4 “And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled in them that perish; in whom the god of this world (or age) hath blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should not dawn upon them.” Satan is called the “God of this world.” Here he takes his position in bidding for the worship of man in competition with the Father God. Jesus plainly declares that men are either worshiping God or the Devil.
Paul leads us to understand that the entire world is cither worshiping God through Jesus Christ or worshiping Satan. When we realize the extent of Satanic worship in this country, our minds are staggered.
Comments
Post a Comment