The Intercession of the Holy Spirit, No. 3
RO115-01

Secular Humanism in the Time of Noah

The people before the flood were, in short, a highly intelligent and sophisticated group of human beings, and they had great confidence, we conclude from what they did, in their human reasoning powers, in their conclusions that they could arrive at by man's thinking. The civilization which was created by one of their original great leaders, the apostate Nimrod, was in fact an early expression of what we call today secular humanism.

Humanism, which detaches God from all relationships to human experience, makes man the center of the universe and simply removes God from any authority and gives that authority and ultimate wisdom to the mind of man. The consequence of the civilization which is built on man as a center of all things rather than built upon the Creator God was a civilization, the Bible tells us, which was corrupt with every imaginable evil and was characterized by widespread violence. The sin nature, then, in that pre-flood era, was probably promoting the same basic idea as I suspect that we here in American culture today, a culture which has also abandoned the information that it has about God because it has cut itself loose from the Bible, and which, in fact, places ultimate authority in man and in man's wisdom.

But suddenly one day, all the smug, sophisticated, liberal intellectuals found themselves screaming and clawing at the side of Noah's ark as the waters rose to snuff out their vile lives and to prove them wrong. They were not, they discovered after all, gods, nor were they able by their wills to bend the true God to their fallen human reasoning.

The preacher Noah who was a fool in their eyes in a backward mentality was safe inside God's ark, just the way things are today. And the same results are inevitable in the future. Those who stand upon the Word of God are going to find themselves safe within the ark of God's care. Those who are the Phil Donohue type and what that mentality represents are one day going to be screaming in the terror and horror of the lake of fire in which they find themselves.

Selfism in America

The picture in the Bible is one of human helplessness, not one of untapped, inherent powers with potential godhood. Now, the Christian community has been caught up in a satanically promoted human viewpoint goal of selfism expressed in a variety of ways for the concept of achieving personal well-being. Self-love is promoted as the means to achieve love for God and love for neighbor. And yet, as we pointed out to you, Paul when writing to Timothy says when people come to the point where in end times, they love themselves, the result will be pure disaster. And then he names all those terrible things that are the consequence.

The pursuit of a good self-image, we are told, is the key to happiness. But the Bible does not give us the ground to think that there is anything of a good self-image that we may have of ourselves. We are sinners saved by grace. The Bible teaches that there is no basis for self-esteem in a person who is fouled by the sin nature. The goal of the Christian life is, as the song says, "Turn your eyes upon Jesus," and give Him the preeminence that he rightly deserves and Who can really make something out of we who are nothing.

People by nature already love themselves. They don't have to be taught that, and they think of themselves more highly than they ought to think. That's the real cause of human suffering, because it's an expression of arrogance. The prime characteristic of the sin nature is arrogance, and self-love triggers that.

Tell me what God, through the Word of God, makes of us that produces anything of value in ourselves to esteem. Never forget the real truth is we are worms filled with dirt. Now with that as a background, and we're building on last Sunday, and you have to have that background to have the full impact and the justification for what is being said.

I want to tie in now that this whole system of selfism which is now being promoted leads very naturally and very directly to the next thing which is becoming prominent in American society and which will prevail everywhere in the antichrist world, and that is human godhood.

There is a natural progression: the exaltation of self leads naturally to the belief in the potential of human beings to achieve godhood. The Christianity of Jesus Christ moves through selfism into the Hinduism of Satan where man has a force within himself to release. The Bible teaches man has an inherent weakness necessitating the assisting ministry of God the Holy Spirit even to do such a simple thing as praying, let alone do anything else in Satan's world. Selfism blocks the human mind to divine viewpoint, and the deceits of secular humanism are then drawn in, leading to the pursuit of godhood.

When you make yourself the center of the universe, this leads to you becoming part of the universal force, the impersonal god of Hinduism. The United States today is increasingly becoming a nation of self-esteemers, self-lovers, self-worshippers, and it's going to ensure their personal and national destruction.

So, how do we pursue godhood? The people you talk to as God's ambassador are people who have this not in their forward, conscious mind. It's been implanted in the back of their mind, and they are actually functioning upon the pursuit of godhood, sometimes without realizing it, because these concepts are so prominently being portrayed in television and entertainment and in literature so that people are constantly bombarded with this idea of pursuing human potential. While the Bible teaches that man exists in the condition of weakness and inability so the Holy Spirit has to assist him, the unbelieving world declares that man is a god with enormous unused powers. To the average person, this is becoming less and less of a crazy idea.

This leads naturally to the challenge of human resurrection. The belief in the biblical promise of human resurrection of all mankind is being replaced today by a belief of reincarnation because that is the pathway to godhood. Man realizes his potential godhood by fulfilling his karma, getting his just desserts in each life so that he steps up in the next life and eventually arrives at divine status.

Hypnosis has been used to prove the concept of reincarnation by regressing a person into past lives. Of course, when this happens, it is the voice of the demon which is speaking. It is the spirit that is coming through and telling you, "Yes, I used to be in a previous life. I was this and this." And under hypnosis, that does take place, because under hypnosis, you lose control of your volition, and in comes whatever Satan wants to bring in.

So, reincarnation and human godhood are "kissing cousins." Reincarnation is the means to godhood. And if reincarnation is true, then resurrection cannot be true. You cannot say, "I am going to come again back to life in the body and in the person I am now," if you are going to go through multiple life forms; the two are mutually exclusive.

This is what is going to make the antichrist so accepted. When he comes on the scene, he's going to be viewed as the epitome of the reincarnation process taking one to godhood.

In the book of 2 Thessalonians 2:4, we have this claim to godhood explicitly declared. 2 Thessalonians 2:4, describing this man, "Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God." Now, as god, he will demonstrate great powers. These powers will be given to him by Satan just as people who come into contact with Satan today in the spirit world do have great powers that Satan gives them.

2 Thessalonians 2:9, "Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders." Do you know what "lying wonders" are? Fake, deceiving miracles. Oh, they're miracles, but they're miracles that convey a lie. They are not the work of God. They're a work of Satan. This man will be viewed with awe, and he will be worshipped as God by those who reject the truth of scripture.

2 Thessalonians 2:10 says, "And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved." They reject the love of the Word of God. When they cut themselves off from that anchor point, they look upon the antichrist, and they believe his claims. Consequently, the Word of God says that God will deliver them up to their own delusion of believing the lie that the antichrist is God.

Verse 11 says, "And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie." The lie, which is the antichrist's claim that he is God. The deity of the antichrist, then, will not be absurd then to the people of the tribulation, because the belief in human godhood of eastern mysticism will prevail everywhere. The New Age basis thesis will be common knowledge and commonly accepted. The antichrist will be seen as the goal that all in the tribulation world wish to attain, reaching through reincarnation the full development of godhood.

Now, the miracles that the antichrist performs are going to be genuine miracles but like the miracles that charismatics perform today, they will be produced by the power of Satan and not by the power of God. They will be used to deceive the spiritually blind. So, basically, human godhood is in effect saying that there is no god. And no matter what the Bible says, no matter what the Bible claims about a Creator God who is Himself sovereign and supreme and separate from creation itself, it's not true.

And therefore, in Psalm 14:1, we are told that such people are fools. "The fool hath said in his heart, 'There is no God.' [Consequently, it describes these people as corrupt who have done abominable works] .There is none that doeth good." The Hebrew word for "fool" looks like this. It's the word "naval." The word "naval" in Hebrew means "stupid" and "impious." So, when the God of the Bible is rejected, there is no alternative but to do the foolish and stupid thing, the impious thing of declaring man his own god.

Always remember that people do not function without a god. Do I have to demonstrate that to you? You know enough about heathen cultures. You know enough about the history of the human race that there's always, no matter how benighted and uncivilized a tribe in some jungle is, they've got a god. If you don't have the real God, you come up with a substitute god. Man does not operate without a god. And so, this is what the fool does: he makes his own God.

This is precisely, of course, what Eve did when she rejected God's sovereign and supreme authority to secure her own personal godhood. And today, man is determined to take control of himself in his own destiny and to act on his own human reason because he sees himself as a potential god. The Bible says he's a fool - stupid and impious.

Hinduism

On the other hand, there is a human viewpoint, which is what the world is increasingly moving to, and that is Satan's religion of humanism, Satan's religion of Hinduism expressed in a variety of variants but all the same basic concept in which man is deified and in which there is no personal, personal living God who exists to make the rules for them. This is the goal. This is the objective. Reincarnation is the way to get there. All of this on the basic assumption that man has inherent powers. Man has capacity for deity.

Now, how do you get there? Well, you have to have somebody guide you. You have to have somebody who is enlightened to lead you to find your own deity. You have to come, first of all, to a point of God-consciousness where you are aware of the fact that you are a potential god, and then somebody must lead you to that potential godhood. And that's where you come in with the guru. The gurus of Hinduism are viewed as gods with wisdom to lead others to evolve into their own godhood.

These gurus have been popularized in the west by such prominent entertainment personalities as the Beatles who made their journeys to India to find their guru in order to find someone who could enlighten them so as to lead them to the personal godhood. That's why the Beatles were over there. Shirley MacLaine has her guru. For what reason? So that an enlightened person of wisdom who himself has already overcome his own karma and has arrived at basic godhood may direct and lead her to find her godhood.

The guru is a godman. He's an enlightened master of wisdom. He has liberated himself from the consequences of karma. For this reason, the Hindu scriptures say that the guru is greater than God for the simple reason that no one can obtain his own godhood without a guru to lead him into enlightenment. So that what seems crazy to you, that there are these thousands of gurus in the world in places like India where Hinduism is prominent, that people are dedicating their lives to and are absolutely subject to. No matter what the guru says, they do. Why? You say, "That's crazy." Not if you think that this guru is the key for you to come to the place where you will be in the position that he is in of dominance and power of your own deity. The gurus, in fact, only lead their devotees into acts of personal degradation. And I mean personal degradation now and into eternal death in hell in the future.

The technique of the gurus is basically this. They teach people the eight basic paths of yoga. The word "yoga" means "yolk." The idea is that the methods of yoga, and there are eight paths of yoga, will take you from here where you are a human being and a bridge to where you are a god. A path of yoga. Sometimes they combine some of these eight paths of yoga to make their own. But that's what guru does for you. He teaches you a system of physical rituals in order to contact the force which is, in fact, spirit powers in order to advance you to godhood. Ultimately, this yoga yolk is going to tie you to Brahma, to the Brahman state, which is the god state or the ultimate force, the universal mind, the impersonal deity of Hinduism.

So, you see, yoga is much more than an exercise program for good health. So, when you turn your television set on, and here's this program that teaches you yoga exercises, just be aware of the fact that these exercises are designed to, through physical rituals and motions, to bring you in touch with spirit powers for the ultimate purpose of bringing you to exercise your own deity. It's more than an exercise program.

And yet, yoga is sold to Christianized, western nations as the art of maximum living when, in fact, it is an art designed to teach you maximum death, to teach you how to die. Because here's what yoga does for you. It leads you to various reincarnations to detach yourself from the life processes. You learn to stop thinking in yoga. You learn to deaden your senses. You learn to reduce your breathing to a minimum so you can even be buried underground and still survive. And ultimately, the goal of yoga is to lead you to blank out and wipe out completely in death so that you enter the great nirvana of nothingness in your great, ultimate deity.

One of the great gurus that you're all acquainted with was a fellow named Mahatma (the word "Mahatma" means "enlightened") Gandhi. Mahatma Gandhi. There was a film recently which was a great propaganda film. I didn't see it, but I heard a lot about it. It was in part sponsored by the Indian government in order to convey an image of Mahatma Gandhi as a great and noble and elevated person that was totally devoid of the past.

Mahatma Gandhi was a guru, and like all gurus, he led his devotees in personal degradation as the means through yoga exercises of arriving at personal godhood. I will not describe to you some of the more loathsome, but let me quote to you from "Gods of the New Age" by Caryl Matrisciana who herself grew up in India and who was personally acquainted with the work of gurus and the consequence who says concerning Mahatma Gandhi, quote, on page 141, "Physical perversions are aspects of Kriya yoga, the brand that Gandhi practiced. Perhaps this was part of the madness that led him to administer enemas to his favorite female devotees. His weird sexual quirks had him sleeping with nude teenage girls in an attempt to confirm his celibacy and his extraordinary fitness perspectives caused him to prescribe cow dung pills for health."

This was the great Mahatma Gandhi. The guru's holiness is so great that he sanctifies, consequently, as a god man, as one who has obtained his own godhood and now is the enlightened master leading you to do the same. His holiness naturally is so great that anything he touches is sanctified.

Now, you can see the devil's here counterfeiting. As you know in the godliness of the Lord Jesus Christ, the woman who had the blood problem was healed just by touching the garment of the Lord, and this was true in the case of some of the apostles too who through things that they had touched were conveying the power of God. So, Satan comes along, and he says, "Oh, here it is. Just a common thing. Nothing different. All of us can do it. Once you have godhood, everything you touch becomes sanctified. Now, how does it actually work out in the case of a fallen human being who claims godhood and enlightenment to lead others to their own deity?

In "Gods of the New Age," beginning on page 142, Caryl Matrisciana describes a conversation she had in an ashram, which is a Hindu retreat. Many years ago, the Methodist church here in town used to send me notices saying, "We are going to have an Ashram on such-and-such a date for all of the Christians in Irving." And I thought, "They have no idea. They must really be off-their-rocker completely in using the word "ashram" to describe the gathering of what a Christian community would have, because it's a pure Hindu term: gather to perform acts of degradation.

Here's what she says in this particular little girl, "I learned that Fermananda was only 21. She had been a disciple of Sotayanda for five years, recruited while still at school. Australia has over fourteen branches of this guru's ashram. Fermananda said that there were also branches in New Zealand, South America, Greece, Spain, France, London, Ireland, Sweden, Singapore. 'How quickly the different schools of yoga are growing all over the world,' I thought. That very morning, I had read a large sign there at the ashram: 'Yoga will emerge as a mighty world power and will change the course of world events.'"

"Do you practice all the methods of Kriya yoga? [Kriya yoga is what Mahatma Gandhi practiced. We gave you a little sample of what that includes. That's one of the eight paths. She asked the girl,] 'Do you practice all the methods of Kriya yoga like amaroli, for instance?' I asked the young girl. By now, she trusted me. 'Well, I meant to,' she said apologetically, 'but it tastes so terrible that it makes me sick.' 'Poor girl,' I thought. What a ghastly spiritual duty. Those poor devotees have to drink urine as part of the yoga discipline. They had been taught that it contained redemptive qualities."

"'Do you know what urine really is?' She shook her head. Well, I tried to explain, 'It's the body's waste product. There's nothing in it that the body needs anymore. Of course it makes you feel sick, and how can it possibly save you?' Fermananda went on to confide that one of her friends had been told to drink her guru's urine. 'I wouldn't know what to do if that were to happen to me,' her eyes grew wide at the prospect."

"My research had taught me that anything which has touched the body of the guru is holy, from the dust of his feet to his dirty dishes. Drinking the guru's bath water is said to be enlightening. Should the guru desire sex, the disciple, whether male or female, should look upon this act as a step up the spiritual ladder. So, I knew that drinking the guru's urine was a devotional duty of great significance. All these specifics are spelled out in the 'Guru Gita,' a Hindu scripture. 'Meditate ceaselessly on the form of guru,' this document commands. 'Always repeat his name. Carry out his orders. Think not of anything except the guru. Through service at the feet of the guru, the embodied soul becomes purified.'"

Now, you want to talk about crazies - that's crazy. But where are you going to come when you make man a God? And Satan's counterfeit is to make man and everything that touches him as sacred as that which has to do with our Lord. These gurus, as you know, often lead their devotees on pilgrimages to bathe in the sacred Ganges River, and you've all heard about the Ganges River. I know you envision it as one of those great, beautiful, marvelous, crystal-clear streams that is refreshing to bathe in and to be in and to be near. And that is a delightful thing to have a river like that.

Many years ago, in our Berean Youth Club, older kids took the trip down the rapids of the Colorado River. Our boatman said, "You can drink out of this river. The Colorado is a pure river." And we could; we could just dip in there and dip out the water. It was cold and clear, and it was clean.

But that's nothing like the Ganges. The Ganges River is now so polluted from a variety of reasons that the Indian government has a major problem, because it doesn't dare tell people that the river is stinkin' dirty. Keep away from it. It'll make you sick. Now how are you going to say that about one of your sacred sources of finding your own deification?

In Caryl Matrisciana's book, "Gods of the New Age," page 159, she has this to say about the Ganges River, "The waters from Mother Ganga are seen to possess all spiritual qualities. They are the source and support of spiritual life. They can destroy evil spirits. They are used as a charm to repel them. The waters can create fertility when sprinkled on newlyweds. They can heal the sick. The river can send the dying victoriously into the journey beyond this life, so it is poured into their mouths. Sometimes dying people can be found lying in the Ganges waters literally for weeks waiting to die there. Their hope is that this auspicious place of death will shorten the pains of their afterlife.

The worship and reverence of the Ganges poses a sensitive political and environmental problem for the Indian government. The rise in Ganges pollution over the last few years endangers the lives of an estimated hundred million people who regard it as their primary source of water. But to declare the river polluted is tantamount to blasphemy. Industrial waste dumped into the river is not the only problem. Additional discharge includes dead human and animal bodies and human sewage. The foul-smelling green and brown waters act as a human urinal and public lavatory. Freely-floating feces testified of this."

"Nevertheless, the river is used for washing laundry and for human and animal baths. It is also used for every kind of religious ceremony. Millions are drawn to its banks annually for spiritual reasons. In the waning hours of the Kumbh Mela festival, I sat gazing activities in and around the river. My eyes followed a young man in a rickety boat cruising some destination downstream. Because of the festival on its shores, the river's waters were, if possible, more polluted than ever. But, in spite of this, the young man reached his hand over the side of this vessel, leaned out, and took a drink. 'Hinduism,' I thought as I watched him, 'is teaching man to seek for spiritual enlightenment within himself and just like this poor soul, people are being poisoned by their own filth while they try to satisfy their thirsty souls.'"

Another very popular technique of the gurus that all of you are acquainted with and which you have heard is called transcendental meditation. Transcendental meditation is the invention of the guru named Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and this man is very popular in the United States in all areas of society. I have seen him on television where he said, "If people would follow my system of T.M., the world would come to peace, and everybody would find happiness and all problems of the world and society would be solved."

And the interviewer was very impressed and pressed him for this marvelous secret that he had. It's a method of meditation that's done twenty minutes in the morning and twenty minutes in the evening with your eyes closed while you hum the mantra sound of "mmm." And there are different kinds of them, vibrations designed to put you in touch with a demon spirit that responds to that particular vibe. And you sit in the lotus position while doing this. The purpose of all this is to empty the mind, to detach you from all external reality, and to turn your thoughts inward until you find pure awareness which is what hypnosis tries to do. Turn in, find pure awareness. To go to nothingness so that then you, in fact, can be taken over by forces that are much more powerful than you.

There are very many extravagant claims which are made for the benefits of transcendental meditation in releasing inherent, divine powers for producing success in all areas of life. And that's why people go in for T.M., in order to find success in love, success in business, success in religion, success in whatever area of life they're looking for it. It is used by corporations to train their executives. They are given training in the T.M. technique in order to bring them to their pure awareness which, in turn, will release their great human potential, even though the Bible says all you've got is weakness so that you can't even pray unless God steps in and enables you to do it right.

The eastern and western gurus want us to believe that we all have the power within us to take control of our weakness and to override it. An introspective madness, therefore, has taken hold of Americans including Christians. And I mean introspection. We have this in some of the materials that are published for our youth work. We've spotted it all along the line where kids are told to go through certain practices that are pure introspection. "Look into yourself and see what you find." And they direct the kids to be looking inward upon themselves in order to find some solution for some problem that that particular lesson is dealing with. It's devastatingly subtle, and there is nothing but weakness to be found by looking within yourself.

It is "turn your eyes upon Jesus and function on His Word" that the answers are to be found. This introspection is presented as the means for maximum spiritual growth, and it's no such thing. It does not lead to self-realization nor to desirable behavior. Man tries to play the role of God, but he is still not omnipotent, and he can't make things happen. He turns to sorcery, therefore, in order to take up the slack.

The concept of human potential was expressed in a very powerful way in recent years in the popular drug-promoting rock musical, "Hair." One of the great, delightful melodies musically that came out of the rock musical "Hair" (which was pure Hinduism and pure promotion of everything we've been talking about: the defining of your godhood, and the use of drugs to find that peace and happiness and that position of power), one of the delightful songs was, "Aquarius." And all of you remember that delightful little song, and the main theme was that we are now in the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. [singing] "This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-da-da." Real catchy melody. Boy, you can just get caught up in that.

And what are they talking about? Well, Aquarius is one of the signs of the Zodiac. It is described as the water-bearer as the particular stars that create the image of the man bearing the water on his shoulders. And it is symbolic of the capacity of man to make it his own, to carry his own load, to find his own living sustenance. It is also interesting that the Aquarius follows Pisces in the Zodiac, which is the sign of the fish which has been traditionally acquainted with a sign of Christianity. So that the Aquarian Age now is the dawning of the New Age following the defunct and helpless age of Christianity, in effect. That's what was behind the song in the rock musical "Hair." And it is the gurus that we have been describing who are leading us into the New Age of Aquarius with the liberation of mind-power resulting in unlimited personal achievements.

So, the age-old aspiration of man to be a god has led to the self-delusion that we human beings possess great potential powers. Many groups today inside as well as outside of Christianity are therefore teaching techniques for activating what is, in effect, your godhood. The mind of man is declared to have the power to bring into reality whatever you desire. You are told that you have with your mental capacity the omnipotence of God Himself. And, of course, this is the real of the occult world. This is the realm of sorcery which uses words and rituals to manipulate demonic powers who indeed will perform things for you, but it's not because you have some inherent power that forms that.

The old witchcraft now has new labels. Today, witchcraft is called "Human Potential Movement." Today, witchcraft is called "Positive Mental Attitude." Today, witchcraft is called "Possibility Thinking." Today, it's called "Visualization." It's called "Success Motivation." It's called "Positive Confession." It's called "Meditation."

The basic principle of sorcery is that anything the human mind can believe, the human mind can bring into reality. Now, that's godhood. If you can believe something, you can produce it as reality. Only God can do that. And the claim is that this is what man can do because man is potential deity. The mind of man can tap into the universal mind and so possess unlimited capacity and knowledge. The sorcerer's counterfeit for faith in God is belief in this mysterious, inherent power of man's mind to create his own reality.

These modern systems of sorcery, like the ancient ones, are based on the premise that there are certain techniques which forces deity to do your bidding. That's what we're talking about. There's certain techniques. If you follow them, you will force God to do your bidding. And so, into the Christian realm have come these ideas that are being taught of visualization, that you can visualize what you want and thus you can incubate and hatch your dreams. What do you want? Just visualize yourself as having it, and you can incubate your dreams.

I am now visualizing myself as one of the hottest, hotdoggin' skiers on the Drunken Frenchman. You think I am going to do that? Rebecca Witherspoon is sitting there with a sneer on her face. So much for what she thinks. I will be able to achieve on the Drunken Frenchman of the blackest of the black slopes, which I would be crazy even to get near. But I know that no matter how I visualize myself going over those moguls and on those moguls and up those moguls and down those moguls (mostly down), it's not going to happen. But that's what we're talking about.

Well, what if Satan comes along and says, "Hey, you're one of the all-time greats, J.D. I'm going to make you really look good! You know, you got all these hotdoggers in your group who really can run down the Drunken Frenchman, and they really think they're great. They go down it, and they zip and zap. And you're going to go winging right past them."

You know the old falsity: "Make a deal with the devil." That's not all crazy. The devil's done that many times. And he gives through sorcery great powers so that the people achieve something, and they're deluded into thinking that it's inherently in themselves.

Faith Not Forcing God's Action

When the Lord Jesus told people on several occasions that their faith had made them well, He meant that their faith had opened the door for Him to be free to heal them, not that their faith had forced Him to heal them. You may look up on you own Mark 5:34, Mark 10:52, Luke 8:48, Luke 17:19. Faith did not force God. It opened the door for Him to do the work. But as gods, we are told, learn the alleged laws that can be activated by simply believing to force God to do our wills. We can make it happen by our belief. In contrast to this technique of sorcery, Jesus Christ in Mark 11:22 clearly says, "Have faith in God, not in yourself."

God answers prayer. How does He do it? Because we believe He's going to do it? No, he answers it on the basis of His holiness and of His sovereignty and because we are subject to His will - not because we are subject to something that we believe He will do for us. Nothing could be further from the truth. We do not conjure up God the Holy Spirit to perform in our behalf by visualizing Him into certain situations. We do not force God the Father because we believe He will do something to make Him do that thing. When we act in that way, and when we get desirable results, you can just bet your bippy that it is the result of satanic power, not of God, and you better back off and be very careful.

Because if there's anything this passage in Romans has taught us, we are incapacitated. We have nothing in ourselves to love, to esteem, to exalt. The only thing God loves in us is His absolute righteousness which He first puts into us, let alone for us to find anything to admire.

So, the power that is turned loose in the world today is a very impressive and dramatic power, and it's an awesome power, and it is going to be the norm in the antichrist's world. Be careful. Do not get caught up in this delusion.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1977

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