God's not dead, people are

The course of this world is to eliminate God from every aspect of life. As David writes in Psalm 14, “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.”

“There’s a culture in ‘this present evil world’ where the world wants to replace God’s truth with the vain imaginations--the empty rational reasoning of man’s attempt to make himself control things and come up with his own vain ideas; his own ideas about how it ought to work and what the purpose and meaning of life is," says Jordan.

“It’s the culture that’s supportive of the corruption, the trespasses and sins, and that culture makes escaping from trespasses and sins all the more difficult. It’s designed to hold people in to the very thing that keeps them from getting free.

“How in the world can Satan pull that off? Well, that’s when Paul says ‘according to the prince the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.’ You see, Satan is the top ruler of the spirits of the world.

“When it says the ‘prince the power of the air,’ look at Ephesians 6:12: ‘For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.’

“Satan has authority up there and he’s the head of the government in all of the invisible realm. The reason he would say ‘the prince of the power of the air’ is that’s the realm where you and I live, not just out somewhere else.

“He’s directing and promoting the philosophy, the course of this world so he can eliminate the Creator. How he exerts his influence and his rulership; he’s the spirit that now works in the children of disobedience. He has access, as it were, to their will. He works in their inner man.

“They have no Savior. They have no Holy Spirit within them. They have no light and truth within them. So he has free access to work.

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“Listen, the genius of unsaved people is satanically inspired. He’s the creature that works, and he uses that to captivate them; to convince them that they’re God and to eliminate any ability on their part to see any glory in the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s how he works in the hearts and lives of unsaved people, by having them captivated by that.

“The world system is controlled by Satan; it’s the vehicle that carries on Satan’s philosophy; worship of the lie. It’s the thing that carries on the culture to promote his philosophy of creature worship; of the lie. He’s behind that. He’s the one who’s animating it. It’s his lie that’s being carried.

“If you wonder why the world we live in is falling apart, the answer’s right there. II Corinthians 4:3: ‘But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost.’ If people don’t get saved it’s because they’re blind, and when it comes to the gospel, they don’t get it.

“When it says he’s ‘the god of this world,’ he’s behind the ideologies, the opinions, the hopes, the aims, the goals, the viewpoints that are expressed in the world. He’s the one they worship.

“You see, the world does worship a god; they just don’t worship the Creator God and the one that they’re following is the god of this world. That’s what he wanted to be was like the most high God; that was his goal and ambition.

“Verse 4 says, ‘In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.’

“His tactic is to blind people; to hide the truth. That’s why he talks about the rulers of the darkness. In darkness things are hid. When things are in darkness you don’t SEE them and that’s why Satan is the ‘power of darkness’ where the light isn’t there.

“That’s why in Ephesians 4 he talks about ‘through the blindness and darkness of their heart.’ He wants to blind people so they can’t see the truth and notice what he doesn’t want them to see: ‘Lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.’

“He wants to keep people from seeing anything glorious in the gospel. You remember what Paul said in I Corinthians 1: 18: ‘For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.’

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“You go out and tell the world that a dead Jew hanging on a Cross is God saving them, you know what the world thinks: ‘Cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo.’ Why do they think that? Because the god of this world hath blinded their minds.

“He blinds their minds through a lot of things. In II Corinthians He blinds them through religion. Talking about the nation Israel, Paul says in II Cor. 3:13-14, [13] And not as Moses, which put a vail over his face, that the children of Israel could not stedfastly look to the end of that which is abolished:
[14] But their minds were blinded: for until this day remaineth the same vail untaken away in the reading of the old testament; which vail is done away in Christ.

“How did he blind their minds? With the law. Moses came along, he put the vail on his face so they couldn’t see the temporary nature of the glory shining off his face. They couldn’t see it go away and it blinded them to that temporary nature of the law.

“Paul said that vail is done away with in Christ. Christ is the end of the law for righteousness. By the way, the religion he’s using there is scriptural. The law is Scripture. He literally uses the Word of God, the religion found in the Scripture, to blind people and keep them damned to hell. It’s fascinating.

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“Almost every religion on the planet is some kind of a plagiarized form of Judaism. Whoever told you a priest should be called ‘Father’? There’s nothing Christian about that. It’s Baal worship introduced into the nation Israel in Judges 17.

“Colossians 2:8 says, ‘Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.’

“Think of Sophia, a lover of wisdom, i.e., human viewpoint: ‘I think I know how to do it. I can figure it out on my own, thank you. I don’t need God.’ So let’s get rid of God in every way possible. Let’s don’t talk about Him. Let’s get Him out and forget about it.

“If it’s religion, philosophy, tradition--anything to keep you from focusing on what God is doing in the Lord Jesus Christ.

“Paul says in Galatians 6:14, ‘But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.’

“But, you see, to glory in the Cross, you have to not glory in anything you do. You can’t glory in me—my ideas, do it my way, those little things that I think I’m good at that God certainly would appreciate. ‘It’s not I, it’s Christ.’

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“In Ephesians 2, notice when Satan blinds lost people he uses their own sinfulness to do it. That’s where the flesh comes in. You see how he says, ‘the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.’

“They’re blinded by Satan but they’re also blinded by their own sin. Disobedience is a willful, deliberate refusal to comply with the demands of authority. The whole tactic is to hide and do away with the truth.

“Ephesians 2: 3 says, ‘Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.’

"We were behaving according to our own appetites; our own pleasures, our own desires. It says ‘the lust of our flesh.’ A lust is a strong desire. It can be a good thing or a bad thing. It’s a strong passion, a strong drive.

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“You remember in Romans 8:8 he says, ‘So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.’ Your flesh is a term of art that describes who you are in yourself; in your own capacities as a natural person. Walking in the lust of our flesh. What does that mean? Fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind. The source of the passions that run your life is that old flesh life, that old self-reliant person I was in Adam.

“It says, ‘Fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; And of the mind.’ The plans, the projects, the aspirations, the goals that I’ve developed. You’re back in Romans 1 now. The vanity of their mind. ‘And were by nature the children of wrath.’

“The root problem is the natural condition of lost people. You’re dead! And it says by nature you’re 'the children of wrath.' Imagine being a child of wrath. Wrath is God’s settled opposition to sin; His determined displeasure with sin.

“Sometimes people say, ‘Well, the Apostle Paul doesn’t talk much about it.’ I wonder what they read! Ephesians 5:6 says, ‘Let no man deceive you with vain words: for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience.’

“Go back to verse 3: ‘But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not be once named among you, as becometh saints;
[4] Neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting, which are not convenient: but rather giving of thanks.’

 “Where do all those activities come from? Those things come from your flesh. They come out of your mind.

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“In Colossians 1, Paul says we were alienated and enemies in our minds. We knew we were doing things God didn’t like and we determined to do them anyway. Nobody stuck a ring in our nose and just drug us along. We made some conscious decisions to be children of disobedience.

“That’s what that verse in Romans 1:32 says: ‘Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.’

“They didn’t just do them, they took pleasure in others that did them. You don’t just watch Miley Cyrus make a nitwit out of herself. You rejoice in it when TMZ puts it on the TV. The whole culture is built on that. You don’t only watch fornication and drunkenness and murder and adultery, you promote the TV shows that do it. You pay to have it pumped into your house.”