How he gets away with it . . .

If Satan came up to a person and said, “Look, I want you to be a part of my plan and my plan’s going to wind you up in the lake of fire,” do you think he’d get many takers?

Jordan made this point, explaining, “You see, Satan’s got it camouflaged. And he’s got it camouflaged so it looks like a good idea. And by the way, everybody else is doing it and you got to make a living, etc., etc.”

“Paul says in Ephesians 2:2, ‘Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.’

“Think of a course like a current of the river. It’s flowing through the world. The world is the culture in which you live and through that culture, there’s flowing a force; a life. The course of this world is to eliminate God from every aspect of life.

“ ‘The fool has said in his heart there is no God.’ That’s a heart problem, not a head problem. People say, ‘How do you know there’s a God?’ Go look in the mirror. You exist. You had to come from somewhere. Common sense tells you that. Cause and effect tells you that. The rule of first cause tells you that.

“You argue around it because you want to get rid of what you already know. So ‘the course of this world’ is like this river current running through the world system that manifests itself in expressing the philosophy of the world. The channel through which the world works and is developed is the Lie Program. It says, ‘Get rid of God.’

*****

“The course of this world starts back in Genesis 4. In fact it starts in Genesis 1:28. When God set man in the earth he set man with a course. Here’s the way the world is to operate. Here’s the way your life and your development is to come. Here’s the course that you’re to follow.

 “The ideal is to find a spouse and be fruitful and multiply. That doesn’t mean to have more kids. You have a family and they’re to multiply a new family.

“Now when families multiply, one of the things they do as a family is pass on tradition, faith, understanding. One of the ways you civilize these little savages that are born every year is the institutions God has designed to civilize them. One of the most basic ones is the family, where you pass on values.

“Then after they multiply, they replenish the earth. They go out and fill up the earth with a culture. You see how He’s developing this? And then He says, ‘And you subdue the earth.’

“You have families that multiply into communities that develop into cultures that go out and harness the resources of the planet, the earth God has given them, and then He says, ‘And have dominion over the fish in the sea and the fowl…’

“The way man is to have dominion in the earth is by marrying, being fruitful, multiplying, replenishing the earth and subduing it. There’s a process here. That’s the way God designed the course of the world to function.

*****

“You know a problem came in, though. Adam and Eve sinned. They join the rebellion of the Adversary. So Ephesians says, ‘We walk according to the course of this world.’ Satan has come along and taken the way God designed the world to function and twisted it and usurped it; taken it captive and used it for his ends. So now it’s not going to function for the purpose God had for it. Satan’s going to use it for his plan.

“When God breathed into Adam’s nostrils the breath of life and Adam became a living soul, Satan couldn’t see that soul. Satan could see God breathing into his nostrils; he could see that red clay turn pink and begin to move and become animated, but he couldn’t see that soul.

“He knows there’s something different about this dude. God just made him king of the earth! Satan said, ‘I want to be king of the earth!’ He’s come to take my place! He’s come to take the dominion that I want!’

“Satan wants to run the culture of the planet. He wants to be God. That’s what he said in Isaiah 14 back in his original plan. ‘I want to be like the most high. I want to be the possessor of heaven and earth. I want to be the one who has all of heaven and earth do my bidding.’

*****

“Genesis 4 says, ‘Replenish the earth. Fill it up. Subdue it.’ You’re going to see man doing it, but now he’s going to do it according to Satan’s plan, not God’s plan. When it talks about ‘the course of this world,’ here’s how the world operates when it’s ‘the prince the power of the air’ running things. Here’s how he sets the course of the world up.

“Cain was a farmer. He loved to dig in the dirt. He loved to grow things. That’s why he brought the fruit of his ground to God. God said, ‘You’re never going to do what your heart desires. Your heart’s desire is always going to be elusive and you’re always going to have an unfulfilled life. And a fugitive and a vagabond you’ll be. You’re going to have to be transient.’

“So what does Cain do? He leaves home and puts down some new roots. He did exactly the opposite of what God told him to go and do. He’s going to go out and live in rebellion. Genesis 4:17 says, ‘And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bare Enoch: and he builded a city, and called the name of the city, after the name of his son, Enoch.’

“Cain doesn’t just go out and say, ‘I’m going to find a place to live and dwell instead of being a vagabond.’ He builds a city. What do you have when you have a city? You get a bunch of families together, you’re being fruitful, you multiply, you’re replenishing the earth. He’s going to build a culture. But when he built that city was he obeying God or rebelling?

“The first city man built was a monument to his rebellion. And he doesn’t just build a city. He names it after his own kid. That’s fascinating. He’s building a monument to his own rebellion. That tells you something about the cities.

“There’s a doctrine in your Bible (I call it ‘the doctrine of the cities’) that starts in Genesis 2 where God’s going to build a city. Cain didn’t come up with the idea. He was copying God’s idea. God built the first city. A place for Him to dwell in. Cain’s going to corrupt it.

“You’re going to have this centralized power; he’s developing a new world order. He’s developing a new course of the world. And you see it go on down. Verse 18 says, ‘And unto Enoch was born Irad: and Irad begat Mehujael: and Mehujael begat Methusael: and Methusael begat Lamech.’

*****

“In Genesis 5, you’ll see that these names are repeated from the seed line there. What that’s telling you is he’s taking these people who are in the 'seed of the woman' line and he’s taking names out of it and putting them with him. He’s trying to duplicate what God’s doing.

“So when Satan builds this city of rebellion, He’s doing it seeking to replicate and counterfeit God’s system. So as the course of this world gets to be coming on, it’s going to be the ultimate lie program being manifest.

“Verse 19 says, ‘And Lamech took unto him two wives: the name of the one was Adah, and the name of the other Zillah.’ Think about what Lamech’s doing there. One, he’s rebelling against the plan of God. He’s going to develop a ‘new’ kind of marriage; home life. He’s going to restructure home life.

“If you have two wives, you know what that tells you? In cultures that have polygamy, the standard rule is you can have as many wives as you can afford to keep on an equal basis. Wife #2 has to have a house on an equal status. That’s why only rich people did that.

“There’s an issue of leisure; an issue of affluence. What happens is in the wake of city life comes this looseness; this permissiveness, this sophistication and chicness where, ‘We don’t have to go by those old mores.’ There’s this constant undermining of what God established, redefining it into something different.

*****

“There are basic ravaging forces that hold lost people in a state of spiritual death. Not only are they in this condition of being spiritually separated from God, but then they have these enemies (these great forces) designed to hold them in that state of lostness.

“First is the world. Galatians 1:4 calls it ‘this present evil world.’ In fact, in that passage he says it’s 'the will of the Father that you be delivered from this present evil world.' God’s will is we be taken out of this world system because it’s the present EVIL world.

“Paul’s talking about how we live in the age, the present dispensation, of the official rejection of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. The whole of the godhead has been rejected by the world, by everyone in the world, and He’s concluded them all in unbelief that He might have mercy on all.

“Satan has this plan; he calls it a wise plan and he’s out trying to merchandise it--trying to propagate it. He has this world system that’s the vehicle he uses to carry on that program and to advance his purpose of rejecting Christ and believing the lie.

"Then Paul talks in Ephesians 2:3 about the flesh: ‘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.’

“Your flesh is telling you to go out and satisfy the appetites of your heart, and what you want to do, and you know where your flesh is? You know what sin is? ‘We’ve turned everyone into his own way.’ We want to do our own thing.

“We want our desires, and when we begin to behave according to our own appetites, then we make ourselves captive more and more to and are bound by the world system.

“Because that world system carrying on Satan’s philosophy has your appetites, that desire that says, ‘I WANT that!’ and it makes it harder for you to get free from it.

“So what these things are designed to do is hold you in a state of spiritual death.  Paul talks about how the prince ‘now worketh in the children of disobedience.’ That’s the devil. He’s the one who’s behind all this. He’s the one who’s behind sabotaging God’s program and plan.

"You have the world, the flesh, and the devil holding lost people in the state of spiritual death so they can’t get to the light ‘lest the glory of the light gospel should shine into them.’

“Now that’s a desperate situation. People’s desire is going to put them in line with and in tune with this program Satan has to advance his philosophy. So when you’re facing a world, and you’re facing Satan, and your own fleshly desires to be a part of it (your own personal interests want to participate in it) there’s a bondage there.

“The course of this world captivates and holds the world. It’s the goal of Satan’s working. It’s a description of how he achieves his plan and his purpose. It’s how he gets away with what he gets away with.”

(Editor’s note: To be continued…)