Weaken nations via internal integrity

The more people deceive themselves, the more they generate in themselves a certain energy and vitality that wants to impose their deception on others. It’s an interacting process of self-deception.

Demons come along at the outset as “familiar spirits,” meaning they put up a friendly facade, introducing themselves in a deceptive manner in order to hook you.

“They want you to come and participate with them in what they’re doing so they court you, deceiving you, explains Preacher Richard Jordan. "That's why the Bible calls them a ‘lying spirit.’ "

*****

When Bach wrote Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring, he incorrectly assumed the “desire of all nations” from Haggai 2:7 was a reference to Jesus Christ.

“Haggai is not talking about Believers. Think about it, what nation has there ever been that desired Him?! Look at John 5 to see what the nations desire. Verse 43 says, ‘I am come in my Father's name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive.’

“Jesus Christ’s saying, ‘I came in my Father’s name, you didn’t want me. Another is going to come in his own name and you know who that is? The Antichrist.’

“You know who the nations really desire? They desire the Lie, not the truth. And when the personification of the Lie, the Antichrist, the 'man of sin,' the 'son of perdition,' shows up as that ‘Wicked,’ what do they do? They receive a lie because they didn’t have a love for the truth. So what the world does is they receive the Antichrist, believing and trusting in him.

“There’s never been a time in human history, in all the world, that the nations of this world have desired the God of the Bible. They desire ‘the god of this world.’

*****

“You look at what’s going on in our country and in Europe today and it’s such a strange thing; people are always talking about liberty and freedom, but you let somebody do some of these terrorist things and what’s the first thing they want to get rid of?

"That’s why you can’t have political liberty unless you have some internal integrity inside of people that restrains them from doing such things.

“The internal strength of character that is necessary to be who we have been as a nation is gone. It still exists some in the older generations, but the younger generations, for the most part, while you find little nests of people like us around, when you go out there in the culture . . . 

"All the things God puts in a culture to de-savage and discipline it and give people the capacity to be strong, Isaiah 14 says what the Antichrist does is he weakens the nations by taking those things out. That’s what’s going on in Haggai; it’s already happened.

“In the 1960s there was a national radio guy, Carl MacIntire, who had The Twentieth Century Reformation Hour, and he used to say, ‘Remember, the Communists want peace--a piece of this, a piece of that, until they have it all.’

"I used to think, ‘That’s a great saying. They want peace, but they spell it different. When they have it all, then there’s p-e-a-c-e.’ Well, that’s what this crafty guy wants."