The Devil's Wicked Whisper:  'When God Puts Things Off Limits To You It Is Just To Cheat You Out Of Things He Knows Full Well That You Deserve And Ought Rightly To Desire!  His Rules Are Unfair!  Trust Me When I Tell You That You Should Ignore Him On Such Matters.'

     God opened up a world of problems when he gave mankind free will.  We are not good at choosing goodness over wickedness, especially when the pressure is really on and the temptation level is intense.  And Heaven, God's kingdom, cannot or will not house or tolerate wickedness.  Adam and Eve really started us down a brutal path when they introduced sin into the world.  But, guess what?  They fell victim to the most successful sales pitch that Satan ever utilized I would say.  Satan simply told humans (with our small brains, selfish hearts, rebellious souls and highly inaccurate discernment) that God only burdens people with rules that they must follow in order to cheat them out of things it is quite natural for them to want.  God makes rules so He can cheat you, so He can deprive you of certain desirable and beneficial things!

too frequent      Why was the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil placed off limits?  Because God knew that if we knew the difference between good and evil then we would all too often choose evil anyway, apparently!  And then,if we were to also to be granted eternal life from the Tree of Life, then after that happened we would be eternal evil-doers beneath the wincing and unhappy eyes of God, perhaps.   It would mean that Heaven then had to look upon and endure a never ending string of evil actions and evil choices and evil activities and philosophies perpetrated by humans, right?

      Now, today, we face Adam's and Eve's same choice all of the time, rasped and knowingly hissed into our dimly lit and damaged minds from the throat of the same slick serpent, the same Devil, that despoiled our first ancestors.  They can at least say they were innocent and had no experience against sin and the Devil's wiles.  We can't say that, though, can we?  We have many warnings not to sin...many testimonies on the horrific damage that comes from listening to and heeding the Devil.  Yet we are even worse and more prolific sinners than our 'unwise and guile free' first ancestors.

     Here is a sad truth: God's reign over us can never end.  He created us and all other things.  He owns all things He chooses to own.  The Devil himself could actually never free us from being God's property, even in Hell we are God's property.  As Jonah and Job and others have noted, God is everywhere, and everywhere that He is...He is sovereign.  But as for the Devil and his reign over our lives and our souls...we could end it today, right now, world wide, simply by acknowledging that God's rules and restrictions are always (absolutely always!) for our good and should always (absolutely always!) be obeyed.  And by then doing just that very thing.  What power could the Devil then wield over anyone?  His super-power lies in convincing mankind to do themselves terrible harm.  He is not allowed to force us to harm ourselves...he must persuade us to!

     Mankind clutches the lies of the Devil close to our hearts and we hold on for dear life in the face of all the mountains of evidence that it is to first our Earthly and then our eternal pain and harm to ever listen to the Devil.  We are insane, we are misled with embarrassing ease, we are categorically incapable of being obedient enough towards God to be worthy of our God's favor.  And when God sent His only son Jesus to offer us a 'pass over', in exchange for offering ourselves to Jesus as servants forever, even after allowing us to see the hopelessness of us being allowed to be masters of our own lives, we still treated His kind offer with impudent rejection or at best with Luke warm part-time service.  We still drink down sin like men saved from the burning desert wolf down water.  We still gather at our various troughs of wickedness like greedy pigs who could never get enough and who wouldn't care to restrain ourselves even if we could. 

     That is why every one of us should reconsider our life and turn (or remain turned but with added sincerity) to follow our given Lord Jesus as well as our strength will allow. Though you would think that He would have by now withdrawn His offer to follow His Son as our Given Lord for the salvation of our souls, He somehow has not yet decided to do so.  The offer, amazingly, is still alive.  Jesus came as the highest priced ransom that ever was or will be paid to redeem someone, yet humans continue to strut about dismissively in a state of blinded arrogant rebellion, urged on by a Devil that has devoted himself to damaging mankind in all ways in order to deprive the Father of His own children of the Earth. 

     The Devil's sales pitch, today in 2024 A.D., remains about the same as it was about 6,000 years ago in the days when Adam and Eve first dwelled in the unsullied Garden of Eden:  "Don't listen to God in every single matter, but only in some.  Sometimes God puts things off limits just to cheat you out of beneficial things that He knows quite well are actually desirable and good for you.  Sometimes God's standards are way too strict, unfairly strict, in order to cheat you out of liberties and rights that He knows you ought rightly to have.  Sure, follow some of His rules...but not all of His rules!  He is unfair at times and tries to deny you certain pleasurable and satisfying things, things that he knows you desire, for no good reason at all.  And, if His followers tell you you are doing some things that God's Word and God's rules say are very wrong and dangerous to your soul, it is just because God's followers are primitively misinformed and superstitious haters.  They should mind their business until we more enlightened ones reach a level of strength where we can mind theirs'...they should be held at bay by our accusations of hatefulness and unfairness until we can grow more in our numbers.  Then we can create a society where their type of hate and intolerance towards our more inclusive version of human freedoms can no longer be legally voiced out loud, we can build a a society where they can no longer legally try to shame us.  And after that time, when our better version of society is brought to fruition, then they can no longer validly object because we will have made it legal to do all things that we find it desirable to do.  We can make it into an example of illegal hate speech to speak against us and the good things we like and prefer.  And then we can decide how best to deal with them so that these sorts of narrow minded haters, these Christians, will not try to aid their oppressive Jesus in holding sway, as Coming King, over this or any other nation again.  Why should mankind have to endure such oppression by Heavenly powers over our inherent natural desires?  These various supposed rules of God are actually the true problem...actually the true evil. "

     And the irony of it all is that the Devil is a 'created being' who has become rebellious, proud and arrogant against his Maker, and he actually has nothing of any permanent worth to grant to any of us.  He can only work tirelessly to pry God's misled human children away from their Heavenly Father's love and away from their hoped for and intended salvation.  The Devil is, in truth, a wicked and deceitful pauper.  Strangely, Satan, banished from the Earth, will not even rule in Hell when it is all over.  He will begin his own term of punishment, scripture tells us in Revelation 20:10  :

¹⁰ And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.

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