The Joy of Salvation in a Satanic World System by Jeremy James

The Joy of Salvation in a Satanic World System
by Jeremy James

Despite what we may think, we have a choice. We can be miserable in face of the incredible wickedness of the world around us, or we can live daily in the joy of our salvation. Which choice have you made?

After his dreadful sin in the matter of Uriah, David repented with a contrite spirit and cried out to the LORD, “ Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation ” (Psalm 51).

David may have been in an even worse situation than Job. He knew he deserved death and that his awful condition was entirely of his own making. Job, on the other hand, suffered grievously, and in ways we find hard to comprehend, but his plight was not of his own making. As we read the account of his condition and what might possibly have caused it, we can detect a golden thread running through his words from start to finish. He knew that God would deal justly with him, that when it was all over he would not find even the smallest reason to believe he was treated unfairly. Naturally, he had no idea how it would all end, but he never came close to doing what his distraught wife had advised from the start: “...curse God, and die.” (Job 2:9) 

David could only find the joy of his salvation – the salvation of the LORD – through heartfelt repentance. Job, on the other hand, found it through the exercise of astonishing patience. Each in his own way had to throw himself upon the LORD and trust in His unfathomable mercy. 

Habakkuk
David was greatly shaken by what he had done, and Job was oppressed by the awful calamities that befell him personally. Habakkuk, however, was deeply troubled for a different reason – the awful condition of the world around him, which he knew was due entirely to the sinfulness of Judah: “...my belly trembled; my lips quivered at the voice: rottenness entered into my bones, and I trembled in myself” (Habakkuk 3.16)

This is the condition that we wish to address in this paper. For many sincere souls, the discovery of the New World Order and the wicked cabal who control it is deeply disturbing. So many questions assail us all at once, all begging for immediate answers, that we hardly know where to begin. How could evil like this exist? How could it hide itself for so long? And why would God allow it to continue? This last question is especially troubling in light of the victory that Christ won on Calvary. Surely he triumphed over the works of darkness on Resurrection Sunday and neutralized, if not destroyed, the power that Satan had over mankind?

So it is a challenging issue, both for those who have not yet found Christ and for those who have come to a saving faith in Christ. For the former, it can come as a great shock to realize that evil exists, that it is a real supernatural force, and that a small but highly influential percentage of mankind worship and serve the powers of darkness. And for Christians it is a shock to find that the doctrine of evil being taught in most churches today is pathetically inadequate, that Satan is far more dangerous and far more cunning than they had been led to believe.
We will address this issue from a Biblical perspective only. Unless one understands the magnitude of what Christ achieved for us on Calvary, we simply won’t guess the depth and extent of the Satanic world system.

Did Calvary end Satan’s dominion?
Let’s start with the really big question for most Christians: Why didn’t Calvary put an end to all this? If Satan was truly defeated, then why is he still “the god of this world”, as the Apostle Paul confirmed in 2 Corinthians 4:4? Surely Jesus himself said, on the night before his crucifixion, “Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out.” (John 12:31)?

We must read God’s Word in its totality and not confine our understanding to some parts to the exclusion of others. The Book of Revelation tells us that Satan will not be bound until after the war in heaven (Revelation 12:7), when the rebellious angels are cast down to the earth.  After the Antichrist and the False Prophet are defeated and thrust into the Lake of Fire, the LORD will send an angel to bind Satan and cast him into the bottomless pit:

“And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season.” (Revelation 20:1-3)

The Enemy will continue to wage his great war of deception until that fateful day!
The victory on Calvary was perfect and complete, but it did not mark the final phase in the LORD’s redemptive plan for mankind. Rather it made possible the completion of that plan. The Church, the Bride of Christ, is still being called out and the Chosen People have yet to go through the judgment that will lead to their redemption. Both of these epic activities, which have continued for nearly two thousand years, are still ongoing.

Satan is as active today as he was in Apostolic times – i.e. after the Resurrection of Christ. Remember how he opposed the Apostle Paul: “Wherefore we would have come unto you, even I Paul, once and again; but Satan hindered us.” (1 Thessalonians 2:18)

Paul was possibly the greatest of all Christian missionaries, a man filled with the Holy Spirit, but Satan hindered even him.

The Apostle Peter stressed the need for sobriety and vigilance since Satan is as keen to devour us spiritually as a lion is keen to devour us physically: “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour:” (1 Peter 5:8)

And for those who forget how dangerous the Adversary can be, consider how he caused the deaths of two professing believers, Ananias and Sapphira: “But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost, and to keep back part of the price of the land?” (Acts 5:3)

Christians are protected
Born-again Christians are blessed with the indwelling protection of the Holy Spirit and have no need to fear Satan. We can pray to have him removed from any situation that affects us. We can also pray to God Almighty to deliver troubled souls from the power of evil demons. Through his work on Calvary, Christ earned these and many other wonderful blessings for his bride.

Contrary to what many are teaching today, mankind will not advance spiritually as the End Time approaches: “But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived.” (2 Timothy 3:13) and “For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy....” (2 Timothy 3:2). Christ even asked whether he would find faith on earth when he returned (Luke 18:8).

The Enemy has many lies that are designed to disguise the true spiritual condition of the world. These lies are so effective that a great many professing Christians believe in Dominionism, the false teaching that the church will bring in the Kingdom on behalf of Christ and that our Saviour will return only when that is accomplished.
There is a general failure within the professing church to perceive the true spiritual condition of the world, and this is masking the astonishing depth of evil which fuels the Satanic world system.

A well-documented conspiracy
Let’s consider a simple example of the leap that the professing church has yet to make to arrive at a clear understanding of the wickedness behind the New World Order. Back in 1980, hardly anyone recognized the extent to which the sexual abuse of children was endemic within society. When discerning souls tried to raise the issue for discussion, they were chided for their lack of hard evidence and their obsessive interest in unsavory topics. But they were right.

It came as a great shock to many to realize that the rumors were true and that in many instances the abuse was far, far worse than any had imagined. For Roman Catholics it was especially  traumatic since, not only had many members of their clergy been carrying out this vile abuse for decades, but they were moved from parish to parish by their superiors in order to conceal what was happening. We now know on foot of various reports, like the one published in 2018 on sexual abuse by Catholic priests in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, that the Roman Catholic hierarchy – the echelon of bishops and cardinals who control the Roman church – have been following a Vatican-approved policy of denial, of litigious obstruction, of suppression of evidence, and of aiding through silence and complicity the ongoing rape and sexual abuse of teenagers and little children. It defies belief, but it happened and it is still happening.

There are three huge lessons in this:

1. It is possible for wide-scale wickedness to thrive in plain view, involving people of high standing. It is also possible for this wickedness to continue for many years without being detected. Should a small number of individuals try to raise the alarm, their wellfounded concerns are dismissed as nonsense. The public cannot believe it is happening. In fact it cannot believe that anything of the kind could ever happen. 

2. We also see how large organizations control and manipulate governments. For this reason the criminal prosecution of senior figures is virtually impossible to secure. The Vatican has been at the center of a worldwide pedophile network for decades and corroborating evidence of its grotesque activities is overwhelming, yet its top people are untouchable. It takes a perverse attitude, in light of these ongoing revelations, to claim that there is no conspiracy.

3. The true Christian church must take a leap in awareness, similar to the one it was forced to take when organized pedophilia was exposed, if it is to recognize what the New World Order is all about. This leap in awareness must come from ‘ordinary’ believers rather than pastors. The ranks of the latter are so heavily infiltrated by the Enemy that, with few exceptions, there is little likelihood that any of these coy and complacent individuals will ever speak out.

As we noted in a previous paper, we wrote to 124 pastors of Bible-believing churches in Ireland in 2017 and again in 2018, trying to form an organized church movement to speak loudly and visibly for the unborn in Ireland prior to the Referendum on Abortion. We received only 3 replies on both occasions. This is the Laodicean church in the prime of life, faithless, materialistic, and hypocritical to the core. Most of her pastors are well educated, with tongues smoother than butter, but when it comes to taking a stand for Biblical truth, they have a hundred  ways to excuse themselves. Few are remotely concerned that thousands of unborn children will be murdered every year in Ireland, purely for social convenience. They were as quiet as mice in the months leading up to the Referendum and they had virtually nothing to say after it was passed by an overwhelming majority. It would be difficult to match this kind of hypocrisy. Their attitude to the Marriage Referendum in 2015 was equally spineless. The imminent destruction of Christian marriage didn’t seem to bother them in the least.

Discouragement
This brings us full circle to the question of discouragement. We have sincere born-again Christians who are greatly troubled by the wickedness of the world as revealed through the Luciferian agenda of the New World Order. We also have sincere born-again Christians who are greatly troubled by their inability to get fellow Christians to recognize the gravity of what is happening. No doubt many are in both camps.

We are just like Habakkuk who looked at the world around him and “trembled” within himself. Was God watching any of this? he asked. The dejected prophet felt only “rottenness” in his bones. The wicked were seemingly in complete control, overturning everything in a frenzy of apostasy, and set to destroy any remaining vestige of righteousness.

Though he was surely familiar with the verse from Job which held the answer to his question, the troubled prophet needed further assurance:        

“Knowest thou not this of old, since man was placed upon earth, that the triumphing of the wicked is short, and the joy of the hypocrite but for a moment?” (Job 20:4-5)

The problem for each of us, of course, is that the “moment” seems far too long!

The LORD refers explicitly to this in Isaiah when He describes the passage of time between the fall and exile of Israel and their eventual redemption when Christ returns and destroys their enemies at the end of the Tribulation: “Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee: hide thyself as it were for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast. For, behold, the LORD cometh out of his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity: the earth also shall disclose her blood, and shall no more cover her slain.” (Isaiah 26:20-21)

The “little moment” is a short span of time relative to the vast depths of eternity. From a human standpoint, however, it is still a trial of endurance, and so the Word of God qualifies it with the phrase “as it were”. The same idea may be found later in Isaiah:   “For a small moment have I forsaken thee; but with great mercies will I gather thee. In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment; but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the LORD thy Redeemer.” (Isaiah 54:7-8)

The LORD is reassuring His people that He is mindful of their predicament, the judgment which they are obliged to endure because of their rebelliousness, but with great tenderness He draws their attention to the boundless joy they will experience when it is all over. He knows that the entire period of their alienation and duress will seem interminable in their own eyes, but He wants them to look beyond it and know that, in the vast scheme of things, it is but “a small moment”.

Our lesson from Lot
This should speak just as vividly and as lovingly to each of us today! While the believer is no longer under condemnation, he must live out his time here on earth under conditions which can be immensely trying. As the End Time draws closer and the tide of wickedness rises higher and higher, where men of reputation publish books that mock and defy the LORD God of the Bible, where every unseemly and salacious form of behavior is acceptable, and where the arrogance, willfulness and pride of the self-anointed Elite is painful to behold, the righteous man is greatly troubled by what he sees and by his inability to do anything about it.

This may be why Peter referred to Lot in his second epistle. Lot was a man whose record in life leaves much to be desired. He gave no evidence of unusual spiritual character. It is hard to read the account in Genesis and not come away asking why Abraham stuck with him for so long. There must have been something about this apparently self-seeking, carnal individual that stood to his credit. But what was it?

The apostle Peter gives us the answer: “And delivered just Lot, vexed with the filthy conversation [i.e. behavior] of the wicked: (For that righteous man dwelling among them, in seeing and hearing, vexed his righteous soul from day to day with their unlawful deeds;)” (2 Peter 2:7-8)

The Holy Spirit is telling us that Lot was greatly troubled by the wicked condition of the world around him. For all his faults, he was a righteous man.

The LORD knows all about the New World Order. He also knows that all who love Him will be troubled by it. We can see from His Word that this is important in His eyes. Those who love Him hate evil. They don’t choose to do so; it’s our innate spiritual response to the works of all who defy or oppose the righteous will of God.

The Laodicean Church
Christ condemned the lukewarm Laodicean church. It was lukewarm because it was neither hot nor cold. It neither loved the truth nor hated evil. That’s the chief characteristic of the modern church, a complete absence of any ability to be “vexed” or upset by the “filthy” condition of the world around us.
    
We find further confirmation of this in Ezekiel. The LORD shows the prophet a future scene in which all who have rebelled against Him will be struck down. He designates a number of angels to carry out this task. However, He sends another angel before them to mark with his ink-horn the forehead of anyone who was “vexed” (“that sigh and that cry”) by the abominations that he saw around him in Jerusalem: “And the LORD said unto him, Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof. And to the others he said in mine hearing, Go ye after him through the city, and smite: let not your eye spare, neither have ye pity:” (Ezekiel 9:4-5)

Through the various papers on this website we try to expose what the Enemy is doing to undermine and destroy true Biblical Christianity and bring in a New World Order. If, collectively, they seem like a doleful chronicle of things too awful to contemplate, well...that’s what they are. The LORD does not want us to walk blindly through this vale of tears and not see what’s happening around us. Rather, he wants us to see it and be grieved by it. But – and this is important – He wants us also to live each day in the joy of the victory that Christ achieved for us on Calvary!

Is this a contradiction? Grief and joy? 
The author of Hebrews explains what is happening: “Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds.” (Hebrews 12:1-3)

The Holy Spirit expressly asks us to consider what Christ went through “for the joy that was set before him” and to “run with patience the race that is set before us”. Unless we do this, the weight of this world will wear us down and cause us to “faint in [our] minds”.

The life of a true Christian is a contradictory blend of grief and joy. From a carnal perspective this makes no sense, but the author of Hebrews resolves this apparent contradiction by showing it from our Redeemer’s perspective. If we walk with patience in the victory that Christ achieved for us on Calvary, the darkness of this world, though it may pain us greatly at times, will never break our spirit or cause our minds to faint.
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Jeremy James Ireland
November 28, 2018

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