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PASTOR GENERAL'S
REPoRT
TO THE MINISTRY OF THE
WORLDWIDE CHURCH OF GOD
VOL.2, N0.47
PASADENA, CALIFORNIA
"SATAN DECEIVE AND USE ME?
N E V E R ''"
by Herbert W. Armstrong
DECEMBER 5, 1980
For the moment, I was much discouraged and grieved. If you had lost
a half dozen, a dozen or more of your "loved ones" how would you feel?
It seemed for the moment that we had lost from the Church more than half
of the top-ranked evangelists. The result of Satan's intensified wrathful
attack against Jesus Christ and the Church at this END time!
I mourn more
over such a loss than one by death. Don't you?
Yet when I stopped to jot down the names of those evangelist-ranked,
those still loyal and solid outnumber those gone two to one!
Yet I loved those who are now outside the Church. Jesus would under
stand. He suffered the same experience when "From that time many of His
disciples went back, and walked no more with Him. Then said Jesus unto
the twelve, Will ye also go away? Then Simon Peter answered Him, Lord,
to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life" (John 6:66-68).
And even one of Jesus' twelve apostles betrayed Him!
But if even Jesus suffered persecution, so must we who follow Him.
And if He had to suffer seeing those who had been with Him turn away, so
must we who are faithful in His Church today.
In actual fact, of those now out I would shift the major guilt from
them to the real enemy, Satan. He is the only real enemy. He is furious
right now, intensifying his attack! I again warn all of you!
Yet if I say to one who is now out, "The real blame is not yours.
Satan got to you--deceived you and thus used you against Christ and the
Church," he would bristle up in self-righteous anger. He would say, "Sa
tan deceive and use me? NEVER! You accuse me of being a minister of
Satan? Satan could never deceive ME!"
No, I don't falsely accuse--I don't accuse such a former minister at
all! I merely remove the principal blame from him and lay it where it
belongs--on SATAN!
But do you think YOU are immune from the wiles and subtle deceptions
of Satan? Are YOU stronger than Satan? DON'T SO UNWISELY UNDERESTIMATE
SATAN! Satan ist:he strongest being or personage God ever created, except
the other two archangels Michael and Gabriel. Satan DID get to the more
than a half dozen top-ranking ministers in God's Church! Even though
they themselves do not realize it.
But HOW? That is the important question. HOW? For if Satan could
be cunning enough to have gotten to them, perhaps he could get to you or
me--UNLESS we understand HOW, and WHY he got to them.