Basic HTML Version
PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, December 5, 1980
Page 2
Let's think about that a while! Let's be sure the rest of us do not
fall into Satan's trap!
In what way did those now on the outside let
their guard down? If we understand that--if we understand HOW Satan gets
through to us, then we CAN be secure in Christ and in His Church!
There are certain ways in which we may "let our guard down"--make
ourselves susceptible to being deceived and used by Satan, and also cer
tain ways in which we may open the door for a demon to enter and possess
us.
God's Word warns us to be constantly ON GUARD against Satan's wiles.
Let me give you some examples.
For instance, consider a man who was consciously pained by a feeling
of inferiority. Everyone of us experiences an uncomfortable sense of
inferiority at times. I'm grateful that God caused me to read some place,
when I was only 18 or younger, that it is indeed a wise man who knows his
own weaknesses, his shortcomings and limitations, as well as his talents,
abilities and strengths. I have ever since tried to know my own weak
nesses as well as abilities--to correctly and properly assess myself.
Where there were lack of strengths, and inadequacies, I have relied on
the POWER OF GOD or avoided those fields or endeavors I was unfitted for.
But consider a man who did not do that. This man, troubled by a
feeling of inferiority, tried to find a way to "kid himself" out of it-
to convince himself that he was not inferior. He decided to become a
"scholar." If he could regard himself as one of the elite scholarly, he
reasoned, he would not have to suffer the feeling of inferiority. One
talent this man certainly lacked was that of sound scholarship. He let
a sense of VANITY lead him into this. Now vanity is the very foundation
of Satan's philosophy. It is self-centeredness. It leads naturally to
coveting, competition, resentment of authority over one.
So this man began to think of himself as a "scholar." He began to
work on that which he was not fitted to do. He began a "scholarly" check
up on the doctrines of God's Church. In his "scholarly" research he be
gan by misunderstanding Acts 17:11, where those at Berea "were more
noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with
all readiness (openness) of mind, and searched the Scriptures daily,
whether those things were SO." This man did not search the Bible to see
that God's truths were SO.�He tried by UNscholarly human reasoning to
prove the Church doctrines were NOT true.
This self-centered attempt led to doubts instead of faith, and to
a spirit of competition against God's Church. Without perhaps realizing
it, he had started himself out on Satan's way of vanity, coveting, compe
tition, resentment of authority within God's Church and God's GOVERNMENT
in His Church. He went out of the Church.
Three or four other ministers made the mistake of treating cheaply
the GOVERNMENT OF GOD in His Church. They did not consider carefully
the real meaning and significance of a very pivotal and key statement of
Scripture, in Acts 3:19-21. The heaven must receive Christ "until the
times of restitution" (restoration) "of all things." What is to be
restored is centered around the GOVERNMENT OF GOD, which Lucifer made
inoperative. The Government of God has not yet been restored to all