The Devil and the World (Continued)
Hesiod, speaking of the devils, saith, “Being clothed with air, they run up and down." By Air is here meant this elementary sublunary world, and especially the airy part of it, that
interstice between heaven and earth. All the Devil's workmanship in apparitions and visions is air condensed: he took Christ up into an exceeding high mountain, to make an outward representation wherein his power lay. Beelzebub signifying "god of flies" might allude to the air being as full of devils as it is of flies; certainly they are called "fowls of the
air" (Luke 8:5-12). Frantzius reports that a holy man in Germany on the night of the great massacre in France saw
many spirits in the air, and was thereby assured of some great thing done in the world on that night. When angels come to minister they are compared to the meteors of the air, as in Psalm 104:4, “He makes his angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire." Now the air is only a place passage to angels, but it is the region wherein devils fly up and down,
except where they possess men's bodies. -Thomas Goodwin.
THE DIVINE WARNING against the course of the world, against the fashion of the world and against the spirit of the world, finds its solution in the fact that the devil is directing the world's course, the devil is creating the world's spirit, and the devil is cutting the pattern of the world's fashion. The touch of the world pollutes because Satan's ringers are in its touch. Its desires are deadly and heaven-quenching because Satan kindles its desires. The world and its things are contraband in the Christian warfare because Satan is the ruler of the world and the administrator of its affairs.
In Ephesians, Satan and his legions are called the “worldrulers," We quote from the Revised Version: “Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in heavenly places." The “world-rulers" are principalities and powers under the direction of the devil. How they rule this world by ruling the things which rule this world! How Satan seizes and directs all the mighty forces of this world! War he seizes, and instead of it being the patriot's struggle for freedom and for the defense of home and native land, it becomes the pliant tool of despotism, crushes liberty and right, enslaves freedom, and carries on a campaign of lust, rapine, cruelty, desolation and death.
Money is another of the world's ruling forces which might be used to Edenize earth and to lay up a good foundation against the time to come. It ought to be used to ease the burdens of the poor, to banish beggary, and to brighten the homes of widowhood and orphanage. A mighty world-ruling power is money. The devil rules it and instead of flowing at the command of pitying love, it is diverted by Satan to all selfish and unholy purposes. Inflaming into covetousness and hardening into callousness, men become noted, illustrious and esteemed, as they are money-getters and money-keepers.
Education, a mighty world-ruling force, Satan chains this to his car, and it becomes the source of pride and ungodly power, and its mighty engineering is turned into “higher criticism," and under the guise of Christian learning, it becomes the most powerful ally to Satan, unsettling faith in God's Word in multitudes of hearts, and opening a wide door of skepticism in the temple of God.
In Ephesians the devil is called the “prince of the power of the air." The very atmosphere of this world ministers to his cause and is under his baneful rule. How much of storm and cyclones, terror and ruin is he responsible for we may not know. "And you hath he quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins; wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience. Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others."
"Among whom we all had our conversation," says Paul of himself and the saints. They formerly lived in Satan's kingdom, and he ruled them by the lusts of the flesh, “fulfilled the desires of the flesh and the mind." We see in this how Satan rules through the world. He is the god of this world, and by the world he excites its desires, both low and high, low in the desires of the flesh, and high in the desires of the mind. Whether the world fills the passions or appetites, or draws out and chains the mind in its high worldly pursuits and refined tastes, it is all of Satan, because of the world. The "lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and pride of life," these are of the world, and Satan is the exciter of them, “and lust when it is finished bringeth forth death."
“We know that whosoever is begotten of God sinneth not, but he that was begotten of God keepeth him and the evil one toucheth him not. We know that we are of God and the whole world lieth in the evil one" (Revised Version). The world "lieth," means that it is in the power of the devil, is held in subjection by him, and is fixed and established. The devil is pictured not only as trying to kindle into a flame the desires which may remain in a good man's heart after conversion, but also as folding in his arms the whole world and making it subject to his power and submissive to his absolute control.
When the world comes in at many a door, it comes in in many a form, but at whatever door and in whatever form it comes, it is always as the devil's servant. It comes in to do his work as his most obsequious and faithful slave. When the world comes in, dressed in its most seductive and beautiful garb, the devil has fashioned its clothing and ordered its coming. The world is the devil's heaven. Its rest, crown and good are here. When the world comes in, God's heaven goes out. It fades from the eye and heart. The struggle for it ends, and God's heaven, with its fadeless and eternal glories, is lost.
In these declarations of the Bible about the world and the devil, we see why the world opposes heaven. We learn the enmity of the two. Heaven is Christ's place, the place where He is, and to which He would win men. The world is Satan's place. His power is here. To fix our hearts on the world, is to be loyal to him. To fix our hearts on heaven, is to be loyal to Christ.
Here we have the solution of the cruel hatred of the world to Jesus and why it has persecuted so bitterly and to death His followers. We see why it is that the Spirit lusteth against the flesh and the flesh against the Spirit, and likewise we see why these are not only contrary to one another, but at war with one another. The devil is in the flesh and rules it. Christ is in the Spirit. This world leads from Christ. It is the invincible foe of Christ.
This great truth is illustrated and enforced by the fact that Christ's work is to get possession of the world and make its attractive power further His purposes. But He establishes a kingdom of heaven which is not of this world. A new power has come in, a new kingdom established and a new. world made. It will take the fires of the judgment and the new creative power to make a new heaven and a new earth before the stains and ruin of the devil's debasing and deathdealing hands can be removed, and this alien and helldebauched, yet beautiful, world fitted for God's holy purposes.
The Christian, by the urgent demand made upon him to forswear allegiance to the world, is, by his very relation to Jesus Christ, lifted out of the world's deadly embraces, and its polluting witcheries are broken. In this subserviency of the world to the devil, we have the solution of the world's intense hatred to Jesus Christ, and we see why it has armed itself with all its forces under the power of the devil to destroy the cause of Christ. The world's opposition and enmity have been always against true religion, but often its smiles are more fatal than its hate.