And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.
Revelation 12:9
The Bible says, "the devil deceives the whole world." What does it mean by it? Is it figurative speech, or is this a reality that all of us are deceived?
I don't think the Bible is speaking figuratively when it says that. The truth is, all of us are deceived in profound ways; In ways so deep that only the Spirit of God can reveal to us our deception.
The devil deceived the whole world by his initial act of deceiving our first parents in the garden of Eden. At that time, there were only two human beings and both came under the dominion of Satan. Satan deceived Eve by telling her that satisfaction exists outside of God; That one can find true development in opposition to His will.
Life in the flesh
Deception continues by the fact that we are born in the flesh. What does it mean to be born in the flesh? Life in the flesh is simply life with man at the center. With me and my needs as the highest priorities. Before sin, God and His will were the priorities for Adam and Eve. But as we can see with the temptation, Eve's priority became food in the physical sense and a desire for self-exaltation in the spiritual sense. (Some women really love food and eating brings them great joy and helps them in dealing with depression, anxiety, etc..) For Adam, he exchanged a God-centered life for a woman-centered life. His wife instead of God became the source of his joy and he chose to follow her.
A downward look for satisfaction
We can see that the mind of the flesh is a mind that seeks satisfaction in other things or people rather than in God. The angels of heaven who fell were deceived into exchanging satisfaction from Christ the source of infinite goodness, to finding satisfaction from Lucifer, a created being and themselves, even lower than Lucifer. The man was supposed to be the head of his wife, with Christ as his head. Meaning the man was supposed to look to Christ for satisfaction and strength, then bring satisfaction to his wife and uplift her. But in rejecting God for his wife, he rejected satisfaction from the source of all satisfaction to making his wife (the weaker vessel) the source of his satisfaction; Therein began a life of frustration for many men. We can also see that the seed of female objectification began; Using a woman's body as a means of satisfaction, which never truly lasts.
The woman also looks towards other things for satisfaction. The woman, in rejecting Christ, became the focus of her own satisfaction. And she finds that satisfaction not necessarily in her husband, but in other created things, like food, money, jewelry, materialism, etc. While the man is seeking satisfaction in the woman, the woman is seeking satisfaction in other things, and frustration piles up for both genders. Men use women for their bodies and women use men for what they can provide, and so, genuine love is hard to find.
Satan has deceived the whole world by removing God from the center of our lives and placing anything else there. It can be money, marriage, a career, pleasures, religion, etc.. No one who is born in sin is born with God at the center. When we wake up in the morning we think of our wants, hopes and needs instead of God's wills, plans, or His glory. Here is the snare of Satan, here is the root of his deception.
A life with man at the center is death. It's a life centered solely on material and physical activity instead of the inner spiritual life. A life focused on man as the center will continue to degrade man, for man has no life in himself to give. As human beings, we like to take more than we give because we truly have nothing to give. As a result, we go through life looking for what we can take and from where. A life of constant taking is a life of emptiness. A life in the flesh is a life of emptiness. Satan himself is empty, and this is why he is a robber and a murderer; He seeks to take in order to fill up his own ego and emptiness. Love is far from his heart, for a taker cannot be a lover.
Life in the flesh turns everything into idolatry. Marriage has become an idol because many think it will satisfy their inner longings. They go into a marriage not to give, but to take. To use someone else as their means of fulfillment. Anything that the mind which has self as its object & man at its center touches, becomes a curse. If an angel from heaven, disconnected from God cannot bring true satisfaction, how much less can a man or woman born in sin bring satisfaction? And how much worse can material things such as money, cars, jewelry, or food bring true satisfaction? Can we see how great our folly is in exchanging God from the center and placing anyone or anything else there? The most successful fleshly person is but a failure.
The way of escape
The way to escape Satan's deception is to go to God and ask Him for the renewal of our minds. We need a mind that puts God and His will alone at the center of our lives.
What does that look like practically?
It looks like seeking God day and night as if life depends on it. To accept the conditions and situations that God put us in. In John chapter 9:3, Jesus, in speaking about a man born blind explains how the man was born blind for the glory of God. God allowed this man to be born blind, to go through a difficult life so that He can reveal what true spiritual eyesight looks like and shed light on our condition as spiritually blind people. Putting God as the center will cause us to submit to God in whatever situation He puts (allows) us to be in because we know that it is working out for His glory. God will use my situation to teach eternal lessons to the universe and to bring others to Himself. The story of the blind man is still teaching us today; When God becomes the center of our lives, our stresses and anxieties start to fall away because we submit to our trials and difficulties which brings us ever closer to God as we remain in prayer.
A man with God as the center no longer looks for a woman as the source of his satisfaction, for God is. But if it is God's will for him to be married, he will look for a woman he can bless and work in harmony with to bring more glory to God. Such a man will be in no rush to find a wife because he is already satisfied in God. Such a man will not seek crooked ways to make money or do other evil things, because he is satisfied in God. Such a man will be a blessing to others because he is not seeking to take from them out of his deficiency, but give to them out of his fullness.
A woman with God at the center will no longer be selfish, seeking out her own satisfaction and using men as the means to attain it. Such a woman will have less drama in her life because she is satisfied in God. She will not use manipulation as a way of controlling those around her. She will not be an attention seeker because God has already given her all the satisfaction she needs. Such a woman will no longer see marriage as some status symbol to uplift herself above other women while neglecting caring for her husband, but she will see marriage as a way to fulfill God's mission for her. She will seek to bring satisfaction to her husband and not expect him to be her slave. A life with God as the center is a life free from deception and full of blessings. Things and people become satisfying when they are no longer the source of our joy, but the benefits of our joy from God.
We all need deliverance from deception because all of us, whether we want to admit it or not, deeply believe that we can find satisfaction from things other than God. Most of our prayers are centered on God helping us to fulfill the desires of our flesh, which is the reason why most of them are not answered. The reason for so much suffering in our lives is our refusal to let go of the plans of the flesh in exchange for the plans of God. This why Satan is lost; He put his plans, his will, above God's and being a finite being, all he has found is misery. The transition from a self-centered mind to a God-centered one is a difficult one and is only possible through persevering prayers and a constant abiding in Christ. It is foreign to us - we who have been idol and creature worshippers from birth.
Satan sought to take from God, to use God for the fulfillment of his own plans. All those whose thought processes are centered around taking from others to fulfill their own desires are deceived by Satan. Such are and were all of us.
We need deliverance, and true deliverance will only be found when we begin to pray the prayer Jesus prayed in Gethsemane: "yet not my will, but yours be done."
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