November 25
"Satan was seeking to shut out from men a knowledge of God, to turn their attention from the temple of God, and to establish his own kingdom. His strife for supremacy had seemed to be almost wholly successful. It is true that in every generation God had His agencies. Even among the heathen there were men through whom Christ was working to uplift the people from their sin and degradation. But these men were despised and hated. Many of them suffered a violent death. The dark shadow that Satan had cast over the world grew deeper and deeper."
If I go through a fairly typical night’s television I find 6 Satan or horror related titles in a 2 hour time sample. Satan is happy with that. He is painted as a comedy horror figure.
We are told in our passage for today that among heathen people there were people Christ was using to lift people out of sin and degradation. Satan attacks these by making them despicable figures.
What is the interest here? Satan tries to hide himself by many means – he is, of course, the deceiver.
Your first protection is to learn that Satan may use many agencies to make the darkness over the world deeper and deeper.
The second point is to know that Satan is not as strong as he thinks he is. Satan is not the ruler of this world. He is a fallen angel. He has much less power than he thinks he has.
That means that you can both resist him and you can also wear simple armour to protect yourself– which you can read about in Ephesians 6:9-11
Put the armour on today! Don't wait till you need to resist.
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Housekeeping details for you
The point of this short blog will become clear if you decide to use this reading in the way we intend it. Netherfield Seventh-day Adventist Church believes in healthy churches. You can see what that means if you head to the relevant Healthy Churches page of the website. We also want other churches to be healthy. That means you can join in our campaign to create healthy churches, with healthy people serving the people in those churches.
A healthy church is one where Jesus comes first. A healthy church is one where the people work together to put Jesus first. One thing we are doing is to join people together to spread that news. I would like you to look at our prayer partners page. This will explain how we want you to use this short devotional. Very basically we want you to find a like-minded Christian friend who you will join with to : choose to pray together every day, decide together on a way to serve other people together, to help them grow as Christians - and to invite the Holy Spirit into your life every day. This blog that you will receive every day simply gives a common spiritual purpose. If you are a newcomer and want to join the blog with this object in mind click here
From October 21st this site will continue going through 'Desire of Ages' - but begin to advance rather faster than one paragraph at a time.
Our sister site, at the Upper Room, will progress at a rather slower pace - one paragraph at a time. If you want to head to our sister site for the slower trip through an excellent book you will eventually follow a link to the Upper Room. This will start on October 21st.
