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God wants humanity to be part of his family and of his rule over creation.
May God open your eyes to see, so that you’ll never be able to think about the Bible the same way again.
The creation bears witness to a creator, and therefore to a realm beyond our own (Rom. 1:18–23
Demons don’t sport horns and a tail, and they aren’t here to make us sin (we do that just fine on our own).
For the Bible, any disembodied being whose home address is the spirit world is an elohim.
Angels deliver messages to people.
That tells us that not everything is predetermined.
We move forward through this life back to Eden.
Heaven will return to earth.
Though Eden was lost, God intends that it be restored.
Last, representing God means every job that honors him is a spiritual calling.
We either stand against the darkness, sharing the life God wants everyone to ultimately experience, or we don’t.
Without free will, concepts like love and self-sacrifice die.
The Serpent’s offspring is anyone who stands against God’s plan, just as he did.
Foreknowledge doesn’t require predestination.
We sin because we choose to. We can’t say God willed it, or that we had no choice because it was predestined.
God is no robot. He made us like himself.
Rebellion in their hearts, they had a better idea, or so they thought.
The Great Commission is a spiritual battle plan.
Every congregation, no matter how small or unknown, is on the front lines of a spiritual war.
One of these dark powers is the lord of the dead. He has rightful claim to humanity, since his deception of Adam and Eve resulted in the loss of immortality. And that was his goal—the extermination of Yahweh’s people.
Holiness did not mean being odd. Holiness was to be identified with the Lord, to be dedicated to God and to enjoy all the good things in life that come with being right with God.
Being right with God is another way of talking about salvation.
Whether in the Old Testament or the New, salvation is never earned, or even deserved. It’s given by the grace of God in response to faith.
Personal failure is not the same as trading Jesus for another god—and God can tell the difference.
The number telegraphed the idea that the disciples of Jesus would reclaim the nations for the kingdom rule of God.
That means you and I are tasked with taking back the nations from the gods. It is our task to turn people under the spiritual dominion of other gods to faith in Jesus.
In his nature and character, he is unique; he is completely other than humanity and anything else.
All these laws were intended to drive home a supernatural worldview.
Since God indwells believers today through his Spirit, each church—each gathering of believers—is holy ground.
They had the God who had parted the Red Sea on their side. It was time they remembered that.
To the Israelites, the giant clan bloodlines were demonic, having been produced by rebellious, fallen divine beings. They could not coexist with a demonic heritage.
But partial obedience is disobedience.
The divine enemy, the Serpent, was banished—cast or cut down—from God’s presence to earth, the place where death reigns, where life is not everlasting. He became lord of the dead, and therefore had claim to every human being who would ever live—because they sin, and sin’s wages is death (Rom. 6:23).
The human story, apart from God’s presence, is the story of failure.
Intelligent evil—Satan, demons, the lesser gods who rule the nations—do not know everything. They do not have the mind of God, nor can they penetrate it.
We will rise because he has risen
Satan has no claim on the children of God because they will rise from death. There is no reason to look for the living in the realm of the dead.
Just as the calling of the Twelve was a sign that the kingdom had come to Israel, so the sending of the seventy signaled that the kingdom would take back the nations.
and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
The gates of hell will not withstand the progression and completion of the Church as God’s kingdom on earth. The decision to participate in the great reversal is ours.
What if we lived intentionally, knowing that each decision we make and each word we speak isn’t randomly purposeless?
Azazel was a demonic entity thought to inhabit the wilderness.
sin has no place on holy ground.
In essence, baptism was a loyalty oath and a message to the demonic powers (as well as any people present) of just whose side you were on in the spiritual war.
First, understand that believers are holy ground, the dwelling place of God’s presence—the
We can turn Christlikeness into a task we must perform lest God be angry with us, but that’s bad theology. It turns grace into duty.
