25 The fear of man brings a snare,
But he who trusts in the Lord will be exalted. Proverbs 29:25 (NASB)
Our enemy is pretty smart. He has been around long enough that he believes he knows us. He knows that lost people are enslaved to him via their sin nature. He knows that the little flock, our Lord’s sheep, may be new creations via the washing of regeneration, but they still have their flesh and a deep, overwhelming need to be fulfilled. Their salvation has changed them so they now have the ability to be fulfilled in God the more they take on Christ’s character….
Our enemy, on the other hand, does all he can to neutralize those sheep by attacking them in innumerable ways so that they walk according their flesh instead of according to the Spirit.
Satan has always wanted to be God. He caused a war in Heaven by attempting to usurp God’s throne for himself. Ever since, he has been hard at work attempting to fool people into believing that he is God or at least driving a wedge between people and the Living God by enticing them to be gods unto themselves through their self-will.
Through our enemy’s work of deceit, false teachers and false prophets, who serve “another Jesus” and a “subservient God,” have overrun the Church. When God wakes up His people to what is going on and they follow through by proclaiming the truth against the lies, the apostasy, and the outright heresies of these workers of lawlessness, the backlash can be quite severe. The counter-attacks can take many forms including intimidation, straw-man attacks, ridicule, and any form of deceitful attacks that people are capable of. Interestingly, the usage of God’s Word in these attacks always takes the form of taking passages out of context in an attempt to justify whatever false doctrines they are protecting.