We have come to one of the most interesting features in the Plan of Redemption, Satan’s Dominion over Creation.
We have shown how Satan obtained this authority; let us now note some facts in regard to it.
The careful student of the Scripture will notice the perfect Justice of God.
He is Almighty, but He has never taken advantage of Satan.
Adam had legally transferred to him the Authority with which God had invested him.
This Authority was Time-limited.
Had God not been absolutely just He would have dispossessed Satan and punished Man then, but instead of that His Grace makes provision for Humanity's Redemption, showing His Love to Man, based upon perfect Justice.
We remember that when Jesus began His ministry, directly after He was baptized He was led away by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the Devil.
The Devil said to Him, "If Thou be the Son of God, command this stone to become bread"; Jesus said unto him, "It is written that man shall not live by bread alone."
Then the Devil led Him up and showed Him all the Kingdoms of the inhabited earth in a moment of time.
This he might have done by simply pointing to the Roman Eagle, the badge of Rome's world power.
And the Devil said to Him, "To Thee will I give all this authority, and the glory of them; for it hath been delivered unto me, and to whomsoever I will, I give it. If Thou therefore wilt worship before me, it shall all be Thine."
Now mark, Satan came to Jesus and declared to Him that the authority and glory of the inhabited earth had been delivered unto him and that he could give it to whomsoever he willed.
If the Devi] lied to Jesus and Jesus did not know that he lied, Jesus was but a man and not the incarnate Son of God as we have believed. If the Devil lied to Jesus and Jesus knew he lied; then it was not a genuine temptation.
We believe that the Bible is true and it was a bona fide temptation.
If that be true, then Jesus recognized that Satan had authority and dominion over the kingdoms of the human race, authority which he could transfer at will to whomsoever he wished.
This is a hideous fact to contemplate: That the human race has been under the Dominion of the Devil, that his Dominion is a legal Dominion, and that God is unable to break it until such time as the Adamic lease, so-called, expires.
Jesus, moreover, not only recognizes Satan's authority at the opening of His ministry but also speaks of him in as the "prince of this world,"
A literal rendering would read like this: "Now is the crisis of this world; now shall the prince of this world be cast out."
Satan here is recognized as the political head of the human race and of the kingdoms of the world.
It does not seem necessary to attempt to defend this point.
In 2 Cor. 4:3-4, "And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled in them that perish; in whom the god of this world (or age) hath blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should not dawn upon them."
Satan is called the "God of this world."
Here he takes his position in bidding for the worship of man in competition with the Father God.
Jesus plainly declares that men are either worshiping God or the Devil.
Paul leads us to understand that the entire world is cither worshiping God through Jesus Christ or worshiping Satan.
When we realize the extent of Satanic worship in this country, our minds are staggered.
Demon Worship
When we think of the mothers who are offering their children today on the altars of Satan, on the altar of the Dance Hall, on the altar of the house of Fame, and on the altar of the God of Gold, and of men and women who are making burnt offerings to the God of Nicotine daily, it makes us shudder.
It is not in India, Africa, and China alone that Satan is being worshipped, but the unhappy fact is that every land that does not worship God through Jesus Christ is a devotee of the Devil.
In Jesus brings another phase of this truth before our minds with awful vividness.
He is contrasting two fathers: His Father and the Jew's spiritual father.
They had lost their temper with Jesus and had said some very unkind things, when Jesus said to them, "Ye are of your father the Devil, and the lust of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning and standeth not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father thereof."
Here we face one of the most solemn facts of the human experience, not only a fact, but also an explanation for the phenomena of sin.
→ Man is spiritually in union with the Devil.
→ He has become a partaker of the Satanic nature, for Paul tells us that "we are by nature children of wrath."
John tells us "in this are manifest the children of God and the children of the Devil."
Man at the dawn of human history became a partaker of Satanic nature. That nature was breathed into his spirit by the Devil, and man became a subject of Satan.
This is the only satisfactory explanation for the power of the Devil in the world.
Satan is declared to be a murderer and a liar: the two outstanding characteristics of the human race are lying and murder.
Deny it as much as we will, ignore it if we can, the fact remains that deception and murder are the chief characteristics of the human race.
Jesus describes as a murderer a man who hates.
Hatred and revenge are deified in all great novels and dramas.
Satan is not only the Prince of this world, the God, and spiritual Father, but Paul also tells us in that he has the power or authority of death.
Paul tells us in that his commission was to go and deliver men out of "the authority of Satan."
John tells us that the whole world lieth in the embrace of the evil one.
These facts are unpleasant; no one would care to write them. Everyone would shrink from telling his dearest friend of them unless duty compelled it.
Man's Condition
Let us in a word sum up man's condition.
→ First, he has become mortal, a subject of the Devil.
→ He is giving birth to children not for God, but for the glory and joy of the Devil.
→ Second, he has become an heir to misery, pain, sickness, and death.
→ He is a partaker of a nature that makes him an enemy of God, and since his treason he has had no approach to God except over a bleeding sacrifice, through a God-appointed priesthood, or by dreams, or visions, or angelic visitations.
→ His mind has become blinded by the Devil; his nature is enmity to God, not subject to the law of God.
→ His eyes have been blinded to the will of God.
Paul sums up his case; without covenant claims on God; without God, Godless; without Hope, hopeless; and in the world with the authority of death in Satan's hands, with no legal approach to God and no legal rights in prayer, a criminal, outlawed by his own Treason.