September 3, 2022

In the seventh year Jehoiada [the high priest] sent and brought the captains of hundreds—of the bodyguards and the escorts—and brought them into the house of the LORD . . . and showed them [Joash] the king’s son. Then he commanded them, saying, “This is what you shall do: One-third of you who come on duty on the Sabbath shall be keeping watch over the king’s house, one-third shall be at the gate of Sur, and one-third at the gate behind the escorts. You shall keep watch of the house, lest it be broken down. 2 Kings 11:4-6

If you have been shown the Son of God, it is imperative to keep watch! It is a sad fact that Satan has worked steadily toward his goal of putting the house of the LORD into a broken-down state. An even sadder fact is that deceived people do the devil’s work for him by helping to propagate error among the people of God. Notice that two-thirds are assigned gates: points of entry.

Each error is an attack on foundational precepts of God that were lovingly and clearly laid out from the beginning. God’s identity as Creator, established in Genesis 1:1 and reaffirmed across the whole of Scripture, came under its heaviest attack in the mid-1800s as Darwin put forth his theory of evolution. Under the heading of Creator are vicious attacks on marriage, gender roles, and now even made-up genders. The war of ideas against God as our Creator continues to rage.

Another attack is upon that which came on the heels of Creation: the Sabbath rest, established in Genesis 2:1-3 and reaffirmed throughout Scripture. Along with marriage, a weekly Sabbath rest was built into God’s perfect creation, before sin and it’s result, death, became realities. God’s identity as both Creator and Redeemer is affirmed by His people in the keeping of the Sabbath, for only He can re-create hearts that have been damaged by the ravages of sin. A concentrated attack upon the Sabbath was brought into the church during the Dark Ages, when the fallen church declared a “new” Sabbath: the day of the sun god in an effort to attract pagans into the church.

But the earliest plan of attack in our world’s history against the Giver of Life was likely formulated in the mind of Satan when he heard Adam share with Eve the LORD’s command: “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” (Genesis 2:16-17) This command reveals the danger of failing to trust and obey the Creator.

Of course, Adam had heard this clear instruction directly from God, so the enemy got to him through his beloved wife, beginning by simply questioning what God had said. He accomplished his goal by lying to her about death: “You shall not surely die.” (Genesis 3:4)  With the idea of death out of the way, it seemed harmless to disobey God. In the moment, she did not perceive that she was switching loyalties from God to Satan. The largest volume of myths and erroneous doctrines perpetrated upon mankind go back to Satan’s lie about death.

The themes of watching and praying are purposefully intertwined (see Nehemiah 4:9; Matthew 26:41; Mark 13:33; Luke 21:36; Ephesians 6:18). The Spirit of Lord alerts His watchful, prayerful ones to the deceptions of the evil one; deceptions that are meant to bring about his own sentence upon us: eternal death. …he knows that his time is short. Revelation 12:12b