Seven Days of God’s Process, 15. The Sixth Day

What about man’s disobedience? Is this all the devil’s fault? Are we acquitted by simply declaring, as the comedian Flip Wilson in the 60’s, who famously said “The Devil made me do it?” What about considering the role man’s disobedience in the garden had in opening the door for Satan to become the god of this world, the prince of the power of the air? In Gen. 1:28, we find that God gave man authority to subdue and have dominion over all creation. There are no caveats cited or exceptions noted to take into consideration his forbearance (purportedly) in allowing Satan to maintain rule because of prior events in a supposed epoch of precreation, when Satan usurped God’s throne in the visible creation. When then might Satan, in this view, have become the prince of the power of the air? At a point when he disobeyed or when man disobeyed? Did God, in His sovereignty, open the door to the enemy, or did man’s disobedience open the door to the enemy? Most people never think this deeply on the matter of Satan our enemy, or original sin. We simply have a corpus of traditional doctrine about it and never question or inquire as the Bereans in Acts, to see if these things be so.

You see, the authority that Adam abdicated by disobedience in the garden of Eden, Jesus reclaimed in the garden of Gethsemane. Jesus came as the only begotten of the Father, to become the First Born from the Dead that He might include the race of fallen man as the LAST ADAM and the SECOND MAN of a NEW CREATION that each one of us in Christ are partakers of.

[1Co 15:45 KJV] 45 And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam [was made] a quickening spirit.

When Adam disobeyed, Satan gained the title deed (as it were) to all that was originally man’s by the divine decrees of God in Gen. 1:28. At that moment, Satan, by divine right (due to man’s disobedience), had the authority to impress upon man HIS image and HIS distorted, perverted nature. If this is true, then why don’t we all look like angels? If Satan is an angel, in the manner in which he has been traditionally considered to be so, then why does not man in the depths of sin, display the nature of angels? Instead, man in sin becomes a brute beast, so despicable that even pigs will commit self-destruction (Matt. 8:32) if they are possessed of the nature that is inherent in man’s fallen nature, outside of Christ.

In the study of the scriptures, the hermeneutical principles of learned church men maintain that there is a “Law of First Mention” that governs interpretation of various subjects in the study of the scriptures. It reads thusly:

The Law of First Mention is “The principle that requires one to go to that portion of the Scriptures where a doctrine is mentioned for the first time and to study the first occurrence of the same in order to get the fundamental inherent meaning of that doctrine.”

Ask yourself – where is Satan first mentioned and what can we learn about him from that reference? If the law of first mention is of any value to us, or holds any validity, then the first mention of Satan must provide us with the fundamental, inherent meaning of who he is.

[Gen 3:1 KJV] 1 Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

What does this verse tell us? Our purpose here is not to do an exhaustive inquiry into the nature of Satan, but looking at this one verse, and weighing it with the universally accepted import conferred upon it by the law of first mention, what can we learn of him? The most emphatic and evident thing we can surmise is that, from the standpoint of holy writ and this book of first things, that Satan originates not in the order of angels, but in the animal kingdom. He is spoken of as “more subtle than any beast of the field…” This does bear out some continuity in comparing the nature of sin as being that of a brute beast in many scriptures throughout the bible.

What about the “fallen angel” theory (not to suggest there are not fallen angels as the bible confirms there are)? Ask yourself the question – if you were the devil, would you like to be thought of as a fallen angel who successfully rebelled against the throne of God, and not only that, but maintained that rebellion for 6000 years? Which glorifies the enemy more? Seeing him as an anointed cherub, the darling of pre-creation – or as Gen. 3:1 plainly tells us, an errant inmate of the order of created beasts that originally were intended to be completely under the dominion of man, by conference of authority by God Himself to man in Gen. 1:28?

[1Co 15:47 KJV] 47 The first man [is] of the earth, earthy: the second man [is] the Lord from heaven.

Paul in the verse above, identifies Jesus in the work of the cross as the progenitor of a new creation. What is true of the Lord is true of those that are his. John declares in his first epistle:

[1Jo 4:17 KJV] 17 … as he is, so are we in this world.

How is He? He is seated at the right hand of the Father. What does this have to do with us? 1 Cor. 12:27 tells us that He is the head and we are His body. What is true of the head is true of the members of the body attached to that head, other than headship itself. If He is Lord then there is lordship in you.

[Rev 1:6 KJV] 6 And hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father; to him [be] glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.

[Rev 5:10 KJV] 10 And hast made us unto our God kings and priests: and we shall reign on the earth.

If Jesus is King of Kings, then we, as members of His body are kings, and this is confirmed in the New Testament by both Peter and John the revelator. What are we saying? What Adam perpetrated by transgression in the garden of Eden, Jesus remediated by obedience in the garden of Gethsemane. He went from the cross and down in to hell and took the keys of death, hell and the grave. When He came out of the grave, whatever authority Satan had, by whatever pretext he had, it was completely undone by Jesus. We might say “well – that is Jesus”, but in Christ’s own declaration, this wrenching of power away from the enemy has a direct and profound impact upon you:

[Mat 28:18-20 KJV] 18 And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. 19 Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: 20 Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, [even] unto the end of the world. Amen.

The power that is Christ’s is ours by divine right as members of the body of Christ. Satan is not the legitimate prince of the power of the air of your life – YOU ARE. You are the principality and the power, and in fact you are, says John the revelator, a king in the earth. Ruling and reigning does not begin after death, it is your portion now. What does that look like? If we are kings and priests, how come we are so powerless? Because we have lived out of a religious philosophy that the Pharisees were guilty of.

[Luk 17:20-21 KJV] 20 And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: 21 Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.

These men understood they were powerless, and therefore were looking for something outward and something in the future. This is the perspective of fallen man because he knows just how powerless he is and how bleak his prospects are. Jesus corrects them and says, that the kingdom is not something outward we are hopefully observing will come as an event or outward experience, but rather something inward that must be related to and released by faith, because the kingdom, the deliverance, the healing, the provision, everything that is in the kingdom is in you. The challenge is to come to Him, not only as Savior, but as Lord – submitting to His anointed process, that after 5 days of capitulation and cooperation on our part, we are now ready to stand forth and receive, not only the occasional anointing of an intermittent blessing, but the office and authority that causes everything you say and do to become consistently, throughout life the baseline of your experience.

The sixth day is graduation day out of the process of discipline of God and into the experience of the finished work of Calvary, coming into the chain of custody of your life, from the cross, to the throne, to your inner man crowned with glory and virtue – manifesting His grace, and power and beneficence in your behalf and in behalf of all those round about you.

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