Joseph’s Alabaster Box

Genesis 3:4 and 5 record Satan’s good news. “And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”

Notice the four points in Satan’s gospel: 1.) no death; 2.) eyes opened; 3). be as gods; 4.) know good and evil. “Gospel” means “good news,” and some men love to hear that God is dead. To some people, it is good news to hear that scientists have proven evolution as a fact, because that negates the Bible and its demands on men.

It is inconceivable that Eve could have heard Satan call God a liar, and not been offended by it. It is likewise true, of course, that we cannot imagine how Adam and Eve might have thought about anything. They had never seen or heard of death. They had never seen or heard of another human. They were innocent, and perhaps with that, a little bit naive. And Satan came as “… an angel of light.” (I Corinthians 11:14), and Eve did not know that there was such a thing as evil. Satan used the body of another creature, just as he uses the body of others today. Eve had doubtless heard serpents and other animals speak, and was not surprised by that. Dr. John R. Rice believed that animals were created with the power to speak.1

I am certain that “. . .the beasts of the field. . .” which God created as domesticated animals, could talk. I can’t think of a single place in the Scriptures where we are told that Satan ever scared anybody, but every time an angel appeared to somebody, he had to say fear not. Satan’s good news to Eve was that they had no fear of dying, as God had said they would if they ate of the tree of knowledge. Eve, will you believe your Creator, or will you believe this serpent? Reader, will you believe God, or will you believe the false prophet? What an insult to the Lord God! What an offense! God sits upon His throne, and listens to people call Him a liar, call him a monster, call Him an impostor. Does the Lord God suffer pain? Can the Holy Spirit be grieved? Can Jesus Christ weep? Will there be a day of retribution? Will God allow these enemies to go without giving an account?

This tender, soft, liberal, sympathetic devil attacked God with violence we cannot imagine when he spoke these words. Every human will decide in his lifetime whether he will side with God or side with His arch enemy, the devil. Do you think that a conflict can rage for 6,000 years for the souls of men, and you can ignore it, or claim that you will not take part? Who do you think you are? God and Satan are enemies. There will be no reconciliation. Every human will be in one camp or the other, and be there as a volunteer. To claim you will be neutral is the most foolish thing you can do in your whole life, because that is self-deception. Your drugs, your music, your entertainment, are all designed to keep you from the horror of thinking of death and eternity, but one day it will be thrust upon you, and you will think about it for eternity.

You will die. Every human will die. That is a self-evident fact. Death is as real as life. Satan still denies death. “Live forever without God!” How foolish the thought. Living forever without God is living death.

Satan promised, “… your eyes shall be opened, … ,” but he did not point out that it does little good to have your eyes open in the absence of light. Satan’s good news is always a lie, you can depend on it. When their eyes were opened, they knew they were naked, and they were afraid. Fear immediately follows sin. The girl who commits fornication is filled with fear that she might be with child. A man who steals fears that he left incriminating evidence. Fear follows sin as surely as night follows day, and day follows night.

Satan did not reveal to what their eyes would be opened. Eve did not dream that her eyes would be opened to the sight of her second-born son lying in a pool of his own blood on the ground, bludgeoned to death by his older brother. That’s only one of the things it would be better if we never saw. Opened eyes are not always a blessing. A man who marries a woman who has a bad past, would be better off never knowing it. Sometimes, a congregation is better off never knowing the details of their pastor’s youth. A child is better off never knowing that his daddy was an adulterer in his youth.

The third element of Satan’s dishonest gospel is “. . .ye shall be as gods,. . .”. This is the underlying great hope of evolution. If man is evolving upward to a more complex state, what is the summit of that complex state? Only a supreme, divine being can be immune from further evolution. When man is completely evolved, then he must be a god.

Satan certainly did not have any wish that Adam and Eve would be gods, for he himself lusted for that position, and he wanted no competition from two mortals. Satan knew that his possession of knowledge of good and evil had not made him a god. He had just been cast out of Heaven, a good illustration of the truth that he would never be as god.

The history of humanity and its lust for godhood is so sad it tends to reduce you to tears. When man attempts to be god, then he becomes a mixer of everything. He throws out nothing until he has concocted such a mess of pottage that the truth is lost. There are no lines of demarcation with the liberal. There are no beautiful blacks and whites. Everything becomes gray. Liberal Christian colleges are examples of man trying to be god. Listen to Donald E. Chittick: “Denial of the historical accuracy of the early chapters of Genesis is the beginning of a slippery slope indeed. It causes problems for institutions as well as individuals. Cases can be cited of institutions which have begun this course only to end up totally secular. Many of our well-known private colleges and ^{universities began as Christian schools.”2 God has commanded} “Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing, and I will receive you.” When man stays in his place, and gives God His place, then he will be offended by falsehood and deception just like He is.

 The fourth element of Satan’s false gospel is that man should know good and evil. I would that I had never known evil. If I had lived out my life in total ignorance of evil, how much happier I would be. But if I had not known evil, I could not have known good, and that would have been a great loss. The worldly philosophers say that man shouldn’t live a life without a little sin. A little sin, the story goes, is what adds spice to life. To deny oneself a little pleasure of sin is to miss the good in life. When liquor is mentioned, the apologizer for the alcohol business always says, “A little drink won’t hurt nobody.” You might accurately call that a satanic truth. That is a truth stitched together to conceal a lie. A little drink may not hurt “nobody,” but the liquor business certainly will. In a year or two, we will be seeing liquor ads on tv as common as automobile ads.

 Santa Rosa County, Florida defeated a liquor referendum. Shortly thereafter, came a hurricane and bypassed Santa Rosa County, and blew an adjoining county with its liquor warehouse right off the map. Dr. Mac Johnson, pastor of Faith Baptist Church in Milton, led the fight against the referendum. He announced on his radio program that folks needed to take heed because a monster was prowling their neighborhoods. He also declared that if the restaurant owner who was the leading proponent of the referendum, would serve decent food, he wouldn’t have to get folks drunk to get therm to eat there. The owner sued and lost.

 Man did not know good or evil when he was created, because you can’t know good without knowing evil. Man was created innocent. One evolution philosopher criticized the Lord for withholding knowledge from man. God did not withhold knowledge from man, and did not create him without a means of learning and remembering. It was the knowledge of good and evil that man did not have, and he was much better off without that knowledge. Some people criticize folks who put their children in Christian schools, because they say the child will develop without a knowledge of the world. It’s called the greenhouse effect. Are we to understand that a child cannot develop fully unless he knows about the wickedness of the world? Satan’s lying gospel still destroys people today.

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1. John R. Rice In the Beginning. . .(Murfreesboro,

Tennessee: The Sword of the Lord, 1975), p. 119.

2. Donald E. Chittick The Controversy (Portland, Oregon: Multnomah Press, 1978), p. 110.

America, the beautiful is not so beautiful anymore. Our alabaster cities are tear-stained now – indeed, blood stained. Our forefathers believed that people would be able to govern themselves – but they did not realize that people would become too busy to govern themselves. The little group in Philadelphia would have been shocked to know that the people would become so rich and comfortable that they would not bother to govern themselves. The power to vote is considered an act of futility by many people who just don’t bother. People are preoccupied with the pursuit of things, and things are available with a vengeance. Things are forced upon us in the secret retreat of our homes where we should have some relief from sales pitches. There was a time in the distant past when businesses would not invade people’s lives with sex and pills, or weight loss stuff, or cars, or whatever.

Sports has ceased to be a pleasant pass time for the working populace. Few people watch a football game while caring little who wins, or what the statistics are. In church, the Saints rarely talk about God’s influence in their life, they talk is of sports. People are identified by what team they support. No longer does Bob Burn’s cotter come home on Saturday night in clod-spotted overalls to enjoy his children, and read to them the blessed Word of God. Now the cotter comes home to hold his kids at arm’s length while he watches the evening news with all the trash that comes with it; with a hamburger and fries on his lap. Benjamin Franklin and John Hancock couldn’t have imagined a nation in which people went to work in two tons of iron and steel to tap keys of a keyboard.

Anybody who has taken history 101 knows that people who came to North America came for God. As a result, the land became the greatest nation in history, honoring the Word of God and sending missionaries all over the globe. People came to South America for gold. As a result the people have become third world people under the heel of a dusty old cockeyed religion and its indolent emissaries; steeped in superstition and ignorance. The roles soon reversed, and North America became a people with a lust for gold, and South America is turning to God. No longer is North America interested in the things that make for a good life: family, worship, work. We are a people manipulated by the few with money and power. Truth is out. Honesty is hunkered down trying to survive. Integrity was eradicated long ago. Mega thieves and liars sit in the board rooms trying to figure out new ways to gut the corporation, while the workers join together to take over the management and profits of the corporation.

Since Andrew Jackson our nation has been governed by people with a self-serving slant on politics. He said, “To the victor belong the spoils.” In so many words, if you win an election, you have a “mandate” from the people to steal everything you can get your hands on. The man America elected to head the nation now has stolen what little national integrity we had left.

It is not an outrageous assertion, as some will charge, to say that the president takes his place among the mass murderers of history: Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, etc. This is a fact established by the fact that he has released American money to pay for abortions in other nations. In addition, he advocates increasing the rate of murder in this country. If people: doctors, scholars, ministers, thinking people, are right in saying that killing an unborn child is killing a human being, then it follows that the person guilty of killing a fetus is guilty of murder. The president has made this possible. He is a murderer. He is most likely not even an America citizen. He is certainly not saturated with American culture and eduction.

Mr. Truman said that a statesman was a dead politician. To which I would reply that a dead politician is a good politician. If the survival of the fittest is true, then the fittest better get cracking. The mass of people are exploited and herded around to suit the whims of those who have money and power. We are seen by them as money machines to make them richer. If we knew all that is going on in the world around us, we’d be afraid to go to bed.

The president was elected with the help of a great number of decent people, many Saints and other church people among them. He was elected by the great number of people who did not vote. Failure to vote is a vote no less that one cast into the count. Writing editorials taught me that a loyal democrat will vote with eyes closed. It matters not whether the candidate has any redeeming qualities. A loyal democrat who is also a church person is sinning when he votes for a democrat! Why? Because the democratic party supports abortion in a plank that every democrat must stand on: at least on the national level. Can America of 2009 be the same nation of 1989? How could we fall so rapidly?

We began the downfall by tearing the Constitution to shreds. We began the downfall by tearing the Bible to shreds. Now we are being governed by thieves and liars under the leadership of a man who is most likely not an American citizen. A man who does not understand the old American mind set. Our children will suffer the consequences even worse then we.

Like the world after the great Flood, America is no longer the wonderful place it was. It has been wrecked by greed, avarice, and neglect of our national heritage. We began by educating our children in Christian principles, and now we teach children that those principles are old fashioned, outmoded and wrong. America of the alabaster cities is no more. Her purple mountain majesties rise from the wreckage left by careless, selfish people. People who have rebelled again “nature’s God,” and declared themselves free from all responsibility to God and country. We deserve what we get.

The first sin of man was rebellion against the authority and position of God. Satan determined in his heart that he would take the place of God. Isaiah 14:13, 14 says, “For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.” Satan probably had a throne on Earth where he was a high- ranking angel. Many scholars believe he was the maestro of the sounds that came to Earth, and were converted by the canopy into beautiful music that greatly enhanced man’s life on Earth, “. . .for the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created.” (Ezekiel 28:13).

Satan originated sin when he said what is recorded in Isaiah 14:13, 14, and proceeded to Heaven where he attacked God, and was cast back down into Earth. God could have cast him to any planet in the universe, but Satan would have returned to Earth, for it was man’s worship he wanted. Satan’s attack probably occurred on the Sabbath, the day of the Lord’s rest, or Sunday, the first day of the week, for he would not have wasted much time in attacking the Lord after the creation was completed, and he saw it. Genesis 3:1 must have occurred on Monday. Let’s read part of what happened on that day as it is recorded in verses 1 through 3 of Genesis chapter 3. “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? And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.”

Satan quotes the Word of God as it pleases him to quote it. He translates it any old way he wants. If you write me an important letter, giving me clear instructions about something, that is very important to you and me both. If you send it to me by a messenger, how would you feel if that messenger got the letter open, and changed the wording, or the meaning of words, and then gave it to me? I’d be very surprised if you didn’t get pretty mad. Satan spoke through this serpent. Mockers have scorned the idea that animals could speak, but some zoologists are even now claiming that they can teach chimpanzees simple speech. Anyway, it was Satan speaking through the snake.

We know that God caused an ass to speak. In Numbers 22:28, Balaam’s ass spoke to him. When animals were created, some of them may have been made to speak to man. Eve was not alarmed by the serpent speaking to her. She seemed not to be surprised when the creature spoke to her.

Satan may mix truth with his lies if he must to persuade some person to do what he wants him to do. For example, Satan may say, “Sure, you need to get saved, but you have plenty of time to get saved.” In that he mixes truth with a lie. Satan is the father of lies. Jesus said, “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode 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 of it.” “You need to get saved” is the truth. “You have plenty of time is a lie.” The statement is a lie. Great numbers of people don’t know the difference. The lie in the truth makes the whole statement a lie. A little leaven leavens the whole lump. The statement sounds good, and it relieves the pain of a smiting conscience.

Dr. Henry Morris says, “Apart from uniformitarian considerations, there may really be no reason why we should not assume that, in the original creation, the serpent was a beautiful, upright animal with the ability to speak and converse with human beings. Such an interpretation would at least make the verses in this passage easier to understand, even though it may make them harder to believe.”1

Satan could speak only lies, and a lie with truth mixed in it is the most sinister sort of lie. How can people hate God, and blame Him for humanity’s pains? Famine, wars, death, everything bad is laid on the shoulders of the LORD. This is what Satan planted in Eve’s innocent heart by what he said in Genesis 3:1. In so many words, he said to Eve, “Do you mean that God will not allow you to eat of all the trees in this big garden?” Eve must have been stunned by that question. It had never occurred to her that God would withhold something from them. I am sure this was a painful thought to Eve. She was so rattled that she did not realize that Satan was twisting God’s words.

We must resist the devil. We can only resist the devil by the power of the Word of God. Eve did not know the Word of God very well, because she misquoted it. God had said, “. . .Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat; But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” Eve quoted God as saying, “. . .God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.” God did not forbid them to touch the tree.

Do we see in this scene the devil at his absolute worst? Is there any greater damage he can inflict than he does in beguiling this innocent woman? Was Satan worse when he drove Stalin to murder 30 millions of his own people? Was Satan worse when he motivated Adolph Hitler to launch an extermination campaign against non-Germans? Was Satan more dangerous when he influenced Herod to slaughter the little baby boys in Bethlehem? Look at Satan in these verses. He was not violent in behavior. He was not cursing. He was not threatening. He was soft, tender, kind, beautiful, sympathetic. In all of these wonderful characteristics, he succeeded in bringing the human race down to ruin. In these few minutes he murdered the entire human race, “For as in Adam all die, …”. Every soul was in Adam, and so Satan’s greatest crime was in deceiving Eve. His worst is seen in his softness, tenderness, kindness, beauty, and sympathy.

Look at John the Baptist – a man dressed in animal skins, eating insects, blasting people out of the water. Look at Jesus, just a carpenter’s step-son, turning over tables and beating up on people, calling them the devil’s children. Think about Peter, saying things to people that cause them to actually fall down and die. (Acts 5). Consider the fundamental preachers today telling people they are living in sin, and are bound for a devil’s hell. Those ways are not the ways of Satan. He is soft, quiet, persuasive, kind, and as deadly as a king cobra. If I am going to tell you a lie and expect you to believe it, I am going to be the nicest to you that I will ever be. I’ll even do you favors or give you gifts to break down your resistance to what I am about to tell you.

The great preachers of old would rouse such passions among sinners that their lives would be threatened. Churches were burned, and all sorts of damage done to stop the ministry of conviction that caused by such feeling of guilt. The truth doesn’t come wrapped up in silver foil tied with a golden string and perfumed with Evening in Paris. The truth is raw. The truth is sharp. The truth is gleaming. Like the needle on the tip of the syringe that is about to inject medicine into you – and pain. The truth flashes on the edge of a Sword. The truth falls from fearless lips that pronounce the wrath of God upon sinners without fanfare or soft music, but love wells up from a heart of love. Deception comes from oiled lips that say pleasing things, and stagnates in a pit of hate.

Satan was as smooth as silk, as sweet as saccharin, as soft as a marshmallow, and as deadly as strychnine. Lies are the opiate of people who love deceit. Lies contradict God. Lies are aimed at God. “. . .Ye shall not surely die.” is the monumental lie of all time. Poor Eve believed it. How can a poor mortal alone joust with the devil? Satan has steadily increased his output of lies. The human race is saturated with them. The more humans there are, the more lies can flourish.

It would be interesting to know whether there are more lies perpetrated in the world of business or the world of religion. There is little doubt which category of lie does the most harm. If a person in finance tells me a lie, then we might lose more money than we have, but we could probably recover from the loss in a few years, but if a person in religion tells us a lie, then we might never get over it. It is most wicked to make a liar of Jesus Christ Who is the truth. People who contradict the Holy Writ are making the Saviour a liar. This is an outrage of outrages. The Bible must be handled with extreme care to assure that we do not violate it in any way. John 8:32 “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”