I JOHN riod between the perfect creation of Genesis 1 :1 and the catastrophic judgment of Genesis 1:2, Lucifer led a revolt against God and there by became the devil. His original majestic and sinless career before the fall is recorded in Ezekiel 28. All strife and war with their devas tating aftermath can be attributed to the devil. In I John 3:12, we have reference to the first recorded instance of hatred and murder. It is the case of Cain and Abel. The words "wicked one" are the translation of a Greek word meaning an act of evil in op position to that which is good. We get our English word "pernicious" from this. Cain, and others like him down through the centuries, have allowed Satan to so control them that they completely carry out his evil purposes. Jesus said that Sa tan was a murderer from the be ginning (John 8:44). God is a lover of men. The devil is a hater of men. The devil is assisted in his pro gram by a host of demons. God never created them, but they fol lowed Lucifer in his downfall. They were previously angels. Their first estate was one of holiness in con trast to their present condition of sin. This they went into willfully. The devil and these demons con tinue to sin as they did at the be ginning, following the fall. It is impossible to account for all the wickedness in the world apart from a personal devil and his evil band. Man's sinful propensities and practices issue from his depraved and fallen nature and his being controlled by the devil (I John 3:8- 1 0 ). When the Apostle Paul wrote to Christians at Ephesus, reminding them of their pre-converted days
he pointed out, "Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience" (Ephes ians 2:2). We cannot deny that the devil has his people. There are men and women who are under his influence and who indulge in those evil passions that are prompted by him. It would be impossible to ac count for the multiplied efforts of wickedness unless we believed in a personal devil. Any who continue to remain under his evil dominion must also of necessity share Satan's eternal doom. We are either the children of God or the children of the devil. The world is divided into two classes only. There are those who are born again of Jesus Christ, and there are those born of Satan. John gives four statements which show that the devil's prospects of overcoming the Christian are very slim. We see first how those Chris tians in the early church overcame the evil one (I John 2:13). The fact is that no Christian needs to suc cumb to the wiles of the devil. Young men, who had not yet reached the peak of Christian expe rience, were commended because they had overcome the enemy of our souls. They were perhaps best described as being at "the middle age" of their walk of faith. Some of us know about the perils of "middle age." We have faced many temptations, and yet we should al so know of the available power for victory. We can, through the indwelling Holy Spirit, master the adversary. We need to be sober and vigilant. John gives us their secret when he pens, "Ye are strong, and the Word of God abid-
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