In this episode, Rick Hughes delves into the cosmic struggle between good and evil, emphasizing the importance of spiritual maturity and vigilance. Through scriptures and compelling analogies, he highlights the subtle lures of Satan’s cosmic system and the irreversible consequences of turning away from divine truths. Tune in to learn how to uphold divine principles, resist spiritual stagnation, and become a beacon of light in a world dominated by darkness.
Welcome to the Flatline with your host, Rick Hughes. For the next 30 minutes, you’ll be inspired, motivated, educated, but never manipulated. Now, your host, Rick Hughes.
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Good morning and welcome to the Flatline. I’m your host, Rick Hughes, and for the next few minutes, please stick around. Simply 30 minutes of motivation, some inspiration, some education, all being done without any type of manipulation because we don’t play games. We’re not trying to con you. We’re not soliciting funds from you. We’re just asking you to listen. Listen as I try to verify and identify the plan of God for your life. And if it’s possible and I can do that, then you can orient and adjust to the plan if you’d like to do so. But the Flatline comes to you every Sunday morning here on this same radio station. We broadcast over 100 radio stations every Sunday morning across America, at least one station in every state. And I would like to announce for you a new book we’ve got coming out with. It’s at the press now. It’ll take a few weeks before we have it in our shop, but it’s called A Crash Course in Christianity. And this is a rewrite of an older book, but it’s been overdone, redone, excellent, and you would really enjoy it. So if your game plan is to grow spiritually, then it’s all laid out and supported by Scripture. Crash Course in Christianity. You can order that from our website. Just send us an email, rick at rickhughesministries.org, or go to the website, rickhughesministries.org, and order that book, Crash Course in Christianity. We also have Christian Problem Solving, a new book we just printed, and that’s available to you free of charge. And we also have all the transcripts from the 2020 year and the 2019 year. Those transcripts are all available. That’s every radio show we did in 2019 and 2020 in print, in a book, in a couple of volumes. So if you’d like to have those, they’re all free. We don’t sell anything. We’re not like those people that hustle money. We don’t sell stuff. We believe if God’s in it, God will pay for it. And so it’s our privilege to offer it to you. So today I want to talk to you about something that I think will be very interesting to you. We want to talk about Cosmos Diabolicus. Cosmos Diabolicus. That’s D-I-A-B-O-L-I-C-U-S, Diabolicus. The word cosmos means the world, and the cosmos, you’re familiar with that, the cosmos being the world, and diabolicus, meaning the devil, is from the word meaning devilish, Latin in origin, and from Greek, Koine Greek especially, diabolical or diabolic, belonging to the devil. So the cosmos, the diabolicus, is the universe. Or, in theology, the cosmos is the created heavenly bodies, the sun, the moon, the wandering stars, the fixed stars. The concept of the cosmos as a created universe and its arrangement has been important in Christendom since its very inception, and it’s heavily used in the New Testament and in the Old Testament as well, over 180 times. Let me read you something about the cosmos. And the Bible says clearly here, Psalm 19, verses 2 and 3, day unto day they utter of speech, and night unto night they show of knowledge. There is no speech and no language, but their voice is not heard. Where there is no speech and no language, where their voice is not heard. So anyone that wants to know God can look at the cosmos and realize somebody created it. The Bible goes on to tell us this. In Psalm 147, verses 4 and 5, he telleth the number of the stars, he calleth them by their names, and great is our God, and of great power his understanding is infinite. So our God put those stars in place. They are there, and they teach us something. And there also is an analogy about the Christian in eternity. The mature believer, if you grow to spiritually mature, be a mature believer in eternity, The Bible says this about you using this concept of the stars. Daniel 12, 3, and they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars forever and forever. Then in 1 Corinthians 15, 41, there is one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, another glory of the stars for one star differs from another star in glory. And so it will be with the resurrection of the dead. So obviously when we get to heaven, there are different stages of reward. And many believers will shine brightly that they have been fulfilled the plan of God. They become mature believers and they will be brighter than other believers using that analogy of the stars. Because you look up at night, you see some that are bright and some that are not so bright, barely seen. That doesn’t want to be you in eternity. You want to glow. You want to be seen in eternity. You want to hear God say, well done, my good and my faithful servant. So the cosmos diabolicus refers to the devil’s world. And we know that Satan took dominion of this when Adam and Eve fell in the garden. And so why is there chaos on the planet Earth? That’s the question we have to ask today. Why so much chaos? What’s going on? Well, the Bible says there will always be chaos and there will always be evil as long as Satan rules the world, the cosmos, this world, earth. The chaos is only terminated by the second advent of Christ and his millennial reign for 1,000 years on this planet when he comes back. But Satan does not have the power, nor does he have the ability to control all the inhabitants of this world or the ability to produce a perfect environment on this earth. He’d like to do that, He’d like to be vindicated for his sin in heaven, and he’d like to not have to go to the lake of fire. And if he could produce a perfect utopia, then he’d be happy with that. But he can’t do it because men have sin natures. Because of that, our Lord Jesus Christ spoke and said this in Matthew 26. You will hear of wars. You will hear of rumors of wars. See that you’re not troubled. For all of these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom will rise against kingdom, and there will be famines, pestilence, earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginnings of sorrows. So you can see that Jesus predicted throughout all of your life, my life, there will be trouble on this planet because it’s a fallen planet. It’s controlled by Satan himself. Although he’s a super genius, we understand that. He’s a fallen angel. The world is too much for him to rule. He can’t do it. He’s never been able to do it. And so the chaos that exists is simply an expression of his failure to pull together under his great power the successful rulership of this world. He can’t do it. The inevitable consequences of man’s involvement getting involved in Satan’s cosmic system is chaos psychologically, socially, personally, nationally, and internationally. So there’s a system out there. And that system is what Satan tries to pull you into. It’s the cosmic system. We call it the cosmic vortex. Another word for it would be the zeitgeist or the German word spirit of times. When a believer or an unbeliever gets sucked into the spirit of the times, it’s like a vortex or a tornado. He gets trapped and he can’t get out and it may take him down the road 20, 30, 40, 50 years and belt him out somewhere where his life is ruined. So there is a cosmic system going on and you cannot afford to be trapped in that cosmic system. You have to learn to think as God would have you think and that’s why the Bible says, let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus. You can’t think in terms of human viewpoint. You can’t think in terms of cosmic involvement because Satan is always trying to straighten out the devil’s world. That’s what political battle is all about, trying to make a better America. Do this, do that. We’ll be better. If we elect this person, we’ll be better. If we change these laws, we’ll be better. If we give everybody some money, we’ll be better. Bird seed, that’s ridiculous. Men have sin natures, and nobody’s going to change that. So anybody that believes and buys into this lie of Satan by the cosmic system actually becomes identified with Satan, and as such, they serve his desires and his plans. I think that’s going on in Congress right now. Because this happens when believers convert temptation into sin by means of their own volitional decisions. Remember what the Bible says, as much as you sow, you’re going to reap. You have volition. You have the chooser in your soul, and you can choose. And you can choose to live free of the involvement in the cosmic system free from being under control of the cosmos diabolicus, or you can choose to live under the control of the Lord Jesus Christ and divine viewpoint thinking operating under the systems of establishment that God set up in his word. It’s your choice. But you know, we will sin. We sin after salvation. It’s inevitable. It’s inevitable that none of us are perfect. You sin and I sin. We do it every day. The Bible says in 1 John, if we say we have no sin, the truth is not in us. So when we sin, it’s inevitable that some people, because of that sin, because of their volitional decisions, they will come under the power and the influence of Satan’s cosmic system, come under the power and the influence of cosmos diabolicus. And this sin is usually after an appeal to our arrogance. And this is exactly what happened in the garden, appealing to the arrogance of Eve, saying, no, God just doesn’t want you to be as smart as he is. So that’s why he told you don’t eat that fruit, because you’ll know what God knows. And in her arrogance, she justified why it was okay to take a bite. That’s the way arrogance works. People that are arrogant always justify their sin. And then they deceive themselves into thinking it’s not really a sin or it doesn’t really bother them. It won’t really hurt them if they try it. And that leads to self-absorption or 100% absorbed with the sin. And eventually it leads to self-destruction in a person’s life. So we’re all going to sin. We’re all going to come under that temptation of the flesh, the world, and the devil. This is one of the reasons that America is being brought to her knees right now, national and political arrogance, national and political arrogance. We are suffering, and that suffering may be means of the weather. It could be military failure. It could be economic failure. It could be disease. All of these are designed by God to cause a change of mind, to wake us up so we will reverse our course of thinking, which of course will never happen without a spiritual revival. And that’s the one thing Satan will do all that he can to stop. He’s trying to shut down the teaching of the Word of God any way that he can so that man has no choice and he can only rely on human viewpoint thinking or the system of cosmos diabolicus. So man can’t solve his own problems in spite of what Satan tells you, in spite of what Satan promotes as equality or national reconciliation, which is in reality just get rid of the opposition. The grace of God has taken suffering usually caused by our own volitional choices are the rulership of Satan over this world and he has converted this into a system of suffering for blessing where people can use their volition in a couple of ways. You can use your volition to receive Jesus Christ as your savior. You can believe in him and you can be promised that there will be no more pain, no more tears, no more sorrow. The old things will be passed away in eternity. So when you make a decision to believe in Christ, you don’t invite Christ into your heart. I hear that all the time. People say, invite Christ into your heart. Nowhere in the Bible does it tell you to invite Christ into your heart. Now, the Holy Spirit works in spite of our misunderstanding sometimes, but the Bible says, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. John 3, 16, God so loved the world, he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. To believe means to trust that the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ was God’s original plan, and it was done on behalf of you, and you accept that as your ticket out of the lake of fire. You believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. You believe in what he did for you, and you express your faith and prayer telling God the Father, I am willing to believe that Jesus Christ is my Savior, and he died for me, and I accept that. That’s salvation. It’s not inviting Christ into your heart. So the church age, which we live in now, here we are. And Satan is in the reeducation business, reeducation business. He wants to reeducate us. And there’s not a day that goes by that you don’t hear some goofy idea from some goofy politician saying, about how we can solve our global warming or how we can solve all our racial problems or how we can solve all our need for fossil fuel or how we can solve all the international conflicts that we’re facing or how we can solve the internal breakdown of society with the rule of law being ignored. Satan is in the reeducation business, and he’s trying to reeducate people to think in a different way, not God’s way. And you can’t solve these problems apart from God. No way possible. But because of Satan’s rulership in this world, that’s why we have these problems. So you have a church age, and you are in it. You live in the church age. And this age exists for us to challenge Satan during the absence of the Lord Jesus Christ on the earth. He’s not here. He’s in heaven. He’s at the right hand of the Father. But don’t worry, he’s coming back. But while he’s not here, we are representing Christ to the world. We are representing Christ to our friends. And we are here to challenge Satan during that time. Not to go on the offensive, but to stand our ground. When Jesus Christ is seated at the right hand of the Father, the church exists to challenge and to utilize all the divine power God’s available. so we can defeat Satan’s purposes. Now, I want you to understand, because of the great power experiment of the church age, this time you live in, this dispensation, it’s a crossroads in history. We call it the intensified stage of the angelic conflict. This is the final blow to Satan’s power on earth in the spiritual realm. When this church age is over, when the Lord Jesus Christ returns after the seven years of tribulation, Satan is locked up in the bottomless pit for 1,000 years. So remember that. We have the opportunity to stand against him. We have the opportunity to glorify God by lifting up the Lord Jesus Christ, being the light of the world. We have the opportunity to preserve our nation by being salt, the preservative of the nation. but only as a mature believer, not some game-playing Christian, not some caricature of Christ, the real thing, the real person. So Satan’s power on earth and the physical realm will never be broken completely until the Lord Jesus Christ comes back at the second advent. But now, in the meantime, we live in the most exciting, the most wonderful, the most unusual period of history. You’re here. And the fact that we are declining today in America is simply a reminder that God has a purpose for our life and all of this. And it’s a challenge for us to grow in grace and the knowledge of our Lord and savior, Jesus Christ. So it’s a wonderful time to live, but you know, many non-Christians that reject Jesus Christ as savior have no other choice than to be sucked into the cosmic system. to live under control of the cosmos diabolicus and to reject the laws of establishment. Whenever a person gets to that system where he rejects all the laws of establishment, he begins to think in terms of the cosmic system and the chaos. He is a worthless person with a worthless life because his thinking is now under demonic pressure, demonic influence. He has a worthless mind. And it’s talked about in the Bible in many places. For example, the worthless mind is a status of reversionism known as a blackout of the soul for Christians. It’s possible that a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ can get involved in sin buy into the lies of the cosmic system and scar up his soul. And therefore Ephesians 4, 17 through 18 says, this I say therefore and testify in the Lord. There’s the prepositional phrase in the Lord. This is where it comes from. That you should not walk like the Gentiles walk in the emptiness of their mind, the futility of their mind. The empty mind, you’re told to have the mind of Christ. You’re told to stop thinking in terms of arrogance beyond what you should think, but think in terms of humility. as God assigned each one of us a standard of thinking, a standard of thinking from his word. When people have the futility of their mind, they are not thinking. You’re either going to live by what you think or live by what you feel. Most of the decisions, the bad decisions you’ve made, you’ve made them based on what you feel. So these people that have a worthless mind, the Bible says they have their understanding darkened, Ephesians 4.18 says, They’re alienated from the life of God because of their sin. No, it’s not what it says. Because of the ignorance that is in them from the blindness of their own heart. So how do you blind yourself? Well, the word blindness is the wrong translation. It’s the word hardness. It’s the Greek word porosis, P-O-R-O-S-I-S. And it’s a word for being calloused. When people buy into the cosmos diabolicus and start to operate under that system, instead of divine viewpoint, they scar up their soul. They get into areas they don’t need to get into. They justify sin that is wrong. They don’t accept that as wrong. They say it’s okay. I can go ahead and do it. The end result is that they no longer feel guilt and they no longer feel shame. That’s what it means to be hardened in the heart. The worthless mind is a hard heart that doesn’t feel any sort of conviction from the Holy Spirit. So let me say this. If you’re a Christian and you have believed in Jesus Christ and you are personally involved in a sinful encounter right now and it doesn’t bother you, you’ve got a real serious problem. You’re probably under divine discipline and you may be on your way out under the scent of the death until you wake up and realize what you’re doing. But this is how sin works. It hardens your heart. It makes you to where you don’t feel any conviction from the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit is quenched and grieved by your repetitive sin and your involvement in whatever it is you’re involved in. It could be an adulterous affair. It could be pornography. It could be theft. It could be political systems. Whatever it could be, if you’re a believer and you’re in it, Is it possible that your heart has become hard so that you don’t even feel wrong about it anymore? That you’ve justified why it’s okay to do it now? If you have a worthless mind, it’s judged by the control of evil. Listen to Romans 1.28. This is how the worthless mind works and evil takes over. And since in full knowledge they rejected having the God, after careful examination of him, God delivered them over to a worthless mind, doing those things, evil things, which are improper. That verse, if you will read Romans 1, 26, 27, and 28, and see what it’s talking about. you will find that where immorality takes over, the person that gets involved in that immorality has a worthless mind, a mind that’s not worth anything. They can’t make any decisions that are accurate. They have scar tissue of their heart. Their soul becomes blackened out. They’re separated from the plan of God, and it’s a sad state of affairs because they die trying to justify why they’re right and the world is wrong. They can’t ever do it. If you reject the word of God in your life, you have a worthless mind. It’s called lukewarm in the Bible. In Revelation 3, 14, to the angel of the church and the Laodiceans, write this. These things says the amen, the faithful, the true witness, the beginning of the creation of God. I know your works that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were cold or hot. So then because you’re lukewarm, neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of my mouth because you say I’m rich and I’ve become wealthy. I have need of nothing. And you do not know you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire that you may be rich in white garments. That’s the glory shining in eternity in the white garments. That you may be clothed and that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed. Anoint your eyes, open your eyes so you can see yourself as you really are. Because as many as I love, I rebuke and I chasten. That’s divine discipline. Therefore, be zealous and repent. Change your mind. Behold, I’m standing at the door knocking if anyone hears my voice and opens the door. I will come in and dine with him and he with me. And that’s not a salvation verse. That’s a verse for believers that are out of fellowship with God, with the worthless mind, sucked into the cosmos diabolicus, following after the plan of Satan. In Hebrews 5.11, the Bible says the worthless mind is unteachable. 5.11 says, of whom we have much to say. It’s hard to explain since you have become dull of hearing. For by this time you ought to be teachers yourself. You now need someone to come back and teach you again the very first principles of the oracles from God, and you’ve come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled. In the word of righteousness, he’s a baby. But solid food belongs to those who are full-aged, that is, who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. And that’s not meaning bad and bad. Good is human good and evil is the genius of Satan. That’s what the genius of Satan produces, human good. And the Bible clearly says, for by grace are we saved through faith, not by works. Human good is works. So if you think you can go to heaven by being a good person or in the end God’s gonna weigh all your bad and weigh all your good and you’re gonna come out on the good side, wrong. The only way you will ever set foot into heaven is to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and his finished work on the cross for you. That’s the only way. So the unteachable mind is a worthless mind, dull of hearing, can’t concentrate, can’t pay attention, can’t keep his attention in church, can’t keep his attention in the Bible. He’s too busy thinking about other things. And the result is he’s a casualty in the angelic conflict. where God wants you to be a warrior. God wants you to stand up and be counted. God wants you to represent the Lord Jesus Christ to be the light of the world and the salt of the earth. This Bible verse in Galatians 5, 4 says, you have become estranged from Christ. You who attempt to be justified by the law, you have fallen from God’s grace, worthless, casualty in the angelic conflict. In Philippians 3, 18, the believer out of fellowship is the enemy of the cross. For many walk, of whom I’ve told you often and now tell you again, even weeping, Paul said, they are enemies of the cross of Christ. And the worthless man has left his first love. Nevertheless, I have this against you. In Revelation 2, 4, you left your first love. And he shipwrecked, the Bible says in 1 Timothy 1.19, having faith and a good conscience, which some have rejected concerning the faith have suffered shipwreck of their souls. Worthless Christians with worthless minds. Their life amounts to nothing. Their life counts for nothing. They can’t think clearly. They just occupy space. They’re nothing but trouble for their family, nothing but trouble for those around them. because they’re so self-centered and so arrogant, they have an unrealistic self-image of who they are and what they are. They are members of the cosmos diabolicus. They’re operating under Satan’s viewpoint, under Satan’s plan, human viewpoint, not divine viewpoint, not the plan of God. I hope that’s not you. I want you to wake up and consider this, what I’m saying today. You cannot afford to be trapped in the cosmos diabolicus. You must wake up. You must come to your senses. You must understand you have an opportunity to shine as bright as the stars when you get to heaven. You don’t want to get there and hear the Lord tell you, oh, have a seat over there. I’ll see you in a few thousand years. You want to hear him say, well done, well done, my good and my faithful servant. I hope that’s what you’re listening to. I hope that’s what you’re hearing. This show is designed to help you grow in grace and the knowledge of your Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And as such, I would like to ask one thing from you. If you’re listening, wherever you may be, as we get time to sign new contracts, would you just let us hear from you? Send us an email through our website, rickhughesministries.org. That way we kind of get an idea of who’s listening in what cities, and now we know where to extend our contracts and pay for the additional year. So if you’re listening and this show is meaning something to you, don’t be afraid to get in touch with us. We won’t hassle you. We won’t send you anything. We’re not going to try to hustle you. But we would like to hear from you. Okay? All right. Some people ask me, why don’t you pray at the end? Because we don’t have enough time. We pray all the time, so we don’t have to pray right now. Next week, same time, same place. Look forward to seeing you then. Until then, this is Rick Hughes, host of The Floodline.
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Thank you for listening to The Floodline with your host, Rick Hughes. If you’d like to contact Rick, please write to him at P.O. Box 100, Cropwell, Alabama, 35054, or online at www.rickhughesministries.org.
