In this episode of The Flatline, Rick Hughes uncovers the intricate workings of the cosmic system, emphasizing the importance of spiritual wealth over material prosperity. Rick discusses the roles and strategies of Satan and how these implicate believers and non-believers alike. Dive deep into understanding the biblical perspective on how Satan and his cosmic vortex work to distract and destroy spiritual growth. Rick passionately explains how deception occurs not just outside but from within, through arrogance and self-absorption, leading believers away from true purpose. Understanding how these deceptions manifest is key to spiritual freedom and identifying divine truth over
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.
SPEAKER 01 :
Good morning and welcome to the Flatline. I’m your host, Rick Hughes, and for the next few minutes, please stick around. It’ll be a short time, just about 30 minutes of motivation, some inspiration, a whole lot of education, and absolutely no manipulation. No con games, not asking for money, not soliciting support, not trying to sell you something. We just want to give you information that will help you verify and identify the plan of God for your life. And if we do that, you’re free to orient and adjust to the plan. That’s your volitional decision. You can make it. No one can make that except you. You’re the only one that has to live your life. You alone make those decisions. But you might want to ask yourself a question if you’re listening, and the question is, how do these shows benefit me? That’s a fair question. If you’re listening to the Flatline, how does a show like this benefit me? Well, simply as I expand and add additional costs for production and broadcast, I take comfort in God’s grace provisions. He provides the finances. He provides the inspiration. He gives the messages. And my objective is to make you wealthy, make you wealthy, not financially, no, but spiritually, to make you wealthy spiritually. In 2 Corinthians 4 and 7, the Bible says we have this treasure in our earthly vessels. so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be from God and not from ourselves. Treasure is the Greek word thesaurus. It’s a word treasure. The Greek word for treasure used is thesaurus. So in Colossians 2, 2 and 3, that their hearts may be encouraged, having been knit together in love, and attaining to all of the wealth that comes from the full assurance of understanding God. resulting in a true knowledge of God’s mystery that is Christ himself in whom are hidden all the treasures and the wisdom of knowledge. So how do we get rich? By understanding God’s plan, having a treasure of words in our soul, a word treasure. So many years ago after I got saved, I had a lot of questions. I didn’t understand much about it. I never did go to church as a young Christian. I had no church background and I was not influenced by any type of organized religion. But I wanted to know what God’s plan was for me after I got saved. Fortunately for me, I got under the ministry of a great pastor who taught me God’s word and gave me a richness in my soul that I now can teach to you and share the wealth with you. The wealth is the spiritual information I learned from my pastor that I pass on to you. And what I want to share with you this morning is something he taught me years ago. It’s called the cosmic system. The cosmic system is like a vortex, like a tornado that’s spinning around all the time. You can’t see it. It’s not evident, but it’s real. It’s Satan’s cosmic system. I call it the cosmic vortex, and it will suck you in and take you down the road where you don’t belong. It’s a strategy that Satan has employed as the ruler of this world to control the believers in this world and unbelievers. The cosmic system is a policy that he has for the rulership of this world. And now, of course, obviously you know that Satan was an angel in God’s heaven in past times. He was a member of the cherubim, but because of his own arrogance, because of his own rebellion against God, he himself was cast out of heaven along with many angels who followed his revolt. May I read to you a couple of verses? It’ll verify what I just told you. In Revelation 12, seven through nine, there was a war in heaven and Michael and his angels fought against the dragon and the dragon fought in his angels and prevailed not. Neither was there place found anymore in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent called the devil and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world and was cast out down to the earth and his angels were cast out with him. Ezekiel 28 gives us a little bit more insight into that. 28, 15 through 18, where it says this, You were the anointed cherub who covered, and I placed you there. You were on the holy mountain of God, and you walked in the midst of the story and stones of fire. You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created until unrighteousness was found in you. By the abundance of your trade, you were internally filled with violence, and you sinned. Therefore, I have cast you as profane from the mountain of God, and I have destroyed you, you covering cherub from the midst of the stones of fire. Your heart was haughty because of your beauty. You corrupted your wisdom by reason of your splendor. I threw you to the ground. I put you before the kings that they may see you by the multitude of your own doings in the unrighteousness of your trade. you profaned your sanctuaries, therefore I have brought fire from the midst of you and it has consumed you and I have turned you to ashes on the earth in the eyes of all who see you. So we understand that Satan in his ancient rebellion in heaven was cast out of heaven, cast to the earth along with one third of the angels of heaven that followed him. Once cast to the earth, we understand that Satan sought to vindicate himself. by using God’s own creation against him. And thus we have the treachery in the Garden of Eden against Eve, trying to deceive Eve and get her to take the forbidden fruit. And our Lord recognized Satan as the current ruler of this sin-infested world. He knew that. When our Lord was here, an earthly body, undiminished deity, true humanity, and one body forever, He recognized that Satan was the ruler of this world. In John 14, 30, here’s what he said. I will no longer talk much with you for the ruler of this world is coming and he has nothing in me. The ruler of this world, that’s Satan. In John 12, 31 through 33, now judgment is upon the world. Now the ruler of this world will be cast out and I, if I’m lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself. Now he was saying this to indicate what kind of death he’s going to die. That’s the cross. So as the current ruler of this world, that’s AKA the devil, he wants to use you and me as his scapegoat to get out of going to the lake of fire. God is condemned in the lake of fire. It’s prepared for him in eternity past. He’s headed there, but he does not want to go. So how does he do this? How does Satan try to vindicate himself? by blinding the eyes of unbelievers so that they won’t see the gospel, and by distorting God’s plan for you, the believer. So we are warned in the Bible to be very cautious concerning his trickery and his machinations, his schemes. That’s what the word machination means, his schemes. Peter warns us about this. Be very, very cautious concerning his trickery. Did you know that his number one trickery is organized religion? Organized religion is not Christianity, and many people will wind up in the lake of fire. They were very religious, but they were not Christians. You’ve heard it said, I’ll say it again, Christianity is a personal relationship with God through his son, our Lord Jesus Christ. That’s why Christ said, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no man comes to the Father but by me. And that’s why the Bible is clear. In him we are delivered. Through Christ Jesus, he that knew no sin was made sin for us so that we could be made the righteousness of God through him. So when we’re warned to be very cautious concerning the trickery of Satan and his machinations, 1 Peter 5, 8 says, Be of a sober spirit. Don’t be drunk. Pay attention. Be on the alert, it says. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. So resist him firm by means of your faith. That’s the shield of faith, and the faith rests real, Ephesians chapter 6. You do not want to be devoured by Satan. In Ephesians 6.11, the Bible says, put on the full armor of God so that you will be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. AKA the devil has a portfolio on you. He knows your weaknesses. He knows what the lust of your flesh is. He knows what you would like to have in the world, the lure of the world, and he will do all he can to take you in that direction because his system is a system of distraction, distracting you from ever growing spiritually and becoming the material believer God intended you to be. And that system is the cosmic system, the cosmic system. It’s his lifestyle, his plan. It’s how he explores believers through their own arrogance. And by doing this, it allows him to dictate policy on this planet. He does this through propaganda and through indoctrination that promotes antagonism toward God or anything related to God. Thus Satan’s attacks are against individuals and also against the Word of God. He wants to discredit you. He wants to keep you from becoming a believer. And he wants to discredit the Word of God. And he does that. That’s where he centers his attacks. Now remember, he is not omnipresent. Satan cannot be in more than one place at one time. He’s not God. He’s not imminent and transcendent like our Father is. He’s limited. So get over the idea that Satan’s knocking on your door. He has more important people to deal with than you and me. So he has to be in one place at one time and I can assure you he’s not in my city knocking on my door. He’s probably in the Middle East trying to stir up trouble against the Jews. In regards to us, me, you, He seeks to draw us into preoccupation with ourself, preoccupation and obsession with ourself. If he can get us to do that, get us to get preoccupied with ourself, then we lose reality thinking and we substitute some sort of subjective preoccupation with self and circumstances over the reality of what’s really going on. It’s very easy to have a pity party. It’s very easy to get preoccupied with self. It’s very easy to feel like you’ve been done wrong and somebody did you wrong and someone cheated you or wronged you and you want to get even, you’re going to get mad, you want to get upset about it. You get preoccupied with what you want as compared to what God wants. This is why arrogance is the number one destroyer of people. Destroyer of people. Arrogance is the number one destroyer of people. Now listen to the Bible in Romans 12, 3. Stop thinking of self in terms of arrogance beyond what you should think. And this is a modified, expanded translation of Romans 12, 3. Stop thinking of yourself in terms of arrogance beyond what you should think. But think instead of terms of sanity as God has assigned to each one of us a standard of thinking from his word. When I’m talking about arrogance, I’m talking about basically three things. Beginning with self-justification. The arrogant person always justifies why they are right and everyone else is wrong. Why he’s right and God is wrong. Why he’s right and the police officer is wrong. Why he’s right and his parents are wrong. Self-justification leads to self-deception. And if this is where you lie to other people, you’ll lie to yourself as well. You won’t see yourself as you really are. You will see yourself as you think you are. And if you have an unrealistic self-image, you’ll have unrealistic expectations about how people should treat you. So in your self-justification, you justify with the things that you do and say it’s okay. And then you deceive yourself into believing that, and that gets into self-absorption. And that’s where we have total self-destruction. Once you commit yourself to be absorbed with your sin, you eventually destroy yourself. So that’s why this mandate from Paul in Romans 12, 3 says, stop thinking of yourself as in terms of arrogance beyond what you should think. You have to orient to some reality. Think in terms of sanity as God has assigned to each of us a standard of thinking from his word. What is that standard of thinking called? It’s called divine viewpoint. Let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus. Philippians 2, 5. Standard of thinking is divine viewpoint. We have to learn to think divine viewpoint. The Bible calls that wisdom. Wisdom. And when we have wisdom from the Word of God stored in our soul, technically we become wealthy. We become rich. And what does that mean? It means we have insight and discernment wrapped up in understanding. So the standard of thinking that God wants you to have is humility wrapped in divine viewpoint. Humility. Humility is the opposite of arrogance. Humility responds to pressure, arrogance reacts to pressure. A person with humility doesn’t lose their temper, they don’t get upset, they don’t blow their coup, they can handle some difficulty. A person with arrogance He’s going to say, you disrespected me. I’m going to do this. I’m going to do that. Arrogant people cannot orient and adjust to unfair treatment in the world. They can’t handle it. So this is the question I want to ask you. When’s the last time you heard your pastor, or for that matter, any pastor, teach anything about the dangers of arrogant thinking? Come on. When was the last time you ever heard that? You don’t. You don’t hear anybody talking about it today. This self-justification I’m talking about leads to unrealistic self-image. And that unrealistic self-image leads to unrealistic expectations. And it’s possible that there are people in your local church where you go to church that are so wrapped up in their own world and their own arrogance that they don’t see themselves as they really are. And they want to be treated in a way they don’t deserve to be treated. That’s exactly what happened to Satan in eternity past. His arrogance destroyed him. The Bible said that about him, as I read you those passages before. He had everything going for him, and he used that to think that he was better than God, that he could run the show better than God can run the show. Yeah, don’t you remember me talking about that to you, how he was cast out? He walked in the holy mountain of God, and he was blameless in his ways, and he was internally filled with violence, and he sinned. Arrogance is the superfood of the cosmic system. Arrogance is the superfood of the cosmic system because arrogance destroys all of your norms and standards that are based on Bible doctrine. See, what’s supposed to happen in the Christian life is you get some understanding and you get some discernment and you build norms and standards. And these norms and standards are in your conscience and they protect you from destroying yourself. You know, you learn, don’t do this, don’t do that, don’t do this, don’t do that. But you said, I want to do it anyhow. I don’t care what the Bible says. I want to do it anyhow. Well, that’s your arrogance. You’re justifying why you want to do it. The end result is you’ll destroy yourself. So arrogance destroys the norms and standards that you might have been taught by your parents. See, as a parent, you may have made sure your children were exposed to biblical truth. But unfortunately, once they grew up, they were recruited by the cosmic evangelist who floats around in the cosmic system. Maybe he recruited your child at college. Maybe it was sooner. But regardless, in arrogance, your child, my child, they reject everything that we’ve ever told them about God and about his son and about our Lord Jesus Christ. That’s how the cosmic system works. There are cosmic evangelists running around today, recruiting for Satan, luring people into the cosmic system, telling them this, that circumstances and people can make them happy. And that’s the biggest lie that Satan’s ever thrown down the pipe. Lonely people looking for happiness in all the wrong places. The cosmic recruiter encourages these sort to follow their own trends, to follow their own lust patterns, And whatever their lust pattern might be, if it’s lust for money, lust for power, lust for sex, lust for drugs, if they follow that lust pattern, as encouraged by the cosmic recruiter, they’ll be destroyed. The inevitable consequence of men being involved in Satan’s cosmic system is chaos. Chaos. Psychologically, socially, personally, nationally, and internationally. The cosmic system stirs up chaos. We call it the fog around here, the failure of spiritual leadership, the open rebellion against God, and the rejection of God’s word, fog. The fog across America is stirred up by the cosmic system. So, the cosmic system, Satan’s AKA main number one plan, can even confuse the most brilliant individual, because I want you to understand something. He or she, whoever they are, is no match for Satan’s genius. He’s very smart, much smarter than you and I, seen much more than you and I have seen, able to deceive us, and we must stick with the word of God, that’s our only defense. Listen again. The Word of God is alive and powerful, sharper than a two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of the soul and the spirit and the joints and the marrow, and is a critic of thoughts and intents of the heart. You must have the Word of God if you’re going to pick up the shield of faith. You must understand what it means to have a flat line in your soul, how to rebound and deal with your sin, how to stay filled with the Holy Spirit, how to use a faithless drill. how to orient to God’s grace, how to orient to God’s word, to understand what is your personal sense of destiny, to understand the virtue love package, which includes personal love for God and impersonal love for all mankind, and to share the happiness of God. and eventually to be, what? Occupied with Christ. Ten unique problem-solving devices that form a main line of resistance in your soul to stop the outside sources of adversity of the cosmic system before they ever become the inside sources of stress in your life. The cosmic system can confuse even the most brilliant individual. I have not put together the attack of the cosmic system and all of the various ways that it happens, but I can tell you where it happens first. It happens first in your mind. And the first thing the cosmic system will do is create doubt, confusion, doubt and confusion. And if you doubt, the first thing you’re going to doubt is doubt God’s word and be confused about what it says. And especially if you’re listening to the wrong pastor teach you the wrong thing. You must have a well-qualified pastor that understands the original languages. They can teach you the word of God as it was written in eternity past so that we don’t get it mixed up. That’s why the Bible says we must rightly divide the word of truth. Rightly divide. If you can rightly divide it, you can wrongly divide it. And I believe you, me, a lot of people wrongly divide it. So, the most brilliant person that I know or you know is no match for Satan’s genius. In Galatians 5, 1, the Bible said it’s for freedom that Christ set us free. So keep standing fast. Don’t become entangled again with the yoke of slavery that’s living in the cosmic system. Don’t become entangled again with the yoke of slavery. When people use their own arrogance to and their own power madness, and they gravitate into the cosmic system, they use their volition to make decisions from a position of weakness, and it has both personal effects and national repercussions. Your decisions that are negative to God has personal effect and national repercussions. When a person such as you that’s a Christian, a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, When you reject the authority of the Word of God and the mandates of the Word of God set up, when you destroy the authority of God in your life and you revert into the cosmic system and the authority of Satan. So who are you going to live under? Are you going to live under the authority of Satan and the lies that he tells you? Or do you want to live under the authority of God and what’s written in his Word? Why would God deceive you? What good would God get out of trying to deceive you? The person that wants to deceive you is a.k.a. the devil. And what he wants to deceive you with is your own desires, your own flesh, your own lust, your own machinations. And you will go down in history as the biggest sucker that ever came along because he will use you and destroy you. Once you’re in the cosmic system under the cloud of confusion and chaos, your soul blacks out. You don’t even see yourself as you really are. You get all confused. The Bible talks about the blackout of the soul in the stream of consciousness and describes it several ways. I’ll give you the verses in Ephesians 4.18. Darkened in their ways of thinking, Ephesians 4.18. It’s a person in the cosmic system. Walking in darkness, 1 John 2.11, a person in the cosmic system. 1 John 2.11, the darkness that has blinded his eyes. And then in John 12, 35, he who walks in darkness does not know where he’s going, John 12, 35. Walking in darkness is in the cosmic system where there is no light. There’s a fog of confusion. We are to live in the light as he is in the light. So the Bible says if we say we have fellowship with God and we sin, we lie and the truth is not in us. This implies that once you’re recruited by the cosmic system and its way of nefarious thinking, you have no discernment, no insight, and no understanding of Satan’s schemes and delusions. Why? Because you’re blinded by your own arrogance and you’re willing to follow the other’s deceived individuals into the slaughter of the lambs. The big lie of the cosmic system is that people or circumstances will make you happy. And the more you seek happiness for happiness’ sake, the more you’re involved in the cosmic system. You only intensify your problems called Operation Boomerang. Your misery intensifies, 0.1, 0.2, 0.3. Your frustration is based on the lack of capacity for life, lack of capacity for love or happiness inside the cosmic system. You can’t find it. You won’t find real life, you won’t find real love, and you won’t find real happiness in the cosmic system. It only intensifies the frantic search for happiness in your life. So you’re warned in the Bible, stop loving the cosmic system or anything that’s in the cosmic system, 1 John 2, 15. If anyone keeps loving the cosmic system, the love of the Father is not in him. By taking the full responsibility for our own apostasy, our own degeneracy and cosmic involvement, We can use our volition to get out of it, use our volition to rebound and get on the road to recovery. Very simply this, recovery means, it demands this, consistent function of perception and metabolization and the application of the word of God in your life. It’s the only way to get out. You got to change the way you think. Let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus. Change how you think. Stop thinking of yourself in terms of arrogance beyond what you should think. Recovery demands you learn and you use the problem solving devices in the protocol plan of God. And here’s the good news. This is the best news I can tell you. As long as you’re alive, and you are alive or you wouldn’t be listening to this, as long as you’re alive, you can recover from your Christian degeneracy of the cosmic system. As long as you’re alive, you can rebound and go to God and confess your sin. Tell God what you’ve done exactly. That you’ve been in a frantic search for happiness and you’re now more miserable than you’ve ever been. You’ve tried everything the world offers and it doesn’t give you what you want. What you’re looking for is the peace of God that passes all understanding. And it’s found in a relationship with Jesus Christ and by learning God’s word and having a relaxed mental attitude and the greatest happiness the world has ever seen, sharing the happiness of God. That’s why Jesus told the disciples in John 15, 11, I told you these things so that my joy might be in you. God wants you to be happy. He wants you to be rich with his word internally, spiritually, so that you can bring him absolute glory. All right. I sure hope you’ve been listening. I know I went fast. Not much time to speak. I hope you paid attention. I hope to see you next week. Same time, same place. Till then, this is Rick Hughes saying thank you for listening to The Flatline.
SPEAKER 02 :
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.
