Satan’s strategy is to exploit your weaknesses and to outwit your objectives. He does it through a three-pronged attack: the world, the flesh (your sin nature), and himself. If you can’t get victory over the world and your sinful nature, Satan isn’t going to worry about you. “God will not allow you to be tested more than you are able” (1 Cor 10:13). Testing often comes in one of two forms—people or circumstances. You need to learn and use the problem-solving device of impersonal love to pass people testing. Fear will neutralize your faith. Faith is an equally opposing
Satanic Devices – Part 3
Transcript of FLOT Line Episode 573 aired on August 21, 2016
Good morning and welcome to The FLOT Line. I’m your host Rick Hughes. For the next few
minutes please stay with me and listen. It will be a few moments of motivation, inspiration,
education all done without any manipulation. This is the way we operate on The FLOT Line. We
simply come on here and give you accurate information, no human speculation. This information
is related to the content of God’s Word. It is a show about the Bible and it’s not a dialogue, it’s a
monologue. It’s just me talking to you but I think if you’ll listen to me I can verify and identify
the plan of God for your life. Then you can decide whether you want to follow this plan, whether
you want to orient and adjust to the plan. This show does not offer useless speculation. We try to
give you accurate information straight out of the Bible. If you have been listening to our show
the last few weeks we have been dealing with satanic distractions, the way that Satan works in
our lives. Since I last was with you I’ve been on the road to St. Louis to speak, then over to
Kansas City, and now I’m back. Sometimes when I get back into the office I think, “Where did I
leave off on that radio show?” We actually have about 24 stations that we broadcast on across the
United States currently. We left you with a challenge from 2 Corinthians 2:11. This challenge
was from Paul to the church at Corinth not to let Satan take advantage of them,
“Not to be
ignorant of his strategy”
or his devices. We are not to be exploited or outwitted by Satan.
Satan
has a strategy and it is to exploit your weaknesses and to outwit your objectives. He does it
with a three-pronged attack: the world, the flesh, and of course himself.
Let me make one
observation for you. There was a comedian named Flip Wilson and he use to say, “The devil
made me do that,” some sort of little comic routine he had.
If we cannot get victory over the
flesh, if we cannot get victory over the lure of the world, why would Satan have to worry
about us?
In other words, if our flesh defeats us or if the world defeats us then Satan already has
us in his hip pocket as far as not being a threat to him. See, this whole thing is about you being a
threat to him. He doesn’t want to go to the Lake of Fire. He wants to use you to get him out of it.
He wants to call you to the witness stand and show your failures so God will go light on him. If
he can somehow or another get you to fail, well then why would he worry about you? By the
way another thing, he’s not omnipresent. Our enemy the devil can’t be in Kansas City and in New
York City at the same time. He’s a created being. He can only be in one place at one time. This is
not like God. God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. God is in Spokane, Washington
and in Miami, Florida at the same time. This is part of the essence of God, so remember this. He
is with you and with me at the same time, but not Satan. When we’re talking about the objectives
of Satan he has a policy that he operates under. We showed you the three-pronged strategy he
uses to get to you and then we went into how he tries to destroy the credibility of the local church
by destroying the credibility of the pastor. I want to show you today how he seeks to discourage
you, as a member of your local congregation, by getting you to focus on the problems in your
church and not the solutions. I want to remind you that churches are made up of people.
573-Satanic-Devices-p3-trannscript.pdf
Remember the little thing about your hand when you were a kid and you would put your fingers
together. You would say, “This is the church and this is the steeple, open the door and see all the
people.” Remember teaching this to your children or maybe you learned this?
Churches are
made up of people and people have sin natures.
If there is a pastor in your church, he’s got a
sin nature. If there’s a chairman of the board of deacons in your church, he has a sin nature. If
there’s a choir director and a youth director, they have a sin nature. No one is perfect. We all have
sin natures, you and me included. Where there is a sin nature, there is a possibility for a problem
and there’s a possibility for failure. If you have people, there is going to be sin and there could be
failure, especially if the sin and the failure are in a leadership position. Then it will be all too
obvious to the congregation. Let’s talk about your church. Has there been sin and failure in your
church? If there has been, what did you focus on? Did you focus on the person who failed or did
you focus on the solution for that? It’s inevitable that someone is going to offend someone. It’s
inevitable that someone is going to let someone down. Discouragement always comes in the
form of people or circumstance testing. This is a big thing in the Christian life and this is what
you must remember. God said in 1 Corinthians 10:13,
“God will not allow you to be tested more
than you are able.”
The person in your church you cannot stand, this is a test for you. This is
called a people test and until you pass this test, you are never going to grow spiritually. God has
given you something to pass that test with and if you remember how the FLOT line works, if you
haven’t forgotten, it’s called impersonal love.
You use the problem-solving device of
impersonal love to pass people testing.
You love the loser, the failure, the person who is
creating the problem based on who you are, not who they are. This is exactly what God did for
you. Listen to John 3:16,
“God so loved the world that He gave His uniquely born Son.”
Let’s
see, were you a wonderful person when He loved you? Apart from Christ were you even near His
righteousness when Isaiah 64:6 says,
“All of our righteousnesses are like a filthy rag in God’s
eyes”
yet He still loves you? You were not pretty and He loved you. You can love the weird
obnoxious person that’s driving you crazy if you use the problem-solving device called
impersonal love. If you don’t remember this, you better write to me and let me send you the little
book called
Christian Problem Solving.
We’ll get it right out to you and it will list them for you.
This is how you handle people testing because if you don’t handle it, it will become
discouragement.
Discouragement will keep you from advancing spiritually.
You will be
destroyed spiritually. In other words, until you build this FLOT line in your soul, until you build
this main line of resistance in your soul, you’re not going to advance very far because you are
going to keep running into tests and you are going to keep failing them. Let’s go to Exodus
14:11-12,
“Then they said to Moses
[they being the Jews who were in bondage in Egypt],
’Because there were no graves in Egypt, have you taken us away to die in the wilderness?
[See,
they were now angry with Moses and there were a couple of million of them here men, women,
children and everything. They were confronted with the Red Sea and the Pharaoh was angry,
behind them, coming after them. Now they want to blame it on Moses.]
Why did you bring us up
out of Egypt? Is this not the word that we told you in Egypt when we said, “Let us alone so we
573-Satanic-Devices-p3-trannscript.pdf
can serve the Egyptians?” For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than we
should die in the wilderness.’”
What a cop out.
They were more concerned about security
than freedom and many Americans are like this today.
They’ll take whatever the government
gives them and be slaves rather than be free.
“Moses said to the people, ‘Do not be afraid. Stand
still and watch the salvation of the Lord which He will accomplish for you today. For the
Egyptians that you see today, you will see them again no more. The Lord will fight for you and
you shall hold your peace’”
(Exodus 14:13-14), and He did. Here is the principle. Those folks
wanted to blame their problems on somebody and Moses was the leadership, so now they’re
going to blame Moses for sticking his nose in their business. “We were perfectly happy being
slaves back in Egypt. We were safe being slaves back in Egypt. Yes, they were killing us. Yes,
they were working us to death but we were eating some meals and we were happy and we
weren’t going to die. Now you’ve got us out here and we’re going to die.” They were content to
live in slavery rather than fight for their freedom. I wonder if this is true with the American
generation today. Since these people had no spiritual problem-solving skills, they had had no
Bible teaching, no one had been teaching them the Word, they didn’t understand. The law of
Moses had not even been written yet, they didn’t have any problem-solving skills, Moses was
going to have to teach them something. What he was going to have to teach them is what we call
problem-solving device #3, the faith-rest drill. Why? Because they were going to need it. In
times of a crisis it is inevitable that people will turn on the leader but let me show you something
that most people miss in the Bible. These folks did not have to go with him. They could have
stayed in Egypt. They didn’t have to leave. They chose to go and they went and listen carefully,
they were well financed. You say, “Wait a minute, they were slaves. How could they have been
well financed?” Let me read Exodus 12:35-36 to you.
“Now the children of Israel had done
according to the word of Moses and they had asked from the Egyptians articles of silver, articles
of gold, and clothing, and the Lord had given the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians so
that they granted them whatever they requested. Thus, they plundered the Egyptians.”
They left
rich. They left there with gold, silver, and new clothes. They didn’t leave there broke, poor, and
destitute.
Here’s the truth, fear will neutralize your faith because fear is an equally opposing
force to faith.
If they didn’t learn how to use the faith-rest drill, their fear would have caused
them to panic. If they panicked, then they would start to run, scatter, and they would have been
destroyed. Moses said, “Don’t panic, stand still, be still, shut up, wait, watch what God is about
to do,” and we know the story of how the Red Sea parted and they went across dry. We know
how the Pharaoh chased them and the Pharaoh did not make it across the Red Sea. In 1 Kings
19:1-3, Elijah, the great prophet of God was neutralized by his fear. Once King Ahab told Queen
Jezebel what Elijah had done to the prophets of Baal, she got real angry about this. I don’t know
if you remember what he did to the prophets of Baal on top of Mount Caramel but he executed
them. She sent a messenger to Elijah and this is what she said,
“‘So let the gods do to me and
more also if I do not make your life as the life of one of them tomorrow about this time.’ When he
saw that, he arose and ran for his life.”
Wow, Elijah ran for his life. A wicked, evil, murdering
573-Satanic-Devices-p3-trannscript.pdf
queen sent a death threat. It’s amazing how an evil woman can scare a man sometimes. He ran
for his life and he got discouraged because he focused on his fear and he asked God to let him
die. In 1 Kings 19:4,
“But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness and came and sat
down under a broom tree
[No, they don’t grow brooms on a broom tree; it’s a particular tree in
that part of the world]
and he prayed that he might die and said, ‘It is enough. Now Lord, take
my life. I am no better than my fathers.’”
He got full of self-pity. He got full of fear. He ran from
the wicked queen who threatened to kill him although he had just faced off with all of the
prophets of Baal and killed them. He had a little pity party. I don’t mean to malign Elijah, he is
one of the great prophets of God. Let’s look at you and me. We cannot afford to have a pity party.
We cannot afford to look at the circumstances around us in our local church and be discouraged
and have a pity party and say, “Nobody loves me. Nobody listens to me. Nobody pays any
attention to me. They all take advantage of me.” Have you ever had one of those? “Woe is poor
me. Everybody’s against me. Look what I did. Look what I’ve done. Nobody appreciates it.” This
is nothing but a case of relative righteousness, comparing yourself to other people, thinking
you’re better than other people because you’ve got it all together and the rest of them don’t.
Elijah had to learn that God had more than 7,000 other faithful folks that had not bowed their
knee to Baal. You are not the only apple on the tree. Get over the pity party, get away from it.
Quit focusing on the problem and look at the solution. The solution is for you to use your
FLOT line problem-solving devices, especially problem-solving device #8, impersonal love
for others.
Another thing Satan will do to destroy the ministry of a local church is he will seek to
lure you into a false doctrine. If he can’t destroy the pastor, he’s going to seek to destroy members
of the congregation. Sometimes members of the congregation have itching ears. They watch
television, they listen to shows and they get itching ears. This is one of the dangers from
listening to too many different pastors. You become the ultimate authority yourself. You
ultimately decide which pastor is right. You use your volition. You choose which one is right and
which one is wrong and you know what? Nine out of ten times you’re going to go with your best
friend’s pastor, the one you like. You are going to trust him and he may or may not be right. You
usually go with the one you feel the closest to or the one you know the best. This is why pastors
normally don’t need to have a lot of personal friends. It’s not a healthy thing for a pastor to do
this because personal friendship has nothing to do with Biblical accuracy. When sound doctrine
is attacked to lure you into some sort of falsehood, it’s usually going to be a doctrine that you’re
not familiar with. It’s going to be something like Dispensations or the Mystery Doctrine of the
Church and somebody is going to come up with something new. It’s going to tickle your ears and
you’re going to say, “Oh, that really sounds good and I trust this person. I know this person
would not mislead me,” right. Here’s what Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior said, “I’m going to
send the Holy Spirit and His job is to lead you into truth” (John 14:26). Now if the Holy Spirit
said, “Okay here’s truth,” and then your friend says, “Oh no, here’s truth,” which one are you
going to believe? You are going to have to turn your back on the Holy Spirit who told you what
truth was to start with and go over here and jump on the bandwagon with your friend who now
573-Satanic-Devices-p3-trannscript.pdf
says he has the truth. It’s a very dangerous thing.
Failure to teach accurate Bible doctrine in
the local church is just as big a nail in the coffin of the destruction of this client nation as
any other threat of immoral degeneracy is.
The moral degeneracy of organized religion that
twists spirituality into some system of works, into some system of legalism, is very dangerous
because it eventually takes salvation and makes it a matter of works. “You can’t be saved if you
drink Coca-Cola. You can’t be saved if you put peanuts in your Coca-Cola. If you want to be
saved and go to heaven brother, you can’t do that and you can’t do this.” If you do that or do this,
they’re not going to like you. It doesn’t take much and before long people are off-base and out in
the tules and believe in some of the goofiest, weird, wild stuff. It starts with leaving the accuracy
of the Bible. It’s saying, “I don’t really think the Bible should be taken literally. There are a lot of
analogies in there and we just shouldn’t take all of that literally.” You need to be under a well-
qualified pastor who will explain what the Bible means and how it applies to your life because if
you don’t, you’re not going to recognize the enemy when he hits you. You won’t recognize the
threat. Let me ask you one simple question. If we get off base, if we get it wrong, if we begin to
misrepresent God, then why would God even keep us around? If we are not an accurate client
nation, if we cannot accurately represent Him, why would He even keep us around? Paul warns
the people at Philippi,
“Beware of the canine clergy, beware of evil workers, beware of the
mutilation!”
(Philippians 3:2). These are the circumcisers who come in and say, “Well, we know
you’ve accepted Christ as your Savior but you really can’t go to heaven until you are
circumcised.” I’m not a doctor, I’m not going to explain this. You should know what this means
but it’s the same as someone saying, “Yeah, we know you have accepted Christ as your Savior
but until you join up, fess up, give it up or whatever, you can’t really go to heaven.” Paul had a
danger warning for these people “Look out.”
Religion has a lot of canine clergy and they will
try to devour you, 2 Corinthians 11:13-15,
“These are false apostles, deceitful workers,
pretending to be apostles of Christ.
And no wonder! For Satan himself transforms himself into
an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also transform themselves into
ministers of righteousness, whose end will be according to their works.”
What does it mean,
“Their end will be according to their works?”
Well, it means they’ll be lost forever because you
don’t get saved by works.
“For by grace are you saved through faith. It is a gift of God and not
of works lest anyone should brag.”
(Ephesians 2:8-9). There are a lot of ways your pastor or any
pastor becomes distracted from studying and teaching God’s Word. He can be distracted by his
family, his children, his wife. If he’s single he can be distracted by romance and involvement
with another person. He could be distracted in business, trying to make a lot of money and trying
to find security in finances. One of my friends who was a well-qualified pastor who is now in
heaven today said these words, “Success in business or another profession such as the military is
very stimulating, very difficult to walk away from in order to prepare for, concentrate on the
ministry and he will never be able to fulfill his destiny in Christ if he can’t concentrate on the
ministry.”
A pastor cannot afford to be distracted and you cannot afford to be discouraged.
Religious intellectual superiority can lead to arrogant assumptions. This is somebody that’s really
573-Satanic-Devices-p3-trannscript.pdf
smart saying, “I’m smarter than you. I am right and you are wrong and let’s debate it, let’s argue
about it.” A waste of time. This is one of the goofiest things on social media today, people getting
on social media, preaching, trying to straighten other folks out. I wish they would stop doing this.
I guess sometimes if they don’t have an audience, they have to get on social media and conjure
up an audience. When you depart from sound, solid, systematic teaching of God’s Word for
another type of learning, your intellect may be stimulated and you immediately feel the need to
straighten other people out with these new-found ideas. Here’s what Paul told Timothy.
“If
anyone teaches otherwise and does not consent to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord
Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which accords with godliness, he is proud, knowing nothing, but
is obsessed with disputes and arguments over words, from which come envy, strife, rivaling, evil
suspicions, useless wranglings of men of corrupt minds and destitute of the truth, who suppose
that godliness is a means of gain. From such, withdraw yourself”
(1 Timothy 6:3-5). In other
words, “Separate from these sorts of people.” Beware of the canine clergy. Why? Because he is a
false teacher who will seduce you. He’s a master of hypocrisy. He will use a phony façade with
you. Romans 16:17-18 tells you,
“I urge you brethren, note those who cause division and
offenses contrary to the doctrine which you learned and avoid them for they do not serve our
Lord Jesus Christ. They serve their own emotions by smooth words and flattering speech,
deceiving the minds of the simple.”
There you go, are you the simple? If so beware. The deceitful
teachers (the religious canine clergy) are going to appeal to your human arrogance. They will
deceive you and they will promote you into something that’s not true.
Listen, stay true to the
faith. Don’t deviate from sound doctrine. Sit under a well-qualified pastor. Stay filled with
the Holy Spirit. Grow in grace and you will effectively re-present Jesus Christ to your
generation.
Anything other than this is going to be a miserable failure. It’s critical that you
understand and believe this. We are in some terrible times in this nation. Listen up and learn.
Until next week, I’m your host Rick Hughes saying thank you for listening to The FLOT Line.
Satanic Devices – Part 3
Transcript of FLOT Line Episode 573 aired on August 21, 2016
Good morning and welcome to The FLOT Line. I’m your host Rick Hughes. For the next few
minutes please stay with me and listen. It will be a few moments of motivation, inspiration,
education all done without any manipulation. This is the way we operate on The FLOT Line. We
simply come on here and give you accurate information, no human speculation. This information
is related to the content of God’s Word. It is a show about the Bible and it’s not a dialogue, it’s a
monologue. It’s just me talking to you but I think if you’ll listen to me I can verify and identify
the plan of God for your life. Then you can decide whether you want to follow this plan, whether
you want to orient and adjust to the plan. This show does not offer useless speculation. We try to
give you accurate information straight out of the Bible. If you have been listening to our show
the last few weeks we have been dealing with satanic distractions, the way that Satan works in
our lives. Since I last was with you I’ve been on the road to St. Louis to speak, then over to
Kansas City, and now I’m back. Sometimes when I get back into the office I think, “Where did I
leave off on that radio show?” We actually have about 24 stations that we broadcast on across the
United States currently. We left you with a challenge from 2 Corinthians 2:11. This challenge
was from Paul to the church at Corinth not to let Satan take advantage of them,
“Not to be
ignorant of his strategy”
or his devices. We are not to be exploited or outwitted by Satan.
Satan
has a strategy and it is to exploit your weaknesses and to outwit your objectives. He does it
with a three-pronged attack: the world, the flesh, and of course himself.
Let me make one
observation for you. There was a comedian named Flip Wilson and he use to say, “The devil
made me do that,” some sort of little comic routine he had.
If we cannot get victory over the
flesh, if we cannot get victory over the lure of the world, why would Satan have to worry
about us?
In other words, if our flesh defeats us or if the world defeats us then Satan already has
us in his hip pocket as far as not being a threat to him. See, this whole thing is about you being a
threat to him. He doesn’t want to go to the Lake of Fire. He wants to use you to get him out of it.
He wants to call you to the witness stand and show your failures so God will go light on him. If
he can somehow or another get you to fail, well then why would he worry about you? By the
way another thing, he’s not omnipresent. Our enemy the devil can’t be in Kansas City and in New
York City at the same time. He’s a created being. He can only be in one place at one time. This is
not like God. God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. God is in Spokane, Washington
and in Miami, Florida at the same time. This is part of the essence of God, so remember this. He
is with you and with me at the same time, but not Satan. When we’re talking about the objectives
of Satan he has a policy that he operates under. We showed you the three-pronged strategy he
uses to get to you and then we went into how he tries to destroy the credibility of the local church
by destroying the credibility of the pastor. I want to show you today how he seeks to discourage
you, as a member of your local congregation, by getting you to focus on the problems in your
church and not the solutions. I want to remind you that churches are made up of people.
573-Satanic-Devices-p3-trannscript.pdf
Remember the little thing about your hand when you were a kid and you would put your fingers
together. You would say, “This is the church and this is the steeple, open the door and see all the
people.” Remember teaching this to your children or maybe you learned this?
Churches are
made up of people and people have sin natures.
If there is a pastor in your church, he’s got a
sin nature. If there’s a chairman of the board of deacons in your church, he has a sin nature. If
there’s a choir director and a youth director, they have a sin nature. No one is perfect. We all have
sin natures, you and me included. Where there is a sin nature, there is a possibility for a problem
and there’s a possibility for failure. If you have people, there is going to be sin and there could be
failure, especially if the sin and the failure are in a leadership position. Then it will be all too
obvious to the congregation. Let’s talk about your church. Has there been sin and failure in your
church? If there has been, what did you focus on? Did you focus on the person who failed or did
you focus on the solution for that? It’s inevitable that someone is going to offend someone. It’s
inevitable that someone is going to let someone down. Discouragement always comes in the
form of people or circumstance testing. This is a big thing in the Christian life and this is what
you must remember. God said in 1 Corinthians 10:13,
“God will not allow you to be tested more
than you are able.”
The person in your church you cannot stand, this is a test for you. This is
called a people test and until you pass this test, you are never going to grow spiritually. God has
given you something to pass that test with and if you remember how the FLOT line works, if you
haven’t forgotten, it’s called impersonal love.
You use the problem-solving device of
impersonal love to pass people testing.
You love the loser, the failure, the person who is
creating the problem based on who you are, not who they are. This is exactly what God did for
you. Listen to John 3:16,
“God so loved the world that He gave His uniquely born Son.”
Let’s
see, were you a wonderful person when He loved you? Apart from Christ were you even near His
righteousness when Isaiah 64:6 says,
“All of our righteousnesses are like a filthy rag in God’s
eyes”
yet He still loves you? You were not pretty and He loved you. You can love the weird
obnoxious person that’s driving you crazy if you use the problem-solving device called
impersonal love. If you don’t remember this, you better write to me and let me send you the little
book called
Christian Problem Solving.
We’ll get it right out to you and it will list them for you.
This is how you handle people testing because if you don’t handle it, it will become
discouragement.
Discouragement will keep you from advancing spiritually.
You will be
destroyed spiritually. In other words, until you build this FLOT line in your soul, until you build
this main line of resistance in your soul, you’re not going to advance very far because you are
going to keep running into tests and you are going to keep failing them. Let’s go to Exodus
14:11-12,
“Then they said to Moses
[they being the Jews who were in bondage in Egypt],
’Because there were no graves in Egypt, have you taken us away to die in the wilderness?
[See,
they were now angry with Moses and there were a couple of million of them here men, women,
children and everything. They were confronted with the Red Sea and the Pharaoh was angry,
behind them, coming after them. Now they want to blame it on Moses.]
Why did you bring us up
out of Egypt? Is this not the word that we told you in Egypt when we said, “Let us alone so we
573-Satanic-Devices-p3-trannscript.pdf
can serve the Egyptians?” For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than we
should die in the wilderness.’”
What a cop out.
They were more concerned about security
than freedom and many Americans are like this today.
They’ll take whatever the government
gives them and be slaves rather than be free.
“Moses said to the people, ‘Do not be afraid. Stand
still and watch the salvation of the Lord which He will accomplish for you today. For the
Egyptians that you see today, you will see them again no more. The Lord will fight for you and
you shall hold your peace’”
(Exodus 14:13-14), and He did. Here is the principle. Those folks
wanted to blame their problems on somebody and Moses was the leadership, so now they’re
going to blame Moses for sticking his nose in their business. “We were perfectly happy being
slaves back in Egypt. We were safe being slaves back in Egypt. Yes, they were killing us. Yes,
they were working us to death but we were eating some meals and we were happy and we
weren’t going to die. Now you’ve got us out here and we’re going to die.” They were content to
live in slavery rather than fight for their freedom. I wonder if this is true with the American
generation today. Since these people had no spiritual problem-solving skills, they had had no
Bible teaching, no one had been teaching them the Word, they didn’t understand. The law of
Moses had not even been written yet, they didn’t have any problem-solving skills, Moses was
going to have to teach them something. What he was going to have to teach them is what we call
problem-solving device #3, the faith-rest drill. Why? Because they were going to need it. In
times of a crisis it is inevitable that people will turn on the leader but let me show you something
that most people miss in the Bible. These folks did not have to go with him. They could have
stayed in Egypt. They didn’t have to leave. They chose to go and they went and listen carefully,
they were well financed. You say, “Wait a minute, they were slaves. How could they have been
well financed?” Let me read Exodus 12:35-36 to you.
“Now the children of Israel had done
according to the word of Moses and they had asked from the Egyptians articles of silver, articles
of gold, and clothing, and the Lord had given the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians so
that they granted them whatever they requested. Thus, they plundered the Egyptians.”
They left
rich. They left there with gold, silver, and new clothes. They didn’t leave there broke, poor, and
destitute.
Here’s the truth, fear will neutralize your faith because fear is an equally opposing
force to faith.
If they didn’t learn how to use the faith-rest drill, their fear would have caused
them to panic. If they panicked, then they would start to run, scatter, and they would have been
destroyed. Moses said, “Don’t panic, stand still, be still, shut up, wait, watch what God is about
to do,” and we know the story of how the Red Sea parted and they went across dry. We know
how the Pharaoh chased them and the Pharaoh did not make it across the Red Sea. In 1 Kings
19:1-3, Elijah, the great prophet of God was neutralized by his fear. Once King Ahab told Queen
Jezebel what Elijah had done to the prophets of Baal, she got real angry about this. I don’t know
if you remember what he did to the prophets of Baal on top of Mount Caramel but he executed
them. She sent a messenger to Elijah and this is what she said,
“‘So let the gods do to me and
more also if I do not make your life as the life of one of them tomorrow about this time.’ When he
saw that, he arose and ran for his life.”
Wow, Elijah ran for his life. A wicked, evil, murdering
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queen sent a death threat. It’s amazing how an evil woman can scare a man sometimes. He ran
for his life and he got discouraged because he focused on his fear and he asked God to let him
die. In 1 Kings 19:4,
“But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness and came and sat
down under a broom tree
[No, they don’t grow brooms on a broom tree; it’s a particular tree in
that part of the world]
and he prayed that he might die and said, ‘It is enough. Now Lord, take
my life. I am no better than my fathers.’”
He got full of self-pity. He got full of fear. He ran from
the wicked queen who threatened to kill him although he had just faced off with all of the
prophets of Baal and killed them. He had a little pity party. I don’t mean to malign Elijah, he is
one of the great prophets of God. Let’s look at you and me. We cannot afford to have a pity party.
We cannot afford to look at the circumstances around us in our local church and be discouraged
and have a pity party and say, “Nobody loves me. Nobody listens to me. Nobody pays any
attention to me. They all take advantage of me.” Have you ever had one of those? “Woe is poor
me. Everybody’s against me. Look what I did. Look what I’ve done. Nobody appreciates it.” This
is nothing but a case of relative righteousness, comparing yourself to other people, thinking
you’re better than other people because you’ve got it all together and the rest of them don’t.
Elijah had to learn that God had more than 7,000 other faithful folks that had not bowed their
knee to Baal. You are not the only apple on the tree. Get over the pity party, get away from it.
Quit focusing on the problem and look at the solution. The solution is for you to use your
FLOT line problem-solving devices, especially problem-solving device #8, impersonal love
for others.
Another thing Satan will do to destroy the ministry of a local church is he will seek to
lure you into a false doctrine. If he can’t destroy the pastor, he’s going to seek to destroy members
of the congregation. Sometimes members of the congregation have itching ears. They watch
television, they listen to shows and they get itching ears. This is one of the dangers from
listening to too many different pastors. You become the ultimate authority yourself. You
ultimately decide which pastor is right. You use your volition. You choose which one is right and
which one is wrong and you know what? Nine out of ten times you’re going to go with your best
friend’s pastor, the one you like. You are going to trust him and he may or may not be right. You
usually go with the one you feel the closest to or the one you know the best. This is why pastors
normally don’t need to have a lot of personal friends. It’s not a healthy thing for a pastor to do
this because personal friendship has nothing to do with Biblical accuracy. When sound doctrine
is attacked to lure you into some sort of falsehood, it’s usually going to be a doctrine that you’re
not familiar with. It’s going to be something like Dispensations or the Mystery Doctrine of the
Church and somebody is going to come up with something new. It’s going to tickle your ears and
you’re going to say, “Oh, that really sounds good and I trust this person. I know this person
would not mislead me,” right. Here’s what Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior said, “I’m going to
send the Holy Spirit and His job is to lead you into truth” (John 14:26). Now if the Holy Spirit
said, “Okay here’s truth,” and then your friend says, “Oh no, here’s truth,” which one are you
going to believe? You are going to have to turn your back on the Holy Spirit who told you what
truth was to start with and go over here and jump on the bandwagon with your friend who now
573-Satanic-Devices-p3-trannscript.pdf
says he has the truth. It’s a very dangerous thing.
Failure to teach accurate Bible doctrine in
the local church is just as big a nail in the coffin of the destruction of this client nation as
any other threat of immoral degeneracy is.
The moral degeneracy of organized religion that
twists spirituality into some system of works, into some system of legalism, is very dangerous
because it eventually takes salvation and makes it a matter of works. “You can’t be saved if you
drink Coca-Cola. You can’t be saved if you put peanuts in your Coca-Cola. If you want to be
saved and go to heaven brother, you can’t do that and you can’t do this.” If you do that or do this,
they’re not going to like you. It doesn’t take much and before long people are off-base and out in
the tules and believe in some of the goofiest, weird, wild stuff. It starts with leaving the accuracy
of the Bible. It’s saying, “I don’t really think the Bible should be taken literally. There are a lot of
analogies in there and we just shouldn’t take all of that literally.” You need to be under a well-
qualified pastor who will explain what the Bible means and how it applies to your life because if
you don’t, you’re not going to recognize the enemy when he hits you. You won’t recognize the
threat. Let me ask you one simple question. If we get off base, if we get it wrong, if we begin to
misrepresent God, then why would God even keep us around? If we are not an accurate client
nation, if we cannot accurately represent Him, why would He even keep us around? Paul warns
the people at Philippi,
“Beware of the canine clergy, beware of evil workers, beware of the
mutilation!”
(Philippians 3:2). These are the circumcisers who come in and say, “Well, we know
you’ve accepted Christ as your Savior but you really can’t go to heaven until you are
circumcised.” I’m not a doctor, I’m not going to explain this. You should know what this means
but it’s the same as someone saying, “Yeah, we know you have accepted Christ as your Savior
but until you join up, fess up, give it up or whatever, you can’t really go to heaven.” Paul had a
danger warning for these people “Look out.”
Religion has a lot of canine clergy and they will
try to devour you, 2 Corinthians 11:13-15,
“These are false apostles, deceitful workers,
pretending to be apostles of Christ.
And no wonder! For Satan himself transforms himself into
an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also transform themselves into
ministers of righteousness, whose end will be according to their works.”
What does it mean,
“Their end will be according to their works?”
Well, it means they’ll be lost forever because you
don’t get saved by works.
“For by grace are you saved through faith. It is a gift of God and not
of works lest anyone should brag.”
(Ephesians 2:8-9). There are a lot of ways your pastor or any
pastor becomes distracted from studying and teaching God’s Word. He can be distracted by his
family, his children, his wife. If he’s single he can be distracted by romance and involvement
with another person. He could be distracted in business, trying to make a lot of money and trying
to find security in finances. One of my friends who was a well-qualified pastor who is now in
heaven today said these words, “Success in business or another profession such as the military is
very stimulating, very difficult to walk away from in order to prepare for, concentrate on the
ministry and he will never be able to fulfill his destiny in Christ if he can’t concentrate on the
ministry.”
A pastor cannot afford to be distracted and you cannot afford to be discouraged.
Religious intellectual superiority can lead to arrogant assumptions. This is somebody that’s really
573-Satanic-Devices-p3-trannscript.pdf
smart saying, “I’m smarter than you. I am right and you are wrong and let’s debate it, let’s argue
about it.” A waste of time. This is one of the goofiest things on social media today, people getting
on social media, preaching, trying to straighten other folks out. I wish they would stop doing this.
I guess sometimes if they don’t have an audience, they have to get on social media and conjure
up an audience. When you depart from sound, solid, systematic teaching of God’s Word for
another type of learning, your intellect may be stimulated and you immediately feel the need to
straighten other people out with these new-found ideas. Here’s what Paul told Timothy.
“If
anyone teaches otherwise and does not consent to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord
Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which accords with godliness, he is proud, knowing nothing, but
is obsessed with disputes and arguments over words, from which come envy, strife, rivaling, evil
suspicions, useless wranglings of men of corrupt minds and destitute of the truth, who suppose
that godliness is a means of gain. From such, withdraw yourself”
(1 Timothy 6:3-5). In other
words, “Separate from these sorts of people.” Beware of the canine clergy. Why? Because he is a
false teacher who will seduce you. He’s a master of hypocrisy. He will use a phony façade with
you. Romans 16:17-18 tells you,
“I urge you brethren, note those who cause division and
offenses contrary to the doctrine which you learned and avoid them for they do not serve our
Lord Jesus Christ. They serve their own emotions by smooth words and flattering speech,
deceiving the minds of the simple.”
There you go, are you the simple? If so beware. The deceitful
teachers (the religious canine clergy) are going to appeal to your human arrogance. They will
deceive you and they will promote you into something that’s not true.
Listen, stay true to the
faith. Don’t deviate from sound doctrine. Sit under a well-qualified pastor. Stay filled with
the Holy Spirit. Grow in grace and you will effectively re-present Jesus Christ to your
generation.
Anything other than this is going to be a miserable failure. It’s critical that you
understand and believe this. We are in some terrible times in this nation. Listen up and learn.
Until next week, I’m your host Rick Hughes saying thank you for listening to The FLOT Line.
Satanic Devices – Part 3
Transcript of FLOT Line Episode 573 aired on August 21, 2016
Good morning and welcome to The FLOT Line. I’m your host Rick Hughes. For the next few
minutes please stay with me and listen. It will be a few moments of motivation, inspiration,
education all done without any manipulation. This is the way we operate on The FLOT Line. We
simply come on here and give you accurate information, no human speculation. This information
is related to the content of God’s Word. It is a show about the Bible and it’s not a dialogue, it’s a
monologue. It’s just me talking to you but I think if you’ll listen to me I can verify and identify
the plan of God for your life. Then you can decide whether you want to follow this plan, whether
you want to orient and adjust to the plan. This show does not offer useless speculation. We try to
give you accurate information straight out of the Bible. If you have been listening to our show
the last few weeks we have been dealing with satanic distractions, the way that Satan works in
our lives. Since I last was with you I’ve been on the road to St. Louis to speak, then over to
Kansas City, and now I’m back. Sometimes when I get back into the office I think, “Where did I
leave off on that radio show?” We actually have about 24 stations that we broadcast on across the
United States currently. We left you with a challenge from 2 Corinthians 2:11. This challenge
was from Paul to the church at Corinth not to let Satan take advantage of them,
“Not to be
ignorant of his strategy”
or his devices. We are not to be exploited or outwitted by Satan.
Satan
has a strategy and it is to exploit your weaknesses and to outwit your objectives. He does it
with a three-pronged attack: the world, the flesh, and of course himself.
Let me make one
observation for you. There was a comedian named Flip Wilson and he use to say, “The devil
made me do that,” some sort of little comic routine he had.
If we cannot get victory over the
flesh, if we cannot get victory over the lure of the world, why would Satan have to worry
about us?
In other words, if our flesh defeats us or if the world defeats us then Satan already has
us in his hip pocket as far as not being a threat to him. See, this whole thing is about you being a
threat to him. He doesn’t want to go to the Lake of Fire. He wants to use you to get him out of it.
He wants to call you to the witness stand and show your failures so God will go light on him. If
he can somehow or another get you to fail, well then why would he worry about you? By the
way another thing, he’s not omnipresent. Our enemy the devil can’t be in Kansas City and in New
York City at the same time. He’s a created being. He can only be in one place at one time. This is
not like God. God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. God is in Spokane, Washington
and in Miami, Florida at the same time. This is part of the essence of God, so remember this. He
is with you and with me at the same time, but not Satan. When we’re talking about the objectives
of Satan he has a policy that he operates under. We showed you the three-pronged strategy he
uses to get to you and then we went into how he tries to destroy the credibility of the local church
by destroying the credibility of the pastor. I want to show you today how he seeks to discourage
you, as a member of your local congregation, by getting you to focus on the problems in your
church and not the solutions. I want to remind you that churches are made up of people.
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Remember the little thing about your hand when you were a kid and you would put your fingers
together. You would say, “This is the church and this is the steeple, open the door and see all the
people.” Remember teaching this to your children or maybe you learned this?
Churches are
made up of people and people have sin natures.
If there is a pastor in your church, he’s got a
sin nature. If there’s a chairman of the board of deacons in your church, he has a sin nature. If
there’s a choir director and a youth director, they have a sin nature. No one is perfect. We all have
sin natures, you and me included. Where there is a sin nature, there is a possibility for a problem
and there’s a possibility for failure. If you have people, there is going to be sin and there could be
failure, especially if the sin and the failure are in a leadership position. Then it will be all too
obvious to the congregation. Let’s talk about your church. Has there been sin and failure in your
church? If there has been, what did you focus on? Did you focus on the person who failed or did
you focus on the solution for that? It’s inevitable that someone is going to offend someone. It’s
inevitable that someone is going to let someone down. Discouragement always comes in the
form of people or circumstance testing. This is a big thing in the Christian life and this is what
you must remember. God said in 1 Corinthians 10:13,
“God will not allow you to be tested more
than you are able.”
The person in your church you cannot stand, this is a test for you. This is
called a people test and until you pass this test, you are never going to grow spiritually. God has
given you something to pass that test with and if you remember how the FLOT line works, if you
haven’t forgotten, it’s called impersonal love.
You use the problem-solving device of
impersonal love to pass people testing.
You love the loser, the failure, the person who is
creating the problem based on who you are, not who they are. This is exactly what God did for
you. Listen to John 3:16,
“God so loved the world that He gave His uniquely born Son.”
Let’s
see, were you a wonderful person when He loved you? Apart from Christ were you even near His
righteousness when Isaiah 64:6 says,
“All of our righteousnesses are like a filthy rag in God’s
eyes”
yet He still loves you? You were not pretty and He loved you. You can love the weird
obnoxious person that’s driving you crazy if you use the problem-solving device called
impersonal love. If you don’t remember this, you better write to me and let me send you the little
book called
Christian Problem Solving.
We’ll get it right out to you and it will list them for you.
This is how you handle people testing because if you don’t handle it, it will become
discouragement.
Discouragement will keep you from advancing spiritually.
You will be
destroyed spiritually. In other words, until you build this FLOT line in your soul, until you build
this main line of resistance in your soul, you’re not going to advance very far because you are
going to keep running into tests and you are going to keep failing them. Let’s go to Exodus
14:11-12,
“Then they said to Moses
[they being the Jews who were in bondage in Egypt],
’Because there were no graves in Egypt, have you taken us away to die in the wilderness?
[See,
they were now angry with Moses and there were a couple of million of them here men, women,
children and everything. They were confronted with the Red Sea and the Pharaoh was angry,
behind them, coming after them. Now they want to blame it on Moses.]
Why did you bring us up
out of Egypt? Is this not the word that we told you in Egypt when we said, “Let us alone so we
573-Satanic-Devices-p3-trannscript.pdf
can serve the Egyptians?” For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than we
should die in the wilderness.’”
What a cop out.
They were more concerned about security
than freedom and many Americans are like this today.
They’ll take whatever the government
gives them and be slaves rather than be free.
“Moses said to the people, ‘Do not be afraid. Stand
still and watch the salvation of the Lord which He will accomplish for you today. For the
Egyptians that you see today, you will see them again no more. The Lord will fight for you and
you shall hold your peace’”
(Exodus 14:13-14), and He did. Here is the principle. Those folks
wanted to blame their problems on somebody and Moses was the leadership, so now they’re
going to blame Moses for sticking his nose in their business. “We were perfectly happy being
slaves back in Egypt. We were safe being slaves back in Egypt. Yes, they were killing us. Yes,
they were working us to death but we were eating some meals and we were happy and we
weren’t going to die. Now you’ve got us out here and we’re going to die.” They were content to
live in slavery rather than fight for their freedom. I wonder if this is true with the American
generation today. Since these people had no spiritual problem-solving skills, they had had no
Bible teaching, no one had been teaching them the Word, they didn’t understand. The law of
Moses had not even been written yet, they didn’t have any problem-solving skills, Moses was
going to have to teach them something. What he was going to have to teach them is what we call
problem-solving device #3, the faith-rest drill. Why? Because they were going to need it. In
times of a crisis it is inevitable that people will turn on the leader but let me show you something
that most people miss in the Bible. These folks did not have to go with him. They could have
stayed in Egypt. They didn’t have to leave. They chose to go and they went and listen carefully,
they were well financed. You say, “Wait a minute, they were slaves. How could they have been
well financed?” Let me read Exodus 12:35-36 to you.
“Now the children of Israel had done
according to the word of Moses and they had asked from the Egyptians articles of silver, articles
of gold, and clothing, and the Lord had given the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians so
that they granted them whatever they requested. Thus, they plundered the Egyptians.”
They left
rich. They left there with gold, silver, and new clothes. They didn’t leave there broke, poor, and
destitute.
Here’s the truth, fear will neutralize your faith because fear is an equally opposing
force to faith.
If they didn’t learn how to use the faith-rest drill, their fear would have caused
them to panic. If they panicked, then they would start to run, scatter, and they would have been
destroyed. Moses said, “Don’t panic, stand still, be still, shut up, wait, watch what God is about
to do,” and we know the story of how the Red Sea parted and they went across dry. We know
how the Pharaoh chased them and the Pharaoh did not make it across the Red Sea. In 1 Kings
19:1-3, Elijah, the great prophet of God was neutralized by his fear. Once King Ahab told Queen
Jezebel what Elijah had done to the prophets of Baal, she got real angry about this. I don’t know
if you remember what he did to the prophets of Baal on top of Mount Caramel but he executed
them. She sent a messenger to Elijah and this is what she said,
“‘So let the gods do to me and
more also if I do not make your life as the life of one of them tomorrow about this time.’ When he
saw that, he arose and ran for his life.”
Wow, Elijah ran for his life. A wicked, evil, murdering
573-Satanic-Devices-p3-trannscript.pdf
queen sent a death threat. It’s amazing how an evil woman can scare a man sometimes. He ran
for his life and he got discouraged because he focused on his fear and he asked God to let him
die. In 1 Kings 19:4,
“But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness and came and sat
down under a broom tree
[No, they don’t grow brooms on a broom tree; it’s a particular tree in
that part of the world]
and he prayed that he might die and said, ‘It is enough. Now Lord, take
my life. I am no better than my fathers.’”
He got full of self-pity. He got full of fear. He ran from
the wicked queen who threatened to kill him although he had just faced off with all of the
prophets of Baal and killed them. He had a little pity party. I don’t mean to malign Elijah, he is
one of the great prophets of God. Let’s look at you and me. We cannot afford to have a pity party.
We cannot afford to look at the circumstances around us in our local church and be discouraged
and have a pity party and say, “Nobody loves me. Nobody listens to me. Nobody pays any
attention to me. They all take advantage of me.” Have you ever had one of those? “Woe is poor
me. Everybody’s against me. Look what I did. Look what I’ve done. Nobody appreciates it.” This
is nothing but a case of relative righteousness, comparing yourself to other people, thinking
you’re better than other people because you’ve got it all together and the rest of them don’t.
Elijah had to learn that God had more than 7,000 other faithful folks that had not bowed their
knee to Baal. You are not the only apple on the tree. Get over the pity party, get away from it.
Quit focusing on the problem and look at the solution. The solution is for you to use your
FLOT line problem-solving devices, especially problem-solving device #8, impersonal love
for others.
Another thing Satan will do to destroy the ministry of a local church is he will seek to
lure you into a false doctrine. If he can’t destroy the pastor, he’s going to seek to destroy members
of the congregation. Sometimes members of the congregation have itching ears. They watch
television, they listen to shows and they get itching ears. This is one of the dangers from
listening to too many different pastors. You become the ultimate authority yourself. You
ultimately decide which pastor is right. You use your volition. You choose which one is right and
which one is wrong and you know what? Nine out of ten times you’re going to go with your best
friend’s pastor, the one you like. You are going to trust him and he may or may not be right. You
usually go with the one you feel the closest to or the one you know the best. This is why pastors
normally don’t need to have a lot of personal friends. It’s not a healthy thing for a pastor to do
this because personal friendship has nothing to do with Biblical accuracy. When sound doctrine
is attacked to lure you into some sort of falsehood, it’s usually going to be a doctrine that you’re
not familiar with. It’s going to be something like Dispensations or the Mystery Doctrine of the
Church and somebody is going to come up with something new. It’s going to tickle your ears and
you’re going to say, “Oh, that really sounds good and I trust this person. I know this person
would not mislead me,” right. Here’s what Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior said, “I’m going to
send the Holy Spirit and His job is to lead you into truth” (John 14:26). Now if the Holy Spirit
said, “Okay here’s truth,” and then your friend says, “Oh no, here’s truth,” which one are you
going to believe? You are going to have to turn your back on the Holy Spirit who told you what
truth was to start with and go over here and jump on the bandwagon with your friend who now
573-Satanic-Devices-p3-trannscript.pdf
says he has the truth. It’s a very dangerous thing.
Failure to teach accurate Bible doctrine in
the local church is just as big a nail in the coffin of the destruction of this client nation as
any other threat of immoral degeneracy is.
The moral degeneracy of organized religion that
twists spirituality into some system of works, into some system of legalism, is very dangerous
because it eventually takes salvation and makes it a matter of works. “You can’t be saved if you
drink Coca-Cola. You can’t be saved if you put peanuts in your Coca-Cola. If you want to be
saved and go to heaven brother, you can’t do that and you can’t do this.” If you do that or do this,
they’re not going to like you. It doesn’t take much and before long people are off-base and out in
the tules and believe in some of the goofiest, weird, wild stuff. It starts with leaving the accuracy
of the Bible. It’s saying, “I don’t really think the Bible should be taken literally. There are a lot of
analogies in there and we just shouldn’t take all of that literally.” You need to be under a well-
qualified pastor who will explain what the Bible means and how it applies to your life because if
you don’t, you’re not going to recognize the enemy when he hits you. You won’t recognize the
threat. Let me ask you one simple question. If we get off base, if we get it wrong, if we begin to
misrepresent God, then why would God even keep us around? If we are not an accurate client
nation, if we cannot accurately represent Him, why would He even keep us around? Paul warns
the people at Philippi,
“Beware of the canine clergy, beware of evil workers, beware of the
mutilation!”
(Philippians 3:2). These are the circumcisers who come in and say, “Well, we know
you’ve accepted Christ as your Savior but you really can’t go to heaven until you are
circumcised.” I’m not a doctor, I’m not going to explain this. You should know what this means
but it’s the same as someone saying, “Yeah, we know you have accepted Christ as your Savior
but until you join up, fess up, give it up or whatever, you can’t really go to heaven.” Paul had a
danger warning for these people “Look out.”
Religion has a lot of canine clergy and they will
try to devour you, 2 Corinthians 11:13-15,
“These are false apostles, deceitful workers,
pretending to be apostles of Christ.
And no wonder! For Satan himself transforms himself into
an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also transform themselves into
ministers of righteousness, whose end will be according to their works.”
What does it mean,
“Their end will be according to their works?”
Well, it means they’ll be lost forever because you
don’t get saved by works.
“For by grace are you saved through faith. It is a gift of God and not
of works lest anyone should brag.”
(Ephesians 2:8-9). There are a lot of ways your pastor or any
pastor becomes distracted from studying and teaching God’s Word. He can be distracted by his
family, his children, his wife. If he’s single he can be distracted by romance and involvement
with another person. He could be distracted in business, trying to make a lot of money and trying
to find security in finances. One of my friends who was a well-qualified pastor who is now in
heaven today said these words, “Success in business or another profession such as the military is
very stimulating, very difficult to walk away from in order to prepare for, concentrate on the
ministry and he will never be able to fulfill his destiny in Christ if he can’t concentrate on the
ministry.”
A pastor cannot afford to be distracted and you cannot afford to be discouraged.
Religious intellectual superiority can lead to arrogant assumptions. This is somebody that’s really
573-Satanic-Devices-p3-trannscript.pdf
smart saying, “I’m smarter than you. I am right and you are wrong and let’s debate it, let’s argue
about it.” A waste of time. This is one of the goofiest things on social media today, people getting
on social media, preaching, trying to straighten other folks out. I wish they would stop doing this.
I guess sometimes if they don’t have an audience, they have to get on social media and conjure
up an audience. When you depart from sound, solid, systematic teaching of God’s Word for
another type of learning, your intellect may be stimulated and you immediately feel the need to
straighten other people out with these new-found ideas. Here’s what Paul told Timothy.
“If
anyone teaches otherwise and does not consent to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord
Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which accords with godliness, he is proud, knowing nothing, but
is obsessed with disputes and arguments over words, from which come envy, strife, rivaling, evil
suspicions, useless wranglings of men of corrupt minds and destitute of the truth, who suppose
that godliness is a means of gain. From such, withdraw yourself”
(1 Timothy 6:3-5). In other
words, “Separate from these sorts of people.” Beware of the canine clergy. Why? Because he is a
false teacher who will seduce you. He’s a master of hypocrisy. He will use a phony façade with
you. Romans 16:17-18 tells you,
“I urge you brethren, note those who cause division and
offenses contrary to the doctrine which you learned and avoid them for they do not serve our
Lord Jesus Christ. They serve their own emotions by smooth words and flattering speech,
deceiving the minds of the simple.”
There you go, are you the simple? If so beware. The deceitful
teachers (the religious canine clergy) are going to appeal to your human arrogance. They will
deceive you and they will promote you into something that’s not true.
Listen, stay true to the
faith. Don’t deviate from sound doctrine. Sit under a well-qualified pastor. Stay filled with
the Holy Spirit. Grow in grace and you will effectively re-present Jesus Christ to your
generation.
Anything other than this is going to be a miserable failure. It’s critical that you
understand and believe this. We are in some terrible times in this nation. Listen up and learn.
Until next week, I’m your host Rick Hughes saying thank you for listening to The FLOT Line.