The Devil In The Front Row Of Your Church – Sunday Thought For The Day

One of the absolute worst things we can do in the church is assume, because a person attends every Sunday, sits in the front row and shows some semblance of piety – the person(s) is/are saved.

We cannot afford to fall asleep in the house of the Lord, because as Paul warns us Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.   It’s not that he is really so transformed, but that he appears to be so, thus deceiving those who judge ‘according to the appearance.’

As Barnes notes: He can assume such an aspect as he pleases. He can dissemble and appear to be eminently pious. He is the prince of duplicity as well as of wickedness; and it is the consummation of bad power for an individual to be able to assume any character which he pleases. … Let there be no doubt; he is long practiced in deceitful arts. For six thousand years he has been practicing the art of delusion. And with him it is perfect.

The devil in the front row of the church gives every appearance of being a saint, until they are pressed with the “Truth” and/or the application of scripture in their lives.  They can give what appears as a cursory scriptural responses when necessary, but that should deceive no one, because Satan distorts the Word of God and so does his emissaries, i.e., demons – they do not speak it in truth.

I speak from experience; I’ve witnessed that of which I speak.  They exhibit every exterior appearance of being saved until you scratch the surface.  Two telling identifiers is they will sit amongst Christians, but they will not have any real interaction with true Christians.  The other is they lead their families away from lives committed to Christ while giving the illusion of being faithful Christians.

We must be on guard agains this evil deception at all times, less we be seduced into blindness.  We cannot make nice with the enemy of our souls.  He hates God and he hates us even more, because of the love God has for us and salvation/forgiveness available to us through that love in the form of Jesus Christ.

READ:
Ephesians 5:7-17 KJV
7 Be not ye therefore partakers with them.

8 For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light:

9 (For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth;)

10 Proving what is acceptable unto the Lord.

11 And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.

12 For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret.

13 But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light: for whatsoever doth make manifest is light.

14 Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.

15 See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise,

16 Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.

17 Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is.