Over the last few days, we have been talking about the unseen realm intersecting with the Earth. This spiritual realm is the venue of a battle between God's angelic beings and Satan's evil angels and demons. The struggle is for supremacy over the Earth and each person born into the world. There is a war going on for your very soul. Satan wants to keep people ignorant of the battle, for his work goes on unhindered if a man is unaware of his schemes. He, therefore, seeks to keep you oblivious to the fact that there is a spiritual realm, heaven, and hell.
The English author, C.S. Lewis, wrote a fictional book entitled "The Screwtape Letters." It focuses on Christian theological issues, primarily with temptation and resistance to evil. In this imaginative book, Lewis writes in the first person as a senior demon named Screwtape, one given the task of training a junior demon named Wormwood to keep men and women from finding Christ. If they come to Christ, then the trainee demon's job is to hinder the Christian's ability to make any difference to affect Satan's kingdom. In the preface of his book, Lewis explains his thesis, saying:
"There are two equal and opposite errors into which people can fall about the demons. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist and a magician with the same delight."[1]
On page thirty-one, Uncle Screwtape writes to the junior demon Wormwood:
"I wonder you should ask me whether it is essential to keep the patient [the person that the demon is seeking to destroy] in ignorance of your own existence. That question, at least for the present phase of the struggle, has been answered by the high command. Our policy, for the moment, is to conceal ourselves. Of course, this has not always been so. We are faced with a cruel dilemma. When people disbelieve in our existence, we lose all the pleasing results of direct terrorism, and we make no magicians.
On the other hand, when they believe in us, we cannot make them materialists and skeptics…I do not think that you will have much difficulty in keeping the patient in the dark. The fact that "devils" are predominantly comic figures in the modern imagination will help you. If any faint suspicion of your existence begins to arise in his mind, suggest to him a picture of something in red tights, and persuade him that since he cannot believe in that (it is an old textbook method of confusing them), he, therefore, cannot believe in you."[2]
Satan seeks to keep unbelievers in Christ from hearing and ultimately responding to God's Word by believing the gospel. For those of us who are Christians, Satan's strategy is to keep us unaware of God's power and authority in us to overcome all the power of the enemy (Mark 16:17-18). The Scriptures calls Satan the God of this age:
The God of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God (2 Corinthians 4:4).
The enemy has many strategies to keep people blinded to the gospel and God's power in believers to impact this world. Our actions show whom we choose to listen and obey, Satan or the Lord. If we continue to listen to the enemy's voice, with his doubts and unbelief, we will not live fruitful lives for God on this Earth. Keith Thomas
This meditation is a shortened version of the more in-depth study: The Unseen Realm.
[1] The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, Published by HarperSanFrancisco, Zondervan Publishing House. Page IX
[2] Ibid, Page 31.