The Devil's Test Run

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Ron Woolsey
2013-05-20
Question: Could it be that Satan is presently conducting a test run for his final and full frontal assault on the moral law of God? Are we witnessing today, throughout the world and every echelon of society, including the church, unprecedented spiritual warfare against the first institution created in Eden, in preparation for the ultimate attack against the second one?
Picture it: day six in the Garden of Eden. The newly created Adam has just been introduced to Eve, created to be “an help meet” for him, an equal partner, but in a supporting role. The word of the Lord states, “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh” (Genesis 2:24).

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it. . . And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day (Genesis 1:27, 28, 31).

Here we see from the beginning God’s plan for man and woman as the marriage institution was created on the sixth day, and that He was very pleased with what He had founded. In this sacred institution God established two very basic principles: patriarchy and heterosexuality, both now under assault in the world and in the church. One important function of this institution of marriage was procreation, filling the earth with children for God, raising them and educating them in harmony with His original plan for all mankind.
After the fall of man, this marriage union became increasingly perverted, primarily due to the focus on self-gratification rather than pleasing the Creator and living in harmony with His ideal plan. Polygamy, bestiality, amalgamation, and homosexuality were a part of the problem when God said of Noah’s generation, “. . .every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” Man’s reasoning: “What difference does it make as long as it is in ‘love’? If it feels good, do it… If it seems right, then go for it. . ., etc.” God’s expressed will was negated.
In the New Testament, Jesus reiterated the original plan for marriage. He echoed Genesis: “a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh” (Matthew 19:5). He also graced a wedding with His presence and performed His first miracle there, giving undisputed sanction to marriage as He Himself had created it in the Garden of Eden, as between one man and one woman.
Throughout the entire Bible we see God’s working through patriarchy with the line of seed being traced through patriarchs, the tribes of Israel being of the sons of Jacob, the Levitical priesthood being established through the sons of Aaron. In the New Testament we are given the 12 apostles, and the bishops and deacons of the Christian church. Husbands are counseled to love their wives, and wives are instructed to submit to their husbands in the Lord.
God’s will regarding heterosexuality is also very plainly spelled out in Leviticus 18 and 20; Romans 1; Jude 7; and elsewhere—while there is no passage of Scripture that even hints at approval of homosexuality.
The very next day after the creation of Adam and Eve, man and woman, husband and wife, Jesus created that very special day meant to be a joy and delight for all mankind—the Sabbath. The Sabbath is meant to be a memorial to creation, a constant reminder of the creative and re-creative power of God, and labeled by God Himself as a sign, seal, mark between Himself and His people that they belong to the Creator God, and that He, the Creator, accepts them as His children (Ezekiel 20:12, 20). In a sense, it is like a spiritual wedding ring, a sign of commitment between the Creator and His bride, the church of true followers of Christ.
This institution as well has been the target of Satan’s attacks for millennia, and with the same reasoning: “What difference does it make as long as I ‘love’ God. . . ?” “Any one day our of seven is good enough,” “If it seems right to me, so what. . . ?” Again, God’s expressed will is negated.
As Seventh-day Adventists, we know the fulfillment of Revelation 13 will culminate in a national Sunday law, followed by a universal Sunday law, designed by Satan himself to force upon the world a breaking of the vow of loyalty on the part of the Bride of Christ against her husband, Jesus Christ. Satan hates the Sabbath and everything it means to Jesus and to His bride. The final test for God’s people, according to the prophecy of Revelation 13 will revolve around worship, the keeping holy of the Sabbath day. An economic sanction followed by a death decree will be legislated against anyone who stands loyal to the Creator God through faithful Sabbath-keeping.
Now, here’s an interesting observation. Could it be that Satan is doing a test run for the Sunday law through the very aggressive global agenda to eradicate “patriarchy and heterosexuality” and to redefine the meaning of marriage? Please hear me out. . .
Do the words of Isaiah come into play here: “Woe unto the wicked! It shall be ill with him: for the reward of his hands shall be given him. As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths” (Isaiah 3:11, 12).
In Luke 17:28-30, Jesus warns that “As it was in the days of Lot. . . thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed.” In other words, the evils that were associated with the local society of Sodom and Gomorrah will be globally present just before the coming of Jesus. We know that one of the major evils was that of homosexuality. The sins of Sodom and Gomorrah included pride, idleness, haughtiness, fornication and going after strange flesh (Ezekiel 16:49, 50; Jude 7).
It is fascinating to me to see the lessening of femininity within the aggressive women’s movement, the lessening of masculinity within the gay movement, and the bold and brazen flaunting of homosexuality throughout our nation and around the world through “Gay Pride.” One former president designated the entire month of June as “Gay and Lesbian Pride Month.” The current president has upped the ante designating the entire month of June as “National LGBT Pride Month” (LGBT: “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender”). Mothers get one day a year. Fathers get one day a year. Presidents Day is one day out of the year. Jesus gets three days a year (Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas). But the entire month of June is designated as a time for national celebration of homosexuality and other sexual perversions! I find this elevation of homosexuality within our national culture to be extremely shocking.
The Gay Agenda in my lifetime has gone through quite a metamorphosis, (actually paralleling and “skirt-tailing” the Women’s Liberation movement to a large extent, both within society and within the church. But that’s another article for another time). First, wanting to just be left alone and tolerated, next acceptance and equal rights were demanded.
With each advance and social achievement, the demand has intensified, as if there is no satisfaction. After acceptance, they campaigned for celebration, then for promotion through the education system and the media. And now beyond promotion they claim privilege as a minority status based upon their claim of having been born gay. There is today a never-ending push for legislation to ensconce homosexuality within all echelons of society, to give themselves every freedom, advantage, and privilege available—all while silencing any expression of opposing opinion, Biblical or otherwise. This is affirmative action on steroids. Through legislation in many parts of the world, any expressed difference of opinion is labeled as hate and can even be prosecuted as a hate crime when presented from the Bible in the pulpit, as happened with a minister in Sweden in recent years. One of God’s Ten Commandments from His moral law has been hijacked and taken over by “political correctness” and “conventional thinking.”
In America, The Employment Non-Discrimination Act of 2009 (ENDA), also referred to as the Gay Bill of Special Rights, is legislation proposed in the United States Congress that would prohibit discrimination in hiring and employment on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity by civilian, nonreligious employers with at least 15 employees. The previous president threatened to veto the measure; the current president supports the bill’s passage.
Now, “In liberal cities across America, there are hundreds of lawsuits by radical homosexuals using local ‘tolerance’ laws to punish business owners, charities and even religious institutions. And the Homosexual Lobby wants to nationalize these dangerous laws by passing the Gay Bill of Special Rights through Congress,” according to Public Advocate’s Eugene Delgaudio. He goes on to state, “. . .We are coming dangerously close to passage of the Gay Bill of Special Rights in Congress and the creation of a superior class of Americans.”
The institution of marriage is under frontal assault as state after state, and nation after nation, are now legislating the redefinition of marriage to include same gender unions. (One report lists 25 states and countries as having legalized gay marriage.)
As the ultimate goal of the women’s liberation movement seems to be the eradication of the difference between man and woman, that of the Gay Agenda is the eradication of marriage altogether. Notice: “Fighting for gay marriage generally involves lying about what we’re going to do with marriage when we get there.” Those words were spoken by journalist Masha Gessen, a radical homosexual activist in an interview in March 2013. “The institution of marriage should not exist. . . . We lie that the institution of marriage is not going to change. That is a lie. [What we want] is not compatible with the institution of marriage.”
Even more surprising is the reality that this Gay Agenda in the world is closely paralleled with a similar Gay Agenda within the church. It is aggressively being advanced in many Christian denominations, even in our own, with petitions, articles, lobbyists, movies, gay clubs on our university campuses, SDA Kinship, sympathetic church members acting on emotion and feeling rather than considering the emotions and feelings of God. This sin issue, too, cost Jesus His life on the cross! We should consider “How must God feel?” Do we care? Actually, He has very clearly expressed His feelings within His word, if we will just accept it.
So, there you have it. The ultimate goal of the archenemy, though not understood by many activists themselves, is the destruction of the institution of marriage and the family unit as God established it to be in the beginning, with its patriarchy and heterosexuality. As women more and more take on the role of men in society and in the priesthood within the home and the church, and homosexuality becomes more and more accepted within both, the role of the man and the image of God alike are skewed, distorted, and diminished. With victory on that front, will Satan then launch his full frontal assault on the second institution created in Eden, the seventh-day Sabbath?
In this global effort to legislate the redefining of the institution of marriage, could it be that Satan is doing a test run? Could it be that he next has in mind the global effort to legislate the redefining of the institution of the Sabbath?
As with the Gay Agenda, The Lord’s Day Alliance and other Sunday activist organizations have been working behind the scenes for many decades “setting the stage,” lobbying congress, and conditioning the world at large to accept the legislation of Sunday worship as a means of turning this nation back to God. Indeed! In recent years I have heard radio sermons in which this sentiment was very strongly and openly being stated that “it is time to legislate our nation back to God.” This legislation would be a redefining of Sabbath from the seventh-day of the week to the first day, just as legislation is now redefining marriage from “one man and one woman” to include two people of the same gender. The methodology is the same: negate God’s explicit directives regarding both institutions, marriage and Sabbath, by redefining through legislation to suit the will of fallen, degenerate man rather than to suit the purposes and design of the Creator.
I truly believe that as Satan succeeds in this assault on marriage, patriarchy and heterosexuality, (and he is…), he will then know that he can also be successful with his all out assault on the fourth commandment, at which point the following word of inspiration comes into play:

The people of the United States have been a favored people; but when they restrict religious liberty, surrender Protestantism, and give countenance to popery, the measure of their guilt will be full, and ‘national apostasy’ will be registered in the books of heaven. The result of this apostasy will be national ruin.

By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near (Maranatha, p. 216).

What does God expect from His people with reference to these issues today? Are we to clothe every word of our opposing views, our Biblical views, in the careful and restricted language of “political correctness”? Must we allow the enemy of souls to dictate our free speech on issues of such major import?
Just a few closing remarks from inspiration:

If every soldier of Christ had done his duty, if every watchman on the walls of Zion had given the trumpet a certain sound, [no wavering on the issues…], the world might ere this have heard the message of warning. But the work is years behind. While men have slept, Satan has stolen a march upon us (Testimonies, vol. 9, p. 29; Christian Service, p. 86).

I am instructed to say to those who edit our denominational papers that they are to print all the matter possible dealing with the affirmative side of Bible truth. They are to give the trumpet a certain sound. Let every article that is printed in the Review and Herald be of a character that will reflect light amid the moral darkness of this world. Every column is to be filled with the precious truth (Counsels to Writers and Editors, p. 105).

The word of the Lord must come to the people. The trumpet must give a certain sound. This is a life-and-death message, and it must not come uncertainly from the watchmen who stand on the walls of Zion (Ibid., p. 169).

God, through Isaiah, urges us: “Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins” (Isaiah 58:10).
May we heralds of the gospel be found faithful at our posts of duty, not wavering, not giving in at the point of political correctness, but giving the warning trumpet a sound of certainty in these perilous times in which we are now living.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: The Lord rescued Ron Woolsey from a life of self-destruction and total degradation as a homosexual 22 years ago. Through much prayer, study of God’s Word, and guidance of the Holy Spirit, he found all the answers to his “gay questions” and walked away from his gay life into his new life in Christ. Now married 21 years, he is the husband of one wife, a father of five children, and the grandfather of five. He serves as pastor in Arkansas and is a speaker for The Narrow Way Ministry.