Page 34 - The Divine Unfolding of God's Plan of Redemption

of government.

Shall we set aside the spiritual order of obedience established by God and set up a

carnal order independent and irrespective of the will of God and suggested by Satan?
Alas and alack, they decided this momentous question in the affirmative! By taking
and eating of the forbidden tree they are not only committed an act of defiance and
disobedience against the Creator-Father but inaugurated a totally new form of

government, a government of the alien will authored by Satan and predicated upon the
lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and pride of life. By accepting his word and
his system in preference to God‟s Word and God‟s order, they handed over the deed of
trust to Satan and enthroned him as the legal ruler. They transferred their allegiance

from the Father of lights to the father of lies.

The words of the Apostle John as set forth in the second chapter of his First
Epistle, verses fifteen to seventeen, are most significant on this connection. He

admonished, “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man
love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” A love for this world-system and
a love for that which pertains to the Father are incompatible and impossible. They are
mutually exclusive one of the other. He went on, “For all that is in the world [or

characterizes this world-system], the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the
pride of life [good for food, pleasant to the eyes, to be desired to make one wise] is not
of the Father, but is of the world.”

We are perfectly sure that when the Apostle here spoke of “the world,” he was not
referring to the inanimate creation or the materials from which the world is made, but
rather to the system of government, the present cosmic order. A house of ill-fame or a
gambling den may be constructed of the finest materials and be of the best

workmanship and externally beautiful. It is the people who have charge of these
buildings and the evil purposes to which they are subverted that lends to them a bad
flavor.

God says that all that is of this world-system, founded upon the lust of the flesh,
the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is unrelated to the Father. Not just “part,”
please note, but all. This all slays the humanistic worldling. He cannot endure it. He is

willing to admit that there may be a few things wrong with the world that need to be
righted and that human nature “makes mistakes” but this sweeping indictment that
God brings against the whole world-system and the utter spiritual deadness of
mankind and the hopeless moral bankruptcy of all nature, he will not accept. We know
no better touchstone by which to determine whether one possess the carnal or spiritual

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