From
The Flip Side:
Satan's Lament
The victory dance was wild and vicious. The whole universe rumbled to
the sound of our drums! Mankind would be easy prey
without the king. The king was dead! All the ancient
prophesies had said he would defeat us but now he was dead, abandoned
and in the grave. What a joke! What a pushover, he didn't
even resist being killed. We humiliated, mutilated and
tortured him. The foolish prophets must have been wrong.
But then He got up. Our drums came to a stop as we all froze
in fear. He was alive again and changed. We watched
carefully, dreading his next move. But we
soon relaxed because all he did was walk around and talk to the same
old people. We would wait and pounce again at the appropriate
time.
But He ascended into heaven before we could corner
him. He was gone from the earth and things went
back to the way they were. We were free to roam and harass
and rule again. No one resisted us. His small band
of followers were huddled together in fear. And you know
fear! We find it irresistible. We smell it and we
lust after it like wolves after fresh blood. We had them
surrounded and were moving in for the kill.
But He came back. We were there ready to attack but a great
and a mighty breathing sound filled the room. Flames like fire rested
on each of his followers. His spirit filled each one of them.
We were appalled! No! He had given each one of them His
authority and His power. The commotion attracted to much
attention. The crowd gathered quickly. People dropped what they were
doing and came running to see what was happening. We couldn't
stop them! It all happened so quickly. Suddenly there was
over 3,000 of them with His authority and His power. Ahhhg! If we would
have known, we would have never killed him. He was just one,
but now there are many. We started looking for a
new strategy!
We called in the sprits of religion, pride, self-righteousness and
selfishness. We let them loose like a pack of wolves chasing
a wounded lamb. We soon had them corralled back under the law
of sin and death. They thought nothing really had
changed. We convinced them they were just another religious
sect. We planned to kill them all anyway, so we
stirred up the self righteous religious leaders. We had an ace in the
hole, a young man named Saul. We had Saul out killing and torturing and
harassing His followers under the protection of the law.
But He came back. He stopped Saul and stole him away from
us. He took Saul to Arabia into the wilderness and protected
and filled him with awful secrete knowledge that had not been told
before. It's dangerous knowledge. Knowledge that has been
hidden from the beginning. (You don't want to know because it
will just get you in trouble) We knew it could spread "His" Spirit
throughout the world. We had to stop it.
We have no defense against this mystery.
Our plan was to obscure it, discredit it or better yet discredit the
messenger. We tried to kill Saul, had him beaten, stoned,
jailed and almost drowned him more than once but God always snatched
him from our grip. So we redoubled our efforts with the
spirits of religion, pride, self-righteousness and
selfishness. There's many of us you know.
By in large, we have won. Very few know about the mystery; the secret
knowledge given to Paul. Oh, occasionally someone will
discover it, but it doesn't take long for us to squelch it.
We have all those religious folks you know.
We're just afraid He might come back again.
Neil
