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
