To avoid the devil’s traps, which are everywhere in these End Times, we need to stay lit! Focus on the light of Christ, and follow that!
Hello Readers, hope all’s well. Time for another End Times post.
In my previous post I wrote about prayer and how it’s what we need to get through this year (or any year), whatever it holds. Today I’m going to talk about another important strategy, taught by Christ Himself, for living well and staying strong in the End Times and any other time for that matter. In the same way that prayer will help us have a good year this year, so will this strategy.
What’s the strategy? Stay lit.
What does that mean? Well, that’s what I’m writing about today.
Keep Your Life Well-Lighted
I mentioned a few posts ago that I read the Gospel of Luke during Advent season, one chapter a day. I do this each December because there are 24 chapters in Luke. Reading one chapter a day from December 1 to 24 helps keep Jesus in my thoughts in the lead-up to Christmas. I go through one more reading of Jesus’ story before celebrating Christmas on December 25. I recommend this yearly practice to everyone.
Anyway, this year I read The Message (MSG) version of the Gospel of Luke. I haven’t read the MSG that much before, so I was reading the MSG Luke for the first time. That was nice, because it felt like reading something new and yet familiar too. The MSG is a unique Bible translation … it uses phrasing and word choices no other version does. Sometimes I’m astounded at what the MSG says, in good ways and bad ways. But I still enjoy the MSG.
Anyway, I came across this passage in Luke 11 that made me think of the topic for today. So here’s Luke 11:33-36, MSG.
(33-36) “[…] Your eye is a lamp, lighting up your whole body. If you live wide-eyed in wonder and belief, your body fills up with light. If you live squinty-eyed in greed and distrust, your body is a dank cellar. Keep your eyes open, your lamp burning, so you don’t get musty and murky. Keep your life as well-lighted as your best-lighted room.”
Luke 11:33-36 (MSG)
It’s that last line that got me thinking. “Keep your life as well-lighted as your best-lighted room.” What great advice, and so Wise. It’s Prudent to follow this advice all the time, but it’s more important than ever in these End Times. There’s so much darkness in the world today that we can fall into. It can lead us to our Spiritual doom in most cases, or just bring our Spirits down. But even bringing our Spirits down isn’t good for us.
There’s so much darkness out there. But if we stay lit, if we keep our lives well-lighted, we can avoid that darkness. We don’t have to walk into the darkness if we stay lit. Most translations of this passage in Luke 11 make it about being careful what you look at. That’s a part of what I’m talking about. But when I talk about staying lit, I mean something more than what we look at. I’m talking about how we live our life, and what we do.
Stay lit! Stay away from the darkness. Let’s talk some more about how to do that.
Stay away from Spiritual Darkness
In Part 63, I wrote about how we must be careful who we hang out with in the End Times. People who are always up to no good will get us involved in their self-destructive sins. That means trouble. People who are non-Christian will rub off on us Spiritually, with the risk of adulterating our beliefs with theirs. This means more than trouble—it means judgment and Spiritual death.
To sum that up in other words: We must be careful what we allow in our life. We must be careful what we consume, and what we engage with. We must be careful to keep our relationships, entertainment, and life as positive and Christian as possible. This is how to stay lit.
In the same way that hanging out with the wrong friends brings sin and trouble into our life, so does engaging with bad Spirituality or demonic entertainment. The best example of stuff like this to avoid is New Age.
There are many Spiritual traps out there, like I’ve said. New Age is a demonic trap cloaked in a guise of benevolent Spirituality. Much of what they teach comes from satanists in the 19th century. Many New Agers practice witchcraft in various forms, knowingly or unknowingly. Many use the Law of Attraction, which is demonic witchcraft (and also foolish—see my post about it HERE). For a good book on New Age, see my book review on The Second Coming of the New Age by Steven Bancarz and Josh Peck.
But don’t get it wrong—just because these beliefs are wrong doesn’t mean they aren’t real. The power behind New Age and that makes the Law of Attraction work is the devil. The devil is very real. Dealing with New Age means dealing with the devil.
In the case of New Age, it’s dealing with the devil through his demonic servants, the principalities of evil with authority over the New Age belief systems. New Agers who engage in the Law of Attraction, for example, are sending their affirmations (prayers) to the Leviathan spirit. That’s a very powerful demon spirit, and one that’s incredibly nasty. If we get Leviathan on us, it’s a hell of a struggle to get it off. Using the Law of Attraction gets Leviathan very strongly in us, because we’re interacting with it and essentially praying to it every day.
I can attest to this myself. I got the Leviathan spirit on me after being involved with a woman who was all about New Age, and seduced me into her false beliefs. I’ve even used the Law of Attraction before, and done other New Age witchcraft. I paid the price for this though. When I understood that I’d been dealing with demonic forces, I turned to Jesus for help. I confessed and repented to Him of my sins of idolatry, witchcraft, and evil. I begged Him to please Save me from these demonic forces infecting my soul.
Jesus did help me, and He freed me from these demons one by one. But to get Leviathan out was a long, brutal, exhausting fight. To finally get it out, I had to radically reform and change all my ways, even my thought patterns. But this is what Jesus wanted of me. As seen in the Book of Job, the LORD takes bad or evil events and turns them to good, for His Glory. Even so, I never want to deal with Leviathan ever again.
The important thing to take away from this story is that any involvement with the wrong Spirituality has serious consequences. Any interaction with dark, occult beliefs like New Age taints our soul. We need to stay lit—we need to stay away from that stuff.
To avoid demonic Spiritual traps meant to claim our soul, we need to keep it Christian in these End Times. Don’t engage in other beliefs or try to mix our Faith with others. I wrote about some dangers of doing this in Part 60 and Part 61.
Jesus is the Truth and the Light. Stay lit! Stay focused on Him and His light! We don’t need anything else, because only Jesus is the Truth. Mixing and matching Spirituality does us no good, it only does grave harm for no reward. We can pick up demons by doing this, like I did, and if we don’t stop this before our LORD returns then we’ll be judged and damned.
Remember there is only one God, and only one mediator between God and man, and that’s Jesus (1 Timothy 2:5). We don’t need anything else. Any supernatural “spirit guides” and whatnot are demons in disguise.
(5) There is one God and one mediator between God and humanity, the human Christ Jesus,
1 Timothy 2:5 (CEB)
Engaging with these demonic things darkens our soul. Our life, our Spiritual life, and our soul will become a dank cellar, like Jesus said in Luke 11, above. These things bring us down. But if we stay lit, if we keep all parts of our life Christian and positive, then we’ll soar. Stay away from anything of the occult or New Age, or other things like that. Stay lit.
Test the Spirit of Entertainment
Much of the entertainment we consume can carry demons too. Movies, TV, music (this is a big one), video games, and more. All these things are influencing us in various ways.
On a more insidious level, much entertainment (and especially music) has subliminal messages in it. For visual media like TV and movies, there can be barely-noticeable, hidden images on the screen. These are satanic things, messages and images of evil and sin.
On a more obvious level, all entertainment tries to influence how we think. What the characters say and do, the tone of the show or movie, these all lead the viewers to have an emotional reaction and think some way about it. What the characters say and do is probably the most important.
If we watch a show where there are criminal main characters, and the show makes them likeable and sympathetic, that influences the viewing audience. The viewers will be on the side of these criminal characters. But this is an encouragement of sin, and portrays sin in a way that makes it look like a good thing. And the audience passively watches it as entertainment. Meanwhile messages like this are making their way into the viewers’ minds and souls.
Most of us won’t be able to catch the subliminal messages and hidden images inserted in music and entertainment. But we can pray, and use our brains to analyze what the message of some piece of entertainment is. We can analyze the lyrics of a song, and think about what it endorses. Does it encourage or glamorize sin? What kind of agenda does a TV show push? Who are the characters on the show, and do they do good things or revel in sins?
God gave us a brain to reason with, and His Word to live by. We can pray for insight on whether something is sinful, but we can also analyze the content, judge it by the Word, and stay away from sinful entertainment.
As for video games, a more interactive form of entertainment, I wrote a post on that topic called Hell Is no Game. I suggest you check out that post, because video games are definitely something to be careful with. Many games have demonic themes or subject matter. It’s not good even to look at anything demonic. Demons are real, and they’re dangerous. We need to take demons seriously. Hell Is no Game.
One thing I said in Hell Is no Game ties back to the idea of staying lit. In that post, I said:
We shouldn’t contemplate or be curious about evil. We need to be careful of what we consume for entertainment, because evil brings our thoughts and our spirits down. Even passively watching these things can darken our souls. Even if we only see it for a second, satanic imagery brings our spirit down.
So we should instead consume entertainment that lifts us up and inspires us. We should look for the light, not the dark.
Entertainment seems harmless, but that’s not always the case. Entertainment can be inspired by the darkness, or promote the message of it. We need to stay away from darkness everywhere it appears! And this includes in our entertainment. We need to stay lit in the End Times … and that extends to being careful what entertainment we consume.
Stay with Christ, Stay away from Evil
Staying lit is staying careful. It’s more than keeping our life as positive as possible—it’s about keeping safe. The devil is always out there on the prowl, trying to devour anyone he can (1 Peter 5:8).
(8) Be clearheaded. Keep alert. Your accuser, the devil, is on the prowl like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.
1 Peter 5:8 (CEB)
He acts through false Spirituality, sinful entertainment, “friends” who tempt us to sins and crimes, or even true friends who are unknowingly being used by the devil to mislead us into one of these traps.
To avoid the devil’s traps, which are everywhere in these End Times, we need to stay lit! Focus on the light of Christ, and follow that! Keep good friends. Hang out with other Christians. Read God’s Word. Consume wholesome entertainment.
If we don’t do this, if we engage with the darkness and interact with it, then our lives will suffer for it. In the worst cases we’ll have demonic oppression. But even in “mild” cases it’s going to bring our Spirit down. Why bother with that? Why suffer that? Stay lit, and keep things Christian, Faithful, and positive. If we keep our life as well-lit as our best-lit room, we will thrive. It’s like Jesus told us in Luke 11.
(33-36) “[…] Your eye is a lamp, lighting up your whole body. If you live wide-eyed in wonder and belief, your body fills up with light. If you live squinty-eyed in greed and distrust, your body is a dank cellar. Keep your eyes open, your lamp burning, so you don’t get musty and murky. Keep your life as well-lighted as your best-lighted room.”
Luke 11:33-36 (MSG)
This is lifesaving advice in the End Times, and excellent advice at all other times. If we follow Jesus’ advice in this new year, 2021, we’re sure to have a better year than if we don’t listen. If we can do what He tells us in Luke 11, we’ll have a healthier life. Especially a healthier Spiritual life.
There’s a lot of darkness out there now. Stay with Christ. Stay away from evil. Stay lit.
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Until next time, be strong and do good!
Your new best friend in Christ,
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