THE ‘WORLD’ Influences, Badgers, Teaches, Dominates MAN’S ‘FLESH’

Antichrist Current, Jas 4:4 April 21, 2015

The half brother of Jesus, James, wrote in his epistle by his name: “know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.” James 4:4

The “Flesh” is part of us, we use it in part to connect with the ‘World’ where we engage in negotiations to make deals with it. Unlike THE FLESH, THE WORLD is not part of us but it is always around, interfacing with us by word, suggesting action and reaction to our soul. We walk in the World and learn how to respond to it by our mind and with our body. We press flesh with The World, we joust with it, plead with it, but always our Flesh tries to get along with it because we longingly want to belong in the World and be a part of it. The World engulfs us and in ways subtle and profuse It speaks to us through the five senses which our Flesh intuitively interprets to suit our own personal prejudices and fears. All of us are limited by personal experience and degree of perception, determination to pay attention and capability of learning. Each person acquires a degree of a relationship with the World in relation to the toll that these influences may have brought to bear on that person. Most peoples’ outward and visible circumstance, as well as their personal history in life, can be defined in terms of the relationship their Flesh has had and is having at that time with ‘The World.’

We are both obligated and indebted to The World because it gives us experience with what the philosophers call empirical knowledge. The World is a prime teacher for how the Flesh operates and what should be embraced or avoided. The World is our teacher about how the Flesh works, working on us about how we should fit into the World. It promises to provide us with all our fleshly and earthly needs if we will take heed to its ways and play by its rules. It is always reminding Man that it is his provider and caretaker; that one should never bite the hand that feeds us.

The Antichrist lives in the World and tries to subdue the World, as a hunter might subdue a beast of prey. Antichrist uses the World as an object of Flesh’s lust to make man captive to the devices of sin. Sin’s greatest object and sole purpose is to separate the human soul from God. The human soul is separated from all fleshly beasts by not only higher reason but noble things like integrity, compassion, remorse, forgiveness and repentance. The World tends to seek its own revenge. The Flesh under the influence and domination of the World does not have the nobility that is possible in the soul of Man when it has conceded to the Divine Spirit of Jesus Christ in God. God says of the World…

“Come out from among them and be ye separate and touch not the unclean thing, and I will be your God and you will be my children.” 2 Cor 6:17

If the term had been coined at that time the Bible would have called the World’s gospel, humanism.

For the World peddles its own brand of love, it is quite generic, deluded. It must be approved by Man; lately it has become closely identified with the tyranny of political correctness, the stirrings of loud perverse voices, the drunken thinking of the self intoxicated masses.

The World glorifies the winners and degrades the losers. It glorifies one thing, then touts the opposite depending on which way the wind is blowing at the moment.

Despite God’s open declaration that the World is a transient and false suitor of Man, a place we should avoid being entangled by; the voice of the World insists that it is the real path to happiness. It pressures one to believe that without compliance with its commands and full acquisition of its essential benefits Man’s life is doomed to failure, his happiness out the window. We reach for its brass ring according to the standards set by the World. If one does not belong to the World and play by its rules then we are relegated to a pariah status, with no chance of happiness. Everyone is told they must have a place to belong and belonging begins with compliance to the World’s precepts.

The Bible tells believers to think of themselves as sojourners who do not have a secure and lasting place in the World, nor could they ever have a lasting home in it. Living in Christ they can come to terms with the fact that they have no eternal home in this World. They can realize they do not belong. They must reach out to God’s hand. “Please Oh God, Don’t be long! Come and take us to our heavenly home, a place built not with hammers and saws, but by your hands, Oh Lord.”

The World will persecute and berate anyone who does not want to pay the price of membership to be a citizen of the World. Who can become detached? Even though God says to strive to be separated from the World and come into his ‘Church’ (Ekklesia: Church, meaning, the separated assembled ones). God says this is when He becomes our God and we become His sons and daughters. The World is a prostitute calling us to come live with it in spiritual fornication; which is adultery of the heart and soul. It might not be so, except God has said that we are to come about, turn and be separate and live with Him in the Spirit. Do not cozy up to the World which only seduces and lies, just so it may win us away from the Will of God and that godliness that the World so despises.

The World has its own ways, self devised by many clever disciples through the ages of civilization. They are the Magi and Buddhists, the Libertarians and philosophers, the Greeks and Roman poets, the Imams and the leaders of state and cult leaders who are the movers and shakers of the World Spirit. The World has its own vision of righteousness that does not conform to God’s ideas, nor does the World care to conform to God. The World is the Antichrist’s podium and loves to provide him that pulpit. The World is exactly like the notorious friend who pretends to be a friend, but really has a hidden agenda to use people for his own selfish end. The World wants to own me, dominate me and lead me into the iron grip of the Antichrist, the World will shortly be in his iron grip itself, though it is more than a willing weapon in his hands. The World is the Antichrist’s dais, his stage, his website and mouthpiece and ultimately, his institution, the throne upon which he sits and rules. He uses it as a cudgel to smash in the brains of those who reside in it and they end up witless, under his spell, totally submissive.

It should be no surprise that Revelation 13 symbolically depicts the person of the Antichrist rising out of it, the World depicted as a sea of mankind. The World is his seductress used to lure us into a strangle hold so Man can be kept prisoner ‘til doomsday.