Satan's devious designs within the church

Paul warned us to “not be outwitted by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his designs” (2 Corinthians 2:11).

If your back were to the wall, could you name any of Satan’s “designs”? The warning of the apostle suggests that he has them, and that we should not be ignorant. In other words, Satan does not proceed like a haphazard, bumbling idiot but like a maniacal genius.

One application of Satan’s designs was not brought to light until refinements in microbiology. Once we were able to peer into what goes on at the cell level, we were introduced to a universe teeming with life and drama and its own form of demonic warfare, as chilling in its darkly intelligent “design” as the warfare observed in the other strata of reality: the cosmic, the cultural, the church, and the interpersonal.

Does the devil prowl around looking for someone to devour (1 Peter 5:8)? Yes, and on multiple levels. In the church he looks for a weakened church body, then infiltrates it with stealth doctrine until it is eviscerated from the inside out. (See Jesus’ stern warnings in Revelation 2 and 3.) That church has drifted from the Bible into feel-good doctrines with the name of Jesus thinly papered over it, which makes it a sitting duck for the devil to infiltrate it with the modern “doctrines” of homosexuality and abortion. On the inter-personal level, he looks for a woman who has been out of fellowship and the Word, and who watches soaps all afternoon, and sends her a man at the gym to infiltrate her marriage.

The “design” is remarkably similar at the cell level. An AIDS virus enters the body from outside and very purposefully looks for a T-cell (a white blood cell that should be minding the store against types like him) that is vulnerable. It finds an accommodating “receptor” on it and “attaches itself,” “tricking” the cell into thinking it is bringing nourishment, and then “gaining entry” and releasing its payload of destructive genetic information. It splices its RNA artfully into the cell’s own good DNA, and then makes copies of itself, sending them out into the body.

Notice the pattern: The virus, rather than directly killing the good cell, finds the cell useful and infiltrates it for its purposes and for the way it confers legitimacy on its designs. Is this not what is going on with the LGBT agenda in churches? There are still the direct attacks on the church, of course. But far more chilling and sinister is this stealth “design” to use the church to promulgate its own agenda. You can’t get more devious than that.