Scripture reading: Revelation 15:2
Revelation 15:2, “And I saw as it were a sea of glass mingled with fire: and them that had gotten the VICTORY over the beast, and over his image, and over his mark, and over the number of his name, stand on the sea of glass, having the harps of God.”
As we can see in Revelation 15:2, those who had gotten the victory over the four areas of satanic influence were seen standing on the “sea of glass having the harps of God.” This means that by their victory over the most powerful weapons of Satan, they had earned for themselves a place in that realm of transparency where nothing is hid, a city of pure golden glass.
Let us look at the first of the four areas of overcoming mentioned above – victory over the beast:
God made man spirit, soul, and body. The spirit in man was devised of God to lead man back to God. The spirit of man therefore is the connecting link between God and man, and the main difference between man and beast. When man began to depart from God the divine order was broken, and in some cases man became body, soul, and spirit. This happens when man is basically led by his feelings and the natural world around him. Instead of the body and the soul being the servant of the spirit, the spirit is entirely excluded and an evil spirit takes the place so that the man does not reason or think human any more, but diabolical. Of this order of persons are some of the scientists of our time and men who worship the intellect and other things rather than God.
I was once invited to a school to speak to the science class where there presided a teacher who invited ministers to his class to prove how stupid they were to believe God. Upon his first sortie he was knocked cold by the scientific evidence of the existence of God. Science wants proof, and since the Ford car by which we traveled to the school was conclusive proof of a Ford factory somewhere, then his very presence there was conclusive and scientific proof of a higher Being Who made such magnificent symmetry.
The soul of FALLEN MAN with its Mind (intellect), Emotion, Will, and Desire is a beast – or, to be exact, four beasts in one. He who is led by his mind is led by a beastlike fallen nature and cannot please God.
In national and world affairs you will notice the flawed reason of those who do not believe in God. In reasoning with them one gets the feeling of speaking to a demon that has no specific basis of right and wrong.
One who has the victory over the beast therefore, is (a) One who first conquers the beast nature within himself, (b) One who does not submit to the beast nature of the world, and (c) One who does not submit to the beast nature of Satan, the adversary and tempter. One who has the victory over that beast nature cannot divorce his wife and marry another because she disagrees with him, and because others are doing it and it is legal. Many of the preachers are setting this example, but regardless of how many miracles they are having and regardless of their financial success, and regardless of how many millions of people are following them, they are not overcomers of the nature of the beast.
This beast nature will be personified one day in a mighty world leader and all those who have not overcome the beast will submit to him and to Satan.
(Excerpt from The Omega Message, May 1986)
Thought for today: The overcomers, by their victory over the most powerful weapons of Satan, had earned for themselves a place in the realm of transparency where nothing is hid.
Sonlight Devotional 