“The Lord lift up His countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.
“In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
“Amen.”
Both men were too moved to say anything more. Steve looked up and smiled into the old man’s squinting eyes.
Dr. Engstrom nodded, turned around, found his cane, and walked slowly to the door. There he stopped, twisted his head and shoulders around, and said, “Good-bye, Stephan Pearson.”
“Good-bye, Pastor Engstrom.”
XXXI
At 9:30 a.m. the following morning, Dr. Pederson’s car pulled into the driveway of the Pearson home. With Steve clinging to the physician’s arm, they entered the house through the back door. Steve found it very welcoming. Mary had cleaned and tidied it up in his absence. They made their way through the kitchen into the living room where with the help of the doctor, Steve installed himself in the big reclining chair which Kay had bought for him a few years earlier. Dr. Pederson covered his lower body and legs with a blanket. Then, on a side table to the right, he left two thermos jugs, one full of icy Seven-Up, the other of warm broth from Mary. He also set the telephone on the side table. He placed Steve’s opened briefcase containing Harold’s Bible on the floor to the left of the chair along with a hospital jar with a lid on it in case he had to use it. Mary had thoughtfully placed on the coffee table in front of the loveseat a wooden lap tray mounted on a cushion which Harold must have used in his last weeks. The physician put it on Steve’s lap where it made a comfortable smooth surface for reading or writing or eating.
“Mary said you can phone her at home any time if you need anything. She’ll be here by 5:00 p.m. If you need to take the edge off your pain, you may take as many of these pills as required, with liquid,” he added, setting a small bottle on the side table next to the Seven-Up.
“Thank you, Doctor. I so appreciate your kindness. I think I have everything I need right here for the whole day. Would you please get Harold’s Bible and the writing tablet from my briefcase and set them on my lap tray before you go?”
“Certainly.”
With that, he placed his hand on Steve’s forehead.
“No fever. You should be all right. Have a good day.”
“I’m sure I will. Good-bye, and thanks again.”
As soon as he was by himself, Steve opened the Bible to the second marker. It was inserted at the beginning of the Book of Job. Chapters One, Two, and Three were highlighted in their entirety. Steve read through them very deliberately.
First he read of Job’s blameless character, of his large and happy family, and of his great wealth. Then he read of a dialog between the Lord and Satan in which a wager was made over Job. Satan claimed that Job’s faith was dependent on God’s favoring him with prosperity and good fortune. The Lord gave Satan the power to take away everything except Job’s life. As a result, in a single day Job lost everything—herds, servants, and family. But he did not lose his faith.
In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong.
Next, Steve read about Satan’s response to this failure on his part. He asked for permission to torture Job’s body, certain that this would make him curse God to his face. God gave him that power. “Only spare his life.” Satan immediately went forth and afflicted Job with loathsome sores from head to toe. His wife counseled him to curse God and die, but Job did not sin with his lips.
“This reminds me of something I recall from my Boston days,” Steve said to himself out loud. “Something about Pope Leo XIII falling into a trance just after celebrating Mass and witnessing a dialog between Jesus and Satan in which Satan claimed he could destroy the Church and Jesus gave him a century to try. That, we were told, was why Pope Leo wrote the St. Michael Prayer and commanded it to be prayed by all the faithful at the conclusion of every Mass. How did it go again?…
St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray. And do thou, O Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl throughout the world seeking the ruin of souls.
“I must not have taken that prayer very seriously back then….”
Steve reached for a sip of Seven-Up and went on.
At this point, three of Job’s friends joined forces to come to condole with him and comfort him. His misery was so great that it left them sitting beside him speechless for an entire week.
After this Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth, bemoaning the fact that he hadn’t died in the womb.
In the next pages, Harold’s markings highlighted Job’s friends’ insistence that some great sin had to be at the root of his misfortune, and that the only way for him to get better was to own up to it. This leads Job to protest his innocence with increasing vigor until he issues a challenge to God Himself to make sense of the cruel disasters that have befallen him for no reason, defying all logic. He wavers between his confidence that God will one day exonerate him and his despair at the prospect that it won’t ever happen. It all comes to a head when Job protests his total innocence and his utter perplexity that God has allowed these calamities to befall him. Then along comes a young man who upbraids both Job and his three friends on the basis that God doesn’t have to answer to any of them, but that if He did choose to answer them, it would silence them all.
And then, circled in red ink, these words:
Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind.
Steve read no further. Those words took his breath away….
Whatever the Lord may have gone on to say in His answer, the fact that He actually spoke to Job that He reached out to him at all, was what counted. It meant that Job was not abandoned to a meaningless fate, that there was an answer somewhere deep in the counsels of God! And this was all Job needed to know! It is all anyone needs to know! And it led Job to his final confession:
Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me which I did not know….
I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear,
but now my eye sees thee;
therefore I despise myself,
and repent in dust and ashes.
“O Jesus! That could be me!”
Steve closed the Bible, folded his hands over it, and laid his forehead on his hands, rocking back and forth in silent wonder.
Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind.
Satan’s game was over.
XXXII
It was an hour later, or perhaps two, when Steve woke up, his head still resting on his hands folded over the Bible. He straightened up, rubbed his eyes, and took a few sips of Mary’s broth. Opening Harold’s Bible to the next marker, he noted that he was now in the New Testament. Harold had highlighted the first eleven verses of Chapter Four of Matthew’s Gospel, the account of the devil’s stealthy attempt to co-opt Jesus at the very start of His public ministry. Steve read the passage attentively.
“What was Satan’s strategy here?” he asked himself when he had finished reading. “In a word, to sever Jesus from His human nature so that He could not fulfill His mission. How? By enticing Him to use His power as the Son of God to serve Himself, not the Will of God. That would have put Jesus on Satan’s side. That same strategy had worked with Eve. But now the devil has thrown everything he had at Jesus and failed. And then what?”
Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and ministered to Him.
Steve sat there pondering how easy it would have been for the average person to fall into Satan’s trap. His enticements were perfectly in line with the cravings of fallen human nature: appetite, personal popularity, power—all self-serving. It reminded him of “the good life” as defined by most of the people they had met at Reedville. He sat there shaking his head.
Jesus knew what we needed to be delivered from, and He stuck to His guns. Those angels must have been a welcome sight
when it was all over.
The next marker took him to Matthew sixteen, where only verse twenty-three was highlighted.
But He turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to Me; for you are not on the side of God, but of men.”
Exactly! Apart from Jesus’ influence, direct or indirect, human beings and Satan think alike! They’re on the same side! The Lord’s Prayer is chockfull of stuff that can put us on Jesus’ side in this battle zone, but you have to build your whole life around it. Jesus really means business in the few words of this prayer. They’re our defense against the evil one. Why didn’t I see this sooner?
And Steve’s mind wandered off into a tangle of events and choices that had taken him in the wrong direction over the years.
The next marker reinforced this one. It led him to John 8:44–45.
You are of your father, the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe Me.
So here also Jesus says that the devil and the human race are on the same wavelength, that doing Satan’s will comes naturally to us in our fallen state. I suppose that’s what’s meant by “original sin.” He hooks us only to murder us, using clever lies and deceptions to suck us in. They become our ‘truth,’ and everything Jesus says which really is Truth, we reject because it doesn’t match the devil’s lies. Without God’s help, we’ll choose the murderer over the Life-Giver every time.
The last marker led him to John 14:30–31.
I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming. He has no power over Me; but I do as the Father has commanded Me, so that the world may know that I love the Father.
That is strong language.
A marginal note from Harold cross-referenced I John 5:19.
We know that we are of God, and the whole world is in the power of the evil one.
That is even stronger language, and it sets us up for a lifetime of constant conflict if we are of God.
Another marginal note led him to I John 3:8b.
The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.
That’s the whole reason He came? Uffda!
From there to Luke 10:17–20.
The seventy returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in Your name!” And He said to them, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I have given you authority to tread upon serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing shall hurt you. Nevertheless do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you; but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”
And then straight to John 12:31–32.
“Now is the judgment of this world, now shall the ruler of this world be cast out; and I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself.”
So, even though the devil may win many battles, he has already lost the war. How many times have we heard in our Gospel readings about the demons’ fear of Jesus and His absolute power over them? The demons are even forced to submit to the disciples! The Gospels are filled with Jesus’ confrontation with Satan. And what about Pastor Engstrom’s missionaries?
Harold’s note now led him to Mark 16 where the first half of verse 17 and all of verse 20 were underscored.
“And these signs will accompany those who believe: in My name they will cast out demons….” And they went forth and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by the signs that attended it.
Isn’t that exactly what happened in the early church in Asia Minor, and in Tanganyika in our own time, and who knows where else?
So it seems to me on the basis of the evidence here that Satan and his hosts can control individuals and societies in two ways—by doing everything he can to get people to ignore Jesus and live by their own instincts which are the same as his, and by harassing and possessing and afflicting people directly for the sheer pleasure of torturing them and driving them and their loved ones to despair. Jesus not only exposes and defeats Satan in both of these guises, but He expects us as believers to be doing it too. I would say that the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount give us the “new normal” for life in this sinful world for anyone living by faith under our heavenly Father, delivered from bondage to our infernal father. When I am done following Harold’s trail, I will have to soak up everything I can find in Matthew Chapters 5, 6, and 7. Kay loved it so much, and she lived it.
Steve’s eyes watered up at the memory of Kay sitting with him at the kitchen table. It had always made him happy when she took the lead in those few minutes of quiet devotion and prayer they spent together there each evening.
From Mark 16, Harold took Steve to two verses from Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians (11:13–14).
For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.
“Eve thought she was being enlightened by him, and she plunged into darkness. I did too.”
From there Steve was led straight into Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, Chapter Six, verses ten through seventeen. He recognized the passage instantly. It was Paul’s “Manual for Survival” in the battle for souls on earth between God and the devil. He read it slowly, reflecting on it verse by verse, as he and Kay had often done with similar passages over the years.
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might.
A call to avoid from the outset the disaster of relying on our own strength.
Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.
Without the whole armor of God, we would never be able to stand before the wiles of the devil. He will find any chink in our armor, Paul says, any unprotected spot, and move right in on us. Of course, if we are oblivious to the wiles of the devil, we won’t pay any attention to God’s armor. That explains a lot….
For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.
Uffda…. Paul really lays it on thick. These enemies are nothing to be trifled with. They operate behind the scenes, manipulating “flesh and blood” to serve their treacherous purposes. They raise up a Stalin and a Hitler whose capacity for evil knows no bounds and they turn them into pathetic stooges of Satan. Men like them may act like gods, but Satan is pulling their strings.
Therefore take the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.
“Therefore!” he says. That is, making a correct estimate of the strength of the enemy and of the certainty that he will have his day, take what God is giving you to survive his assaults if you want to find yourself still on your feet at the end of the evil day.
Stand therefore, having girded your loins with truth,
We’ve already seen that this is a basic difference between God and the devil, between the Father of Truth and the father of lies. I can see why God’s truth goes on first, right up against my skin. Everything else builds on that.
and having put on the breastplate of righteousness,
“That would be my commitment to making the Sermon on the Mount my whole way of life.”
and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace;
That means that wherever we go, we will live and spread the gift of peace with God through Jesus in a world which has made its peace with Satan. If we don’t, we’ve already fallen prey to the enemy.
above all taking the shield of faith, with which you can quench all the flaming darts of the evil one.
Unshakable faith in God disarms the devil comple
tely, as we saw in the failed attempts of his flaming darts to kill Jesus spiritually in the wilderness.
And take the helmet of salvation
To protect your head. That’s the helmet that makes victors out of martyrs.
and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
Everything else about God’s armor is there to protect us. The Word of God defeats the enemy, as we also just saw in Jesus’ wilderness temptation by the devil. Faithfulness to God’s Word in a fickle world full of words is the only weapon we have and the only one we need.
From there Harold directed him to 1 Peter 5:8–9.
Be sober, be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experience of suffering is required of your brotherhood throughout the world.
Don’t let your guard down, Peter is saying, because if you do, you haven’t got a chance. The devil will swallow you whole. And he did. More than once. But Jesus kept fishing me back out of his gullet, and He still is. I am sure that the prayers of my angels in Heaven have something to do with this…. Only weeks ago I had all but given up hope.
The marginal note here said: “Now to the ‘Revelation to John.’ Read the marked passages aloud in rapid succession. Then ponder them all together.”
Steve turned to the last book in the Bible. These were the passages marked by Harold:
“Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested, and for ten days you will have tribulation. Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life.” (2:10)
“I know where you dwell, where Satan’s throne is; you hold fast My name and have not denied My faith….” (2:13)
And a great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; she was with child and she cried out in her pangs of birth, in anguish for delivery. And another portent appeared in heaven; behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems upon his heads. His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven, and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, that he might devour the child when she brought it forth; she brought forth a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to His throne, and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, in which to be nourished for one thousand two hundred and sixty days.
A Grain of Wheat Page 41