The Daily Word of Righteousness

The Age of Reconciliation, #14

Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time. (Revelation 12:12)

Now the heavens are filled with rejoicing because Satan has been removed. Never again for eternity will Satan be able to dwell in the heaven. His end has come as a heavenly creature. He now is confined to the earth until God assigns one angel to bind Satan with a great chain and cast him into the bottomless pit, shut him up, and set a seal upon him.

There was a foreshadowing of this total spiritual victory when the Lord Jesus sent forth His disciples to cast out devils.

And he said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven. (Luke 10:18)

The age of reconciliation began when the Lord Jesus in anguish of soul proclaimed His unswerving obedience to the Father in the Garden of Gethsemane. Now the triumphant Spirit of Christ has wrought total victory in the warlike remnant of His saints, and they too have pleased God by their total obedience—obedience to the point of death.

The Saints Are Seated at the Right Hand of God in Christ

If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. (Colossians 3:1-3)

When we first come to the Lord Jesus Christ we are raised to the right hand of God—far above all of the nobility of the spirit realm. Our struggle against the rulers and authorities of the heavens is not so we may attain the throne but so we may maintain that which was given to us at the beginning.

Behold, I come quickly: hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown. (Revelation 3:11)

The world, Satan, the lusts of our flesh, our self-will, and sometimes other believers, seek to bring us down from our high position in Christ. "Come down off the wall" they cry to us as they did to Nehemiah. "Come down off the cross." Will we listen to the clamor or will we stay in the place where God called us?

We are in the process of receiving a kingdom that cannot be moved.

Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear: (Hebrews 12:28)

It is absolutely necessary that we center our hopes and affections, our interests and treasures, in the heavens where Christ sits at the right hand of God. If we will do this we cannot be harmed during the coming ages of turmoil and horrors. But if we "live on the earth," so to speak, we will not be able to survive spiritually in the days to come.

To be continued.