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O
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ur Father which art
in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth,
as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us
our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And LEAD US NOT INTO
TEMPTATION, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the
power, and the glory, for ever. Amen. (Matt
6:9-13)
Does
The Lord tempt us to sin? NEVER! Does He allow our sinful desires to take us
into the way of temptation? CERTAINLY! He may even make that way accessible to
us, but it is the Devil who tempts and not the Lord.
In
recent days, the Roman Pontiff arrogantly suggested that the wisdom and
understanding of the early church may not have known as well as he how to
translate the Lord’s Prayer. He pointed out that the traditional Greek text of
the New Testament does not transmit the intent of God as well as himself –
supposedly a modern marvel of spiritual and academic enlightenment. He, of
course, is wrong in this case just as he has been in his muddled understanding
of social morality.
The
Lord certainly may cause us to confront temptations that are self-imposed
according to our own wicked desires. Righteousness is attained by causing the
love of God and His Word to grow stronger in our souls than the will to sin. In
reality, we can have no native righteousness anyway – the only righteousness to
which we can truly claim is the IMPUTED righteousness of Christ. If we love God
and His Word, our desires to live according to His Commandments grow stronger
than our will to sin. But the will to sin lies dormant in our souls and may
emerge again if we lend fuel to them. Righteousness is imputed by our taking on
the Will of God as the Sovereign Will of our lives and surrendering the old
will of depravity of the unsaved. That depraved will was never free, but in
bondage to Satan and the world.
Perhaps
Pope Francis will decide that the following powerful passage of Scripture is
likewise wrong in translation: “Let no man deceive you by any means: for that
day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin
be revealed, the son of perdition; Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all
that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the
temple of God, shewing himself that he is God. Remember ye not, that, when I
was yet with you, I told you these things? And now ye know what withholdeth
that he might be revealed in his time. For the mystery of iniquity doth already
work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way.
And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the
spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming: Even
him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and
lying wonders, And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that
perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be
saved. AND FOR THIS CAUSE GOD SHALL SEND THEM STRONG DELUSION delusion, that
they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the
truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” (2
Thess 2:3-12)
It
seems Francis has received an early serving of that ‘strong delusion.’
The
Roman Church has a long history of manipulating the Word of God to suit the
whims of the papacy. One strong example is the altering of the Ten Commandments
to disregard that of making and worshipping graven images. The Roman Church
simply omits that Commandment and divides the last into two parts so that the
omission will not seem so blatant. Even their own official Bible, which is
fairly faithful to the original manuscripts, provide for that omitted
Commandment. Here is the rendering from the official Douay- Rheims Catholic Bible:
“Thou shalt not make to thyself a graven thing, nor the likeness
of any thing that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, nor of those
things that are in the waters under the earth Thou shalt not adore them, nor serve them: I am the Lord thy
God, mighty, jealous, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children,
unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me:”
(Exodus
20:4,5) Do you wonder why this particular Commandment is
not included on the tables of stone of the Roman Catholic Church? Might it be
because they love to pray to stone images of the saints? But a quick glance at
the Ten Commandments in any Roman church will reveal the omission of this one
salient Commandment against idolatry.
At
the beginning of His ministry, our Lord Jesus Christ was driven by the Spirit
into the Wilderness to be tempted of the Devil. “Then was Jesus led up of
the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.” (Matt 4:1)
If I am not mistaken, it was God (the Holy Spirit) that drove Christ into the
Wilderness to be tempted – not by God – but by the Devil! If we place our feet
in the way of temptation,. The Lord will allow the Devil to tempt us. It is
what we deserve and may be the means by which we are drawn to repentance.
Our
Lord Jesus Christ is a great Rock of Refuge. He is also a great Magnet that
draws men to Him. No one comes to Him except the Father sends him. “No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw
him: and I will raise him up at the last day.”
(John 6:44)
Our Lord truly is a great Magnet; but sin is likewise a magnet to draw us away
if we drift too far from the Rock of our Refuge. I am reminded of an Arab fable
that is taken from the One Thousand and One Nights translated by 1850
translation by Burton:
“There is the Arab legend (recounted in One
Thousand and One Nights) that a magnetic mountain could pull all the nails out
of a ship, causing the ship to fall apart and founder. Excerpted from 1850
Burton translation: We slept not that night, and in the morning we found
ourselves much nearer the Loadstone Mountain, whither the waters drave us with
a violent send. When the ships were close under its lea, they opened and the
nails flew out and all the iron in them sought the Magnet Mountain and clove to
it like a network, so that by the end of the day we were all struggling in the
waves round about the mountain. The story passed to Europe and became part of
several epics.” http://www.sciencephoto.com/media/705407/view
It should be
noted that the draw of Christ will hold us in certain security because we
remain in its force field by the power that draws us. But when our bark is not
guided by that power and drifts too close to the Loadstone of Sin, we are
ruined on the sea of life.
Unlike the Roman
Church, the Protestant Church does not place its faith and hope in the hands of
any man but upon the Lord Jesus Christ and His Word! We do not believe man has
the authority to amend the Word of God even if, to him, it seems a bit
inconvenient. I prefer to trust in God rather than any presumptuous tin-horned
saint. I invite two witnesses to the bar: “We ought to obey God rather than
men.” (Acts 5:29) and “It is better
to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man.” (Psalm
118:8)
Here
are the Words of Son of God that was made man and dwelt among us: “And I, if I be
lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.” (John
12:32) “This
is my beloved Son: hear him.” (Luke 9:35)
Let
me see: we have two voices – one of Christ, the other of a pope. Which shall we
hear? You choose!
