An ingenious mode of deception employed by the Adversary nowadays is to associate his own misuse of Scripture with vigorous campaigns against many present prevailing evils, including much that the Word of God itself condemns. Many have assumed mistakenly that Satan is always opposed to good and disposed to evil as if he takes delight in wars, violence, vice, poverty, drugs and disease. While such evils are the fruitage of his own original lie, we should also remember he is the god of this wicked eon (II Cor. 4:4; Gal. 1:4) wherein he has a limited lease of spiritual power, so we may scarcely assume that he enjoys seeing his dominion in peril of falling apart. He will in fact yet succeed, though only for some temporary time, to display a deceiving likeness of "peace and security" (I Thess. 5.3) shortly before he is to be restrained for a thousand years.
Melvin Johnson
