Because the Laodicean churches exist at such a miserable depth of soulish rebellion, self-centeredness, and fleshly lusts, and the victorious saints through Jesus are ascending to the right hand of the Father, a great gulf will divide the two sets of Christians. The Laodiceans will despise the holy remnant, and the holy remnant will be able to have little fellowship with the Laodiceans.

The Laodiceans, being filled with the spirit of Babylon and the spirit of Antichrist, will join with the governments of the earth in persecuting the true witnesses of Christ. While they are persecuting the true saints, the Laodicean Christians will speak of being witnesses of Christ and of going into all the world to preach the Gospel. So it was with the Pharisees who adhered strictly to the Law and the Prophets and then compassed land and sea to make proselytes. Yet they crucified their own Christ. Man-centered religion always murders the prophets of the Lord.

Every human being has been invited to find his own place in the ranks of mankind on the new earth. The sole duty of each person is to receive the Lord Jesus and through the Lord Jesus to enter the rest of God: that is, into the flowing of Divine wisdom and energy that is bringing into view the new creation.

But there is a problem.

Satan, a cherub, desires that man be in his image, that man find joy through obeying the lusts of Satan, that man reproduce Satan's image, and that Satan's will be done in the creation— especially in the earth.

Also, the world, and the bodily lusts and soulish self-seeking of the believer in Christ, add to his inability to simply enter the rest of God, to allow God to work His will in the earth and in him as an individual.

Satan is a death-giving spirit. He is wicked in personality and behavior. He is horribly grotesque in appearance. Every human being who obeys Satan takes on Satan's image although it may not be obvious in its early stages.

Satan is not a human being and so he cannot find joy in loving relationships. The closest Satan can come to love is lust, perversion, and cannibalism. Also, Satan is filled with hatred, murder, violence, revenge, and spite. He is not a son of God, not a peacemaker.

Satan enters the flesh of willing men and women and seeks joy and release through various physical and emotional excesses.

For example, Satan cannot love a child. He can only harm it in some manner, molest it, or murder it. This is how Satan seeks joy and how his followers seek joy. Satan is incapable of joy. Also, all who follow his desires are incapable of true joy.

Satan cannot love God or any human being. He only can manipulate the bodily and soulish passions in a frenzied, frustrating attempt to gain pleasure and release. The end result is a wretched orgy of perversion, rape, and destruction as the ancient serpent seeks to appease his appetite for the "dust." The person who is filled with Satan cannot love God or any human being. His life is one of frantic seeking for joy, for something he never can attain because he is seeking it in the wrong manner.

To be continued.