God will give Antichrist authority to tempt us rigorously and viciously in the realm of our desires. Antichrist will inflame and pervert our desires and then make certain we cannot have what we so fervently desire without breaking God's laws. If we endure to the end, God will give us the desires of our heart.

If we yield to the desire and take the forbidden fruit, Divine judgment will come upon us. Unless we repent speedily, making full restitution as we are able, we certainly will lose our place in God's army. We have not been found faithful and true.

Holiness is a question of marriage and divorce. We must marry only what is found in God. We must divorce all desires not found in God. All that is in God is holy, it is clean. All that is not found in God is unholy, it is unclean. The holy individual is the one who looks to God constantly so no desire is obeyed that is not of the Lord.

The Ten Commandments deal with relationships. It is in the area of relationships that man experiences his greatest joy and his greatest anguish.

Man is unique among God's creatures in that he is made for relationships. The greatest joy anyone can experience is to be in Christ in the Father, and then to have the love of the Father flow through Christ through him toward someone whom the Father is drawing to Himself.

God is love, and the person who dwells in love dwells in God. Man is made for relationships, and the only kind of relationship accepted of God is love. Man can find fulfillment only in love. Love is the end of every aspect of redemption. Love is never a means to an end, it is the end. Of all the elements of God's universe, love is the greatest.

We experience agony as God removes from us the deepest desires of our soul. God does so because He knows our desires in their present inflamed, perverted state can never bring us pure love, pure joy, pure peace. Because God is leading us to a wonderful state of joy and glory He is altering our relationships so they may be restored to us in unblemished, eternal perfection.

God is good, and we must trust in God's goodness if we are to be able to stand during His dealings in the realm of holiness, of desires, of pleasure. The second area of man, the area of the desire of his soul to worship, to experience pleasure, was tested in the Lord Jesus. He responded, "You shall worship the Lord Your God. You shall serve Him only."

One of the most treacherous of the problems (although not the only major problem) of the Christian personality is that of self-seeking, envy, and presumption. It was this spirit that moved Korah (Numbers 16:3) to rebellion against Moses and Aaron. It was envy that drove the high priests and elders of Israel to murder the Lord Jesus.

To be continued.