The Knowledge of God

Perhaps the most important commodity in the entire universe is the knowledge of God. The Bible indicates, and human experience bears witness to the fact, that without the knowledge of God, there can only come disaster. With that knowledge, we possess a Divine insight that helps us deal victoriously with the pressures of life, and enables us to make the most of the many opportunities that come our way.

The knowledge of God is what makes it possible for nations and people to survive. The Bible says in a hundred different ways that apart from that knowledge, desolation inevitably comes to pass.

I’ve had the blessed opportunity on several occasions, to walk upon the sand and the stones of the Middle East. Looking at those apparently endless deserts first hand, and then flying over them for what seemed to be an eternity, I found myself wondering, “Why all the sand? Why all the rubble? Why all the heat?”

Those questions were recently renewed when I viewed a “National Geographic” television special, in which a caravan of people went deep into the sand dunes of the Middle East. After a while, they came upon a rocky area where they began to sweep the sand away. The search revealed an inscription on those rocks, miles and miles from where anybody lived. It told the story of a well-developed civilization; pictures of trees and plants and flowers and fountains and castles and people. There once had been a thrivng society there at that impossible location, but now it is all gone! The explorers looked around, and conjured up suggestions as to why that culture had passed into oblivion.

I’ve developed a growing conviction that once upon a time, these deserts were verdant fields and fountains and palm trees and culture and an advanced civilization. Then something happened, which turned that civilization into desolation!

It is said that oil comes from decomposed vegetable matter. When you look at the topography of Kuwait, and the vast southern deserts of Iran and Iraq, you are hard pressed to find a single living thing there, as far as the eye can see. Yet deep underground lies an ocean of oil, proof that the Middle East once bloomed like a paradise. The Garden of Eden was most probably somewhere near the land of Kuwait. But now, nothing. It is all gone. What happened?

I’ve thought about that many times, and I’m sure you have too. The Bible, which opens our understanding to the knowledge of God, offers a provocative description of the path that leads to desolation:

“Because that, when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves: Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshiped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their err! or which was fitting. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not fitting” (Romans 1:21-28).

Romans 1 goes on to describe the awful, downward steps of degeneracy which will eventually consume every society that rejects the knowledge of God. We need to think about that most precious commodity, the knowledge of God, more intently in this day and age, because inch by inch and hour by hour, that knowledge is slipping away from us, and we dance with forces of destruction.

The Revelation of God

In the beginning, all of mankind had the knowledge of God. Adam had a personal knowledge of God. He walked with God every evening in the cool of the garden. Cain and Abel retained the knowledge of God, but one responded affirmatively to it, and one did not. Nebuchadnezzar, whose arrogance sentenced him to discover the humility of madness, gained the knowledge of God. After that untoward experience in which God straightened him out, Nebuchadnezzar testified, “There’s nobody else that runs the universe, besides God!”

The knowledge of God has been written upon many of the pages of history. Conversely, the absence of that knowledge has been obvious in cultures that have experienced desolation. The knowledge of God is the world’s most precious commodity. One could almost weep, to think of how ignorant people are about the things which really matter—God, His will, His purpose—all of which He’s freely made available to man. God has revealed Himself to man, so that man, believing in Him, might know prosperity and blessing and every other good thing. Without that knowledge, terrible things take place!

The Competing Darkness

If you saw the wreckage of an airplane on the desert floor, you would logically ask, “What happened, to cause it to fall?” You must also ask that about our world today. What has happened to man, that caused him to turn from the knowledge of God? The answer is, that a competing darkness has been pressed upon him, flooding his mind and soul in an attempt to extinguish the knowledge of God.

Let us remember that there was a time in Heaven when an angel by the name of Lucifer rebelled against God. Lucifer had said, “I will take over the universe.” God said, “You will not. You will not become the master of everything.” And so Lucifer was cast out of Heaven, and became Satan. Satan was allowed to take up residence on a planet called Earth. There, he began to subvert mankind. Satan has worked diligently from then until now, seeking to supplant the knowledge of God with his competing darkness. It’s almost as if a conduit from the dreadful soul of Satan was plugged into the heart of mankind. The way the Bible puts it is:

“Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Romans 5:12).

So the world is the scene of a cosmic competition that pits God and the knowledge of truth, against Satan and the darkness he fights to produce in the lives of men through his lies. The Devil has been a liar from the very beginning. In a battle between truth and lies, it makes sense that there would be key elements of truth—light, if you will—that the enemy of truth doesn’t want you to possess. This is one of them! The world in which we live must not be presumed to be “a good place.” It is a place of competition between good and evil, a field of warfare, upon which you and I are called to do battle. With that truth in mind, we are no longer tempted to say, “There are problems in the world, and therefore, there is no God.” Rather, we recognize that the problems in the world are enhanced by Satan, and God allows those problems to continue. In the end, even our problems will be turned around to bring glory to God. Understand life by thinking of this wo! rld as a battlefield, the place of conflict between the light and darkness. To understand that, is to know something the Devil doesn’t want you to know!

The Light of the World

Now, before we despair of the terrible darkness coming against us, let’s remember the simple expression, “The Light of the World.” God saw the competition between good and evil, light and darkness, the knowledge of God being assailed by error, man sinking further and further into sin, and God did something! God sent His Son, so that we wouldn’t have to fight the darkness alone. The Bible says:

“For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given” (Isaiah 9:6).

That event, which took place in Bethlehem nearly 2,000 years ago, was one of the greatest events in the history of mankind. God sent us the Light that would conquer the darkness, when He came to earth in the form of a man. Jesus Christ was the Name of that Man, the Son of the living and true God. Christ said:

“I am the light of the world: he that follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life” (John 8:12).

Our understanding of the knowledge of God expands, then, when we remember that God in His wisdom did not abandon the world to sin. Instead, the Lord Himself came to live in this world. He became the sacrifice for our sins, dying on the cross of Calvary, that we might have life eternal and be freed from the bonds of darkness. Jesus said, “I am the light of the world: he that follows Me shall not walk in darkness.” Every single person who has responded affirmatively to that statement has seen it work out in his own life.

But now, thinking further about the knowledge of God, there’s something else very important that the Devil doesn’t want you to know. Jesus, at the end of His earthly ministry, said something slightly different from “I am the light of the world.” Turning to His disciples, Jesus said, “You are the light of the world” (Matthew 5:14). You are concerned about the knowledge of God ebbing in the world, and you would like it to flow more completely, until the knowledge of Divine reality covers the earth. Then you must remember: you are responsible to bring that to pass! “You are the light of the world.” This was said many times in Scripture. One of the most emphatic, was when the Apostle Paul turned to the Corinthian church and said, “some have not the knowledge of God” (1 Corinthians 15:34). There are people who do not know of Christ, of deliverance from sin! , who have not been able to extricate themselves from the competing darkness. “Some have not the knowledge of God: I speak this to your shame” (1 Corinthians 15:34).

What a devastating remark! It is a shame for people to not have the knowledge of God. It is a shame for believers who have the knowledge of God to occupy themselves in other things, besides bringing the light of the world to a lost mankind. One of the strongest appeals for our lives to be committed, to be light bearers in a world like this, to know and then propagate the knowledge of God, is found in that very statement. “You as Christians,” the Apostle Paul said to the Corinthians, “have been living in nineteen separate sins,” and he names them. He told them they should be ashamed of themselves, because, “While you are playing your little games, the world dies and dies and dies. While you wait, the world slips further into ignorance and darkness.”

By the way, ignorance is a kind of a vacuum that is soon filled by other satanic things. When a person is ignorant, he is vulnerable to the cults. He is vulnerable to the lies of atheism. He is vulnerable to many other kinds of degeneracy. It is the knowledge of God that makes the difference. You must consider yourself as a purveyor of that knowledge. In so doing, you become a threat to the Devil!

The Ascending Apostasy

When we began, we stated that at one time, the whole world possessed the knowledge of God. In failing to respond to that knowledge, the nations of the world became apostate, reprobate, a literal hotbed of lies. As time progressed, they perverted the light that came from the fragments of the knowledge of God which remained, and invented other gods and religions. The points of similarity in the so-called great religions, are simply the last glimmers of light shining through the twisted deception that supplanted the knowledge of God so long ago.

Today, every place in which the knowledge of God has not been regained, is marked by ascending apostasy. The Apostle Paul, talking about the end of the age, said: “that day shall not come, except there come the falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition” (2 Thessalonians 2:3).

The Day of the Lord is a time of judgment spoken of so frequently in the Bible that it is often simply called, “that day.” It begins with a seven year period of time called the Tribulation. A rising tide of apostasy will warn us of the coming of “that day,” and that tide of apostasy is crashing in upon us even now! The Bible indicates that as the end approaches: “some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of demons” (I Timothy 4:1).

When spiritual ignorance sets in, when the knowledge of God comes to a very low ebb, when we no longer teach our children and all others what we can about the knowledge of Jesus Christ, apostasy takes over. That persistent, nagging darkness that always seems to hang on the edge of spiritual reality, begins to flow back in again.

Are we seeing that today? Dear friend, it has become a dreadful characteristic of the church of our time, and one that should cause us to weep. How many people in the world profess to be Christians? Maybe a billion and a half. How many still believe in the teaching of the Word of God? How many still believe that the Scriptures are literally true? How many still believe that there’s a heaven to gain, and a hell to shun? How many believe that Jesus Christ is the only Savior for a lost mankind? Not everybody. I seriously doubt if you could find 10 per cent of the people in the world that claim to be Christians, who still believe the doctrines that are the very essence of Christian faith!

Many times, we see the persistent spread of darkness and ask, “Why is it that life is such a constant struggle?” It is allowed to be so, because you and I are called to be contestants in that great battle between Christ and Satan.

The Triumph of Truth

How will it all end up? I’m happy to announce, that in the end, truth will triumph. This is something the Devil most definitely doesn’t want you to know! The marvelous faith that we hold, built upon the knowledge of God, will be vindicated one day.

How is that going to happen? Well, the book of the Revelation says that Satan will become concerned as we move into that period we call the end of the age, and the Tribulation. He will see that his kingdom needs attention, and he will go forth “having great wrath” (Revelation 12:12). Revelation Chapter 13 tells us that Satan will produce a religion that is the essence, the quintessential reality of apostasy. His vast, apostate, ecumenical, Christ-denying, godless religion—perhaps even retaining the name of Christianity—will spread like cancer across the world. And it will appear to capture everything before it.

Does that mean that the knowledge of God will become extinct? No, because the Bible teaches that at the end of that period of time called the Tribulation, Christ will return in power and great glory. He will return in such overwhelming force, that He will depose the Antichrist—an evil world ruler who will be worshiped as the god of the new world religion. The Antichrist will be hurled into the Lake of Fire. Satan will be captured by an angel and bound in chains before being cast into the bottomless pit. Christ will set up His kingdom, and He will reign over the world for 1,000 remarkable years. The whole world will finally understand what it means to have the knowledge of God in living, real presence before you. The Bible says:

“the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea” (Isaiah 11:9).

No one will have to ask about spiritual reality, because holiness will be universal, according to Zechariah’s prophecy, spreading even unto the ends of the earth.

We believe the great truth, without which the world cannot live. It is the truth of the knowledge of God. Become the kind of person that is inexorable, that cannot be withstood, that has the arguments and the force to make everything fall before the absolute truth of the knowledge of Jesus Christ. The contest is for the knowledge of God, which is the world’s most precious commodity. Please, commit yourself to know it, and then be a part of its distribution across the world of our time.

From the writings of Dave Breese

What The Devil Doesn't Want You to Know! Part 2

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