Now if anything in these pages has had any effect on your understanding of the sovereignty of God in all things, then what lies ahead will be a struggle to understand how the Bible can say “as in Adam all die, so in Christ will all be made alive” and at the same time, teach that “the smoke of their torment ascends up forever and ever” (Rev 14:11). “Lying spirits”, which are nothing more than false doctrines which have set up their abode in us, are loath to leave their dwelling to which they are so accustomed. Lying spirits teach that God is a monster who through either eternal torment or eternal annihilation will destroy most of His creation. Ridding the temple of God of these spirits will take a mighty spiritual struggle. It has always been so for anyone coming out of the Babylon of the apostate people of God. An in- depth investigation of the word translated eternal, eternity, forever, forever and ever, everlasting, etc. will be the next step. What one will discover is that the Greek word behind these five English words, plus about thirteen other words and phrases, including phrases such as ‘world without end’, ‘courses of time’, ‘end of the world’, ‘before the world began’, are ALL translated from the same little Greek word. That word is aion [ Strong’s #165] in its noun form or aionios [ Strong’s #166] in its adjective form.

To this day, it seems incredible that the leaders of every Christian denomination on earth would agree the best translation for the question the disciples asked in Mat 24:3 – “What shall be the sign of thy coming and of the end of the world” should really read “end of the age“. Yet these same leaders would rather condemn most of mankind either to eternal torment or eternal death rather than to acknowledge how little the flesh, with its fabled ‘freedom of choice’ has to do either with salvation or the affairs of this world. They are blinded to the other places in scripture where this same little word is used. To have the blinders removed would be to destroy at least one of their huge idols of the heart.

There are many ‘idols of the heart’ which deceive the masses of humanity. Some have a stronger grip on us that others. The “immortality of the soul”, “eternal torment” or “eternal death”, “salvation by works”, or “no works are needed whatsoever” and thousands of other ‘lying spirits’ are “idols of the heart”. The most ingrained idol of all is that of man’s ‘free will’. To give up this idol amounts to nothing less than casting the beast (Ecc 3:18) out of the temple of God (1Co 3:16). The beast in each of us will not go without a mighty spiritual struggle.

Acknowledging that God really is the creator of the good AND the evil gives the flesh NOTHING to claim lordship over, not even evil. It leaves the flesh feeling desperate. The flesh will not accept this the most completely dramatized and blatantly stated of all doctrines: “That they may know from the rising of the sun and from the west that there is none beside me. I am the Lord and there is none beside me” (Isa 45:6)

So what does that mean? Simply: “I form the light and create darkness, I make peace and create evil: I THE LORD DO ALL THESE THINGS” (Isa 45:7).

We can cling to this idol and argue that God only brings evil on those who choose evil, that Cain chose to be the ‘seed’ of the serpent instead of the ‘seed’ of the woman. Such statements deny that God knew in advance what Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, the serpent and each of us would be before He ever created man, or that He made provision for it all “before the world began” (2Ti 1:9) and Titu1:2). It denies James’ teaching that God knows “what shall be on the morrow” (Jas 4:14). Whether good or evil, circumstances will be what “the Lord wills” (Jas 4:15), because they will ALL be “according to the purpose of Him who worketh ALL THINGS after the counsel of HIS OWN WILL” (Eph 1:11).

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