Big Mouth Nana posted in message #26:
If I wasn't grounded in Christ, you could have had me
with these lies if you were Satan lol!
The lies which were presented in message #25 as being
what Satan could say during the tribulation should be
answered, in case any one of them might be niggling
away at some believer's faith. They were presented to
serve as vaccines, as it were, so that if a believer
is in fact confronted with those lies during the
coming tribulation, his spiritual immune system, his
faith, will have already been prepared to overcome
them (Ephesians 6:16).
First, it was said to believers who were in the
tribulation that God was cruel to promise them a pre-
trib rapture and get all their hopes up, only to pull
the rug out from under them at the last moment. The
truth is that God has never promised believers a pre-
trib rapture. No scripture ever refers to any such
thing.
Second, it was said that God was laughing at the
suffering of the believers in the tribulation, and
Proverbs 1:26 and Job 9:23 were referenced. The truth
is that God doesn't ever laugh at the suffering of
believers (Psalms 116:15); Proverbs 1:26 is addressing
those who have rejected God (Proverbs 1:24-33). And
Job 9:23 is just the wrong opinion of Job during his
great suffering; not everything he says is correct.
For example, he says in Job 19:11 that what was
happening to him was God's wrath against him, when it
wasn't God's wrath at all, but Satan's wrath. During
the coming tribulation, Satan is going to have his
cake and eat it too. Because of the false pre-trib
idea that all of the tribulation is God's wrath,
instead of it mostly being Satan's wrath, Satan will
get to cause a whole world of suffering during the
tribulation and then blame it all on God and say that
God did all of it, and people will believe Satan.
He'll get to present himself as the good guy and God
as the evil tyrant, when it will be Satan doing the
evil, just as it was Satan doing the evil against Job.
Third, it was said that God hates all of humanity.
The truth is that God hates only some of humanity,
the vessels of wrath, those predestined by him to
damnation before they were born (Romans 9:13-22). Now
this will be where the rubber meets the road for many:
can they accept that the Infinite Creator has the
right to do with his infinitesimal creatures (Isaiah
40:15,17) whatsoever he wants (Romans 9:21-22,
Proverbs 16:4, Revelation 4:11), or will they insist
that God is unjust, evil, to predestine people to
damnation before they've done anything at all? To
accept the former shows humility before God; to insist
on the latter shows human, nay, Satanic, pride, for it
attempts to set God's creatures above God himself:
it's saying that infinitesimal humans are more
important than the Infinite God and his will and
pleasure. The truth of double predestination is the
ultimate test of our humility before God. No doubt
Satan will employ that truth during the tribulation as
his ultimate weapon to try to turn people away from
God.
Fourth, it was said that all God wants to do is cause
suffering, all the tribulation suffering. The truth
is that God loves to care for his creatures (Psalms
104:10-18). He only brings suffering (chastening) to
those he loves when they fall into sin and need to
repent (Revelation 3:19). And the suffering which
comes upon those who are already repentant (Acts
14:22, John 16:33, Philippians 1:29) can still work
good things in them, such as patience (Romans 5:3)
and a greater hope in the eternal glory to come
(2 Corinthians 4:17). Suffering is an innate part of
the fallen creation; it is universal (Romans 8:22).
It's not like God himself is actively behind every
instance of suffering. There can simply be natural
disasters. And Satan and evil men cause tremendous
amounts of suffering (e.g. Revelation 2:10, 12:17,
13:7,10, 14:12-13, 20:4b).
Fifth, it was said that God will delight in the
eternal torture of the unsaved. The truth is that
God will not take any pleasure in the unsaved's
suffering per se (cf. Ezekiel 33:11). The only
pleasure he will take in connection with people being
unsaved is that they will provide him an opportunity
to show his wrath and to make his power known (Romans
9:22) forever (Revelation 14:10-11). This again will
be where the rubber meets the road for many: will they
accept that the Holy God has the right to eternally
torture the unsaved as punishment for their free-
willed sins (Romans 6:23, Revelation 21:8, James
1:13-15), or will they claim that they know better
than God himself what is just and what is not just?
If they accept the former, they will show humility
before God, while if they claim the latter they will
be placing themselves above God, making themselves
the judge of God, and so will show the ultimate extent
of their Satanic pride.
Sixth, it was said that God is not all-powerful as he
pretends to be, and that he was fearful when man built
the Tower of Babel; Genesis 11:6 was referenced. The
truth is that God is all powerful (Jeremiah 32:17,27),
and he wasn't fearful for himself at all at the Tower
of Babel; all of mankind together is an infinitesimal
speck, less than nothing compared with the Infinite,
Almighty God (Isaiah 40:15,17). He was fearful only
for what a fallen, united mankind, in its overweening
pride, would end up doing to itself and the planet, or
even to other planets, such as creating some huge
scientific device which would end up blowing the earth
to smithereens, or colonizing Mars and some moons of
Jupiter only to utterly defile them with sin and
pollution.
Seventh, it was said that Satan doesn't hate mankind,
and that his feeding of mankind during the tribulation
will prove his love for mankind. The truth is that
Satan has wanted to murder all of mankind from the
beginning (John 8:44); that's why he deceived Eve into
committing sin (Genesis 3:4), so that all of mankind
would become mortal and die (Romans 5:12). Now his
hope is to drag as much of mankind as possible with
him into the lake of fire (Revelation 20:10,15). He'll
do anything for men in the tribulation, give men
anything they want in the tribulation, so long as he
gets to see them ultimately tortured forever just as
he will be (Matthew 25:41,46). So when he offers men
bread and water and clothing and "love" during the
tribulation, this will be a ruse, nothing but bait to
get men onto the hook of rebellion against God, to
get them to ultimately suffer eternal damnation
(Revelation 14:10-11).
Eighth, and last, it was said that a good God would not
let an innocent little baby starve to an agonizingly
painful death during the tribulation while he sits up
in heaven and does nothing. The truth is that this
life, even if we live to be 100 years old, is nothing
but a nanosecond compared with eternity. And death is
better than life in this world for those who are saved,
and for little babies who have been elected by God to
salvation, for their death will take them into heaven
to be with Jesus (2 Corinthians 5:8); their death will
be no loss, but gain for them, far better than any life
in this fallen world (Philippians 1:21,23). Only those
who wrongly love this world (1 John 2:15) and their
life in it (John 12:25) are horrified by death. Satan
uses the fear of death to keep people in bondage to
himself and to his ways (Hebrews 2:15), to keep their
sights on temporal things instead of on that which is
eternal (2 Corinthians 4:18).