Introduction

Did the devil speak the truth in the garden, or did he spin a nonsensical lie? Did Adam “fall for” the serpent’s ideas, or did he know they were a lie, but chose them anyway because of his own hatred of being like God?

What is the essence of the serpent’s lie? God says, “You Are.” The serpent says, “You can be if you try.” God through you says, “I am crucified with Christ.” The serpent says, “You can be crucified with Christ if you try, loser.”

This little book is a sequel to Knowing Jesus as He Is. The purpose of this text is to give the believer in Jesus an understanding of the work of the evil one against the Church of Jesus Christ in this world. Our task, out from the Jesus who lives inside of our hearts, is to set creation free, beginning with all our Christian brethren.

And so we see our brothers and sisters in Christ living and walking inside of the goodness, love, and joy of Salvation, yet knowing in their minds almost none of it.

What is the cause of this terrible disconnect between the Jesus of their hearts whom they know and love and the image of “Christ” which they hold in their intellects, a “Christ” always at war with Jesus alive inside of them?

There is a deadly way of thinking found in certain Christian sects that, beyond all comprehension, has elevated the words of Satan in the garden of Eden into the “Christian” definitions of God, of man, of Christ, and of salvation.

How can this be? Jesus warned us of this very thing, that false ideas would be planted inside His Church after the apostles were gone. Jesus’ explanation was – “An enemy has done this.”

There are Christians who define the Bible by the first words of accusation spoken by Satan, “Did God indeed say?” – that is, as words for the human intellect to be figured out, adhered to, and performed – and not the Bible as the Person of Jesus written upon all the pathways of our hearts.

Yet that desecration of the Word God speaks is just for starters. There are Christians who use the serpent’s definition of “God” as if that definition is the foundation of everything – a God who knows evil right alongside of a knowledge of good. The vile doctrines coming out from such an accusation against our Father have done more harm than all other human actions.

There is a way of thinking found in some Christian sects that imagines that Satan’s definition of the human is the only true definition, that we are NOT the image and likeness of God, that we are not coming out from the good-speaking of Jesus every moment, but rather, that we are our own source, our own ‘god,’ generating our own self-life contrary to Christ.

As hard as it is for us to understand, these ideas and definitions spoken by Satan right from the start hold rule in the minds of many Christians as the “true” definitions of all reality.

We cannot study these things, of course, without continually wrapping our own minds with the knowledge of the Jesus who fills our hearts with His glory and who causes us to be real humans, as we are in weakness – the image and revelation of Father.

You and I are coming out from God’s thoughts concerning us through the good-speaking of Jesus, and we are not and have never been anything else. This Jesus who showed us the love of Father by setting forth His soul for us, for our sakes, is then that same commitment in our hearts now to also set forth our souls for our brothers and sisters. And thus God provides Himself to us as a model of our lives, of loving one another, of humbling ourselves, of carrying all inside our hearts all the way through their confusion and into the joy and knowledge of Father and of Jesus Sent into them.

A careful study of this short text will give the reader many of the tools needed to show to our fellow Christians the true Jesus, every Word God speaks, alive inside their hearts, and now their very and only life.