Is God in control today, or Satan?

Response

To begin with, by nature God is in control. Otherwise He would not be God. As Almighty God there is no one, or no thing, that can overrule Him or ‘take control from Him’ or put Him ‘out of control’. Wherefore, by nature He is ultimately ‘in control’.

However, at that same time God makes it evident in His word that He has not created His creation to be an automaton, or a programmed robot type thing, which He has pre-programmed to respond in a certain way, and that He therefore is simply manipulating to do whatever He wants it to do. Instead, God makes it evident that He created His creation to be something far better and far greater than that. He actually created His creation to be something that not only corresponds to Himself as the thinking, acting, and free volitional entity that He is, but He also created His creation to be something that can freely respond to Him on its own, and can do so unto its own benefit in accordance with His stated plan and purpose with it.

For this reason, God not only dealt with both His angelic creation and His earthly creation in the intelligent and informative way that He did when He originally created them, but this is also why Lucifer freely chose to respond negatively to God in the angelic realm and became Satan, and is also why Adam and his wife freely chose to respond negatively to God in the earthly realm and man thereby became a sinner.

Now my reason for stating this is to point out the fact that in view of how God has created His creation to operate, He has not only allowed for the existence of an opposing plan of evil (just like Lucifer constructed when He rebelled against God and became Satan, and then implemented it in the heavenly places and also on the earth) but God has also allowed for His own original plan and purpose to continue on in spite of an opposing plan of evil. Moreover, God has also allowed for His own original plan to take the opposing plan of evil to task, and thereby to allow it to contend with His own plan, for the purpose of putting on display what each plan is made of and what each will amount to.

What I have just said is a very simplistic way of putting things (and by no means is it the least bit comprehensive) but it is the gist of what we need to realize in order to understand the nature of what goes on in the contention between God and Satan’s plan of evil, both in God’s program with Israel as well as in this present dispensation of God’s grace.

Simply and briefly put, Satan is not only allowed to work towards the objectives of his plan of evil and to pursue his hopes of succeeding with them while he contends against God succeeding with His own original plan, but while Satan is allowed to do these things he is also allowed to earn for himself the right to do certain other things that he thinks will be an advantage to him and that will further his aims.

Wherefore, for example, at the point in time when God suspended His program with Israel and brought in this present dispensation of His grace, by what Satan had already succeeded in doing during the outworking of God’s program with Israel he had earned the right to be called “the god of this world”.

Hence during this present dispensation Paul gives him that title by concession, as he does for example in II Corinthians 4. In connection with this, the “course of this world” that Satan had charted for it so long ago not only continues to be in effect, but it also continues to evolve and to get more and more ungodly. However, it does this primarily because the world had come to the point where it was more influenced by (and desired to be more influenced by) the course that Satan had charted for it, rather than wanting to be influenced by God’s original design and purpose for it.

For this cause Satan’s “course of this world” predominates and holds sway in this world. Though this may tend to make it look like he is ‘in control’ of things and not God, such is really not the case. For what has happened (and what is still happening) is in complete accordance with how God has allowed for His creation to operate; just as was previously described. In truth the issue is that man in this world at large is experiencing the ugly fruit of preferring Satan’s “course of this world” over the truth of God and what He is doing. And this will continue to be the situation, and it will only get worse, for as long as God keeps this present dispensation of His grace in effect. Wherefore, all the more God is the one who is ‘in control’, seeing that it is He who determines how long His dispensation of grace will remain in effect.

Keith Blades
Enjoy The Bible Ministries

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