◄ Christ The Power Of God ►

I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. (2 Corinthians 11:3)

Deception is not something out there that is put upon us willy-nilly, or in spite of ourselves. All deception has its own ground in man. What is that ground? It is the fact that man is now a psychical being. Now if you can get to the bottom of that, if you can apprehend that, you will understand the whole thing. The ground of all this is in thefact that man is a psychical being, and when Satan interferedwith man at the beginning and man consented along the line of hisown soul-life, Satan made man suitable to his own government. Itwas not that he came and set himself up as man ruler andsubjected man by sheer force to his own government. How did he doit? By breaking into that realm in man being where man waslinked with God, and that was in the realm of man spirit.e that is joined to the Lord is one spirit,and manwas in fellowship and communion with God by means of his spirit,not his soul, not his body. These two were under the governmentof his spirit. The enemy, the Deceiver came to man soul,and instead of man reacting by his spirit-fellowship with, andknowledge of, God, he dropped down on to his soul, came out ofhis spirit and reacted in his soul.

What is soul? It is reason, emotion, feeling, desire, and then, of course, choice, or will. And the enemy reasoned through the desires and captured the will by deception. You see what happened when man violated the very organ of his union with God, his spirit.... So the enemy governs man, and the whole of therace now through the nature of the soul-life. What is the basisof deception? It is just that! How do you get a counterfeit HolyGhost operating? By reason of your psychical nature. You canbecome mediumistic in your very psychical nature and open all theavenues of your being to supernatural guidance and come under thepower, the sway, dominion, of deceiving spirits operating in amultitude of ways. You can so suspend your soul and come into astate of utter passivity that you are open to everything to playupon you. You can have your quiet hour in your soul, which is themost perilous hour of your life. That happens by suspending allspiritual activity and becoming utterly passive and opening yourpsychical being, which is a most dangerous thing. God never asks you to become spiritually passive. Waiting upon God is not being spiritually passive. God wants us active in spirit even when waiting on Him in silence.