Deliverance from Evil
Editor’s Note: Sometimes in life we journey along a path so fraught with obstacles that we want to turn back to safer ground. But, time doesn’t let us turn back, we have to keep trudging onward. There is the wonderful light at the end of the tunnel, of course, but in the meantime, there is the seemingly unending darkness as evil extends its tentacles into every aspect of our lives. As we pause in this month of October, 2013, we can clearly see how True Israel’s fall from God’s Law has brought judgment to our very doors. Hurricanes, fires, floods, earthquakes, tornados, pestilence, setbacks in war and loss of freedoms are only some of the 2012/2013 disasters serving as punishment for an unrepentant Israel. We need a deliverance from evil. With this in mind, we have reached back in time for a superb article by R. Llewlyn Williams, the former president of British Israel World Federation, London, England.
In these days of anxiety and suspense, when discord and strife are rampant as never before, it becomes increasingly apparent that the affairs of this world are being misdirected by an unseen agency of great malignity and power.
Wherever we turn, we are confronted by wrangling and contention of every kind. Industrial disputes, bloody revolutions, war, and preparations for war keep all humanity in a fever of apprehension and unrest.
So great is man’s folly that he fails to realize that all this disorder is part of a relentless campaign, the sole object of which is to ensure the degradation, the enslavement, and ultimately the extermination of all God’s great human family.
We are indeed witnessing some of the last stages of a conflict for the bodies and souls of men, which has been raging since the dawn of time between Light and Darkness, between Good and Evil, between Life and Death, between Jesus, the Captain of our Salvation, and Satan, the arch-enemy of all mankind.
Behind all his glittering temptations and specious promises, Satan has nothing to offer except darkness, degradation and death; whereas Jesus offers freedom from disease, freedom from want, freedom from fear, more abundant life in this world, and everlasting life in the world to come.
Between these two masters, man is free to choose as he will. He may join the forces of good or the forces of evil; he may serve under the Saviour or under the Destroyer.
From this choice there is no way of escape by any neutral, impartial or middle course. He cannot serve both masters; and he cannot evade the issue by refusing to serve either. If he has not enlisted under the banner of the living Christ, then, wittingly or unwittingly, he is assisting Satan and all the fiends of Hell to accomplish his destruction.
If this is true of individuals, it is also true of those collections of individuals which are called nations;- and they, too, must face the challenge which has been issued once and for all by the incarnate Son of God : `No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other.’ ‘Ye cannot serve God and mammon.’ `He that is not with Me is against Me; and he that gathereth not with Me scattereth.’ `The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.’
It has always been Israel’s Divinely-appointed task to make God’s ways known upon earth, and to demonstrate His saving health to all nations. Now, at this very time when the fate of all humanity hangs so precariously in the balance, that task is more urgent, more vital and more imperative than ever before.
While there is yet time, let God’s Servant Nation return to her Redeemer in truest penitence. With passionate sincerity let her stand up before all the nations of the world, and insist that there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby the human race can be saved from overwhelming disaster, except the triumphant name of the everlasting King of kings and Lord of lords.
Peace, in all its fulness, can only return to the earth when the Prince of Peace Himself takes the government of this distracted world upon His own shoulders, to order it, and to establish it, with judgment and with justice, from that time forth even for ever. Then indeed will the daily prayer of every Christian, ‘Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth’, become at last a glorious reality.
While, therefore, we continue to pray, ‘Deliver us from evil’, we shall await the issue in quietness and confidence. Even in the darkest hour of adversity and testing we shall lift up our hearts as we remember the last recorded promise of the ascended Christ, ‘Behold I come quickly’; and, by the grace of God, we shall answer with all the steadfast faith of the Apostle John, ‘Amen. Even so come, Lord Jesus.’