In last week’s THOUGHT I declared that in order for man to live in a perfect world, it would be necessary for him to act perfectly at all times. This then, necessitates perfect thought, which necessitates a perfect standard of right and wrong, and so on. Ultimately, the foundation of a perfect world is whether one believes in the existence of God. The construct of my argument can be illustrated with the following diagram. 
This week I want to consider the things that keep a perfect world from coming to fruition. One might ask, “Why would anyone seek to keep the world from becoming a perfect place in which to live?” The answer to that question is simply that a perfect world is the promise of God which He will one day accomplish. Any enemy of God will then seek to keep God’s promise from coming to fruition because it would also mean that they were overcome and judged with the judgment of God.
As stated before, the foundation of a perfect world is the very existence of God. If the thought of God can be erased from the minds of the world’s population, then no other battleground is necessary. While the enemies of God have had little success in convincing the world that God does not exist, they have had great success in creating “practical atheists.” A practical atheist is a person who, in theory, declares the existence of God, but in the realities of life, lives as if He does not. An enemy of God will seek to remove any and all cognizance of God from the everyday affairs of life. Two particular areas where God is being banned from being recognized are government and education.
The enemy has not lost the war though if the battle for the existence of God is lost. All that is necessary is to confuse the nature and attributes of God. Portray God as someone He is not, and the promise will never be accomplished. The best way to do this is to exaggerate the attributes of God. All of God’s attributes are infinite and perfectly harmonious with all of His other attributes. But exaggerate the attributes of love and justice and you have a God who excuses every sin without consequence or condemns every sinner without possibility of forgiveness. With the attributes of God being confused in the minds of men, then the activity of God becomes incapable of being understood or believed. Why would God provide a means of salvation if He is only a vengeful God or One who is only a forgiving God? Unfortunately, the enemy’s greatest means of fighting this battle is found in religion.
In order to comprehend the activity of God, there must be an accurate revelation from Him as to who He is and what He has and will do. That revelation must also contain a declared will for those who would be followers of Him. Discredit that revelation and the battle is won. And so we hear that the Bible is just one among a number of religious manuals of no greater authority than any of the others. Or make the Bible the writing of man rather than the revelation of God. From there it becomes very easy to insist that the Bible contains errors and is therefore unreliable. But even if this battle is lost by the enemy, he still can win the war by confusing the mind of the reader of it as to what is says. Pull a text out of its context and you can validate or condemn just about anything. Make something that is written to one group of people apply to a different group and confusion exists. For example, a promise of a corporate prosperity was given to the nation of Israel but now it is preached that the promise belongs to individual Christians. When man believes false ideas, an ungodly lifestyle will soon manifest itself.
The battle is constantly being fought on these battlegrounds. While a perfect world is at least millennia away according to Bible prophecy, it will come one day. In order to participate in it though, battles must be won along the way. The atheist will have no place in this perfect world. Those who have corrupted the nature and attributes of God, regardless of how sincerely religious they may be, will also have no part. But those who believe that the Bible is the Word of God and have recognized that they are sinners in need of salvation that was provided in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ and have appropriated that salvation by personal faith in Him will stand with Him who wins the war.
Lord willing, next week Part Three will examine the outcome of these battles.