Do you like Spooky?

 

2 Peter 2:4-10

Do you like spooky?   I’m not into spooky, and I believe it goes back to sitting in the living room of our framed, three-bedroom house on Friday night, right before bedtime, when my brother and I would listen to the “Shadow.”   It always began with "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? “The Shadow knows!” and all I remember is my imagination when wild.  I could see in my minds eye this darkened shape watching me, and it knew if I was good or bad, and it  caught the bad guys and punished them. On September 26, 1937, The Shadow radio drama officially premiered with the story "The Death house Rescue,” in which the character had "the power to cloud men's minds so they cannot see him."  One of the lines used each an every show was; "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!" These words were accompanied by an ominous laugh and a musical theme, Camille Saint-Saens’ Le Rouet d'Omphale ("Omphale's Spinning Wheel", composed in 1872). At the end of each episode, The Shadow reminded listeners, "The weed of crime bears bitter fruit. Crime does not pay.... The Shadow knows!" (Wikipedia)

And people wonder why I’m not normal, my dear older brother who shared a room with me loved to make shadows with his hands or ask me if I heard that noise, and I did, I saw all kinds of evil things.  But what a great question, "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?”  At that moment in time as a small child, I believed the Shadow knows, but I’m no longer working out of my imagination, but have come to understand that Creator God who spoke the world and everything that is into being, the God who is unseen knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men.  With that said, and to bring some clarity to 2 Peter 2:4-10, we need to look at Revelation 12:7-9. “Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon.  And the dragon and his angels fought back, but he was defeated and there was no longer any place for them in heaven.  And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.” God has not chosen to reveal the time line of these events, but the book of Jude verse 6, does shed more light on the event.  “And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day.”  So we can ascertain from this that some of the angels who had position of authority were not cast down to the earth, but held in total darkness awaiting judgment. 

As we look at 2 Peter 2:4, “For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment;” and Peter goes on to tell about the flood that God brought on the world and how He turned Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes, but it is verse 9 and 10 that should bring fear into the hearts of men.  Peter is making reference to Lot, “then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trails, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment, and especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling passion and despise authority.”  It is of the utmost importance to share these words from Jesus, hell was not designed for people, people choose to go there, see Matthew 25: 41, “Then he will say to those on his left ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared fro the devil and his angels.”  Why would anyone choose hell, they bought a lie, and this verse spells out who is the author of the lie, “that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world.”

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice