I write a lot about darkness and light. This is because of the spiritual understanding provided by my faith and the Holy Spirit. From spending time in the Word of God. From living life on this earth. Everything is either of the darkness or of the light. There are no gray areas, gray zones.

Don’t misunderstand. This isn’t a Satan is found under every rock, around every corner thing. Not where a person gets off blaming the devil for all their failures, sin, actions taken or not taken, words spoken or not spoken. As well if they have an auto accident, are late, angry, burn dinner, so on. Too many people are either blaming God or blaming Satan and not taking responsibility, being accountable for their choices, their actions, what lies in their hearts. In every matter.

The darkness within is the evil part of human nature. The personal rebellion, the warring flesh seeking its own way. This evil, this willfulness to disobey and rebel was not brought about because the devil picked the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge and forced it down the throats of Adam and Eve, thus bringing sin into the world. In that instance altering world history from that of perfection and Paradise to a fallen and corrupted world. No, he merely spoke cunningly, seductively to them. It was in their human nature to be selfish. To rebel. Because God created man and woman with the ability to think and make choices for themselves. He did not want puppets or robots or pets. He created man and woman to have communion with His creation! God visited and spoke to Adam and Eve. It was of their own volition, what resided in their hearts to disobey and rebel. Satan merely put the idea in their heads. He lied to them. But it was they who committed the act of disobedience.

Spiritual darkness is everywhere. It is possible to be found in every human place. Within everyone. Within every professed Christian. For there is a constant spiritual war taking place especially within true believers. Satan attacks those who he does not already have enslaved. Those he has enslaved he spends the least amount of time with.

What’s this? I just wrote not many words ago Satan is not found under every rock, around every corner and now I’m writing Satan attacks true believers because they are not enslaved to him as those walking dead in the world are?

Yes, and those, many professing to be “Christians” fall prey to the same willfulness, the same disobedience, the same selfishness, the same listening to lies and then acting upon those rather than the truth just as Adam and Eve did. This is happening in the professed body of Christ daily. More and more.

Spiritual darkness.

An escalating spiritual war.

The increase in false teachers, unsound doctrines, and throwing open the doors to permit every evil spiritual darkness to enter. First within an individual. Then a few. Then a church. Then it spreads outwards as the deadly cancer it is.

Mr. Vitagliano in his article below mentions “fixing America,” and “revival.”

Can the once-great nation founded on Christian principles and acknowledged being brought about by Divine Providence repent? Reverse its evil and choking darkness, it’s rebellion and turning from God as it has? To experience what it once was as a result?

Yes, surely. All things are possible with, by, and through God. If we the people would truly, sincerely repent. If there were individual revival within people. If our churches swept out and no longer allowed in all the sin, abominations, unsound teachings, unrighteousness, and spiritual darkness now permitted. Yes, that can happen.

Will it?

Personally, from where I look out and spend time listening, watching? I am discouraged by this. Not because of anything of God — but due to the nature, words, actions, lack of actions — the ways, practices, deeds, decayed and rotten fruits yielded these past many years year in and year out with further erosion, further rot, increasing darkness, and a massive turning from God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and the Bible.

As things are now I don’t see any national revival happening.

I pray I am wrong. I pray there is true repentance among tens of millions of people. Sincere. True. And this choking, deadly spiritual darkness weighing down upon our land lessens greatly.

But it is only going to happen if and when each individual places their complete trust and faith in the Lord. Believes every word within the Word of God. Truly repents. Truly is renewed of mind and spirit. Truly turns back to God humbly, sincerely.

Meantime the spiritual darkness pushes, bellows, screams, suffocates, oppresses, represses, stagnates, pollutes, dilutes, confuses, increases mayhem, chaos, rebellion, lies, and all those things along that path.

While the remnant of godly folks, the righteous ones in the eyes of God due to their faith and obedience to His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ if they are seen and heard? It’s all politics. Nationalism. Attempting to create the kingdom of God here on earth themselves. Vainly, foolishly imaging it’s all about America. Rather than all about God. All about Jesus. All about the Holy Spirit. All about the Holy Bible. All about eternity and whether a person — each person — has built their life upon the Rock rather than their job, their retirement accounts, so on.

Where are those that spend time in prayer not amiss? Where are those who spend time studying the whole Word of God faithfully asking for ever-increasing wisdom? Where are the lights unto the world? The salt of the earth? If a pastor, a church leader, partaking in a church? Probably in a meeting. Probably organizing some activity, attempting to be “creative” so they can appeal to young people, attempting to disguise the gospel in games, activities, play, and distractions [rather than taking the plain, clear, direct gospel to them — why isn’t the Word of God enough Mr. Pastor, Preacherman, Mr. Church Leader man? Why must you bow to the world and appease so much?], or what is so very important to them — trying to increase revenues! If a layperson? Probably watching TV. Putting more time in work and treading water paying bills, buying things, so on than in spiritual matters.

So how’s it going to happen folks?

Let’s see the lights of the world illuminating into the darkness and shining in this land. Enough of all the words, all the talk, all the patting each other on the back. Enough of the believing we’re being better than so and so, or that group, or I’m glad I’m not in THAT denomination, my, my…have we learned a lot in our spiritual walk haven’t we?

Does anyone pause to hear the voice of Jesus in their hearts? Pause to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit in their hearts? Pause to allow God to speak to them through His Word? It’s all there folks! It’s all there in the Scriptures.

I hear people say, I wish I knew what God wanted, what God’s will really is in my life.

Hey, it’s all readily available in this land screaming for revival. It’s called the Holy Bible! The God-breathed will of God is given to people to know what God wants, what a person ought to be doing, reading, listening to, living their lives.

It isn’t hard people.

It really isn’t.

But we permit spiritual darkness in. Doing not much, or not doing what we need to in order to remove it, push it back, extinguish it as best we are able while still in this sinful flesh always warring with the spirit.

Do not surrender to the flesh. Do not surrender to the spiritual darkness. Overcome it. Through Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, through a vibrant, bold, large, huge, perpetual, faithful prayer life. Through cherishing, reading, studying, meditating upon believing, and then living the Word of God!

And maybe the light will then go on and the way out of the spiritual darkness can be found.

He’s called Jesus.

It’s called the Holy Bible.

Just turn the switch on within a heart and see what happens!

And yeah, everything is about the spiritual war going on. Everything is either from the Light or the darkness. There is no shading, no various shades of gray no matter what the world may say, no matter what a person might want to believe.

But that flat tire? Being lazy and late? That poor grade? That terrible work ethic? That desire to cheat on your husband, your wife, your taxes? To abuse your children? To lie? That’s within you. You are taking the various actions. It’s upon each of us to be accountable, responsible. And it’s easier when instead of listening to the world, and Satan’s domain, Satan’s people? We tune out cunning, seductive selfish evil and we tune in the Word of God.

Try it and see what happens.

Ken Pullen

Thursday, January 27th, 2022

ACP — A Crooked Path

Spiritual Darkness

Wednesday, January 26, 2022

By Ed Vitagliano

Reprinted from American Family Association

Spiritual Darkness How It Operates; How It’s Cured

Our nation is clearly deteriorating as moral darkness threatens to overwhelm diminishing spiritual protections. Moreover, nowhere is safe from this spiritual darkness; it’s no longer solely inhabiting larger cities; it’s next door in small town and rural America.

The Bible explains how this happens, because as it turns out, wickedness has a nature: There is a pattern manifested by evil when it takes root and then spreads.

Darkness is drawn to darkness

It says in James 3:16 that “where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every evil thing.” We have in this verse the formation of an interesting principle regarding sin: Spiritual darkness draws more darkness to itself.

James says sin produces and/or attracts two things. The first is “disorder,” a word that sometimes refers to political unrest like revolts, rebellions, and riots (Luke 21:9; 2 Corinthians 6:5); sometimes it simply refers to spiritual confusion (1 Corinthians 14:33). James is saying sin brings chaos and turmoil into an individual’s life.

However, jealousy and selfish ambition don’t just produce and attract more jealousy and selfish ambition. They don’t just bring more of the same. According to James, these sins draw “every evil thing.” When a person or a church fails to deal with two sins, greater darkness is sure to follow.

This is true for the individual life as well as the collective life – i.e., wherever individuals create a collective existence. Therefore, James isn’t just issuing a warning for the individual Christian but also the Christian marriage, family, church, and the community. Wherever sin exists, it draws every evil thing.

A stubborn demon

That the power of darkness grows and expands in a person’s life is highlighted in a terrifying way when Jesus teaches on demons. In Matthew 12:43-45, Jesus begins by talking about the removal of darkness from a man’s life, “when the unclean spirit goes out of a man.”

We aren’t told why the demon left, only that it did. Perhaps the demon was driven out by exorcism, or perhaps this man closed some spiritual door by which demonic influence had entered in the first place. Once the demon left the life of this (hypothetical) man, his life begins to return to some sense of normalcy. This is represented by the metaphor of a house that is now “swept” and “put in order” (vs. 44).

From the outside, everything looks OK, but as we quickly learn, looks can be deceiving. The man’s life is outwardly orderly but devoid of true godliness. This is similar to Jesus’s rebuke to the Pharisees – they are “whitewashed tombs” that are actually filled with death and decay (Matthew 23:27-28).

Since demons apparently do not like to wander, this one returns to the original place from which it was expelled or banished. Darkness returns because it is a stubborn thing.

Deepening darkness

In Jesus’s teaching, the return of the demon brings an exponential increase of evil: it is not just one plus one – i.e., one demon bringing one more; it is one demon bringing seven more (a quantitative increase), and those demons are “more wicked than itself” (a qualitative increase).

There is a deepening of darkness as the demons re-enter the man’s life “and live there” (vs. 45). How horrifying! Was there darkness before? It is now much, much worse. This is what sin always does in the life of a sinner.

Paul teaches the same thing elsewhere. He warns, “But evil men and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived” (2 Timothy 3:13). Why do evil men go from bad to worse? Why don’t they go from bad to better? Because once a person willingly steps on the path of sin, evil reinforcements are coming. To Paul’s point, evil men deceive others and are also deceived even more; it is a reinforcing loop of wickedness.

The same terrifying portrait is painted in Romans 1:18-23, where culturally the idolatry of a people leads to a downward death spiral – a further darkening of the mind, producing increased rebellion, leading to depraved minds and depraved behavior.

This is why Jesus states that, when the demon returns with more and worse demons, “the last state of that man becomes worse than the first” (Matthew 12:45).

A generation engulfed by darkness

In stunning fashion, Jesus concludes His teaching by applying this principle to corporate existence as well: “That is the way it will also be with this evil generation.”

In other words, what is true of the individual is true of the community – for what is a community but a collection of individuals? Therefore, a house that is “swept” and “put in order” represents a society that is outwardly orderly but devoid of true godliness. In America, for example, we have “In God We Trust” on our money; we recite the words, “one nation under God” in our Pledge of Allegiance; and many of our national monuments have Scripture engraved on them!

But those things do not necessarily represent true godliness, do they? Instead, what do we see in our nation? We see sin drawing to itself more and deeper forms of darkness. We see evil men becoming worse and worse. We see a spiritual death spiral unfolding before our very eyes.

Escaping darkness

How does an individual escape this destructive pattern? How does a society – a collection of individuals – escape this pattern of decay and destruction?

We begin by asking: Why was the demon able to return to the man’s life  – i.e., the house that was swept and put in order?

It was because the house was “unoccupied” (vs. 44). The demon is returning to the heart of a man that is not occupied by the Spirit of God. He really is a whitewashed tomb; he is still filled with corruption.

In fact, for the most part, Matthew 12 deals with religious men who refused to repent and submit to Jesus Christ! There is nothing more deadly than the religious fiction of false Christianity  – when someone is outwardly Christian in name only, having a form of godliness while entertaining inward darkness. The plight of such a man, such a nation, will only get worse.

How can we not see our current moral collapse as the result of a mere outward appearance of rightness but a clear internal embrace of evil – all while rejecting Jesus Christ?

The process of sweeping out the garbage and restoring order to the house always begins with repentance and a return to the Savior. There is an inside-outside direction of transformation involved here.

If you get your life right with God, you can then work on your marriage. If you get your marriage right with God, you can then work on your family. If you get your family right with God, you can then work on your church. If you get your church right with God, you can then work on your community.

We will not fix America without this process unfolding in just this way.

You know what we call it? Revival!