Against the corporate Body of Christ, Satan is working in two very distinct and definite ways at the present time: through degeneration and through division.

First, he is sowing tares among the wheat. He is placing his emissaries in the pulpit and pews for the sole purpose of leavening the whole. He is mixing his own progeny among the people of God to lower the standard of the entire Body of Christ. Thus, Christ will be so caricatured before those in Satan’s kingdom that they will see no advantage in leaving it for the Kingdom of God.

Satan is working through his paid and his lay agents in the professing church to destroy the sovereignty of God, to undermine the authority of His Word, to strip Christ of His deity, and to unseat Him from the place and preeminence of Lordship and to lead His people away from full conformity to the image of Christ by partial conformity to the standards and fashions of the world. Thus, through this degeneration within the visible church, the Body of Christ is made impotent amid the world’s appalling need.

The world has its standard of what the Christian should be; inconsistent as it may seem, it holds the Church of Christ up to that standard. A minister’s wife asked a worldly-minded woman to become a Christian. Her response was as revealing as it was cutting, “If I should become a Christian, I could never wear the immodest clothes that you wear.” The emptiness of the pews speaks of the contempt the world has for a church that degenerates into a lecture hall and a place of entertainment. A friend, who was eagerly praying for a husband’s conversion, who, out of regard for her, went regularly to church, said, “Oh! why doesn’t the minister preach Christ?” “Anything but Christ crucified, risen, ascended, exalted” is the devil’s motto, and he is doing his best to get ministers of the Gospel to make it theirs.

But the devil has another mode of attack upon the corporate Body of Christ. He is doing a very deadly work, even among the saints of God, through division. When he sees that he cannot touch the spiritual man by deceiving him regarding the fundamental truths of God, or undermine his love for God, or deflect him from doing the will of God, then he works to make him so zealous in his defense of the truth, so ardent in his love for it, so set in his own particular interpretation of it, that he will not fellowship with those who, as sound and true and devoted as he, do not see and act as he does. He cannot see that “adorning the doctrine” may be as great a manifestation of real love for Christ and as potent a weapon against the appalling apostasy as “defending” it. Perhaps, in his desire for vital spirituality within the Church, he has placed such emphasis upon some segment of truth that he unspiritualizes other brethren who do not give that truth the same emphasis. Thus, the devil succeeds in injecting into the very vitals of Christ’s Body the poison of acrimonious criticism, unwarranted suspicion, unloving intolerance, and bitter feelings. By weakening and dividing the spiritual forces of Christ and by turning their eyes in upon themselves rather than out upon the world lying in sin, Satan gains a tremendous victory in the conflict.

Source: “Life on the Highest Plane” by Ruth Paxson

Lord Jesus, Satan is vehemently ragging against Your church to undermine Your Headship. Thank You for coming to destroy the works of the Devil.