By Camilla Smith

Satan, the Magic Dragon

By Camilla Smith

Last night while watching the evening news, I felt my soul cry out to God, “How much more, Lord?” A story that ripped through the headlines also ripped through my heart as I watched it play out on the news cast. More on this in a minute, I can’t stomach it right now.

Earlier in the evening, I had been watching David Reagan’s show, Christ in Prophecy. The topic?  Spiritual Crisis in America. Dr. Reagan’s guest, Carl Gallups, and co-host Nathan Jones were discussing our country’s swift descent into moral depravity. This subject is extremely timely and relevant to this period we are witnessing in these final days before the Lord pours out his wrath on America--for that matter, the entire world.

The crux of the show was about Almighty God’s hedge of protection being taken away from a country full of people who refuse to repent—first leading to a sexual revolution (the 1960s), then a homosexual revolution (the 1980s until the present) then finally, a depraved mind for society, or the “anything goes” mentality (the present day to the end of the age). Obviously, we are in that final stage. Homosexuality has been widely accepted and promoted in our culture and is now mainstream and happily tolerated.

But my friends, our society has gone way past the stage of a homosexual revolution. I am not recommending you watch any music channels, but if you were to do that you would be disgusted by the open display of bestiality, necromancy, witchcraft and Satanism. Sodom and Gomorrah meets 2014. It is nearly over. I am afraid the United States is about to be pulverized into piles of dust. It may not be with meteors and fireballs like God pulverized the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah in the Bible, but a definite crushing blow is coming.

We may be headed for SEVERAL types of judgment because God has held off his wrath for decades now, and the United States has continued to build that “Tower of Babel.” Our citizens and our leaders have eagerly kicked Christianity and the worship of God to the curb. It seems as if those who are legislating, our conduct cannot wash their hands of Christians quickly enough. And guess who is there to provide the soap and water? That’s right—Lucifer.

You know, every once in a while Satan just gets in your head. I heard a prayer last night that stated, “Dear Lord, please silence the voice of Satan in my ear.” Boy, have I needed to utter that prayer this week.

It all started with a sermon that I watched last Sunday that really rendered me dumbfounded and Satan has been beating up my brain ever since. This particular pastor, whom I have watched a few times and have grown to like, was warning people about tying up the “end times” in a neat little package and feeding it to the public. I am pretty sure he was talking about a certain theory--the two-part return of Christ, i.e., the Rapture before the Tribulation and Christ’s return at the end of the Tribulation. That theory. He said the subject has been debated for generations (obviously); he said focusing too much on this Second Coming subject may keep us from giving, witnessing and serving. He said people who are preaching this “relatively new” theory (does that make it wrong?) are ignorant of two facts (yes, he said ignorant—I think this is when my face started to feel flushed). He said one fact is that this is a relatively new (150 years) theory and the second is that it is only found in the English-speaking footnotes.

OK. I am not convinced (based on one disagreement in doctrine) that this pastor is a bad pastor. I still like him. I will still watch him until I can get absolute direction from the Holy Spirit not to. I was hurt, maybe a little offended and definitely jolted out of my comfort zone. It is possible that I only heard part of his sermon, as the show is cut to only about 15 minutes or so of preaching. But it bothered me. And then it bothered me some more and it continued to bother me.

For me, and I am sure many of you, studying the end times has the opposite effect. The one thing Bible prophecy does NOT do, is make me want to sit idle. It lights a fire under me that gets my witnessing blood pumping and makes my giving spirit more generous. So, I did not do well with the wet blanket being thrown on my “Blessed Hope.”

And then, you-know-who (the evil one) jumped in there and started scrambling around in my mind. Yes, casting doubt. That is what he does. And causing confusion. That is what he does, too. So I have been in a bit of a derogatory mood this week, fighting that little spiritual battle.

But the good news is this: I put on my whole armor and I won the victory! Or should I say, Jesus won the victory, because He pulled me out of my funk. He always does. Why am I so weak sometimes? I guess it is because Satan is so strong. He is like a wicked magician who uses smoke and mirrors, lies and deceit, and any little moment of weakness and doubt that he can find, and boy, is he right there, ready to take a few jabs. I am not minimizing his power. If you do not detect it, it is even harder to fight it. Once again—smoke and mirrors. His tactics are shrewd and he can be very difficult to recognize, can’t he?

So back to the news cast; two nights ago, an Amber Alert came across the screen for a ten-year-old girl in Springfield, MO who had apparently been kidnapped. And there it was the next night, 24 hours later the horrible story of what happened to her. According to witnesses, this precious 10-year-old girl had been “picked up by a man and thrown into his truck like a rag doll,” and the truck sped off with her inside. I can only imagine what happened to this little soul over the ensuing hours, but police found her body in a tote in the man’s basement a few hours later, a bullet to her head and marks on her arms from apparently being bound.

This happens all the time. We all know the story. You all most likely know THIS story, having heard it on your local station by now. But as I watched yet another brutal child murder play out on the evening news, I couldn’t get the apathy out of my mind. There was a coldness and detachment with which the story was told, that is. It seemed as though no one wanted to face what had happened. The smiling newscasters kept talking about going on Facebook and remembering this little girl and getting on Twitter and “Tweet your support for this little girl.” Even, “Turn your porch light on in support of this little girl.”

It made me feel literally sick. This child had just suffered a heinous and violent death and we are talking about Facebook and Twitter. How does one “support” a little girl who has just been viciously murdered by a maniac?  How can we pleasantly talk about remembering this victim as the obligatory teddy bears and candles are being piled in her yard?  I cannot imagine how these newscasters were not absolutely sobbing. I don’t know, but the whole thing made me want to vomit.

Have we become so desensitized to violence and these kinds of stories that we immediately have to jump on Twitter to help us deal with it all? I’m sure these reporters were just as sickened by this story as I was, but there seemed to be a veil of denial thrown over this entire incident and the telling of it. Where was the outrage or at least, why was there seemingly no emoting of shock?   Does Facebook have some sort of tranquilizing effect?

And that is what I am talking about. Satan, that wretched dragon from the abyss, is blowing his putrid smoke out of his nostrils and it is penetrating our senses like some form of repugnant, paralyzing incense. He is essentially choking the life out of us. So now we have to “smile” and “celebrate” this little girl’s life and how wonderful she was. Let me emphasize “she was.” She is gone. No doubt she was a bright and beautiful child. No doubt, her life should be celebrated. But right now, I am enraged by the senselessness of it all. And I want to stay in that moment of disbelief and anger and convince myself that this will ward off another such atrocity.

But I cannot get past what happened to her. What kind of beast would do this to a little child and why are we not focusing on that? Is it just too much of the obscene for our little pickled minds to handle? I know it is politically correct not to talk about the killers anymore and only focus on the victim, but WHEN ARE WE GOING TO START LOOKING AT THIS FOR WHAT IT IS? It is EVIL INCARNATE—SATAN IN FULL END-TIMES REGALIA!

It is almost like he has put on his ensemble of evilness and is parading around like an in-your-face banty rooster. Satan’s mission is being accomplished on a daily basis and we are so dumbed down that we just shake our heads and nod, and say “Oh, how sad.”  How can you defeat an enemy when you can’t even identify it?

I have such disdain toward Satan for possessing this man long enough to do what he did to this poor child. Whatever method Satan used to work his black magic on this killer, be it through pornography, sexual addiction, drugs, alcohol, or any of the myriad of evil that manifests in human beings, it is excruciating.

The dragon, the beast, the serpent, the evil one, the adversary, and I will not even bother to list some of his “names.”  I am just ready for God to mop the floor with him and cast him away into blackness and torment infinitely. That would make me happy.

I wrote this article when I was in a bad place, having come off a spiritually taxing week, and ending with this inexplicable crime of insanity against an innocent darling child. I fully expect another satanic assault coming my way for writing down my thoughts. Maybe throwing some hostile verbiage at Satan was therapeutic for me. I will be on alert though. I will also be suited up.

In the meantime, I can take comfort in knowing that I feel this child’s precious soul is with Jesus in Heaven. I am praying for that. I can take comfort in knowing that the Lord’s strength helped me defeat a very small part of a very large foe this week. And I can take comfort in knowing that many of you have had similar spiritual attacks and have fought the good fight with nothing but the blood of Jesus as your weapon.

So here it is—a fairly daunting picture of the world in which we live. The darkness is closing in. I will focus more on that in a future article if I can maintain the guts to go there. For now, this world is run by the prince of darkness. But things are about to change. I can hear the sound of a mighty rushing wind, and I will choose to focus on the words that I begin my prayers with every morning and every night—“Lord, I know you are coming for us soon!” I’d bet my life on it.

Camilla

Romanns116@gmail.com