Satan's Plan for Your Money - Ed Reid
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Satan’s Plan for your Money
By Ed Reid
Someone told me one time, some of you may know that in edition to money management, in my spare time I’ve written several books on eschatology, Sunday’s coming, Even at the door, Ready or Not, Battle of the Spirits, those kind of books. This guy came to me and he said, you know I have this wonderful idea. We know that you believe Jesus' coming is near and you are excited about, and anybody that loves Jesus is excited about, aren't they? But you’re also recognizing that we need to raise money to finish the work. I’ve got a wonderful idea, why doesn’t everybody get cash advances on their credit cards, and get loans on their houses and everything, get all the money we can together and quickly finish the work? Now we can thumb our noses at the devil on our way to heaven and let him pay off the bills in the millennium. Does that sound like a plan? Anybody have an idea of why it wouldn’t work? Well, first of all it’s not a good Christian witness, you understand that. But the worst part about it is that Daniel 12 verse 4 comes into play. And that’s before Jesus comes back, there’s a time of trouble such as never was since there was a nation. And the people that are indebted are going to have the worst time of it. Really true.
People ask me, what do I think is going to happen in the economy. And I’ll tell you what I think, and then I’ll tell you what I think about economists. By the way, people are financials advisers to make weathermen look good. The whole idea is we really don’t know for sure what’s happening. But I read all the national news magazines, but I also get money magazines, Money Forbes and all those. And people are not sure what’s going to happen. But they know one thing for sure. We’re only putting a bandaid over a deep wound right now and it’s not going to hold very long. It’s going to get worse. Much worse. And I think God is giving us two or three years maybe at the most, where we can get our houses in order and get out of debt. Do you understand? This is what I think. That’s what I would certainly encourage you to do if you can do that. So that’s what we’re going to talk about here: Satan’s plan for your money.
Now a lot of people don’t understand this, but selfishness and materialism are really part of the devil’s plan. You understand that that’s the case? Now I’m going to show you how we know that to be the case. First of all, in the spirit of prophecy, Ellen White was given a vision of one of the Devil’s workers' meetings. Now I go to lots of workers meetings. I’ve been to workers' meetings around the world, all the pastors in the trans European division, for example, just a few months back. Just recently we were at pastors' meetings in New Jersey. And I'm going to the Chesapeake conference workers' meetings. So we have these workers' meetings where we have strategy for evangelism and so on. Well, if we have workers' meetings, don’t you think the devil also has workers meetings? Doesn’t it make sense that he would? Let me tell you something interesting. Ellen White was actually given a vision of one of the devil’s workers' meeting. You may not understand this or know it, but Ellen White actually quotes the devil in Testimonies to Ministers and in Counsels on Stewardship.
The one that I’m going to show you is Testimonies to Ministers, p. 473, 474. She overheard the devil saying, “Go make the possessors of lands and money drunk with the cares of this life. Present the world before them in the most attractive light, that they may lay up their treasures here and fix their affections upon earthly things.” Now let me just ask you if I stopped there, would you think the devil has been successful at this? You get the point. Pretty interesting. Let’s go on. “We must do our utmost to prevent those who labor in God’s cause from obtaining means to use against us. Keep the money in our own ranks, the more means they obtain, the more they will injure our kingdom by taking from us our subjects. Make them care more for money than for building up Christ’s kingdom and the spread of the truths we hate. And we need not fear their influence, for we know that every selfish covetous person will fall under our power and will finally be separated from God’s people.” That is incredible, speaking from six thousand years of experience, it works, he says, if we can get the people focused on selfishness. Isn’t that incredible? That is it.
Ellen White also noted in the little book Steps to Christ, p. 44. “The love of money, the desire for wealth, is the golden chain that binds people to Satan.” This is really incredible. So in my seminars, I don’t want to tell you how to become a millionaire. As a matter of fact, once your debts are paid, you ought to be the most generous person on your block. Because you want to be storing up treasures in heaven.