The book of Acts is a glorious book; a celebration of the triumph of the Church over the forces of the devil, and the conquest of the world by the power of the Gospel. But Satan meant to write the last chapter of that book. Accordingly, he plotted against the captain of that triumphant band of Christ, the apostle Paul. He planned death and defeat as the final fate and episode of the man who had given life to others and led the Church in triumph. Satan plotted an inglorious termination of the glorious course of Paul and of the Church.
How could we have said it, that the man who raised the dead was himself killed by a viper, a messenger of Satan, and that in the final chapter of a glorious book! We would have had to mourn again in the New Testament as for King Saul in the Old Testament: “The beauty of the Church slain in a strange island! How art the mighty fallen, and the weapons of war perished in the midst of the battle! Tell it not in Gath; publish it not in the streets of New York, lest the enemies rejoice, lest the daughters of the uncircumcised triumph” (2 Samuel 1:17-27). But, thanks be to God, it was averted, by the mighty power of the Everlasting God.
For many people, especially true servants of God, Satan seeks to do the same. He seeks to write the last chapter of their lives; a chapter of shameful episodes. Therefore, he seems not to bother much at the Chapter 1 or 2 or 3 of their lives. He hides a viper among the woods for the last scene of the last acts – yea, for the last chapter of their lives. Satan knows that just one disgraceful episode in the last chapter is enough to erase all the glorious adventures of the earlier twenty-seven chapters.
Satan could hide his viper as you go on your daily routine, gathering ‘wood’ - your daily ministerial routine, your job, gathering wood for warmth, warmth for life, gathering your daily bread, or doing whatever occasion might find you to do. Be watchful.
For some, Satan has hidden the vipers of seducers, or of filthy lucre; vipers of Jezebels and of Balaams; vipers of arrogance, pride, and strife. Many have fallen that way. They fell to rise no more. Satan wrote their final chapter: “So and so was mightily used of God in the early 60s in New York, but he died a drunkard.” “So and so was mightily used of God in Greece in the nineteenth-century, but women ruined him.” “So and so was a jewel in God’s hands in the 1970s, but she fell out because of the lusts of this world. She ran away with another woman’s husband.” What a bad way to end a good book! What an inglorious termination of a glorious cause!
May Satan not write the final chapter of your life. May God give you discernment when the viper appears, and instant initiative on how to deal with it. Amen.
ESTÁS LEYENDO
THE LAST CHAPTER of Your Life
EspiritualA book is remembered more often for how it ends than for how it starts. We are a book that God is writing. Often, the tricky devil, when he can no more stand the zeal of our early days, takes a break from the middle chapters of our life, waiting t...
