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 Charles Spurgeon on detecting the voice of the devil

Charles Spurgeon on detecting the voice of the devil:

"Now I will give the poor sinner a means of detecting Satan, so he may know whether his convictions are from the Holy Spirit, or merely the bellowing of hell in his ears. In the first place, you may always be sure that that which comes from the devil will make you look at yourselves and not at Christ. The Holy Spirit’s work is to turn our eyes from ourselves to Jesus Christ, but the enemy’s work is the very opposite. Nine out of ten of the insinuations of the devil have to do with ourselves… "You do not repent enough”" that is self. "You have got such a wavering hold of Christ" that is self. Thus the devil begins picking holes in us; whereas the Holy Spirit takes self entirely away, and tells us that we are "nothing at all, - but that "Jesus Christ is all in all."

"Nothing is to be trusted to but the finished work of Jesus Christ upon Calvary’s bloody tree! No feelings, no emotion, no believing, no conversion, even, must ever be put into the place of that one eternal Rock of refuge—the blood and merit of Jesus Christ! Fly there, poor Soul! Whatever you are, or are not, fly there! Cast your guilty self on Christ and rest there, for there alone can you find salvation! Learn this lesson - not to trust Christ because you repent, but trust Christ to make you repent—not to come to Christ because you have a broken heart, but to come to Him that He may give you a broken heart - not to come to Him because you are fit to come, but to come to Him because you are unfit to come! Your fitness is your unfitness. Your qualification is your lack of qualification. You are to be nothing, in fact, and to come to Christ as nothing - and when you so come, then will repentance come!"

 2014/10/29 6:10
jujashan4
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Joined: 2009/1/11
Posts: 77


 Re: Charles Spurgeon on detecting the voice of the devil

Thanks for that Tuc ..... Very helpful for me :-)


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Andrew Wales

 2014/10/29 7:21Profile
Sree
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Joined: 2011/8/20
Posts: 1953


 Re: Charles Spurgeon on detecting the voice of the devil

Quote:

Cast your GUILTY self on Christ and rest there, for there alone can you find salvation! Learn this lesson - not to trust Christ because you repent, but trust Christ to make you repent



To understand exactly what Spurgeon means we need to consider the word Guilty self, which means the sinner has already come to his senses about his sinful life, he is surrounded by Guilt. Now when he turns to Jesus his repentance becomes complete. His repentance started when he started feeling guilty and completed when he fell at the feet of Christ. The guilt is the Godly Surrow that caused him to repent.

So first this Goldy Sorrow was produced in him by a convicting message. Where are those who bring conviction?

Quote:

“If I had my way, I would declare a moratorium on public preaching of 'the plan of salvation' in America for one to two years. Then I would call on everyone who has use of the airwaves and the pulpits to preach the holiness of God, the righteousness of God, and the Law of God until sinners would cry out, 'What must we do to be saved?" Then I would take them off in a corner and whisper the gospel to them. Don't use John 3:16. Such drastic action is needed because we have a gospel hardened generation of sinners by telling them how to be saved before they have any understanding why they need to be saved.”
- Paris Reidhead



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Sreeram

 2014/10/29 8:00Profile









 Re: More from Spurgeon

There are others who think that repentance is a qualification for faith in Christ.Such a person says, “If I have repented of sin, I can then believe in Jesus. If I am conscious of my guilt, I may then come and cast myself upon Christ.” My dear Friend, I know that you will never cast yourself upon Christ until you are conscious of sin, for men do not usually eat till they feel hungry and they do not clothe themselves till they realize that they are naked. It is well for you to have a sense of your iniquity, but, at the same time it is no qualification for believing in Jesus. “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” The only qualification a physician seeks in his patient is that he is sick. The qualification for pardon from Christ is guilt. The qualification for imparting His fullness is your emptiness—that is all! And if you feel yourself to be so empty that you do not even feel your emptiness—if you feel yourself to be so hard that you do not even think you feel your hardness—well, then, you are just the kind of man that Jesus Christ came to save. If there is no good thing in you whatever—no, if there is no repentance in you—yet it is still true that “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” And He still sends His servants to you with this plain Gospel command, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved.”

“Still,” says one, “repentance must be the ground of our belief.Do I not believe that I am saved because I repent?”
Stop! There is a muddle there! What is the ground of my trusting Christ? That is what I mean by believing. I will tell you.

My only ground for trusting Christ is this—that I am told, by God’s Word, that He can save sinners and I believe He can. And that then I am commanded to trust Him to save me, and I do it. My warrant for believing is God’s Word—not my sense of sin or anything in me. How then, do I know that I am saved? I know, as I stand before you, that I am a saved man. Why do I know that? Because it is written, “He that believes on Him is not condemned,” and I do believe, trust, rely on Jesus Christ! Sometimes I feel as if I were not saved, but my feelings must go overboard if they come into conflict with the plain declaration of God’s Word! “He that believes on the Son has everlasting life.” The ground of a man’s belief that he is saved is not that he repents, but that he has trusted Jesus Christ, who is able to save him, and that God has declared that whoever trusts Christ is saved!

Do not forget that repentance is a gift not a work

2 Timothy 2:25, "correcting his opponents uwith gentleness. God vmay perhaps grant them repentance wleading to a knowledge of the truth,"

Edit: add verse

 2014/10/29 8:14
yuehan
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Joined: 2011/6/15
Posts: 562


 Re:

Hi Sree,

Does one realizes his need of a Saviour before He encounters Christ?

Or does he encounter Christ, and then realizes His need for a Saviour?

I think it can be both. After all, in Romans 2:4 it is written - "the kindness of God leads you to repentance".


 2014/10/29 8:33Profile
lovejt
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Joined: 2005/11/5
Posts: 124


 Re: Charles Spurgeon on detecting the voice of the devil

Thanks much for posting this Tuc.
Anymore on this topic from Spurgeon or others would be much appreciated.

The evil spirits are always 'pressuring' and 'hasty' in their words. Its never the 'grace' or strength and peace you experience from God which is not a guilty word but more convicting one. Devil is always condemning and tries to weaken us with doubt and uncertainty. He will use scriptures and religious sounding words to substitute God's voice. Same as in visions. The effect is the same and he will flood us with false visions from the authentic. It happens usually in the night with me. Its a great exercise of discernment and i'm not all there but we have to be on our toes. Ask yourself and question....is this of God? Its not showing a lack of faith since we are heeding the command to 'test the spirits'. Reading the original book, 'War on the Saints' by Jesse Penn-Lewis has also helped me on this subject.


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james thorpe

 2014/10/29 12:57Profile
Compton
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Joined: 2005/2/24
Posts: 2732


 Re: Charles Spurgeon on detecting the voice of the devil

" ...you may always be sure that that which comes from the devil will make you look at yourselves and not at Christ. The Holy Spirit’s work is to turn our eyes from ourselves to Jesus Christ, but the enemy’s work is the very opposite."

Very good. Thank you tuc, for bringing sharing this.

MC


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Mike Compton

 2014/10/29 22:52Profile
brothagary
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Joined: 2011/10/23
Posts: 2556


 Re:

Thats close to my view ,that is that the flesh can produce nothing good whats so ever so faith its self must come from the new man which is Christs faith in us ,Paul said he lived by the faith of the Son of god .

To repent ,which is to change your mind and turn from sin and stop practicing sin and turn to god ,a four fold process ,all comes from the workings of the holy spirit of grace , which must happen at conversion and there after .

The flesh has no power to change , sinning is the only thing the flesh can do ,,and Paul said the flesh was what was in him and in him dwelt no good thing .Apart from regeneration there is no good in us ,no light ,but Jesus said if the light in you is darkness how great is that darkness

 2014/10/30 2:43Profile
brothagary
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Joined: 2011/10/23
Posts: 2556


 Re:

Nope lol that is my view by the looks of what i just read from spurgen ,,;;;;quote from charles

—"He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved"; and he adds the solemn threatening—"He that believeth not shall be damned." I know some brethren will not like this, but that I cannot help. The slave of systems I will never be, for the Lord has loosed this iron bondage from my neck, and now I am the joyful servant of the truth which maketh free. Offend or please, as God shall help me, I will preach every truth as I learn it from the Word; and I know if there be anything written in the Bible at all it is written as with a sunbeam, that God in Christ commandeth men to repent, and believe the gospel. It is one of the saddest proofs of man's utter depravity that he will not obey this command, but that he will despise Christ, and so make his doom worse than the doom of Sodom and Gomorrah. Without the regenerating work of God the Holy Ghost, no man ever will be obedient to this command, but still it must be published for a witness against them if they reject it; and while publishing God's command with all simplicity, we may expect that he will divinely enforce it in the souls of those whom he has ordained unto eternal

 2014/10/30 2:56Profile
wayneman
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Joined: 2009/1/24
Posts: 453
Michigan

 Re:

Thanks for posting this. The OP was a timely word to me yesterday.


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Wayne Kraus

 2014/10/30 19:53Profile





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