Living The Worthy Life- The 12 Tricks Of Satan

Brothers and Sisters, we are entering into a political year.  While a highly charged political year in which you will a great deal of talk about the government, the purpose of the government, and what is right and wrong.  You will be asked to finally vote for a person to lead us.  Now in this troubled time, it may sound odd to worry about Satan.  However, Satan is not worried about that one bit. 

What does Satan look like?  What does he act like?  Is he real? These are not new questions by any means, they are age-old questions but, they have been answered by Bishop Sheen remarkably in the past and today we revisit his answers. 

First, Archbishop Sheen dispelled myths about what the Anti-Christ will look like. “The Anti-Christ will not be so-called, otherwise he would have no followers. He will wear no red tights, nor vomit sulfur, nor carry a spear nor wave an arrowed tail as Mephistopheles in Faust.” 

Second, Sheen explained that “Rather he is described as an angel fallen from heaven, as ‘the Prince of this world,’ whose business it is to tell us that there is no other world. His logic is simple: if there is no heaven there is no hell; if there is no hell, then there is no sin; if there is no sin, then there is no judge, and if there is no judgment then evil is good and good is evil.” 

Sound at all familiar?  It should.  It is based in the Bible and rooted in the foundations of our faith.  

Third, Bishop Sheen warned us that in our day, Satan will play his games and try to trick us to get us to go along with him.  

Here are the 12 tricks according to Archbishop Sheen: 

1) He will come disguised as the Great Humanitarian; he will talk about peace, prosperity, and plenty, not as means to lead us to God, but as ends in themselves.  

2) He will write books on the new idea of God to suit the way people live. 

3) He will induce faith in astrology so as to make not the will but the stars responsible for our sins. 

4) He will explain guilt away psychologically as repressed sex, make men shrink in shame if their fellowmen say they are not broadminded and liberal. 

5) He will identify tolerance with indifference to right and wrong. 

6) He will foster more divorces under the disguise that another partner is “vital.” 

7) He will increase love for love and decrease love for persons. 

8) He will invoke religion to destroy religion. 

9) He will even speak of Christ and say that he was the greatest man who ever lived. 

10) His mission, he will say, will be to liberate men from the servitudes of superstition and Fascism, which he will never define. 

11) In the midst of all his seeming love for humanity and his glib talk of freedom and equality, he will have one great secret which he will tell to no one; he will not believe in God. And because his religion will be brotherhood without the fatherhood of God, he will deceive even the elect. 

12) He will set up a counter-Church, which will be the ape of the Church because, he the devil, is the ape of God. It will be the mystical body of the Antichrist that will in all externals resemble the Church as the mystical body of Christ. In desperate need for God, he will induce modern man, in his loneliness and frustration, to hunger more and more for membership in his community that will give man enlargement of purpose, without any need of personal amendment and without the admission of personal guilt. These are days in which the devil has been given a particularly long rope. 

To many people, it is old fashion to believe in Jesus Christ and to many people, Satan does not exist.  Do not be fooled and foolish to follow this crock of lies.  We were created for destruction, we were created for salvation and exaltation. Glory to God, now and forever