Satan, as Lucifer, got it into his puffed-up mind that he could be "like the most High, possessor of heaven and earth."

So he went about gaining the allegiance of creatures in the heavenly realm and then did the same thing on earth through the fall of Adam.

Through his usurpation of both dominions, he became "the prince of the power of the air" and the "prince of the world."

God revealed through the mouths of His prophets how He planned for His Son to one day repossess the earth, but what God kept a secret up until the Apostle Paul was His plan for repossessing the heavens through a brand-new species of man created by the death of Jesus Christ.

This "one new man," as Paul calls it, is "the church the body of Christ" made up of Jews and gentiles who believe in Jesus Christ as their personal Savior.

"It is a newly created species of man in Christ Jesus, possessing neither 'Jew-ness' nor 'Gentile-ness,' nor any of man's drawbacks or ties to Satan's usurped domination," explains Bible scholar Keith Blades in his book, "Satan and His Plan of Evil." "Instead, it is a radically different species of man possessing corporeal union with the victorious Son of God, Jesus Christ, and possessing in that union unique features that not only set it apart from the seed of Adam, but also give to it capacities here-tofore unheard of."

Of course, Satan never counted on any of this when he entered into Judas to ensure Christ's death. That's why Paul says, "But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory:
"Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory." (I Cor. 2:7-8)

"Satan and his co-horts, through their own supposed intelligence, do the very thing that proved to be their own complete undoing," explains Blades. "By keeping 'the mystery of Christ' a 'mystery,' or secret, God made it so that the 'princes of this world' didn't know about His plan for providing for the making of a 'new creation' through the death of Christ. They neither did, nor could, figure it out."

By God taking Satan and his co-horts "in their own craftiness," as Paul details it in I Cor. 3:19, their eternal doom's been sealed and they now act out of humiliation and embarrassment.

What they seek to do today is minimize the effectiveness of "the church the body of Christ" by keeping Believers in the dark as to their true identity. They don't want Christians to act in accordance with who we really are as members of this unique heavenly entity.

Hence, Satan's forces specifically hone in on Christian preachers, deluding them through the corruption of God's Word to teach that Christians are simply "spiritual Jews" meant to follow the Four Gospels which deal with Jesus Christ's future earthly Kingdom, not the assembling of "the body of Christ" to run the government of the heavens.

"Such perversions and distortions of the gospel of God are referred to by Paul in other places as 'another gospel,' and he associates Satan and his ministers as being directly involved in the production and propagating of them," explains Blades. " 'Another gospel' is just that—a gospel that is different from that which the apostle Paul preached. It poses as 'the gospel of God'; it claims to be 'the gospel'; it is preached by preachers and the Bible is used in its proclamation; but it is 'another gospel' and is not the gospel of God's grace in truth."

As my pastor, Richard Jordan (Shorewood Bible Church, Rolling Meadows, Ill.), summarizes the change in program leading to Paul's gospel, "God says, 'I'm going to spend 2,000 years making a distinction between Israel and the gentiles; between the Jew and the gentile; between the circumcision and the uncircumcision. I'm going to build a middle wall of partition between these two groups that is absolutely impregnable, and for 2,000 years, I'm going to deal with men on this basis. Then, I'm going to wipe out that distinction and make all one in the Body of Christ. I'm going to make a new humanity.' "

There's no place in all of the universe, accept in Christ, where Jew and gentile can be made one and it's only because of the Cross that God could accomplish this.

"What's demonstrated in the spiritual realm is the capacity of God to do what He said He's going to do in the heavens and the earth," says Jordan. "We literally are putting on display the wisdom of God to be able to accomplish His purpose in the earth and in the heavens, in two separate distinct realms, through Jesus Christ. That's exciting!

"And when Paul says, 'I want to make all men see the fellowship of the mystery,' he's saying, 'I want people to see the living oneness that God has created, this fellowship between Jew and gentile—this fellowship that God has made in Christ, because it puts on display the wisdom of God according to the eternal purpose that He purposed in Himself.' "

The Bible tells us God's eternal purpose is to make all things, in heaven and earth, center in His Son and this wisdom display before heaven's "principalities and powers" (the angelic realm of government) demonstrates that, in Jesus Christ, God can bring two diverse elements and governments under the headship of one person, His Son.

"That's really important to get that into your thinking and think about what God's doing from that perspective," says Jordan in a study I have on tape. "As soon as you do that, you'll quit thinking, 'Woe is me, the washing machine isn't working right.' You get a lot bigger than the little nit-noids, the little gnats today—such inconsequential things.

"When we live day to day, we are to live from this eternal perspective. We are to know what's really going on and, boy, when you do, you live with that 'Big Picture' in your understanding. You understand that everything going on in your life has an impact not just here, but in the heavens.

"Around this building tonight, angels watch. You drive home tonight, angels are watching. They watch to see, 'How they doing?' The 'elect' angels watch and the 'fallen' angels watch, and when you stumble and fall, the fallen angel goes, 'Ah-ha-ha-ha.' "

With Satan's angels there is a mocking and a constant speaking evil of what God is doing.

Their blaspheming and contradicting of what God's doing is aimed specifically at Believers, and that's why Paul repeatedly warns of the need to be sure that the doctrine of God is not blasphemed by what a Believer wrongfully does or says. It not only effects a person's testimony before men, but it ripples all the way out into the heavenly places.

When Paul stresses, for example, in II Cor. 4:15, "that the abundant grace might through the thanksgiving of many redound to the glory of God," his use of the word "redound" refers specifically to the impact in the heavens.

"When something rebounds, you throw it and it comes back to you, but when something redounds, it comes to you and then it just goes 'floo, floo, floo, floo' on off," explains Jordan. "It's like the ripples of a rock thrown into a sea. They just keep going out.

"That's why Paul says, 'ye do shew the Lord's death.' It's not just here, but on out there to them. And Paul is conscious that one of the things his ministry is producing is a group of people in whom the glory of God is put on display even before the angelic creation. That's what he's talking about when he says 'the fellowship of the mystery.' "