Ill-informed people naively look at Islam and think it’s this big monolithic religion rolling across the face of the earth when obviously it’s not. The “Muslim brothers” literally hate each other more than they hate Israel or America.

As Jordan pointed out in a bible study the other week, “You understand that all religions are schismed up; they’re all divided. Catholicism, for one, says, ‘We are the one true church Jesus founded and we’re united,’ but when you get in it, you find they’re just as busted up as anything is. Yet they point the finger at Protestants and say, ‘You’re all divided; you can’t get together.’

“Religion is never monolithic, and especially in paganism. What demonstrates the flesh is it ‘bites and devours one another.’ (Gal. 5:15) I told you about Satan’s kingdom; people have the idea that Satan sits on this monolithic kingdom of devils underneath him, with the fallen angels and all, and they’re just one big happy family.

“You don’t get a happy family based on sin. ‘There’s no peace for the wicked saith God.’ Satan’s crafty; he’s sharp, he’s sly, he’s conniving. He’s crafty enough and powerful enough to keep the lid on the pot, but it’s always jiggling. It’s not a happy, united group of people.

“Anything built on avarice, greed and sin isn’t that way. But he uses his craft and his power and his salesmanship; his ‘deceiving and being deceived’ kind of thing.’ ” (II Tim. 3:13)

*****

In the media you hear people pontificate on what’s called a “God gene” and discuss whether our DNA compels us to seek a higher power.

From Romans 1:19, we know God’s put a revelation in the heart of every man and there’s not one person ever born who didn’t know two things—there’s a God and they’re going to face Him in judgment. This is why Paul says the unsaved are without excuse.

Paul writes, “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.”

Jordan explains, “Here’s why men are without excuse—because when they rejected the information God put into the DNA of their inner man, they made an idol out of it.

“Notice how that image goes—it starts out with God, then it’s man . . . There’s an old saying: ‘God created man in His own image and man returned the favor.’ Well, that’s what he does, but he doesn’t stop there, because then he goes from man to birds and then to four-footed beasts and then to bugs.

“What does that sound like? When you go to school today and they teach you evolution, what do they say? You know the little children’s rhyme: ‘First he was a tadpole swimming in the sea . . .’ He starts out down here and he goes up. But it’s not puddle to paradise; it’s really paradise to the puddle.

*****

Of course, when men reject the revelation God’s given them, they develop religions. As Paul states in Romans 1:25, ‘Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator.”

Psalm 96:5 tells us “all the gods of the nations are idols.” The power behind these idols is really the Devil and demons. The devils (or gods with a little “g”) are behind the idols that men worship.

Paul writes in I Cor. 10:20, “But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils.”

Jordan says, “Notice that devils have a religious system designed to counterfeit God’s system and the force behind that counterfeit religion is satanic. So there is a spirit behind all that stuff.”

*****

By the way, if you look at Acts 14, when Paul and Barnabas went into Lystra, the pagans there thought they were gods that had come down; specifically Mercurius and Jupiter.

The passage reads, “And when the people saw what Paul had done, they lifted up their voices, saying in the speech of Lycaonia, The gods are come down to us in the likeness of men.
[12] And they called Barnabas, Jupiter; and Paul, Mercurius, because he was the chief speaker.
[13] Then the priest of Jupiter, which was before their city, brought oxen and garlands unto the gates, and would have done sacrifice with the people.
[14] Which when the apostles, Barnabas and Paul, heard of, they rent their clothes, and ran in among the people, crying out,
[15] And saying, Sirs, why do ye these things? We also are men of like passions with you, and preach unto you that ye should turn from these vanities unto the living God, which made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are therein.”