March 26

Even while confined to this earth, you can be confident that your Father is watching over you. The devil took away Job's purse and left him temporarily destitute, but Job had a God in heaven who replenished his account. As a saint, you have some collateral: your stock of faith, and your deed on inheritance as a citizen of heaven. These are great security both now and for the future. Satan knows it, and will do his best to snatch them away from you. But no matter how hard he tries he cannot blot your name from the Book of Life. He cannot annul your faith, make void your relationship with God, or dry up the spring of your comfort though he may dam up the stream for awhile. Nor can he hinder the glorious outcome of your whole war with sin. God, who is said to preserve us by His power "through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time" (1 Peter 1:5), keeps all these things in heaven among His own crown jewels, well out of Satan's reach.

Satan's empire is also restricted as to subjects. The devil's principality is bounded not only by place and time, but also by those he is allowed to govern. They are described as "the darkness of this world" or, more simply, those who are in darkness.

The word darkness is sometimes used in Scripture to express the condition of a person in great distress (Isaiah 50:10), sometimes to describe the nature of all sin (Ephesians 5:11), and sometimes to refer to the particular sin of ignorance. It is often compared to the darkness of night or to physical blindness. To enlighten this particular passage, I will take the word in the two following interpretations: first, for the darkness of sin in general; and second, for the darkness of ignorance in particular.

Mark this distinction before we begin: The devil's rule is over those who are in a state of sin and ignorance, not over those who are sometimes sinful or ignorant.

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