Holiness isn’t up for a vote or a popularity contest. It’s based on the beauty and truth and balance of God’s revealed Word.

Reading Richard Baxter’s A Christian Directory (1673) makes me marvel at how Satan’s tactics are predictable and effective. In this series of excerpts, Baxter lays out Satan’s strategies to corrupt society and try to make evil win the day. 

We must remember that holiness isn’t up for a vote or a popularity contest. It’s based on the beauty and truth and balance of God’s revealed Word. But Satan is actively trying to ruin individuals and cultures. 

Here’s how Baxter describes Satan’s strategy to replace the loveliness of life in Christ with corruption made in Satan’s own image. 

Satan’s First Attack: Popular Opinion 

“He maketh very great advantage of the common customs of the country that men live in: this carrieth away thousands and millions at once. When the common vote and custom are for sin, and against Christ and holiness, particular persons think themselves excused, that they are no wiser or better than all the country about them. And they think they are much the safer for sinning in so great a crowd, and doing but as most men do.”

If everybody is sleeping together before marriage, is it really wrong? If getting high or drunk is the norm for all your friends and acquaintances, it seems extreme and intolerant to suggest that there is a better way to live. If hundreds of people join in demolishing someone’s reputation online, is it really a sin for you to add your own clever but malicious slander? 

Satan’s Next Tool: “Education”

“Also he is exceeding industrious to get education on his side; he knoweth how apt men are to retain the form which they were molded or cast into at first: if he get the first possession, by actual as well as original sin, he is not easily cast out. Especially when education doth conspire with common custom, it delivereth most of the people and kingdoms of the earth into his hands.” 

So, get them young, and they won’t depart from depravity as they grow older.

False Religious Teaching

“Also he is industrious to get the approved doctrine of the teachers of the people on his side. If he can get it to pass once for a revelation or command of God, he will quickly conquer conscience by it, and take down all resistance: he never doth war more successfully against God, than when he beareth the name of God in his colours, and fighteth against him in his own name.” 

This is why it’s so serious and heinous when religious teachers explain away or even disregard God’s eternal commands. Teachers who do this become servants of Satan’s agenda rather than promoting the eternal Kingdom of God. They are traitors. Baxter adds this devastating line elsewhere in his book: “None so successfully serve Satan, as a false or bribed minister of Christ.”

None so successfully serve Satan, as a false or bribed minister of Christ.

Next Step: Make the Faithful Pay a Heavy Price for Staying True

“He is exceeding industrious to get common fame and reputation on his side; that he may be able to keep his cause in credit, and to keep the cause of Christ and holiness in disgrace. For he knoweth how exceeding prone men are to fall into the way of honour and esteem, and which most men praise; and how loath they are to go in the way which is hated and evil spoken of by the most of men.” 

If upholding God’s truth causes you to lose your job or be laughed at by popular culture, fewer people will choose it. When evil leads to honor and advancement, and proclaiming the truth leads to censure, exclusion, and even financial loss, many people will flee from the truth. Such people love favor with the world more than they love fidelity to God. 

Next, Satan Unleashes Government Censure:

“He is very diligent to get the sword and government of kingdoms, and states, and countries, and cities, and corporations into his hands, or on his side; for he knoweth the multitude of the ignorant and vulgar people are exceeding prone to be of the religion of those that are able to help or hurt them, and to follow the stronger side; and that the will and example of the ruler is as the first sheet or stamp, which all the rest are printed after.”

When government and business join together in denouncing a godly truth in order to promote an ungodly lie they further persuasive, corrupting influence.

Win over family members and friends who are close to us. 

“Also he is very desirous to get our society and companions on his side; who are near us, and have frequent opportunities to do us good or hurt. For he knoweth by long and great experience how powerfully they draw, and how frequently they speed. And he is very industrious to get our friends that have power over us, and greatest interest in us, on his side. For then he hath won our out-works already.”

It is difficult to disagree with and be at odds with those we love. For the faithful to choose God’s truth over a child or grandchild, or a child to choose God over a parent, or a friend to lose a friend, isn’t an easy choice. 

The final piece is to make evil sound virtuous:

“Lastly, he is desirous sometimes to get the name and appearance of virtue and piety on his side; that those that are to do his work, may have a winning carriage, and so a venerable name, and the cloak of virtue may serve his turn for the promoting of the destruction of piety itself.”

So Satan’s strategy is this: 

• Slowly win popular opinion
• Take over the education of younger people
• Corrupt the teaching of religious leaders so that it seems as if God favors evil
• Make the faithful pay a heavy price for continuing to believe the truth
• Unleash government censure against those who still teach God’s commands
• Turn family and friends against God’s teaching so that the remaining faithful will feel ever more compelled to renounce righteousness, lest they lose relationship with those they love the most
• Make evil sound virtuous

Satan hates the beauty of life as God has designed it. He knows evil will ruin us and our society, so he makes it his passion to move entire societies toward evil and away from the compassionate, wise and ultimately life-giving commands of Christ. 

It’s amazing how relevant words written almost four centuries ago are today… Satan’s strategies haven’t changed. Will God’s people faithfully resist them?