At some point, the Antichrist is going to offer you a job

Fred Clark, writing about the Tim LeHaye “Left Behind” dreck specifically, but offering thoughts on life generally, has a good post with some discussion about temptation. Now, I’m not a religious person and don’t particularly believe in personifications of good and bad, but that doesn’t mean I don’t believe there are moral choices to be made.

Clark talks about the big flashing warning light that should go off when people find that their spiritual feelings about God’s will matches exactly their own earthly inclinations.

I don’t think either the authors or the members of their Tribulation Force appreciate that temptation doesn’t always announce itself as temptation, doesn’t always look like what it is. But that’s not really the problem here. The temptation to which Rayford is succumbing here looks exactly like temptation and not like anything else. Rayford is lying here, basking in the prestige and luxury of his position, congratulating himself and never questioning why what he “felt in his spirit” as God’s leading should be so remarkably congruent with the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life.
. . .
But we haven’t addressed quite as much the spiritual peril of these job offers or the way that peril is compounded by the self-serving rationalization that working for the Antichrist might be what God wants you to do.

This is a rather important point because it’s the most realistic aspect of these books so far. Nearly all of the action in this story is implausible and impossible, but this is something that can and will happen to every person who reads these books and to every person now reading this blog.

At some point in your life, the Antichrist is going to offer you a job.

Don’t take it.

And especially don’t delude yourself into imagining that taking it might actually be God’s will because, conveniently, God’s agenda for you and the Antichrist’s agenda seem to perfectly overlap. The job offer itself is a trap set for you by others. The rationalizing delusion is a trap set for you by yourself. Just say no.