When the Light Shines upon Him

November 23

“And now you know what is holding Him back, so that He may be revealed at the proper time. 7 For the secret power of lawlessness is already at work; but the One who now holds it back will continue to do so till he is taken out of the way.

8 And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of His mouth and destroy by the splendor of His coming. 9 The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works; he will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie, 10 and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refuse to love the truth and so be saved.

11 For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie; 12 so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness,” II Thessalonians 2:6-12


The Holy Spirit of the Living God was present at creation. The second verse of the Bible, Genesis 1:2, tells us, “The earth was without form and void; darkness was on the face of the waters and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the deep.” His move upon the formless void of the earth was transformative.

God moved upon the darkness, causing the power of His presence to set in motion the amazing complexity of the universe and to introduce the loveliness of His handiwork throughout the earth.

The Spirit of God, moving upon the heart of a man, does much the same thing. The soul of unregenerate humankind is dark and void of goodness and capable of all manner of sin. The man without Christ as his Savior is “dead in trespasses and sin,” Ephesians 2:1, 5, 6, and incapable of godliness.

The Bible is quite clear in the matter, as we are told in Romans 3:10-18, “As it is written: there is none righteous, no, not one; there is none who understands; there is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside; they have together become unprofitable;
there is none who does good, no, not one. Their throat is an open tomb; with their tongues they have practiced deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips, their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; destruction and misery are in their ways; and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

Man is capable of every vile deed that his reprobate imagination can conceive and his rush to do the work of the evil one, “to steal, kill, and destroy,” John 10:10 is pervasive throughout the earth. The moral void in which he wallows steeps him in oblivion, for he is unaware of the depth of his depravity and the magnitude of his sin and the lostness of his soul.

But when the Spirit of God moves upon the face of the deep of a man’s soul; when the power of the Holy One compels him to see himself as God sees him, he cries with the prophet, “Woe is me, for I am undone! I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell among a people of unclean lips; for I have seen the King, the Lord Almighty!” Isaiah 6:5.

When the light of the King of kings and Lord of lords shines upon him, a man departs from the evil he has done in the darkness and becomes an instrument in the hand of the Lord Jesus Christ to guide other lost souls into His glorious light.