On the Satanic prayer at the Kenai borough assembly meeting

The furor over the recent invocation of satanic “prayer” at a Kenai Assembly meeting is a bit amusing to this Christian pastor. The “prayer” itself is more amusing than alarming. It might help us to remember that our Christian heritage began when our prayers on any public level for any purpose whatsoever were nonexistent. In the days when the bulk of our New Testament Scriptures were being written, no one dreamed of having a Christian prayer open any public governmental meeting. Since Christian beliefs were seen as subversion and sabotage to the deification of the emperor and the prevailing pagan beliefs in whatever “god” one chose to invent or imagine, any public prayer might well have been one’s last because attack or assassination was a fairly sure thing.

The historical turn from broad emperor, pagan, or satanic worship to state-approved Christianity under Emperor Constantine may have paved the way for eventual development of a “Christian” United States of America. However, it did not guarantee adherence to the Christian values that made America a nation that dares allow freedom for the foolishness of public “prayer” to the anti-God and anti-human fallen angel named Satan.

Those life-giving Christian values are indeed under serious and concerted attack by self-worshiping people on many levels today. And true enough, adherence to any be-your-own-god philosophy, from progressive socialism to Satan “worship,” is costly to any society. However, the present Christian distress about it is misdirected. Fellow Christians, I hope to challenge us to avoid getting our “undies in a bunch” over the religio-political bait of “satanic prayer” at any public affair. True, any invitation to the enemy of all collective human souls is not without consequence. However, let’s see this for what it is - a spiritually blind attempt to be “religious” towards an entity that has no power, no authority, and no ability to do anything without some human assistance. Unlike any simple faith-filled prayer from any Christian to the only real God of power and authority; satanic or pagan prayers are like, and of less significance than, “blanks” fired at a nonexistent target in the dark. They are only noise. Prayers to nothing at all tend to produce nothing at all. Some will argue that, unlike the carved or invented gods of paganism, satan has some real power.

But that is actually false and is a product of some Christians buying into the only “power” that the little dead one has - deception. That little dead one, Satan, has only the power he can can con out of us. And that is what this whole thing is all about. Satan hopes that Christians will divert from the use of their genuine powers of prayer unto the only One who can answer prayer and begin flailing away at deceived folks whose prayers have no real power or authority. While it is indeed a sad day when our elected political leaders have neither the intelligence nor intestinal fortitude to reign in such useless nonsense as “prayer” to Satan or any other pagan invention, it is nothing new and should not promote any paralysis or phobia among our ranks. We should simply stand in confident patience until foolishness has its “turn” so that we may once again offer a truly powerful prayer to the truly powerful God who can both lift blindness from honest hearts and blind those who lift themselves or their inventions up as gods. We must not forgo any opportunity for prayer in the public square just because fools desire to supplant the true with the false while claiming “equal time” or political “balance.”

We should affirm the reality of Jesus as Lord of all through our obedience and words of faith declaring that this whole world will reveal His preeminence and glory. The plain reality is that He has been winning over all darkness since His resurrection, and any current surge of darkness is only another convulsion in the death throes of all evil. Denial of the goodness of the only real God who gives Himself in all of His loving wonder to all who acknowledge His right to rule is a privilege granted by that good God as proof of His value for each human. He simply refuses to robotically subjugate beings created in His own likeness even to the point of allowing their suicidal turn from His goodness to their contrived and confused “belief” in things without reality or substance.

That reality of liberty for all people to chose life or death means that we must not wash our hands like Pilate and walk away from all this frustrating foolishness in the public square. That is what garnered us this present disaster of absence of virtue among our elected and appointed leaders. We must stay engaged even as our energies are spent praying down heaven to earth as we have been instructed and exampling the reality of a faith and prayer system that is truly constructive and confirming. Jesus’ command to the seven churches in Revelation to “overcome” through the kingdom power of peacefully patient endurance comes with the promise that He has already overcome.

Moreover, we have a promise that when we simply “resist” the inanity of “satanic prayer” it will find only sufficient energy to flee from the power of truth. We Christians must each hear from the Spirit of God exactly what constitutes our resistance and do only that even as we recall Psalm 2 indicates that God has only to laugh at those who position themselves as His enemies. I am not saying that the events in Kenai are a “nothing.” Nor am I saying we should not strive to elect better leaders. I am saying this satanic nonsense will come to nothing if we make the right response. Remember, “prayer” to Satan or non-existent pagan deities is like prayer to your average piece of milled lumber. It does nothing unless a human picks it up and begins to construct with it. We must leave this “prayer” to Satan business sitting like the powerless dead stick it is and pick up real rule through prayer and obedience to Jesus’ life-giving words. This satan stuff will continue to die of its own dead weight if we do not empower it with the focus of fear. Indeed, we should declare its demise and act as though our kingdom, the Kingdom of God and Jesus, is truly alive and ruling - because, in fact, it is.

Steve Alexander is the pastor of the Word of Faith Assembly in Wasilla.