They Sacrifice to Demons and Not to God

I'm very happy to present this sermon. I've never given it before. Usually I don't like to repeat sermons, and so I'm always coming up with new ones, things that we can learn about God's truths. And certainly this trip to Mexico brought out a lot of interesting principles and learning experiences, which I'd like to share with you. We have a PowerPoint about this trip. I wanted to show you a bit. Now, while we were there, like I mentioned, we visited the nearby pyramids of Tatihuacan, one of which is the second largest in the world. Is it coming up? There's an important lesson that we're going to learn today. I think it's something that we're not going to forget very easily in our lives. Here it is. So we'll go to that first slide and amplify it. Okay, so just one more click here. Let's go to the first one. Before that, no, we're going to need to go there. One more back. There we go. And then is that the way it's going to be presented or can we zoom out? So how many have visited Mexico City? Can I see your hands? Okay, probably about maybe eight or ten. Of course, we do have Mexican brethren, but, Jorge, did you ever go to Mexico City once? Okay. And Daniel? Yes, okay. So they've been around. What's very interesting is that this city that is now 22 million people live on this valley. And this valley was the Inca, the Aztec capital of the Aztec Empire. And it was built on a lake, if you can imagine that. So it was called Tenochtitlan, which is now Mexico City. You can see the two parts of that. There we go. And on the right there, everything else looks good. Just that first slide. See, it was built on an island on this lake. That's where the Aztecs had their capital. That's where the Spanish soldiers had to come from those bridges. And of course, now it's all filled with the city of Mexico City, which still is sort of built over a lot of mud. And so some parts do sink a bit. But while we're there, you have no idea that this was once the Aztec capital. So next slide. We had the Spanish regional conference there. Ministers and wives, and also deacons like Jesse and Linda Appi were there. And then we went to the Teotihuacan pyramids. Next slide. If you go... How many have seen those pyramids? Can I see your hands? Okay, Anna. Okay, yeah, Steve, Jean. But this is an amazing place because it's still intact. And it's probably about 1,200 years old. There are three pyramids. When I went 12 years ago, they still hadn't prepared the third one for the public. So it's just this huge area with three pyramids. The biggest one in the next slide is called the Pyramid of the Sun. And what you see here is the Pyramid of the Sun, and then the pyramid in Egypt is higher. It's placed over it. But basically, the base is the same for both. It's just that the pyramid of kyops is higher and taller.

And then we went to the Anthropological Museum. Anthropology just means the study of human beings. And there they showed us the culture of the Aztecs and the Mayans, for instance. Next slide.

And they practiced human sacrifices.

And after going through that whole museum, you realized how lucky we were not to have been born into this society, because you probably would have been sacrificed. Human sacrifice was rampant. And these civilizations just believed in human sacrifices to placate, to make the gods content. After the Spanish conquered the Aztecs, one of the monks interviewed some Aztecs right after that time, and he recorded it in one occasion as they were dedicating that main temple in Mexico City. They sacrificed 80,000 people in four days. That was day and night, 24 hours. Not 80, not 800, not 8,000, 80,000 people. Just imagine, what a loss of life. Men, women, children, captives. And the faces of their gods were monstrous. You didn't see one happy one at all, just big teeth and incisors. So they were meant to be frightening. The Bible tells us clearly what this really is all about. Let's go to Deuteronomy 32. This is the only place where you find God's truths about civilizations, about these gods of the different nations. It says in Deuteronomy 32, in verse 15, it says, Jezurun, another name for Israel, grew fat and kicked. In other words, it became rebellious toward God. You grew fat, you grew thick, you're obese. Then he forsook God, who made him, and scornfully esteemed the rock of his salvation. They provoked him to jealousy with foreign gods. He started worshipping the gods of the people around him, the Ammonites, the Egyptians, Canaanites. With abominations, they provoked him to anger. They sacrificed to demons, not to God. To gods they did not know. To new gods, new arrivals, that your fathers did not fear. Of the rock who begot you, you are unmindful and have forgotten the God who fathered you. And so God knows that, unfortunately, these civilizations were under the control of Satan and demons. Let's look at what the Apostle Paul, when he quotes Deuteronomy 32, what he says in 1 Corinthians 10. 1 Corinthians 10, verse 20. It says, rather, the things which the Gentiles, or people that are not part of God's people, sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God. And I do not want you to have fellowship with demons. Don't be involved in these things. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord, talking about the Passover, and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the Lord's table and of the table of demons. Or we provoke the Lord to jealousy. Are we stronger than here? Are we supposed to decide? Or is God our guide whom we obey? God prohibited human sacrifices. Notice in Leviticus chapter 18, verse 21. Other nations around them practiced human sacrifice, but not God's people. Leviticus 18, verse 21. It says, And you shall not let any of your descendants, any of your children, any of your wife, anybody born from you, from you and your wife, pass through the fire to Molech. Nor shall you profane the name of your God, I am the Lord. So the Canaanites, they offered their children to Molech.

Next slide. See, that's one of the representations of them offering their live, little, recently born children in this way.

In Leviticus 20, verse 2, God repeats.

It says, You're not supposed to be committing this type of human sacrifice.

And the Israelites were tempted because these human sacrifices were supposedly there to appease those gods who were bloodthirsty. For instance, the Aztecs believed that the sun god needed more power in order to be able to have more brightness and shiny. And so they said in each human heart there's a piece of energy that the god of the sun can take up and then he'd be strengthened. But they had to keep the sun blazing and lighting up every day or else it would just go out. And so they used human sacrifice. Again, doctrine of demons. And God told his people, that's not what we are to do. Now, the ancient Celts, the Romans, the Greeks, the Chinese, in India, the Hindus, the Carthaginians, they all practiced human sacrifices. So when God started calling people to his light, it was completely a pagan world. And it started when man rebelled against God at the Tower of Babel. Let's go to Genesis 11.

Now, we know that before the flood there was violence and killings, but after the flood our present world is where man rebelled against God again. Let's look in Genesis 11, verse 6.

It says, And the Lord said, Indeed, the people are one, and they all have one language. And this is what they begin to do. Now, nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them. So they were growing in technology and all kinds of knowledge. They knew how to build this huge tower in defiance. Some commentators say that one of the reasons it was built, they thought they could build a tower high enough that if there was another flood, people could run up and the waters wouldn't get to them. Others just said that this is the way to defy God, to build powerful cities and defy Him. So then God said, Come, let us go down. This must be God the Father and the one who became, the Word who became Christ. Let us go down, and there confuse their language that they may not understand one another's speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they seized building the city. So He stopped that technological advances because He knew as soon as man is able to gather so much information and everything, then it's just a matter of time before you come up and build an atomic bomb. Basically, from the time of the Renaissance, maybe in the 1400s, you needed about six geniuses to be able to come up with all the technology, starting with maybe Galileo, then you had Isaac Newton, he discovered basic laws, and then you go forward to men such as John Maxwell, who was a British scientist, and eventually you come to Albert Einstein, who got the formula to be able to create from matter, you're able to split it and create this enormous energy, which is the atomic bomb. So God had to somehow just, okay, confuse the languages, people can't get together, they can't get their technological progress to accelerate. But this is where they scattered with their different languages, and later their different cultures. They went from belief in one God to multiple Gods.

God prohibited the worship of objects, which was the basis for human sacrifices. When you start worshipping nature and the God of rivers, the river is not running, there's a drought, what do you do? You go to the God and you have to sacrifice, you have to do something to appease them so that the water will flow again. That's the idea, but notice what God said in Deuteronomy chapter 4. He prohibited us to worship objects here on earth or anything that isn't God. In Deuteronomy chapter 4 verse 12, it says, And the Lord spoke to you out of the midst of the fire. You heard the sound of the words when they were on Mount Sinai, but saw no form. You only heard a voice, so God did not allow himself to be seen, so that people would start making images of him. So you just heard his voice. He said, So he declared to you the covenant which he commanded you to perform, the Ten Commandments, and he wrote them on two tablets of stone. From there precedes all of God's laws from those ten basic principles. And the Lord commanded me at that time to teach you statutes and judgments that you might observe them in the land which you cross over to possess. Then he says, Take careful heed to yourselves, for you saw no form when the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire, lest you act corruptly and make for yourselves a carved image in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any animal that is on the earth, or the likeness of any winged bird that flies in the air, the likeness of anything that creeps on the ground, or the likeness of any fish that is in the water beneath the earth. And take heed, lest you lift your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun, the moon, and the stars, all the hosts of heaven, you feel driven to worship them and serve them, which the Lord your God has given to all the peoples under the whole heaven as a heritage. Yes, that's our future heritage, the universe, but right now it's just matter and energy.

But the Lord has taken you and brought you out of the iron furnace out of Egypt to be His people and inheritance as you are this day. And so that's why we don't have crosses. We don't go around, you know, hanging some type of collar with crosses, which is a symbol that it becomes a symbol of worship.

And if Jesus Christ was hung on rope, would we be carrying a little lasso then? Or if He was killed with a sword, would we have a sword? No, that's something God doesn't want us to be reminded of, the terrible torture that He went through that way. Jesus Christ is not on a cross today. He's up there at the right hand of God the Father, and He's glorious and smiling and the God of love.

So people, they have to worship physical things, and we don't. We have a personal relationship with God in heaven. We don't need to look at an object, a statue, or anything else. But this is the way all of these civilizations started worshiping. Instead of God, they started worshiping nature and all the objects. So God freed us. Again, I remember one of the few things when we had to flee Cuba as a young boy of seven years old.

Basically, we had to flee from Castro's communist system, and so we came over to Miami. One of the few things my mother had was a big silver cross that I had gotten from the Catholic school that I'd been in. She hung it on the wall there. At 17, I read the booklet, Ten Commandments. When I read the Second Commandment, you shall not have any object that you are to worship God. You're supposed to worship God in spirit and in truth.

We lived in North Carolina. We had some woods in the back, one of those old houses. I just opened up the window, took that crucifix, that cross, and I threw it out the woods because I was worshiping in the wrong way.

That's what life is about. Change, repentance when you come to the knowledge of the truth. And then you do what's right. God wants us to worship Him in knowledge, in spirit. That means spiritually, going up and speaking with Him. Not anything between us and God. If we go to Ephesians chapter 2, I've always remembered this too. Coming into the church as a young boy, Ephesians chapter 2 verse 1. I was lost in that world following Catholicism and idol worship everywhere.

This speaks to me as it does to you. Verse 1. So the course is just like this river that you just get in and it'll take you down the same way. The current of this false system, well, you have to get off that river. You have to get off the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air. Satan is the one that moves that current. The spirit who works now, who now works in the sons of disobedience, the children of disobedience. He works for us to be rebellious and say, no, I'm not going to do it God's way.

I want to do it the world's way. Among whom also we also once conducted ourselves in the lusts of the flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh, which produce sin, and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath. God was angry with us, just as the others. Just like all of these different civilizations, we were part of the western civilization with all their false teachings about God, half-truths.

We're not talking about Christianity, we're talking about a fake type of Christianity that's out there. Because they're not keeping the Ten Commandments. You look at most churches, they have idols, they have crosses, or statues, or anything else. He says, but God, who is rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us, despite what we're doing, he still loves us. Even when we were dead in trespass, in other words, we were guilty, made us alive together with Christ.

By grace you have been saved. Not because we're so good, but we appreciate. We appreciate what God was doing for us. And we accepted it. A happiest day in my life. Now I've had some wonderful, with marriage and children being born, and great. Nothing compares to the day I was baptized at 18 years old.

I felt this big burden just fall off that I was carrying around. Now God applied Christ's sacrifice to my sins. And so you never forget that. He says, and raised us up together and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Well, we have direct access to God the Father and Jesus Christ because none of those sins are separating us. That in the ages to come, He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kingdom toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, belief.

Belief in God. Faith that is obedient to God and that not of yourselves. It is a gift of God. God produces that motivation. It's not something we worked up. He works in us. So we see here that we went from darkness to light. Notice Colossians chapter 1. Colossians chapter 1 and verse 13. So I want to go to one more slide which showed how all this system and we basically came from that system of the Tower of Babel. Man is building that technological Tower of Babel now. That's going to be so powerful that one day if God doesn't intervene, it'll destroy mankind.

So there's man's Tower of Babel that God had to intervene as he will have to in these days as well. Colossians chapter 1 verse 13. It says, He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption or rescue through His blood the forgiveness of sins. So again, we've been taken from darkness.

So glad I was called at 17 and not at 27 or 37 or 47 or 57 because you can start a fresh start before making so many mistakes. The Aztec Empire was very powerful, but it would have to clash with a greater empire that it didn't know even existed. These empire rulers controlled the people.

They had them meekly come and offer themselves. They thought, oh, this is going to continue over time. But prophecy got in the way. So I want to show you in the Bible where that Aztec Empire had its fall and why it did so. As the best as we understand it, because prophecy, of course, God has the last word, but this is what we understand.

And Darius McNeely gave a very good Bible study on this topic that I'm going to cover. You're going to go to the next slide. Oh, yeah. We are ready. Go back one. Oh, no. That's the right one. In Revelation 17, there are seven heads which are the revivals of the Holy Roman Empire. Through history, we see that when the Roman Empire collapsed in 476 AD, it looked like it was another empire that would never arise. But it did. And I'll show you the seven heads as we have traced them in history.

These were the emperors that were crowned by the Pope. Now, none of the popes have been crowned before. But this is a new system where there is a woman riding the beast. The beast that would have seven heads.

If we go on, yeah, here, let me just show you. This is Hernan Cortes fighting the Aztecs. This is when the Spanish came, and in three short years, they defeated the Aztec Empire in a way that was short of just being miraculous. I want to explain to you a little bit about why that happened. Let's go to the next slide. I hope that you can see this. It's close enough. But the seven heads of the beast in Revelation 17.

The first head is the revival of the Holy Roman Empire. This is the first one, where he's crowned by the Pope Justinian in 554 AD. The second one, Charlemagne in the year 800, also crowned by the Pope. The third head, Otto the Great, 962 AD. The fourth one, which is what I wanted to focus on, the fourth head is Charles V in 1520.

In 1519, Charles V, Emperor of the Spanish, Austrian, and Hungarian Empire, orders Hernán Cortés to explore the Mexican Empire, because he was in charge of this vast empire. Of course, Columbus had just discovered America in 1492. So we're talking about roughly 30 years, which they had been going to. But it was still all the little Caribbean islands, Cuba included. But in 1519, through the permission of Charles V, Hernán Cortés is given permission to go, but to explore that area. But actually, what were the Spanish trying to find? Were they trying to find more territory to just plant food? Now, what was it? Gold. And once Cortés landed in Veracruz off of Mexico, when they went inland, they started hearing the tales of gold.

And the Aztecs had tons of gold, and the Spanish went crazy. There were only 500 of them, but they had their horses, their armor, they had muskets, and they had all kinds of weapons. And so they went all the way to Teclon, what is Mexico City.

And as we see in the next slide, Hernán Cortés met the Aztec ruler Montezuma, and in 1521, he conquered the area. Montezuma was killed. And the empire was taken over by the Spanish. So, thanks to the technological military wear, the legends, because they heard one of their gods, Quetzalcoatl, said that there would be this ruler that would come from the east, and that it was a personification of this god.

So when they saw Hernán Cortés, they said, oh, this is the fulfillment. Instead of killing them immediately, they gave them passage all the way to Mexico City. Also, there was an alliance of tribes. The Spanish mustered up against the Aztecs. And so, just in three short years, it was conquered. So the beast power would dominate most of the western hemisphere for over a hundred years. Mexico fell. The Mayan Empire fell. Then you had the Inca Empire in South America with Pizarro. He did the same thing. In Spain and Portugal, Catholic countries became the most powerful in the world. Of course, in 1585, God promised that he would intervene so God's people could come out of their hiding places.

In 1588, Spain lost the war against England. They were never the same. But they had their good run of world dominion. So, let's go now to the future. Talking about the doctrine of demons. The title of this message is, They Sacrificed to Demons and Not God. People don't know that. Under false premises. Let's go to 1 Timothy 4. It's a prophecy. It says, verse 1, Now the Spirit, talking about God's Spirit inspiring his prophets and apostles, expressly says that in the latter times, at the end times, some will depart from the faith.

Some will leave the church, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons. Speaking lies and hypocrisy, they pretend having their own conscience seared with a hot iron. They don't want to accept their own sins. Forbidding to marry. So, here's one of the popular teachings that family is not that important anymore.

You have the celibate priests, for instance, that take a vow for bidding marriage. But this also goes on to a lot of people don't even marry anymore. They just live together. That comes from demons. Because anything that has to do with the core of family life, Satan hates it. And so, it says, And commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be received. So, we have this trend now about food like not eating meat, just abstaining from any type of proteins as such, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.

Well, we have the principles in Leviticus 11, Deuteronomy 14. It tells us what kind of food that Christ eats. He ate clean food. He never ate pork, but he ate lamb. He ate fish. There are all kinds of good food that he gave the example, and he is our perfect example. It says, For every creature of God is good. Now it's talking about meats. And nothing is to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving.

So first, give it the blessings. For it is sanctified by the word of God, so it has to be sanctified. Which means it is a commandment that God has placed that makes that food sanctified. What is good? What is eatable? And prayer. So we ask God to bless the food, purify it, but also make sure that it's been approved by the Bible. And that's people, they don't respect these things. Did you quit eating pork when you learned about these things, or did you just continue to do so?

We've got to take what God's word says very seriously. And then, now as we are ending, let's go to Revelation 16. Because unfortunately, the world is going to be overpowered. And Satan and his spirits are going to be very active. It says in Revelation 16, 1-2, It says, Then I heard a loud voice from the temple, saying to the seven angels, Go and pour out the bowls of the wrath of God on the earth. So the first went and poured out his bowl upon the earth. This is punishment and plagues. And a fowl and loathsome sore came upon the men who had the mark of the beast and those who worshipped his image. So Satan's going to try to impose his way through that mark of the beast. And you can see here, it has to do with Satan and his spirits. They're going to be very powerful at that time. Then it goes on to say in verse 13, it says, Let's start in verse 12. It says, Then the sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up so that the way of the kings from the east might be prepared. So this is when Armageddon is going to take place in the future. Verse 13, And I saw three unclean spirits, like frogs, coming out of the mouth of the dragon, out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet. For they are spirits of demons, performing signs which go out to the kings of the earth and of the whole world to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty. Verse 16, And they gathered them together to the place called in Hebrew Armageddon. And that's the picture that we have there. That great valley in Israel, where the armies will be gathered together to battle eventually Jesus Christ, who is coming down. People will be so deceived, they don't even know how they're being manipulated.

And so let's go to the second Thessalonians, because here this answers the question, what kind of deceit are people going to go through in the future? Second Thessalonians, chapter 2, it says in verse 9, It says, The coming of the lawless one, one who goes against God's laws, is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. What is the truth? John 17, 17, Christ said, Thy word is truth. It's all of God's word, the Bible. And it says here, those who do not have it, it says, and for this reason, because people don't love God's word over everything, God will send them strong delusion that they should believe the lie, that they may all be condemned who did not believe the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness. The lie, doctrine of demons. There will be a strong delusion. There's going to be such a powerful thing that in Matthew 24, it tells us that if God didn't intervene, and it says that even the saints, the elect, would be deceived. So that's how powerful it's going to be. That's why, brethren, we have to be thankful and be prepared for the future. Let's read one final scripture, Ephesians 5, verse 1. Ephesians 5. I want to end in an encouraging theme. It says, verse 8. Ephesians 5, verse 8, it says, For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light, for the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, righteousness, and truth. Finding out what is acceptable to the Lord. That's one of our tasks. And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them. So these works of darkness, they're never going to produce good fruit. For it is shameful even to speak of those things which are done by them in secret. But all things that are exposed are made manifest by the light, for whatever makes manifest is light, whatever is truth. Therefore, he says, Awake, you who are asleep. Arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light. See that you walk circumspectly or carefully, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time because the days are evil. They certainly are. And that's why it's so wonderful to come to this oasis, every Sabbath, to drink of God's word, to realize how God took us out of darkness into his glorious light.