The apostles just could not stay awake at the ‘midnight hour.’ Their assignment was to watch over Jesus while He prayed. Jesus agonized, not about His death, but about why He was elected to die. It was His ‘cup’ that would hold the communal ‘wine’ that is the Holy Spirit. After He suffered and died, all who would, would drink of His cup.
They had all done so at the Last
Supper, but soon they would drink, not from a silver chalice, but the ‘Vessel’
of God who He had named, ‘Jesus.’ With that thought, in search of the Holy
Grail is finding Jesus as the ‘cup’ and drinking of Him. (I have found the ‘Holy
Grail’ and it was not hidden away in some cathedral’s archives, but on the
throne where ‘It’ belongs in Paradise in heaven.)
With such heavy eyes, Jesus encouraged
the apostles to sleep on, knowing their eyes were heavy:
Then came He to His
disciples, and said unto them, “Sleep on now, and take your rest: behold, the
hour is at hand, and the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise,
let us be going: behold, he is at hand that does betray Me. (Mat 26:45-46)
A friend betrayed Jesus…
one who loved Him before. Judas, who once had affection for Jesus, defected
from Him for the love of money. What Jesus preserved Satan spoiled. Somehow Satan
got past the seal that kept Judas safe and what Jesus preserved was spoiled
from within.
That had happened before. Adam
and his woman were preserved within the boundaries of the Garden of Evil whose way
was guarded by cherubim… who were apparently asleep at their post along the way
to the Tree of Life. (Gen 3:24).
Judas was a “familiar friend,”
but temptation overwhelmed him. His stronghold was his job. He held the finances
of the ministry and was a miser who did not even want it spent on Jesus. He
must have thought that he was the apostle who would be greatest in the Kingdom
of God!
Just as Satan got into the Garden
by using lustrous fruits to tempt Eve, Satan got into the ministry of Jesus by
the lusts of Judas. Judas was the ‘adulterous’ in that Jesus was once his love,
and then not so!
(Mother Eve was the “wife” of the
man Adam. Wife in the Hebrew is ‘Issa which means among other things ‘adulteress.’
The plural of which is “nashiym.” Compare that to the image [nahas]
called the ‘Serpent.’ Some linguists believes that Eve, the ‘adulteress,’ was
another kind of being akin to the Serpent. In other words, the woman in
the Image of God was made into another being.)
Satan got into the Garden of Eden
via Eve who was tempted. She still looked like a woman, but sin apparently mutated
her genetics. If the same is applied to Judas, then even he became another kind
that would require destruction. That raises the question; Did Judas commit
suicide because he was guilty of breaking the Law, or was it because he had
been altered into new kind… the Antichrist?
Think about that. If Satan or a
demon got into you, indeed you would be another creature, an “old creature” from
millennia ago.
Judas, if he was the Antichrist,
and it seems he was, then he would be against Christ. He was against Him.
Somehow Satan in Judas made him the “Adversary.” Before, while he was in
Christ, he was something else; Paul wrote, “If any man be in Christ, he is
a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new”
(2 Cor 5:17).
In Christ is a new
creature, implying in Satan is the old creature. As such, Judas was as
great a sinner as Eve.
If any one of us woke up and
realized that we were devils, suicide would be a logical and reasonable
response. Judas did just that! Rather than wait on Jesus to destroy the Beast
within, the next day, Judas could not sleep, so he became his own god and resolved
his fallen state himself. He acted as if he was the Savior God; and it was him
that should have been on the Cross instead of Jesus!
Satan had become active in the
world after he entered Judas, but all the while Judas was planning on killing
God, the apostles slept.
Jesus, as well as the apostles,
were facing great peril; Jesus had warned them about His death. There is much
meaning in that if you think about it. Just as Paul warned us in his letter to
Peter, he said to, “be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the Devil, as
a roaring lion, walks about, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Pet 5:8).
As a faithful friend of Jesus,
Judas would have thought of himself as safe. He was wide awake when Satan
entered him, yet he did not realize it for quite some time. While he was
roaming around seeking Jesus to perish him, the others just slept. With Jesus
gone; it would be them that was in peril and as written in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs,
all but John perished just because they were disciples of Jesus. Many believe
that Emperor Nero had Satan in him, and as there are many Antichrists and Satan
is one existence, Satan selects one after another to go into.
With them asleep and unaware,
Satan could have gotten into any one of them if not for the grace of Jesus who prayed
that it be His cup that passed, not any of the others.
The lesson for Christians should
be that you may feel safe because you follow Jesus but all the while,
like Judas, even those wide awake are in danger. To be sober and vigilant means
that the Devil or his demons may even get into you if you sleep.
Oftentimes Christians ‘sleep’ while
wide awake, in the manner of Judas. The unexpected happened; the Devil got into
even him — one who loved Jesus — because Satan persuaded him to believe that
just because he was with Jesus, then he could not be harmed. If it can happen
to the ‘familiar friend’ of Jesus, it can happen to any of us who barely know
Him!
We should always beware of the Devil
in disguise until he is destroyed in the Lake of Fire in the end. So long as
Satan and his demons roam, looking for an innocent being to enter, anyone of us
is in danger!
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