Matthew 12:43-45, “When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, but finds none. Then it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when it comes, it finds the house empty, swept, and put in order. Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there, and the last state of that person is worse than the first. So also will it be with this evil generation.” 

If you pay any attention to what’s going on in American politics, you are familiar with the expression, “The Deep State.” In case you’re not clear on what it means, here’s a definition of “Deep State” from a former Republican congressional aide, as laid out in Wikipedia: “a hybrid association of elements of government and parts of top-level finance and industry that is effectively able to govern the United States without reference to the consent of the governed as expressed through the formal political process.”

To whatever degree the “Deep State” is operative in America, the real and present danger is from “The Darker State”! What’s that?

In our text from Mt. 12, in parabolic form, Jesus says it is the condition of an evil generation. The generation he was referencing was the nation of Israel of his time.  The man in the parable is not one individual but the Jewish nation. The unclean spirit represents the idolatry which characterized the nation from the time of its servitude in Egypt to the Babylonian captivity (which temporarily cured Israel of its idolatry). It was as if the unclean spirit had gone out of the man. But they are like a house that is empty, swept, and put in order.

Jesus, the Messiah, sought admittance to that empty house because He was the rightful Occupant, the Master of the house. But, except for a handful, the people steadfastly refused to let Him in.

The empty house speaks of a spiritual vacuum, a dangerous and very short-lived condition, as the parabolic sequel shows. Reformation is not enough. There must be a whole-hearted, open-door invitation for the rightful Lord of the house to come in and fill it with his government, grace, and glory.

The last state or the darker state as stated by Jesus the Messiah is that a demon referred to as an unclean spirit “goes and brings with it seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there, and the last state of that person is worse than the first.

Author Jonathan Cahn rightly asserts, “And therein lies the warning. The house that is cleansed and put in order but remains empty will be repossessed. And if it should be repossessed, it will end up in a worse state than if it had never been cleansed. What happens if we apply this to an entire civilization?

“It would translate to this: Should a culture, a society, a nation, or a civilization be cleansed, exercised of the gods and spirits—but then remain or become empty—it will be repossessed by the gods and spirits that once possessed it, and more. And it will end up in a far worse state than if it had never been cleansed or exercised at all. It will, according to the parable, end up many times more possessed and evil than before.

“When Israel turned from God, the land became filled with idols. It was not an accident. It is an unchangeable dynamic. The nation that turns from God will always turn to other gods. Even if it never utters their names or erects their idols, even if it turns to atheism or a form of secularism, it will always be led to the worship and serving of other gods. The dynamic can be seen in Communism, Nazism, Fascism, and any other ism that seeks to drive out God. Other things will take on the aura and authority of godhood and seek to reign in His place.

Even many who have no faith have noted that it seems as if something “supernaturally dark” has come to possess American and Western culture; something has taken it over. This should be obvious to followers of Christ. A house that has emptied itself of God cannot remain empty. It will be seized and taken over by that which is not God. And when a civilization expels God from its midst, it never ends well.

Once more to quote at length from Jonathan Cahn’s excellent book, The Return of the Gods, he writes, “And so as America and Western civilization turned away from God, they began undergoing a process of subjectification. As they moved away from the truth, they moved away from the concept of truth itself, that there was any truth to begin with. The transformation affected language. Truth was now what was true for the individual. If a man believed he was not himself but was someone or something other than what he was, a child, a woman, a leopard, or a tree, there was no ultimate or absolute truth or any truth, no objective reality to contradict his own personal "truth."

“As the West began de-Christianizing and re-paganizing, the gods could again begin depicting Christians as different, alien, foreign, and a danger to society. Again they could begin setting the culture to war against them. Again they could incite a generation to fear and hate them. And now the gods had powers unavailable to them in ancient times - mass media, social media, the worldwide web. And as in the days of Rome, they could portray Christian dissent from sin as intolerance and hate-mongering and the speaking of God's Word as a blasphemy, an act of criminality.

“In an earlier day the values upheld by Christians would have been lauded as virtues. But now they would be despised. The Christians had not changed, but the culture around them had. It had been transformed so totally that it could not even remember ever being otherwise—that it had once been Christian. So for the first time in two thousand years, believers found themselves in the midst of a pagan civilization. And just as it had two thousand years earlier, it would mean persecution.

“And it is this that lies behind the strange and disturbing transformations overtaking American culture and Western civilization—the rise of irrational ideologies; the nullifying of biology; the denial of reality; the emergence of quasi-religious "secular" movements; the deterioration and transmutation of marriage, family, and gender; the alteration of children; the abolition of man and woman; the murder of the most innocent, the disintegration of society as we have known it; the rise of a new and subtle totalitarianism; and the silencing of all that question such things.”

The pagan world of New Testament times was demonized to the max. It was an empty, darkened, restless world, without peace, purpose, or hope. The Apostle Paul described the condition of those living in paganism as “...having no hope and without God in the world” (Eph. 2:12).

Modern culture, having turned away from God and to the gods – Satan and his demon hordes - is now marked by the same signs that once marked the ancient pagan world: vulgarity, violence, hatred, purposelessness, emptiness, and hopelessness. And the answer to the modern world is the same as to the ancient, and even more so, the gospel of God. This gospel that exposed the Darker State, drove the demons out of peoples and lands, and filled God’s House with His presence, peace, purpose, and power, can, and I believe, ultimately will do it again. 

The gospel of the kingdom is more powerful than the “Deep State” in America and the “Darker State” in the world.

We must recover a passion for the whole gospel of the kingdom.

We must renounce a partial gospel as a substitute for the whole gospel. The partial gospel has Christians and churches looking for top-down solutions to our problems that is found in social activism backed by the strong arm of civil government, or in the ultimate top-down event – the Second Coming of Christ, where He uses omnipotent power to force all sinners into acknowledgement of His Lordship and then hurls them into hell. Far too many preach and teach that the gospel truth is not as powerful as Satan’s lie, and that sheer force must exempt saving faith if disciples are to be made of all nations.

It’s time we repent of preaching a truncated partial gospel and recover the whole gospel that declares that the THEN of the kingdom has come currently, is coming progressively, and will come ultimately into the NOW of History! We need to recover a whole gospel that declares that the greatest event in history is not the Second Advent of Christ but the First. We need a recovery that embraces the “Big Story” gospel that will bless the nations with salvation, and not blast them with damnation!

The great recovery of the King Jesus’ gospel will fill the House of God with the Spirit of God and not spirits, i.e., demons. This gospel will transform hearts, homes, and homelands. We pray for the Church of the Living God to recover the whole gospel – the one that got Peter and Paul killed, that caused world governments to tremble, and that set all hell on red alert!