CHAPTER SEVEN

ONENESS VERSUS EVIL

I have the burden to give another message on the genuine oneness revealed in John 17. In order to know what oneness is, we need to consider the situation at Babel in Genesis 11. Originally, God created one man. He created man not in an individualistic way but in a corporate way, for God’s intention was not to have many men individualistically but to have many men as part of a corporate man. Therefore, in the creation of mankind there was oneness. But this oneness was broken at Babel. Before Babel there was just one race; but after Babel mankind was divided, and the many races came into existence. On the day of Pentecost the many races of divided mankind came together as one, not in creation but in God’s full redemption. Hence, at Pentecost at least three thousand one hundred and twenty people were one, and there was a practical answer to the Lord’s prayer in John 17. In John 17:20 the Lord prayed not only for the disciples with Him at that time but for all who would believe in Him through their word. In Acts 2 at least three thousand people were saved through the word of the Lord’s disciples, and they were truly one.

THE TWO BABELS

In the Bible there are two Babels, two Babylons, one in the Old Testament and another in the New Testament. In a sense both the Old Testament and the New Testament end with Babylon. The first Babel caused division among mankind; the second Babel has also caused division. After the departure of the apostles, the second Babel emerged in the second century as a cause of division. According to church history, the result of the second Babel was the same in nature as the first. With the first Babel the languages were confounded, and the nations came into existence; with the second Babel the denominations came into being.

THE SATANIC SYSTEM

It was with the first Babel that the God-created earth along with mankind fully became Satan’s systematized world. Before Genesis 11 the world as a satanic system had not yet come into existence in its fullness. When the Lord spoke of the world in John 17, He was referring to this satanic system. In verses 14 through 18 the Lord mentioned the world eight times. This is the satanic system with Satan as the evil within it.

In verse 15 the Lord prayed, “I do not ask that You would take them out of the world, but that You would keep them out of the hands of the evil one.” The word one in this verse is in italics, indicating that it is not in the Greek; hence, the literal rendering of the Greek here is “the evil.” Most translators agree that the evil here is a personified evil. It is not a thing but a person. Satan has become the personified evil in the world. Now in the world there is someone called “the evil.” This evil is the essence, the basic factor, of the satanic system. This evil is Satan who is himself the personified evil in his satanic system. In the eyes of God, the whole world today is the evil. In verses 14 through 19 there is the implication that Satan is one with the world. Satan is the evil, and the world is also evil. They are one entity.

THE WORLD AND THE EVIL

Verse 15 indicates that the evil and the world are synonymous. In this verse the Lord prayed not that the Father would take us out of the world but that He would keep us from the evil one. First the Lord speaks of the world and then, using a synonymous term, of the evil. This reveals that the world and the evil are virtually identical. The world is the evil, and the evil is the world. Although we cannot say that Satan is the world, we can say that Satan is the evil and that the world also is the evil.

THE EVIL OF DIVISION

The major symptom of the sickness in the satanic system is division. In the world today there is no oneness. On the contrary, there is division everywhere—among the nations, in the family, in the schools, in business, and in politics. Every society is filled with division. The whole world is ill with the disease of division. This divisiveness is the evil in the world. According to Genesis 11, at Babel division and confusion came in. We see the same on earth today. Every nation and every people are divided. This is the evil in Satan’s system.

This evil has crept into Christianity and has produced denominationalism. Division is therefore the evil in today’s Christianity, just as it is the evil in the world. By this we see that Christianity has become an intimate and faithful follower of the world. Eventually, in the book of Revelation so-called Christianity is named Babylon the Great. By following the world with its evil of division, it has become “great.”

This evil is constituted mainly of worldliness, ambition, self-exaltation, and concepts and opinions. The entire world is the evil, and within this evil there are ambition, self-exaltation, and concepts and opinions. All division comes from ambition, self-exaltation, and concepts. If these three things were removed from the world, the world would no longer be Babel, and there would no longer be divisions.