Don't Be Ignorant of Satan's Devices

By Gene Alley

Don't Be Ignorant of Satan's Devices came to me in a night vision. The Lord literally showed me the book. It was around 2:30-3:00 a.m., and I awoke with a clear sense of the presence of the Holy Spirit. The book seemed to be suspended in air before my eyes. When I saw my name on the cover, a Holy Ghost thrill ran through me like fire. T

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trilogy Christian Publishing
• Release date: Aug 11, 2020
• ISBN: 9781647732394

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Don’t Be Ignorant of Satan’s Devices

Clarence Eugene Alley

Trilogy Christian Publishers

A Wholly Owned Subsidiary of Trinity Broadcasting Network

2442 Michelle Drive

Tustin, CA 92780

Copyright © 2020 by Clarence Eugene Alley

Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

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Manufactured in the United States of America

Trilogy Disclaimer: The views and content expressed in this book are those of the author and may not necessarily reflect the views and doctrine of Trilogy Christian Publishing or the Trinity Broadcasting Network.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

B-ISBN#: 978-1-64773-238-7

E-ISBN#: 978-1-64773-239-4

Dedication

It is my pleasure to dedicate this work first to my faithful wife and partner, Karen Griffie Alley, and next to all the community volunteers who work diligently in the North Carolina Department of Correction, trying to show Jesus to those imprisoned. Just to name a few:

Chaplain Jim Jewell

Chaplain Alan Carpenter

Ken and Jan Griffith

Mike Rozzell

Ernie Holland

Louie Hairston

Tommy Bynum

Garrett Harwood

Shakey Connor

Rhonda Myers

Patti

Jack Watts

Max Pendleton

Raymond Johns

Rev. Powell

Rev. Mac

Oscar (Bud) and Sarah (Pat) Whitescarver

Greg Mocanu

Mark Forbes

Mabel Manning

Pastor Posey

Sherman

Artie Kilgore

Rayvon Matthews

And hundreds more!

Thank You, Lord Jesus!

Don’t Be Ignorant of Satan’s Devices!

D—Division

O—Offense

N—Negativity

’T—Timidity

1

Who I Am

I am a nobody. It is June 20, 2009, and my seat is a molded plastic chair in a prison dayroom. Though I am still physically incarcerated, I am free.

If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed. (John 8:36)

My name is Gene, and I have been serving a life sentence for second-degree murder since 1982. You may be thinking, What could a lifer, a convict, possibly have to say to me? Well, since God has already used a donkey to speak to men, why couldn’t He use me? Or you? No offense intended.

Or perhaps you may say, It’s just that chain gang religion! Well, it was good enough for Paul…and for Onesimus. I am joking, of course. There is chain gang religion, which is left at the prison gates, just as there are false salvations professed in the churches on the streets. Then, too, there those whose salvation in prison is real, but upon release—or soon after—they fall to the same old temptations, just as there are weak brethren on the pews of our churches who keep falling to sin over and over. Did you know that some sheep will get stuck in the same mudhole over and over again?

Yet, this is not about religion; It is most certainly not about where I presently am. It’s all about Jesus Christ and being a new creature in Him.

You see, I totally surrendered my heart and life to my Lord Jesus Christ about seven years ago (eight, almost). Since then, we’ve been developing a growing relationship. You might say that I had a close encounter of the finest kind, and I just haven’t been the same since.

If you noted the year of incarceration and my spiritual age, then you have realized that I did not fall on my knees when I got locked up. Many do; that’s rock bottom for them! But me? I was too hardheaded and ignorant for that. No, I ran poker games, parlay tickets, and sold pot, etc., in prison for nineteen years on this sentence. And it is not my first sentence! Looking back, I can see where the Lord called me again and again.

But it wasn’t until I’d lost everything in here that I surrendered. My wonderful lady finally realized she couldn’t fix me. She put me in the Lord’s hands and she withdrew. My brother-in-law died, and my sister had a stroke. They had been helping me and showing me Jesus for decades. My hip blew out while horseplaying, and I lost all my money in one weekend on the parlay tickets.

Lonely, in constant pain, and broke after over nineteen years in prison, it still wasn’t rock bottom. A brow of brass… (Isaiah 48:4). Every person is different, and my heart was hardened by decades of sin.

My oldest brother, Frank, was a biker and affiliated with one of the major nationwide clubs. For a small man, he was bad to the bone. He loved me, his baby bro, and I loved him dearly, even when he didn’t always do right by me (in my own eyes). He was in the hospital with peritonitis of the lower intestines. That’s gangrene of the gut, folks. After three surgeries, nearly two full months in ICU, and every antibiotic known to man, the doctors gave up on him. They had taken out everything they could, and he had only twenty-nine inches of lower intestine remaining. There was nothing else they could do, and his body was shutting down on him. They said he couldn’t live over forty-eight hours.

The prison gave me the option of going to see him in the hospital or going to the funeral. I chose to see him alive, even if in a coma. They made the arrangements and said to me, If he’s still alive at 11:00 a.m., we’ll take you to see him.

At 3:00 a.m., alone in the same dayroom where I now sit, I cried out to God. God, if you’re really there, I need you! Show me, please!

A fine man of God named Gary Blunt had given me a red, shaded-promises Bible six years earlier (it was still like new). I snatched it up, almost missed it, and grabbed it with both hands. The phrase, clutching it desperately, comes to mind. My thumb reared back to thumb through it, my mind deciding God would just somehow show me something. Did you know that God will meet you where you’re at if you call on Him from the bottom of your heart?

The Lord is nigh unto all them that call upon him, to all that call upon him in truth. (Psalm 145:18)

I never turned a page. Right there at the top of that page, in a shaded passage, the word read, And the prayer of faith shall save the sick…

The words jumped off the page at me! I realized I was so far from God in my lifestyle that I didn’t even know how to pray for my brother! I fell to my knees and cried out, God, I don’t want my brother to die! And I don’t want to live like this anymore. Jesus, come into my heart. Take over my life.

The Lord God Almighty honored that prayer. Well, I knew I couldn’t get it all in one night. But that verse He showed me was James 5:15. James has only five chapters. So I read it over and over. It all came down to James 5:15,16, which ends, The effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.

I thought about that awhile and said, Lord, I remember as a kid, they told me that You made us righteous when we come to You. So I’m righteous right now. And I know what fervent means. It means with all my heart. I even know what effectual means, ’cause it just means ‘effective.’ But God, I’m new at this, and I don’t know how to make an effective prayer. So I’m just gonna trust You on that.

At 11:00 a.m., a program staff member named Mr. O’Brien and a security staff sergeant named Warren Cook took me to see my brother. When we walked into the ICU room, Frank looked kind of dead. He weighed seventy-nine pounds, he was blue-gray all over, and he was not moving at all.

Mr. O’Brien said, Is he alive?

And Mr. Cook said, I think he’s dead.

Then the monitor beeped, drawing our attention. As I recall it, his pulse showed as forty, and his blood pressure as 78/40. A nurse came in and said that Frank could not last the day. I heard her, but I ignored what she said. God had spoken, and that was that. They all stepped outside, leaving me with Frank. The scriptures had said, Anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord, but I didn’t know anything at all about anointing oil. But I had put some baby oil on my hands!

Laying my hands on Frank, I prayed. I do not know what all I prayed or how long I prayed. It could have been five minutes or up to thirty minutes. But I know how it ended!

Lord, I heard one time about faith the size of a mustard seed moving a mountain. Well, I don’t have that much. I’ve got maybe a ten thousandth of that, but that is all you need to work through, ’cause you’re God! Please heal my brother. I’m asking you in Jesus’s name.

The peace of God washed over me and through me, and I knew that my brother was okay. I was sort of crying and smiling at once.

At noon (according to Sandy’s watch), my sister-in-law, Sandy (Frank’s wife), our sister, Billie Ann, and one of Sandy’s sisters entered that room.

Frank was awake and alert, and his skin was pink like a young child’s. Someone got the nurse. She looked and said, It’s impossible!

She went and got the doctor who looked and said, It’s impossible! Because Frank’s pulse was seventy-two. His blood pressure was 120/70. He still weighed seventy-nine pounds, but the gangrene was gone! They began unhooking all that junk (straps and stuff). When they took the tubes out of Frank’s throat, he was unable to speak until they gave him a sip of water. Then Frank whispered, Jesus saved me. Praise God!

And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him. (James 5:15 KJV)

Frank later said that Jesus appeared to him with His nail-scarred hand extended to him, saying, Son, it’s time to get right.

He said he took the Lord’s hand and said, Lord, forgive me.

The miracle God did in me was no less than the one He performed with Frank. But that first year was rough!

It was in my heart to read my Bible, and I began to do that at least a little almost every day. I prayed every day. I began to bow my head over my food. But I wasn’t going to church, hearing the Word preached, or fellowshipping with other Christians. My number one excuse was the choir at the prison. Most of those guys gambled with me, cussed with me, got high with me, traded porn with me, etc. Whoever their Jesus was, I didn’t want Him. That was my mindset, and it was wrong.

The Lord moved me to another prison where there were about a dozen or so men truly on fire for Jesus. The first time I went to church, I heard an extremely anointed message about having a made-up mind. I caught fire for Jesus! The Word of God consumed me as I devoured the Bible. When the doors were open, I was generally there, listening to every word preached avidly and checking that word against the Bible. Soon I had several anointed Christian books, and I had enrolled in several Bible studies, which caused a space problem. You see, prisoners in dormitories live out of a locker, much like soldiers in barracks.

My locker was already packed with fiction I’d written back in the bad ol’ days. I’d always had a desire to write, and while at Central Prison in Raleigh, I took an on-site creative writing course from UNC-CH. The class showed me that I had a natural bent for the expositional essay. Later, I spent a couple of years on long-term lockdown (hey, I really was a heathen in my unsaved days).

To maintain some semblance of sanity while in lockup, I began to write. What I wrote was action-packed (extreme violence) and sensual (sex-obsessed/driven) drivel. Most of the people who read it loved it, but they weren’t saved either. There was even some dark poetry. The main stuff consisted of seven novels and thirty-plus short stories. These were handwritten on notebook paper: that’s a lot of paper!

So here I am, a new creature in Christ, with a few great books and at least three different Bible studies, none of which I could get in my locker. And everything had to go in the locker. There were only three people active on my visitation list, and none of them were physically able to tote over a hundred pounds of paper. It would have broken my budget to mail it home. So I prayed about it. Duh! I did not know that prayer should always be the first step in any problem.

At about 2:30 a.m., the Holy Spirit woke me and very, very clearly said, Throw away all that secular trash. When I want you to write something, I’ll give you something to write.

My attitude was a grateful and joyous, Yes, Sir!

But (and everybody’s got one) when I got up in the morning and looked into my locker…those pages represented thousands of hours. Some of those books were in their third draft and were actually pretty well-written. Ah, but the very last one was over a thousand pages, front and back, of trash. It was awful. So I threw it into the trash can. And guess what? The space created was exactly enough for the books and Bible studies! I was very happy with this result and maybe even a little bit proud of my obedience.

The next morning, around 2:30 a.m., the Holy Spirit woke me again. He was mildly disappointed with me, which made me cry, but then His awesome love overwhelmed me.

The Lord said, Since you did not obey Me, I’ll give you an ABC lesson to write before you go back to bed. The following is the assignment which the Holy Spirit gave me:

Jehovah our God is—

Able, Awesome, Almighty, Abba, Alpha.

The Branch, Beautiful, Beloved, Breathtaking, Bold, our Blessing.

Caring, Calming, Capable, our Counselor, Charitable, our Creator, our Comforter.

Our Door, Dear, Dedicated, our Deliverer, Divine, Our Defender.

Eloi, Eminent, Eloquent, Evermore, Everlasting.

Faithful, Fierce, Father, Friend, our Fortress.

Gentle, Good, Glorious, Great, our Grace.

Hearty, Heavenly, our Healer, our Husbandman, Holy, our Hope.

Immutable, our Intercessor.

Just, Jealous, Jeshuah, our Judge, our Joy.

King, Kind, Knowing, Keen.

Love, Loving, Living, Learned. Loved, our Light, our Lord.

Messiah, Master, Magnificent, Marvelous, Mine, Mystery.

Never-ending, our Nurturer, Nice, Now, Noble.

Omniscient, Omnipotent, Omnipresent, Omega, One.

Peace, Perfect, Pure, Patient, Peculiar, Perpetual, Pleasant, our Physician, Precious, Powerful, Proven, Prudent. our Provider, the Potter.

Quick, Quiet, our Questioner.

Ready, Reasonable, our Recoverer, our Reliever, our Restorer, our Repairer, Righteous, our Righteousness, our Redeemer, Risen, our Rock, our Refuge.

Safety, Surety, Sanctified, our Sanctuary, Savior, Seal, Secret, Security, Shepherd, our Sower, Spirit, Special, Stable, Stablished, Supreme, our Salvation.

Tender, Teacher, our Tabernacle, Terrible, our Testimony, Thanked, Three, our Tower, True, the Truth, Trinity.

Unchangeable, Understanding, Upright, Unweighed.

Valiant, Valorous, Verity, our Voice, our Vow.

Wanted, Warm, Watchful, our Way, our Wealth, our Well, our Wing, Wisdom, Wonder, our Word, our Workfellow, Worshipped, Worthy, Wrath, our Writer, Wonderful.

eXceptional, eXpert, eXactly.

Our Yearning, our Yokefellow, Yeshua, Yehovah.

Zealous, Zany, our Zion.

In this ABC lesson, the Lord taught me something of His attributes. He also taught me that all means all. And he taught me that partial obedience is not obedience at all but rebellion (1 Sam. 15).

Nearly five years later, the Holy Spirit gave me unction to write out some of His teachings as expositional essays. These will one day form a book. There are over twenty of them now.

On June 9, 2009, around 2:30 a.m., the Lord woke me with a vision of a book:

Don’t Be Ignorant of Satan’s Devices.

D—Division

O—Offense

N—Negativity

’T—Timidity

Scriptures came to my mind with each of the four parts, and I added them to the outline. Honestly, I knew I could have stood up right then and there and preached a forty-five-minute or an hour’s sermon on the subject! But…a book? With 150 or more pages? I doubted very seriously that I had enough in my mind and heart to write a book! So I told the Lord exactly how I felt and asked Him to help me, to teach me.

His message was so powerful that I made copies of the outline and put one in my Study Bible, one in my KJV, and a third in my notebook. For a couple of days, I meditated on the scriptures used in the outline. Finally, I prayed again and let go of it.

On June 19, 2009, ten days after the vision (and seven days after that prayer), a true man of God name Oscar Bud Whitescarver made a special trip to the prison to see me. He told me that three days earlier, while he was in another state, the Lord woke him and told him to come and see me. He said, The Lord said, ‘Write that book.’

He showed up about noon, and I was physically exhausted. I’d been working very hard without drinking water. I had momentarily forgotten what the Lord had shown me. I really wasn’t too sure what Oscar was talking about, but I trusted God to make it clear to me. A little while later, when I opened my notebook, there were the DON’T notes staring me in the face!

I prayed and prayed, and finally the light came on. Uh, duh! While I’ve been a minister of the Lord in prison, I have seen each of the four parts of DON’T demonstrated. My testimony of those incidents is about the trials that Christians face in prison. If you will bear with me and read on, then I’m very sure that you will be able to relate to many things (whether you’ve ever been in prison or not). The issues Christians and churches go through are pretty much the same everywhere.

Please hear this: Satan does not have any new tricks. So, don’t be ignorant of Satan’s devices.

2

Division

For to this end also did I write, that I might know the proof of you, whether you be obedient in all things. To whom ye forgive any thing, I forgive also: for if I forgave anything, to whom I forgave it, for your sakes forgave I it in the person of Christ; Lest Satan should get an advantage of us; for we are not ignorant of his devices.

—2 Corinthians 2:9–11

Paul wrote that we are not ignorant of his devices. That we referred to Paul and to the young believers in Corinth. Sadly, the church in America seems to have forgotten this truth.

Section One: Division

Division is Satan’s number one weapon. In fact, Satan has other devices which rely on some form of division or are intended to create division.

And if a Kingdom be divided against itself, that Kingdom cannot stand. And if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand. (Mark 3:24–25 KJV)

There are three areas of a Christian’s life where Satan tries to bring division so that he may divide and conquer (destroy). Because he came to steal, kill, and destroy (John 10:10). The three areas are

(A) the church itself,

(B) families,

(C) personal relationships.

These three areas affect and interact with each other. At times, any lines between the three blur into one map of pure misery or pure joy (depending on your viewpoint).

Look back at 2 Corinthians 2:11. If we allow Satan to divide us, then we are giving him an advantage. You see, division is sometimes rooted in unforgiveness. Unforgiveness is sin. Walking in sin allows Satan to attack us.

For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. (Mark 6:14–15 KJV)

What is so important about sin? Since we all sin, we all fall short of the glory of God.

If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. (1 John 1:8)

When we get into unconfessed, unrepented sin, we open the door to Satan. He is more than happy to come in and kick our hind ends. Often, it’s only when we are sick, depressed, alone, miserable, et., that we cry out to God and repent. Brethren, it doesn’t have to be that way. I realize that some may immediately reject the idea that there are