Christian speaker, author and founder of Precept Ministries International Kay Arthur visited Jackson this week, speaking in Union’s chapel and capturing the attention of every student, professor and faculty member in attendance.
“I stand before you in fear and trembling,” Arthur said. “We are in a time of war.” She implored the students to realize that their only hope in these times is deeply knowing God’s Word.
The air in the room was still as Arthur began teaching a message called, “The Serpent Deceived Me,” walking through Genesis 3.
Arthur, who is 83 years old and has been a speaker for decades, spent less than five minutes on the stage before she descended the steps and said, “I want to see your faces.”
On their way into the chapel, students were given a handout of the Scripture that would be covered in the next hour, and as Arthur walked the aisles,the sound of papers unfolding echoed in the chapel hall.
Arthur began in Genesis 3:1-6, where Eve is deceived by Satan in the Garden of Eden. She urged students to mark their pages when there were repetitive words throughout the passage, a tool Arthur uses in her own study of God’s Word. She pointed out Satan’s claim that God is a liar and Eve’s belief, asking students to consider the question: “Who’s running your life?”
She moved on to look at Genesis 3:11-15. God asks Eve, “What have you done?” and “brought enmity between [the serpent] and the woman, and between [the serpent’s] offspring and her offspring.” Arthur points out that this is the first proclamation of a Redeemer.
“Satan becomes powerless in our life if we hold to Jesus,” Arthur said. Because Satan is crushed under Christ’s heel, the enemy has nothing to use against us.
Arthur paused, looking around the room, still in the aisles between the students. She made eye contact with certain people for longer than others, she says, because of her specific concern for them.
“This is a critical hour,” Arthur said, and she again began to read the Word of God.
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Revelation 12:9 and John 8:43-44, 47 speak of the angelic forces and offspring of Satan, many of whom were the Jews, believing that they were doing what was right. Arthur read 2 Corinthians 11:3, and asked the students, “Do you truly have a sincere and pure devotion to Christ?”
Arthur shared some of her personal testimony, how she was divorced at age 29 from her first husband and began to look for love in the wrong places, rejecting God. However, God opened her eyes to see that He was all she needed. She read 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, showing how Christ calls us righteous despite what we once were.
As the room continued to look on intently, Arthur closed with John 17:13-17 and Matthew 4:4, asking the students, “Do you believe His Word is truth?… It’s one thing to know [God’s Word]. It’s another thing to live it.”
The students were left with the challenge of realizing the time of war they are in and choosing not to be deceived by Satan through clinging to and trusting in God’s Word, our greatest weapon.
“In this day and age, it’s so easy to fall into the entrapments of sin, but that’s the most dangerous thing that we could do,” Mandy Wilson, a junior psychology major said after Kay Arthur spoke. “If we seek after the Word of the Lord, then our temptations to fall into sin will grow less and less.”
Arthur will be speaking in various classes across campus this week, as well as teaching in the Jackson community.
