This conflict is to have a climax. The sin of man will head up in the Man of Sin. This is he who shall come in the spirit and power of Satan, the false Messiah. Jesus forewarned of his coming, when he said: “I am come in my Father’s name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive” (John 5:43). The Isaiah passage describes not only the scene in heaven when Satan reached after the throne of God, but it foreshadows the Man of Sin on earth, “the son of perdition, he that opposeth and exalteth himself against all that is called God or that is worshiped; so that he sitteth in the temple of God, setting himself forth as God ... even he, whose coming is according to the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceit of unrighteousness for them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God sendeth them a working of error, that they should believe a lie” (2 Thess. 2:3, 4, 9-11). Man’s Final Religion The spirit of Satan, then, finds its climax in the worship of man, rather than the worship of God. Here is the heart of all sin. This is the central lie of Satan by which he deceives men. The final religion of man, before the coming of the Lord Jesus to earth again, will be the religion of humanity, the worship of man as the only deity. Paul brings all men who reject God’s revelation under this condemnation: “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever.” We have been speaking of the great conflict of the ages between Jesus and his Adversary, the conflict that underlies the raging of the nations to-day, as Satan works out his plan to put the creature in the place of the Creator, to send that one, inspired of Satan, who will come in his own name and who will be received because he comes as man. But this same conflict goes on in each individual life. Every man, because God has given him free will, must make his choice as to which of these he will follow, the Son of man, or the Man of Sin. Even the Christian, who has made his choice, will find constantly before him the possibility of serving in the spirit of his Lord or in the spirit of Satan. When the Christian is not serving after the example of the Lord Jesus, let him ponder this well,――that he is serving after the spirit of Satan. How startled must Peter have been when the Lord not only told him he savored of the things of men (the spirit of Satan), but actually addressed him as Satan, knowing that it was the great Adversary he was meeting again in one of his loved disciples. Very often is it true of Christians that “ye know not what spirit ye are of.” Is it too much to say that much of the service that is being offered to-day in the name of Christ, by followers of His, is mixed with the spirit of the evil one?