There's a Crack in Your Armor Perry Stone

the bait, like a magnet to a magnet, pulls the animal off its journey to investigate the bait, and suddenly the trap catches the animal. By Christ’s time the word referred to any stumbling block put in a man’s way that would trip him up and cause him to fall. 2 The strategy behind an offense is to cause a person to stumble, fall, or participate in certain behavior that will cause ruin or destruction. This word is used is a variety of examples throughout the New Testament. The word was used by Greek writers (such as Aristophanes) for the “verbal traps” set to lure a person into an argument in order to trip them up. 3 In Matthew 13:21, in the parable of the sower, there are some who are offended at the instruction required by God’s Word, and thus they turn from Christ because of persecution. The spiritual design of persecution is to use verbal assaults, like burning arrows, to insult a person and place mental pressure upon a believer, causing that person to choose serving Christ with persecutions or departing the faith for convenience. The apostate who departs has fallen to the offense, or the skandalon , as the bait of persecution created internal and emotional pressure that he or she could not stand up under. When the Pharisees attempted to trap Christ with controversial questions, Paul wrote that the preaching of the cross and crucifixion of Christ was a “stumbling block” to the Jews of his day (Rom. 14:13; 1 Cor. 1:23; Gal. 5:11). This was because in the Torah, the Law said that any man who was hung on a tree was cursed (Deut. 21:22–23).