Have you ever been
deceived? Well of course you have. And I bet you were not too thrilled when you
found out about the deception either. A
deception is really a lie. A big
deception may have a lot of little lies all bound up together. And the father of lies is Satan who is called
by many names. He isn’t omnipresent,
omnipotent, or omniscient, but he is very powerful. And he has help. He has lots of help considering that one
third of the angels followed him in his rebellion against God. Many people of earth are aiders and abettors
of Satan right now. There is a day of judgment coming for Satan and his
followers. Satan knows his eternal
destination. Some of his followers are
currently delusional about their eternal destination. They think they are going somewhere other
than hell. When they stand at the
judgment they will realize they have been deceived. But it will be too late.
Then there are true
Christians, individuals who have gone to God the Father through Jesus Christ
the Son. They have gone with a truly
repentant heart and with full willingness to change how they do things. They want to be more like Christ. Some of these people are being deceived as
well.
Satan has the world
divided into two groups for the purpose of deceptions.
Group number one consists of people who are lost, not saved,
separated from God by their sins. He
handles this group in a huge variety of ways, but the common thread in
everything is a lie. Three common lies are:
All roads lead to
heaven.
Everyone can
be/already is god.
Good or mighty acts by
an individual gain or even guarantee entrance into ‘heaven’.
Group number two consists of people who are truly saved. Satan handles this group more with things
like small lies, small variants on the truth, feelings, mystical experiences,
materialism, and other things that aren’t so apparently evil in the beginning.
Satan’s deceptions are
revealed by the truth. That means it is
VERY important that individual believers make a strong point to know the
truth. Most of the garbage passing for
evangelism on television and even in many pulpits around the world can be
filtered out as lies and partial truths by even a beginner Bible student. When in doubt about anything it is important
to go the Bible for the truth. You want
the unvarnished truth no matter how harsh it may seem at the moment.
Unvarnished truths include:
The Bible is inerrant
– it has no errors – it has the final say on every subject.
The Bible is complete
– there are no ‘new revelations’ – and no traditions of man supersede Biblical
authority.
The Bible is
sufficient – it gives mankind the necessary information to restore fellowship
with God through Jesus Christ.
The Bible is relevant
to every person in every generation – it never goes out of date.
These are the concrete
and unchangeable parameters or boundaries from which everything else is
evaluated. That is how it works. You can’t stay a step ahead of the devil on
his latest scheme, trickery, deception, religion, social do-good, scientific
terror, mother-earth’s hurt feelings, or anything else. Instead of spending time trying to figure out
what Satan’s latest deception is spend time learning what the Bible teaches as
truth. What eventually happens is you
wind up spotting error simply because it doesn’t align with the truth according
to God Almighty.
The Bible is a book of
truth revealing the love of
God, God’s mercy, the plan of salvation, the history of creation, and all
things necessary for the individual to come to a saving knowledge of Jesus
Christ.
The Bible is also a
book of ‘unvarnished truth’ or ‘dark sayings of old’. This
means it just tells the truth. It doesn’t
sugar coat it. It doesn’t spin the truth
to make it more acceptable to the general population. It doesn’t do anything except tell the truth. Something much harder than a ‘hard truth’ is
finding out about a lie when it is too late to do anything about it. Remember that if the Bible makes a clear
statement regarding something, that is exactly what it means regardless of
social or political ideas of a specific people or generation. Deep and true compassion for others will not
allow you to accept or ignore a lie that will cause you to fail to warn someone
of the danger of hell in his/her future.
False teachers are in every religion and ideology.
You can spot these false teachers through their:
Lack of sincerity. They
preach or teach one thing but they do something else. They may expect/coerce followers to make
sacrifices and do things in a particular way, but they don’t actually follow
their own teachings. You see this in
religion and politics. Leaders don’t live
the truth they preach. A secular example of this is in the global warming
community. A noted global warming fear
monger is Al Gore, former VP of the USA.
And what does this man do about global warming? He makes a fortune peddling his ideology. He
applies political pressure to crush people under changes he claims necessary to
‘save the planet’. He has no regard for the individual. In spite of his stated concern for the
wastefulness of mankind and the danger of the destroying the planet, Al Gore
lives in a giant house that uses massive amounts of energy. He justifies this by saying his ‘carbon
footprint’ is ok. That is supposed to
mean he is putting more good stuff back into the environment than he is taking
out. In truth it means he is a very rich
man. In my opinion he is also a hypocrite.
Emotional adoration. They
place emotions and feelings above scripture or sound knowledge. It is easier to go with feelings instead of
written truth. You just have to ‘feel’
it. You don’t actually have to spend the
time studying to learn.
Attacks on the
authority of the Bible. The unvarnished truths of the Bible are
attacked viciously. The pre-existence of
Jesus Christ is denied. The Genesis
account of creation is denied. Christ’s
bodily resurrection is denied. Things
called sin by God are accepted. These
arrogant teachers give to themselves authority to change the message of God
Almighty in order to say what the itching ears of some people want to
hear. They have no authority to do
this. To those who know the truth of the
Bible such teachers reveal themselves as Satan’s mouth piece when they speak
such heresy. They are revealed as
deceivers when measured by the truth of the Bible. Any so-called preacher of the gospel who
teaches anything that goes against the unvarnished truth of the Bible is an
apostate and a worker of evil.
Hatred and/or
trivialization of Jesus Christ. Jesus is not given His
rightful place as King of kings and Lord of lords. They may speak of Him as someone who is
noteworthy, but NOT as the ONLY way to heaven.
Persecution and hatred
of the truth. As you make a consistent effort to know more
of the truth of the Bible, to know more about Jesus Christ and His teachings,
you will notice a growing global hatred of the truth. This is fast becoming one of the easiest ways
to spot deceivers. They hate anything to
do with Biblical truth. They hate those
and belittle those who speak the truth of the Bible. They marginalize those who believe the truth
as ignorant and unimportant. Look around you.
Fundamental Bible believers are thought of as something from the dark
ages. They always portrayed as ignorant
people who just don’t know any better.
Yet a fundamentalist simply believes simple fundamentals clearly taught
in the Bible. Haters of the truth Bible
fundamentals.
It really doesn’t seem to matter where a person begins.
Those who reject the truth of the Bible reject Jesus
Christ. Without the transforming power
of Christ they have no God given help to transform their lives. It is much harder for them to sincerely
follow any ideology or teaching. They
are insincere meaning they are hypocrites.
They don’t adhere to their own teachings or ideas, but they firmly
expect their followers to adhere to their teachings.They are more prone to emotionalism than to sound teaching of any sort. They love to stir up emotions in their followers instead of teaching solid truth. Actually they don’t have solid truths, so they can’t teach truth.
They grow to hate the Bible because it condemns certain
behaviors and actions.
They grow to hate the truth.
They eventually persecute followers of the truth. We are seeing that now in Islam which
persecutes Christians. Islam is very clear regarding its hatred of Christianity. Humanism hates Christianity just as much, but preaches tolerance while oppressing every person and belief system that does not get on their 'anything goes' bandwagon. I wonder if there has ever been a more narrow minded hypocritical group than those posing as tolerant today.
Satan’s deceptions will be revealed by the actions of the
deceivers themselves. If you are looking for actions and teachings that signal
deceptions a recap is:
Insincerity or hypocrisy of the teacher
Trivialization of the truth
Hatred of the truth
Persecution of the truth
If you would be one to whom Satan’s deceptions are revealed you
must be one who accepts all the truth and rejects all of the lies. You cannot keep parts of a false belief
system and simply mix Christian theology in with the lies. If you find yourself in a religious system
that puts emotionalism, the traditions of man, or so-called newly revealed
prophecy above the Bible itself you are being deceived. If you are in a religious system that teaches
you can be a god, you are already a god, or that good works have power to get
you into heaven you are being deceived.
Satan’s deceptions are revealed by the truth. The truth is in the Bible, and it is
available.
Barbara Henderson
