(ver 1.9)  This is Part 2 of a series of Bible lessons on the subject of deception.  If you have not read “Part 1” I would suggest that you go there to begin your study.  Let’s read one of the series foundational Bible verses to get us started:

Rev 12:9  And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.

Today will be a different type of Bible lesson for me.  As you can see from our Key Bible verse above, Satan is called the deceiver that is trying to deceive the whole world.  That means, Christians and non-Christians alike.  Satan is an equal opportunity deceiver and he shows no favoritism.  He is interested in causing us to be deceived from believing and knowing the Truth of God by any means that he can.  So I’m going to introduce you to some new things to think about that God has taught me personally.  You will hopefully see that these few things that I present you to think about could be a very effective tool of our enemy Satan.  I do hope that you understand that God’s enemies are Christian enemies also.  If Satan is an enemy of God, then he is our enemy here and now on the earth.  Satan’s greatest weapon on the earth has always been the subtly of deception.  But, Jesus told us that if we continued in His word we would be His disciples and that we would know the truth and that the truth would set us free (John 8:31-32).  That sounds like our freedom is dependent upon us continuing in the word, recognizing the truth, knowing the truth and then using this knowledge of God’s truth to set us free.   If Satan can keep you from knowing the truth you will be forever bound by his deception.  That is why he is trying diligently to do everything in his power to distract you and to keep you from knowing more about the Bible.  In fact deception is one of his only weapons that he has to defeat you.  If he can get you to think and believe wrong, he has accomplished his plan of deception and you are now a party working in conjunction with him to deceive others in the world.  There are false prophets, false teachers and false apostles in the world everywhere we look.   The numbers of these false distributors of lies are so many today that it is becoming increasingly difficult for Christians to recognize all of the ways that Satan uses to deceive people.  I will discuss just a couple of the ways that God has taught me over the years that Satan uses and I pray that you can see them also.

I am going to start with one method of deception which I feel is critical for all Christians to understand.  This method of deception is to take a small but critical piece of the truth in the Bible and then to possess it or claim it is something that it is not.    False teachers take bits of information out of context and then teach it in a false religion with new imbedded lies attached to it.    For example, we can find the “Golden Rule” of the Bible found in almost every religion of the world in some alternative form.   Because all of these other religions have attached themselves to this verse in the Bible, they have in essence diluted the true meaning as having come from God and they change it to fit what they prefer it to say.  Most Christians just automatically discredit the teachings of Satanism and Cultic organizations.  But, where did these false religious organizations get their information and why is it so important for them to claim it all as their own original ideas?   Think about this a long time, where did all knowledge come from?  Was it not our Almighty God who holds all knowledge?  I think I should stop here and tell you that what I am saying I am saying to only mature Christians who have been in Christ for many years.  I do not want you to think that it is OK to explore Satanism, or to go and study other religions looking for the truth.  That would be very foolish to go to a source of predominately lies and try to determine which words are true and which ones are false.  That is exactly what Satan wants you to do.  What I am saying is study the Bible and ONLY the Bible and find the truth and then do not reject it because Satan has tried to pervert it.  Do the sayings of Jesus from John 8:31-32.  Continue in the Word was the first step of the command.   That means you do not search history books, you do not search text books, you do not search other religions and you only stay with the BIBLE for your total and complete source of the truth!

I am not convinced that Satan has ever had a completely original idea in anything that he does or says on the earth.  It would appear to me that Satan takes what God does and perverts into something useful for his purpose of deception.  You must realize that Satan is a highly intelligent being that can run spiritual circles around what you know right now.  Satan has been in the presence of God and seen what He does first hand, have you ever stood before the throne of God?  I doubt seriously if you have.  Satan has been deceiving man for the last 6000 years, how old are you?  Does your experiences match Satan’s experiences?  I say Satan has had a lot more practice at deceiving people than you have had at resisting him.  What Satan likes to do is take little key principles from the Word of God and to pervert them so that many Christians will automatically reject them because they are taught as a part of a cult lesson.  Do you understand how powerful this is?  By taking a truth and by discrediting it, he can now cause many people to more easily reject that truth and be deceived into believing a lie.  This is a common political tactic used in our political system.  A candidate for office simply discredits his opponent with some perverted mixture of truth with lies.  By discrediting them they make themselves to be a more positive answer for the people.  I usually do not like to name names but I will give you an example of this type of behavior of Satan.  I was told by a reader that a small part of what I teach is a concept that is embraced by the Mormons and used to promote evolution.  Since the Mormon religion is a false cultic teaching, does that make everything that they teach a lie?   If I do not teach evolution using this same concept does that make what I say a lie?  No, what I say is not a lie, but it has been discredited by a cult taking it and perverting into their lies.   Does what they teach discredit everything that I say using the Bible?  Again, I am not telling you to go read the Book of Mormon and try to figure out what is true and what is false.  That is clearly a ploy of the enemy.   The book of Mormon is promoted as ANOTHER Testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ given to a false prophet and written down so that you will not read the REAL Testimony of Jesus Christ.    Jesus actually warned us not to read things that people ADD to the bible.  Jesus clearly told us not to take away any words or to add any words to those that have been written in the Bible (Rev 22:19).   The enemy has produced this book of Mormon simply as a tool to get you to not read the TRUE Word of God and His Holy Book of Truth.  As long as Satan can distract you with the false you are never going to recognize the Truth.  But, if the Mormons try to teach something that is a part of the truth just to discredit the truth; that does not mean the truth is not present in the Bible.

So let me give you another example of something that I may teach that is perverted by a satanic symbol.  A common satanic symbol is a five pointed star with a symbol of a male goat with horns on it.  Why did Satan choose this symbol to pervert it?  What is the significance of this symbol and the meaning of this symbol?   Why did Satan pick a goat to pervert it?  Now anything in the Bible that God uses for the symbol of the goat is tainted with this perverted image.  Because the goat and the 5 pointed star symbols are used for a direct reference to Satan, anything that the Bible now attempts to use them for are more easily rejected by Christians.  If someone suddenly came to you with a new revelation of what God said a “star” represents; you will more than likely retract from it.  Now, if anyone comes to you with a revelation of what a goat is a symbol of in the Bible, you will automatically throw it aside.  This is typical human nature to throw away even the good because someone used it for evil.  It is an automatic death sentence for any symbolic object that Satan has used to describe himself.   This death occurs by the simple association of any truth by associating with the lies or symbols for Satan.  All Satan has to do is to get someone in the world to take a Bible symbol and to pervert it into a symbol for Satan and every Christian will automatically run very fast away from it.

The Bible informs us that Satan presents himself as an angel of light (2 Cor 11:14).  Why would Satan then try to present himself with strong demonic images of himself being a very evil being with a pitch fork, horns and a pointed tail?  It is because when he shows up looking like a glorious spectacular supernatural being or even as a normal looking person, he will be able to trick you into believing his lies.  After all you are looking for an evil ugly being and not a handsome good looking fellow.  It is the classic bait and switch approach to advertising; you present one image and then you switch out another new image that is completely different and try to get people to be a sucker for something they didn’t expect to get.  This is a very prominent ploy used in deception.  Make people think this is true and then present them with a set of lies that are believable.  Satan used people like David Koresh and Jim Jones to deceive people.  They looked normal, they sounded normal and presented some very subtle words of deception.  As a result many people died because these men decided it was time to die.   Understanding how your enemy Satan operates may save your life someday.

I’ll end this blog with one more example of deception.  If you did not know it, the Ram is a Bible symbol for God the Father.  However Satan uses this symbol for himself.  Satan is attempting to exalt his throne to the equivalency of that of God’s throne.  Satan is trying to deceive people into believing that he is god.   When the anti-Christ comes in Revelation he will be setting himself up to be this most high god.  So where is God a Ram in the Bible?  We can find this several places in the Bible but we will start with Genesis 22:

Gen 22:13  And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son.

When Isaac asked his father Abraham “Where is the animal for the sacrifice?”  Abraham replied “God will provide Himself as the lamb”.  Jesus is repeatedly called the Lamb of God in the N.T.  This is a symbolic name for Jesus Christ our sacrifice Lamb.  Who is the father of a Lamb?   A Ram is the father of a Lamb!   As you can see in this verse in Genesis 22, instead of Abraham sacrificing Isaac God provided a Ram.  This Ram was a symbol of Himself being the sacrifice.   Abraham sacrifices the Ram a symbol of God coming to the earth in the flesh to pay the price for the sins of all mankind with His blood.  So God’s symbol is that of a Ram and Satan now produces this symbol to represent himself.   What is Satan trying to do?  He is trying to discredit the truth of the Bible.  He is taking a real symbol found in the Bible and trying to present you a false symbol.   This is a classic ploy of deception.  Take the real and pervert it.

So this blog was different, I know!  It was an attempt to challenge you to think.  Use your brain for something more than a place holder of useless information.  Take the real and reject the fakes, the false, and the lies of the enemy.  God Bless you to know the difference!

If you would like to continue reading about deception you can continue to “Part 3“.

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