(Ver 1.0) This is Part 7 in the series of essential Bible lessons on one of the most significant causes of many of the problems that Christians and even the general population are living through today. We now are living at the time of the very end of the church age of God’s Grace. People in the world that do not get saved very quickly are about to go through the worst times of all human history (Matthew 24:21). I know this, God knows this, Satan certainly knows this, and you should too.

If you feel that you are going through a state of confusion and are having trouble discerning between what is the Truth versus what are lies, what is Good versus what is evil, what is Right versus what is wrong, you are not alone. But I believe that you may be at the right place at the right time to begin to allow the Holy Spirit to open your eyes to see things as God sees them. Stop right now and pray the Word of God:

Lord Jesus! I ask you according to Ephesians 1:17-18 that you give me the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Christ Jesus. The eyes of my understanding being enlightened, that I may know what is the hope of your calling, and what are the riches of the glory of your inheritance in the saints. Thank you for opening my eyes to see what is true in your written words and how they apply to my situation right now. In Jesus Name. Amen!

Today’s subject is “deception” and “lies” of the devil versus the Truth of God. Both the lost world and even God’s saved Christian people are being faced with this constant attack of deception from Satan, every minute of every day. This is happening in more ways and from more people being used by the devil, than can be imagined or named. The lost world has easily fallen into the belief of most of these lies, but this deception has even caused some people that say they are Christians to also fall or drift away from their individual Bible beliefs and personal faith in God.

Most of the world doesn’t believe in the existence of spirit beings, like God or the devil. But there are also too many Christians today that believe there is no devil or hell. There are also too many other Christians that believe Satan is completely defeated and powerless, and we don’t have to be concerned with him anymore. All these people in the world and these types of Christians have already been deceived. This is our topic today about how this has occurred. If you have not read this series from the beginning, you might like to go to “Part 1” to start. Otherwise, this short lesson will still be beneficial to anyone that has the time to partake of it.

Embracing and Building Our Minds
 on God’s Foundation of Truth

One definition of “deception” can be defined as someone who adds to, subtracts from, misdirects, replaces, hides or conceals the truth for their own advantage. But this definition could be applied to good or evil intentions of deception. Remember in earlier lessons we learned the concepts of good deceptions that are designed to help another. For example, I gave the story of my mother when I was a child, if you remember she mashed up squash and stirred and concealed it into my cream corn. You see I would not eat squash as a child and my mother felt this would be good for me, so she deceived me into eating it by placing it into a substance that I did like. Today as an older man, I do eat squash on purpose, and I like it. I guess my mother knew more than I did as a child.

I believe this is potentially how God is as our loving Father. He at times keeps things from His rebellious or foolish children who do not know what is best for them. God being omniscient always knows what we need. But there are subjects we are not mature enough to receive yet. But all God wants to do, is to get us to grow up spiritually and He knows many more ways of accomplishing this than we could ever imagine. And sometimes He does this in ways that are hidden from our knowledge or understanding as my mother did with squash to her son, who refused to eat it.

But on the negative side of deception, there is a different motivation and application other than for the good of others. For an evil purpose of “deception”, it can be defined to describe someone who presents untruths as in the guise of truths. These deceivers have great negative intents to get others to believe the lies to keep them from being born again and growing up spiritually.

The Lord be willing, we will someday do an in-depth study on Genesis 3:1. In this account of the first human deception, God warned Adam not to eat from one tree or he would surely die. But Satan places doubts in the humans’ mind by simply contradicting this warning saying, “you shall not surely die”. Clearly this was a lie intended to encourage the humans to commit sins, and it did work very successfully.

Another technique of deception we can see today is to cause people to view a person differently than how they had viewed them before by simply relabeling a good person as evil, or an evil person as good (Isaiah 5:20). For example, recall a recent popular and well-known TV personality that had a number one primetime show for several years from 2004 to 2015. This person was loved by every celebrity, news media and talk shows, and all Hollywood. Even every politician loved him.

But quickly all this popularity and love suddenly changed when he ran for President of the USA in 2016. Now these same people that praised him, had suddenly changed their narratives to call him Hitler and a Nazi. Where good words were once spoken about him, he was re-labeled by politicians on both sides, the media and modern celebrity culture as an evil man, simply because of a potential occupational shift. Why would a man labeled good for TV suddenly be thought of as evil, when he desired to fulfill a new and greater calling and purpose for his life?

This relabeling inspired by Satan caused many humans to believe that a good man could have suddenly changed to an evil man that must be hated. But we can all see that the only thing that had changed was the sudden shift in the words that were being said about him. That is a modern-day example of a great deception that was implemented to shift people’s attitudes and votes. If you do not believe this could be done to you, I am sorry to say you have been deceived.

This is just a very simple way to deceive people and it is repetition of what Satan did to God’s reputation in Genesis 3. By reversing a true personal label describing someone from being clearly good and labeling them as something evil like Satan did by implying God was a liar begins to plant the seeds of doubt about God’s character.

Most Christians should have been taught and understand that God is the first and final authority and source of ALL Truth. Everything that God says is Truth. In fact, the Bible clearly tells us in Hebrews 6:18 that it is impossible for God to lie. Therefore, we can depend upon God’s Words to always be True and free from every attempt of unrighteous deception.

John 14:17 calls the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth. This just further confirms God is our Truth source. Jesus also confirms this by stating in John 6:63 that His Words are Spirit and Life. And in John 14:6 Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life”. Therefore, God is dependable to give us Truth which produces Life. Satan on the other hand is only reliable to lie and deceive according to John 8:44, where Jesus said very clearly, Satan is a liar and the father of lies. We can again confirm this deception is what happened to Adam and Eve. If they had believed and obeyed God’s command they would live, but they chose to obey Satan and they both died.

Therefore, we are given a very clear set of guidelines in the Bible of two opposite personalities and forces with radically differing moral values. God is truth, righteousness and good, versus Satan who is called a liar, unrighteousness and evil. We can further confirm this by John 10:10 where Jesus was comparing his purpose for coming to earth versus Satan’s purpose for coming to earth. In this verse Jesus said, “the thief (Satan) comes not but to steal, kill and destroy, but I have come that you may have life, and that life in abundance”.

It is very interesting to know truth in the Strong’s dictionary means “stability”, “certainty”, and “trustworthiness”. Without a firm foundation built upon God’s truth, humans have opened their minds to the lies of chaotic deception that can never be trusted. This is why Bibles have become illegal in public schools for children. This makes them easy prey to deception, unless the parents take this responsibility, as they should.

Therefore, God has drawn a line in the sand, and we are asked by God to step into the “cross” truth side with Him. God has said in Deuteronomy 30:15, “I have called heaven and earth to record against you today, I have set before you, life and death, and blessing and cursing. Therefore, choose life…”. This is our daily warfare that we will be discussing in this lesson.

Identifying the Enemy

Here is one of our basic foundational verses for this Bible series of lessons. It comes from the book of Revelation chapter 12:

Revelation 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. 

As we can see from this verse again, there is a spiritual enemy that will soon be cast out of heaven. Until this happens in the soon coming future, he is still alive and doing so much to drag every human to hell with him. We need to ask, how is he able to cause even Christians to depart from their faith and follow him to hell? This verse describes the answer to this question on how he is very successful in deceiving “everyone” on the planet, including some Christians. God informs us that this strategy is based upon a concept of lies called “deception”.

We also learn from this verse that this enemy is named Satan and the devil. We further learn for the first time who is the spiritual being that was symbolically labeled as the “serpent” in Genesis 3 and has grown significantly to be symbolically called the Great Red Dragon in Revelation 12.

Therefore, we are learning that “deception” is a key weapon and strategy of this enemy and has been his primary tactic since the very beginning of humans. We should know that the devil’s “deception” represents an intentional misguidance through words, that direct someone away from knowing the truth.

We know this tactic of deception affects the church simply because of two factors. First the Bible warns Christians not to be deceived (Luke 21:8, 1 Corinthians 6:9, 15:37, Galatians 6:7, etc.). And second, we can see the effects of deception by observing the incredible numbers of denominations found within the Christian body of believers. All these denominations represent the presence of deception, based upon there being only 1 real God view of the truth.

Remember the early church when they were started in Acts chapter 2, they remained in “one accord” for a long time (Acts 4:24). But as the church number grew and increased, suddenly there arose dissensions, conflicts and disagreements (Acts 11:2). This was clearly the introduction of satanic deception fighting against the spread of the truth, and this has increased to such a level today that it is difficult to comprehend.

Christians today will literally shun a fellow believer simply because they do not agree 100% with what they teach. This is an example of true demonic deception because usually neither of them knows or realizes they are not God who knows the complete truth, and in their pride, they fight against someone exactly like them that God has chosen to grow and learn with them.

Deception within the last days before Jesus returns has increased within so many churches that they have become no different than the lost world. When a church embraces the murder of children, same sex unions and other abominable things, this is a sign that it won’t be long before these churches could all be taking the mark of the beast to worship the “antichrist”.

Satan has been able to keep a vast number of Christians divided against each other fighting over differing beliefs of doctrines.  That is an incredible tactic of deception, and as long as the church is arguing against another church, they are not winning the unsaved world, nor are they resisting or hindering the plans of their enemy to take over and control the world.

This study subject is about the top strategies of Satan to send people to hell and to defeat Christians, called “deception”. It is this exact evil plan of deception that was implemented by Satan in the beginning (Genesis 3:1). And this original plot of deception worked so well against 2 humans in God’s planted garden, that it is still the same strategy being used today, only on a larger scale.

Satan’s schemes to deceive must be made known and understood to allow us to stand against them. God’s word says “His people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge (Hosea 4:6). Just as Adam and Eve were ignorant of this tactic of Satan, so also are many of the people of God.  Satan is our spiritual adversary (1 Peter 5:8), and he desires to devour us by stealing, killing and destroying us (John 10:10). But this is only available to him by him tricking us to open the door to give him legal access into our lives and this is called falling into his trap of deception.

As we have previously learned, no natural or spiritual army should go up against an enemy without learning their enemy’s weapons and strategies. The army should always be trained in the basics of their weapons that will be used to overcome these enemies. This training is done individually and as a unified working unit in their basic offensive and defensive weaponry. These are the fundamentals of how to overcome a known enemy’s tricks and traps.

Jesus Christ is a Christian’s commanding officer, and we must call Him Lord of every aspect of our lives. He won the war for us, but Christians remain here in combined teams and individual spiritual warfare to battle and work for Him. Christians must cooperate with Him against these evil spirits to enforce His won victory. We accomplish this primarily through living in “Peace” (Romans 16:20), being led by His Spirit (Romans 8:14) and by using His given spiritual authority accessed through our faith in His Name (Acts 3:16).

These are some of the main factors that will cause us to win the victory over our enemy by us cooperating with God’s plan. Hearing from God and obeying His voice will cause us not to be destroyed. Let us begin to examine some of these basic tactics of deception work.

Satan’s Tactics of Deception

There are many ways how a Christian or the unsaved world can be further deceived. Did you notice I said “further”? It should be obvious that all Christians are at least partially deceived about something, because only God knows the entire truth and we all grew up in a world full of deception. These lies of Satan that we have all encountered had some effect and influence upon each of us, whether we admit it or not. This is why the Bible commands us to not be conformed to this world. And it says we are freed from this corruption only by the “renewing” of our minds. The implied renewing agent is of course the Word of God’s Truth (Romans 12:2).

There are significantly too many ways to be deceived to list in one lesson. But we will cover a few of the things that God teaches us in His Holy Word about our enemy and his tactics of deception.

Ephesians 4:27 – Neither give place to the devil.

We are commanded to not give the devil any place in our life. This verse clearly teaches us that it is what we choose that must determine the access of Satan to enter in and take ground from us. When an enemy attacks their opponent (us), this means they are trying to occupy the territory that we are in possession of. This is a spiritual warfare that we are participating in willingly or unwillingly. For a Christian there is no option but to participate because Satan will not stop trying to defeat us, unless we resist him (James 4:7).

This warfare takes place in the spiritual realm and is fought with spiritual weapons that include primarily words and thoughts. The battle is for truth. Each Christian has varying degrees and levels of truth if they are saved. It is impossible to get saved without hearing and believing the Truth of the Gospel (Romans 10:9-10, 17).

If Satan can get a Christian to believe any lie that is not a part of the Bible, he has taken a small bit of ground to overcome us. This is why we must learn the Word of God and put it into our mouths to win. God’s Word is always Truth, if it is rightly divided and understood. If Satan can get a Christian to believe a wrongly divided Word of God, this too brings deception. So, we must make sure we are hearing from God correctly. We also must verify every word that is being taught to us, with our own Bible studies (Acts 17:11).

We learn in the Bible that God’s Words are the most powerful (Hebrews 1:3, 4:12). This means whatever Satan tries to say to us we can be like Jesus in Luke 4:1 when He was tempted by Satan. Jesus set the ultimate example to follow. First Jesus knew and understood the Word of God. He did not have to say to Satan wait a minute while I look up that verse. No, Jesus just said, “It is written” and quoted the right verse to counter the devil’s temptation to sin. So, if we can learn His Words and keep these words in our mouth, we are practically guaranteed victory (Hebrews 10:23).

But if Satan can get a Christian to get distracted by his thoughts or their circumstances, this can take their focus away from the Holy Spirit’s voice, and His Written word. These tactics usually always are designed to initiate deception. And this is the beginning which was devised by the devil to change our previously focused God beliefs in a new direction of believing things that are not true. And when we continue to think negatively and wrong, for enough time, this is designed to change our spoken words. Once we speak wrong and believe it, Satan has us exactly where He wants us (Proverbs 6:2).

Finally, all of this can then align us with the spirit of fear (Satan) (Job 3:25). This can allow Satan to gain an entrance to control us and even to destroy us like he did Job. And all of this describes how Satan can gain an opening to take away enough spiritual ground to take full advantage to win over us.

The more ground (mental and spiritual focus) Satan takes by replacing our right thoughts and words (Truth), the greater impact we allow him to accomplish. When a Christian’s thoughts are completely shifted away from God’s spiritual ways, to align with carnal worldly ideas and beliefs, this Christian has been turned away from following God’s narrow path leading them to Life Eternal.

The only other direction to travel is to follow with the Satan influenced people in the natural world in the wide path representing there is no God judgment consequences for sin, or there are many ways to God deceptions. Satan desires everyone to be led into the deceived common and comfortable wide path because this is leading them all to eternal damnation. This is exactly why Satan wants no Bibles in public schools for children. Instead, he is feeding children lies to corrupt their beliefs and these can become strongholds.

2 Corinthians 2:11 – Lest Satan should get an advantage of us, for we are not ignorant of his devices.

This verse further confirms what God taught us in Hosea 4:6. God wrote to us in Hosea 4:6 that being ignorant of Satan’s devices (plans and strategies) is one major reason that gives the devil an advantage to defeat us. But there is another opening that caused by Christians not being a doer of the Word of God. Jesus taught us this in a parable of the wise man that built his house on the foundation of the rock (of Jesus) by doing what Jesus said (Luke 6:47-48).

Some Christians believe they can go to church and listen to the preacher’s message and then walk out and live their life like they want to. This is based upon the assumption that the preacher is teaching them the Truth. But Jesus clearly teaches this will only get your life destroyed by the storms of life caused by Satan. Everyone will have a storm it is practically guaranteed, but when they do come, those that know and do the Word of God, their house will not be shaken or fall. It is not so fortunate for those that either do not know the word or refuse to do it, they are deceived and will not stand. Satan is so much stronger than people know. He has been here and alive for thousands of years longer than us. He has been in the presence of God in heaven, and he knows how to fight better than any human alone. Thank God we are not alone if we are saved!

Sometimes a Satan victory over a Christian only means the Christian dies younger than they should have (1 Corinthians 11:30). But other times it could mean that Christian believer could have been tricked into departing from their faith completely (Hebrews 3:12). This means at the end of their mortal life they are joined back with Satan’s destination to live eternally in hell (1 John 5:16, Heb 10:26).

For example, this verse in 1 Corinthians 2:11 immediately follows verse 10 that stipulates one main reason why a Christian could give Satan an advantage. Verse 10 describes a state of unforgiveness in the life of a Christian. This means someone has potentially done something evil or horrific to them which caused them mental, physical or emotional hurt and pain. But instead of giving this to Jesus Christ, they carry the burden themselves as a heavy load of unforgiveness. This obviously is a sin and when a Christian operates in unforgiveness, they have given their enemy an opening to attack them by not doing what Jesus commanded them to do (Mark 11:25). This is a prime example of one technique of deception to keep Christians from obeying their Lord and Savior.

Deception taking place today can be easily identifiable through Satan’s usage of many other significant strategies revealed in the Word of God. There are so many of these that we cannot list them all, nor can we teach them all fully and in depth today. These methods of deception include, but are not limited to the following:

1. One very Popular Strategy of Satan is for him to use a deceived person and fill their mouth with his spirit of accusation against a righteous Christian. Satan is called the accuser of the brethren in Revelation 12:10. He is constantly at work to divide humans with this technique of accusation. However, Satan uses whatever the deceived person is guilty of doing, to accuse the good person of doing it (Romans 2:1-3). For example, God gets accused and blamed by Satan and his people, for every death, evil and destruction, but Satan is the one guilty of these things according to Jesus in John 10:10.
2. Another key strategy of Satan has become a plot to actively and openly deceive people and nations with massive and overwhelming unified lies from many mouths of Propaganda (Revelation 12:15). Satan telling these lies over and over through mass media, until people and nations are influenced into accepting the lies as truth. This is has become an overwhelming deception plot like a “Flood” of untrue words. It is now being used by Governments and their State Run News to keep all their people in-line with their evil agenda.
3. Another common Satan strategy is to mix a small Portion poisonous lies with a greater portion of truth (Genesis 3:1-5). This Causes the lies to be planted in the hearts of people and accepted as truths more quickly. Then Satan can bring more new lies that can then be jointly slipped into the message for increased deception as each previous lie is accepted. This is a progressive deception and there is a pun intended by design in this technique name.
4. Another very popular modern method of deception is to make evil lies entertaining and funny. Anything that is untruthful and evil can become entertaining to indoctrinate people into accepting the same flow of deceptive evil. Modern television and movies have used comedy extensively to play a huge part in building up lies in humans. They funnier they can make sin they more people are led to enjoy it and participate in it.
5. Another popular and successful Satan Strategy to deceive Christians is to mix one of the Greatest Truths of God’s Word into a known cultic taught message so that those that are beginning to know some of God’s basic Truths will immediately reject the greater Truth. For example, there are multiple Christians churches today that deny the virgin birth of Christ, the Messiah. With out this truth this makes the Lord Jesus just a man and denies His direct claims to being God.
6. The final tactic of deception to be listed today, we will call the antichrist deception. This is going to be a man that appeals to the masses. He will be a man of the greatest deceptive attributes possible. He will look physically nice and appeal to many people. He will appear extremely intelligent and appear to have a solution for any problem. But the most deceptive quality is he will have the ability to speak lies as if spreading them smoothly like butter or jam on a piece of bread that will be eaten up by most that hear them. Many will be drawn to him but at the end of his smooth talking there will only be death and destruction for the entire world. This spirit is working in people today, but they are not the final coming antichrist.

Perhaps you also have seen all these tactics taking place recently? The strategies of Satan have been working because too many people who know a lot of the truth, are too passive to raise the red (blood of Jesus) flag of truth against these plots to deceive. By doing nothing there is no way to overcome the lies and deception taking place. Knowing God’s Truth and speaking it in love, loud and clear today is the only way to victory.

For example, Satan has even taken considerable ground about the basic family unit created by God. In the beginning God made them male and female and there were only these two in the first family. But some churches believe God created a lot of other genders and family types. But Malachi says God never changes. How it was in the beginning will be how it is in the end.

Christians in the New Covenant and New Creation are constructed uniquely by God, and we are supposed to know the truth of the Word of God. We were designed by God to have an advantage over the Old Covenant people, the lost unsaved world and even the created angels.

For example, those in the world are easy prey to Satan’s deception. But real Christians should have the Holy Spirit who is the Spirit of Truth living on the inside joined with our spirit (1 Corinthians 5:17). And God on the inside causes us to be far greater than the deceiving enemy in the world (1 John 4:4). Yet too many Christians who have the Spirit of Truth, don’t choose to listen to Him, when the lies of the enemy are presented, nor do they spend the time to read and study the Bible to figure out what He might say.

Conclusion

This has only been a basic review and overview of just some of the evil strategies of Satan to deceive the world and the saved church. We are living through a great rise in deception today. It surrounds you, it bombardes you from every side of your existence. It is Satan’s plan to overcome you using these constant words of lies deception. We will end this lesson with just a couple of key verses of hope and promises of God’s strategies to overcome Satan’s deception:

John 8:31 – Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; 

John 8:32 – And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. 

Are you a believer? If yes, these verses and words were spoken to you. The keys to be set free from Satan’s deceptions, tricks, traps, and works of evil, is to continue reading, studying and listening to the Word of God, both day and night and always being led by the Holy Spirit. Yes, the world is a busy place with lots of distractions and important things we must also do. Most work, most have a family life, many have children and there are just necessary things that must be done to live here.

But spending as much time as you can, will benefit you more than you can possibly imagine. Seeking to know the Word of God like a valuable treasure that it is, will cause God to bless you with more and more revelations to knowing Him and His ways. To know the Truth, and to understand it will keep you from being deceived. To be ignorant of the Word will allow Satan to begin to deceive you into a path of destruction.

Romans 16:20 – And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen.

This is a prophecy that has not yet been fulfilled. This very clearly says it will be our God of Peace that will bruise Satan under our feet very soon. We know this because our church age of grace is ending very soon. According to this verse, the church was designed by God to win over our spiritual enemy and to crush Satan’s head under our feet shod with the preparation of the Gospel of Peace (Ephesians 6:15). There are times it does not look like this is possible to occur, but God said this is exactly what will happen. And God is not a liar (Numbers 23:19). All we need to do is to choose to participate and cooperate with His plan.

Thank you very much for reading and studying the Bible with us today. Hopefully you can begin to recognize and see all the deception that is taking place around us. It is on the internet. It is found on television, in newspapers, movies, and even in many churches. If you ever recognize lies being spoken, it is time to stop reading them, watching them, or listening to them. Jesus said very clearly for us to “take heed what you hear”. God also instructs us to guard our hearts with all diligence. Protecting what you are allowing in your mind, blocks what gets planted in your heart.

There is a flood of lies coming to you in this season of time. The church must stand up and preach the truth to counter the devil’s lies. God is not finished with America. God is not finished with Christians all around the world. The victory has begun by the Lord Jesus Christ but must be enforced by the Body of Christ being led by His Spirit. God has prophesied the Bride of Christ to be a victorious woman over the devil (Genesis 3:15, Revelation 12:1, Romans 16:20, Luke 10:19, Romans 8:37, 1 John 4:4, 1 John 5:4, 1 Corinthians 15:57, 2 Corinthians 2:14, Isaiah 54:17, Revelation 2:7, 2:11, 2:17, 2:26, 3:5, 3:12, and 3:22, to only name a few).

God bless you very much and please keep being a faithful doer of the Word of God and not just a hearer only. Only doing what God says ensures us that we can stand through all the deceptions and storms of life (Matthew 7:24). Being in God and remaining with God, will cause us to always triumph and overcome all evil. God is good and Good will always overcome evil.  Truth will always prevail over lies. God can’t be defeated, so let us remain with Him always and He says He will always remain with us and on our side (Hebrews 13:5-6, Psalm 118:6).

Have a blessed day and night and continue praying always in the Holy Spirit. Thank you for taking the time to read and study the Bible here. We pursue Truth to know it, apply it, and live it but also to share it with everyone that is willing to learn it. Finally, never forget how much God loves us. He is doing and will continue to do exceedingly and abundantly for us, with us and to us than we can even imagine.