Blog Archives
SERPENT WITCHCRAFT – PART 2 – FOUR TYPES OF SERPENT POISON
(Ver 1.0) Today is a vital prophetic Bible study, on an essential current world topic. This Bible subject concerns one of the most important end-time warnings that God wants to reveal to humans. This plan of evil is revealing Satan’s strategy of coordinated deception, and his plans to try to control every human. This will be a highly explosive controversial subject that will certainly offend Satan, but could also potentially offend a lot of readers and even Christians. Therefore, be warned up front, if you do not consider yourself to be a spiritually awake and mature Christian, judge yourself to determine if you should continue reading. It is recommended that you read this lesson series from the beginning. If you have not read this, click on “Part 1” to go there first.
In this series we are talking about a nefarious prophesied planned tactic of human control from an ancient evil serpent. Today’s short Bible lesson, will only focus on the subject of the types of “serpents” that God reveals in the Bible. There will be four different types of “serpents” that will introduced. Two types of serpents will be totally natural, and the other two types of serpents, will be a potential combination of both spiritual and natural. We will hopefully, go over who or what they are, and introduce how they are effective to hurt, harm, or even kill people in this lesson.
Unless you have been living on a deserted island somewhere, you already are aware of something that is happening in the world that is “far” from good. Death has become the dominate topic of conversation. There appears to be a globally coordinated, and planned agenda to cause a one-world new ordered lifestyle, through fear driven words of deception, distortions, distractions, and biases. People today are intentionally being murdered, when they could have been quickly treated correctly, to live.
Please take note that this lesson will be taught using a lot of Biblical, spiritual terminology, representations and symbolism, to keep this message from being muzzled by Satan’s cooperative human IT workers of evil. I believe most mature Christians will understand it, and receive the spiritual message of warning from the LORD.
Let us go and study some of the key verses about who and what types of serpents, that are applicable for today’s plan of global deception.
#1- BIBLE OVERVIEW OF ENEMY SERPENTS
The first directly named mention of a serpent in the bible, occurs in Genesis 3:1, and this creature is defined to be Satan in Revelation 12:9 and 20:2. He is the main focus of this lesson series. But there are also other types of serpents, that are literal or figurative, that may be working with our main character to accomplish his great destructive evil.
There are at least four forms, or types of “serpents” mentioned in the Bible. These types represent natural, spiritual, and figurative patterns of serpents. There are spiritual serpents, and figurative serpents that are working together in the world today. Both of these categorized types of beings have amazing similarities and parallels. But it is important to know that they all represent sin, and evil. Let us quickly go through an introductory overview of these 4 types of evil.
SERPENT #1
First, there are the natural types of God created serpents, that slither, and slide along the ground. Christians today are not fighting these natural beasts in mass, as the children of Israel did in Numbers 21. However, this natural story of fiery serpents moving through the camp, to kill many people is a shadow of what is happening now in the world. Like Moses did by lifting up a serpent on a pole, to have people look on it to be delivered, is also what is available today. But people today are required to repent and look to Jesus on the cross for their spiritual salvation, and He is the only hope anyone has.
When, and where did these natural reptiles come from? Christians should believe the Bible, because God created the world, and He wrote the Bible, and He answers these questions. In Genesis 1:24, God begins day 6 of creation. At the beginning of day 6, God creates land animals of every kind. This would logically include any natural snake. Many people consider these creatures a physical enemy, which is very logical and wise. But God said He created these beings to help us to understand His greater unseen spiritual realities, in John 3:12.
Natural serpents are mentioned a few times in the Bible. But we will only be focusing upon one occurrence found in the Book of Acts for this lesson series. In Acts 28:4, the apostle Paul is shipwrecked on an island called Melita, where he is placing a pile of sticks on a fire. While feeding the fire, a venomous beast attaches itself to the hand of Paul. Everyone that watched this happen, looked upon Paul in amazement when he shook the beast off, and did not fall down dead. This is an amazing story that reveals more than you know right now. We will be talking more about this event, later in the series. Here are some little facts about poisonous and venomous natural serpents:
- A poisonous serpent or viper has specifically designed venom producing glands.
- Poisonous serpents have hollow long fang sharpened teeth that are used to inject the mouth gland’s poison into their victim.
- There are over 700 types of poisonous serpents in the world today.
- Over 250 serpents have the ability to kill a human with one bite.
- Serpents are globally prevalent. There are only about 6 nations on earth where snakes do not live.
- Many snake venoms contain neurotoxins that attack the nervous system, that is designed to immobilize and, or kill the victim.
- Sea snakes are some of the most venomous in the world.
- Snakes smell with their tongues.
- Venomous snakes usually have elliptical or slotted pupils in their eyes.
- Snakes are considered “cold blooded” animals.
- Most snakes have very keen eyesight and night vision.
Most of us know that natural serpents are real, widespread globally, dangerous, designed to kill or cause harm, and should not be ignored, and treated like they do not exist. Therefore, if we should not ignore natural dangerous serpents, we better not ignore a far more powerful spiritual poisonous serpent named Satan. All of these descriptive qualities of naturally created serpents, have parallels into the other spiritual, and figurative serpent types.
Serpent #2
The next type of serpent mentioned in the Bible, is a spiritual being named Lucifer (Isaiah 14:12). This spiritual being is first referenced by God to be a symbolic serpent in Genesis 3:1, but his identity is not clearly revealed until Revelation 12:9. That fact causes these two books (the first, and the last), and these two chapters (3 and 9), to be very intimately connected. It also teaches us that this figurative serpent represents an unseen hidden enemy.
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.
This symbolic serpent is our central figure of this Bible study, and he is also one of the secondary central themes of the entire Bible. He is identified in this verse, to have two names, and two figurative descriptive symbols. The two symbols are the “old serpent”, and “great dragon”. With these symbols is prefixed qualification of “old” and “great”. The two identifying names are the “Devil” and “Satan”. “Devil” means “false accuser”, and “Satan” also means “adversary accuser”. Both of these names identify Satan to be a masterful slanderer using words. He uses words of deception craftily, like casting a spell upon a victim.
Today there is a battle of words taking place. It is a key part of what is happening in the strategy of the serpent in our world. There is an evil side that is producing words of fear, division, hatred, and redefinition of evil being called good, and good being called evil (Isaiah 5:20), and the God side is attempting to just tell the truth in love (Ephesians 4:5). Christians are going to become deceived, if they do not learn to pay attention to the words they hear.
A lot of Christians believe we should not spend time studying this spiritual enemy, but obviously they have not been a Christian long enough to know how evil, powerful, and tricky this enemy can be:
2 Corinthians 2:11 – so that no advantage would be taken of us by Satan, for we are not ignorant of his schemes. (NASB)
It should be obvious from reading the Word of God and from our human experiences, that Satan has schemes of evil to work against humans. Paul wrote that we should NOT be ignorant of these strategies, yet too many people are. Any wise military general understands, the more they know about how an enemy can operate against them, the more likely they are to overcome them. Let us just read about one key part of Satan’s ability to control humans:
2 Corinthians 4:4 – In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.
Satan has an uncanny ability to produce a shadow of darkness that overwhelms the human mind, causing people the inability to see the truth. God says there are people in the world that do not believe the truth about Jesus to be saved, just because of this ability. But even some Christians can experience this darkness to not see certain Bible truths. We learn from this verse, that this deception is occurring in the unseen human mind, by an unseen spiritual serpent god. Wow!
Therefore, the number one strategic way Satan figuratively poisons people, is by thought filled words of deception. We learn that Eve was deceived by the serpent in Genesis 3:13, by her own admission, she said she was deceived by the serpent. But then we learn in the New Testament that God claims she was only deceived in her thoughts:
2 Corinthians 11:3 But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.
Surely you can see that the modern church is being warned to control our thoughts. We learn from the Word of God, that any thought in our mind, could potentially come from Satan. Therefore, it must be evaluated by comparing it with the word of God in the Bible (2 Corinthians 10:5). This is your only guarantee that this thought is something that needs to be agreed with, spoken, or acted upon.
Then reading in a connecting verse in Revelation 12:9 we discover this same serpent, has deceived the entire world. Therefore, the words of the serpent represent poison, that causes spiritual death. Serpent words in Genesis left the entire world separated from God, spiritually dead. You have just been introduced to two types of poisons, in serpent types 1 and 2. A natural serpent has a natural poison substance in its mouth to kill people physically, and the spiritual serpent has poisonous words of deception in its mouth to spiritually kill people. Let us examine a new type of spirit serpent next.
Serpent #3
Ok, now for the next prevalent type of “serpent” that is mentioned in the Bible. This type of serpent is a figurative representation of another spiritual being. Can you guess what type of being this can be? Yes, it could be angels, devils, demons and other unclean spirits, but those fall into the serpent type 2 category. No serpent type 3, could be any human you hear speaking to you. This is why, we better learn this lesson from the Bible and learn from God’s Word. Paul wrote in Romans 3:4 “…let God be true, and every man a liar…”. Let us review some verses that introduce this type of human serpent:
Psalm 140:1 – Deliver me, O LORD, from the evil man: preserve me from the violent man;
Psalm 140:2 – Which imagine mischiefs in their heart; continually are they gathered together for war.
Psalm 140:3 – They have sharpened their tongues like a serpent; adders’ poison is under their lips. Selah.
These verses describe a natural human being, that has an extremely evil heart. This would indicate this human is connected to be like the unseen spiritual serpent also named Satan. Notice in verse 3, God says this human has a sharp tongue like a serpent, and they have adders’ poison under their lips. These are clever symbolic representations of people who deceive, and hurt other humans, with their words, and actions.
Take a quick look at one other reference to how human words can be a deadly poisonous substance:
James 3:7 – For every kind of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents, and of things in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed of mankind:
James 3:8 – But the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.
We find in verse 7 of James 3, that God speaks of humans being able to tame every kind of naturally created beast, including natural serpents (serpent type 1). But this natural reality, is being compared to an unruly spiritual evil full of deadly poison, called the human tongue. God is now teaching us how Satan is using the words of deceived humans, to deceive other humans. These types of humans can be just introducing us to false religions, Satanism, socialism, Marxism, communism, or atheism. And it could also be coming from anyone, including politicians. An injection of poisonous words, can be coming from any source, including your neighbor, a boss, the television, and the internet.
Currently in the world, there are literally billions of deceived people that have been buying into the untruths of Satan. These deceiving words are being spoken through people (like the false prophets), who have no real concept that they are being used by an evil spirit (Ephesians 2:2). It is amazing how a deceived person, can believe they are the one that is speaking the truth, and believe that those that are actually speaking truth are speaking the untruths (2 Corinthians 4:4). But God said this would happen, and warned us of it in Isaiah 5:20. In this verse God says “Woe to them that call evil, good and good, evil. Please let me give you another set of key verses that are very relevant to our subject of serpent witchcraft.
Act 13:6 – And when they had gone through the isle unto Paphos, they found a certain sorcerer, a false prophet, a Jew, whose name was Barjesus:
Act 13:7 – Which was with the deputy of the country, Sergius Paulus, a prudent man; who called for Barnabas and Saul, and desired to hear the word of God.
Act 13:8 – But Elymas the sorcerer (for so is his name by interpretation) withstood them, seeking to turn away the deputy from the faith.
Found here in the Bible, is an amazing parallel to what is happening in our modern times. Satan always repeats the same strategies and plans, just to new people. Ecclesiastes 1:10 says, “Is there anything we can say, this is new? No, it has been already in old time, before us”. This is a wise principle to know and apply. This makes Bible study exponentially more important in these times that we are living. The more we learn about what Satan was doing in the past, the more we can be prepared to know what could be happening now. In this passage we are about to be introduced to the ancient concept of witchcraft and magic, to see how it was used then, and how it can be repeated now and in the future.
Here in Acts 13, We can read, where Paul and Barnabas were going through the land preaching the Gospel of Jesus, when they came across a government ruler named Sergius Paulus. This man desired to hear the words of light and truth spoken from Paul. But there was opposition from a human, that was a false prophet, magician, and sorcerer named Barjesus. This evil man tried extensively to silence the truth. This man was attempting to sway the ruler away from hearing God’s words of truth to bring light, in order to keep him in Satan’s dominion of darkness (Acts 26:18). This is exactly what is happening today, but on a much larger scale. Here is what Paul said about this evil man:
Act 13:9 – Then Saul, (who also is called Paul,) filled with the Holy Ghost, set his eyes on him,
Act 13:10 – And said, O full of all subtilty and all mischief, thou child of the devil, thou enemy of all righteousness, wilt thou not cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord?
This is an accurate description of people that are doing the same in our world today. Notice the Greek word G1388 translated as “subtilty”, leads God’s descriptive terms. This word means, “a decoy”, “a trick bait”, or “a wile”. Wile is defined as a strategy to deceive in order to trap and ensnare a person into believing a lie. It is like placing a tasty piece of cheese on a trap, to get the mouse, to take the bait and die.
This is happening every day from the mouths of the modern false prophets, that we learned about in lesson 1. We can learn from this, that whatever a false prophet is claiming is the truth, is actually the opposite of the truth. In fact, whatever a false prophet accuses their enemy of doing, is what they are doing. The accusation is given just to distract the attention away from them.
The next Greek description is G4468, and it was translated as “mischief”. This Greek word is defined by Strong as “recklessness”. Recklessness can be defined as someone who gives little or no thought to the risk of danger. This would apply to any danger to themselves, as well as any danger to others. These types of people care very little about their safety, or about who else gets hurt. This could describe a terrorist suicide bomber. This is clearly a type of person that is deceived, and on their way to hell, and does not care how many others they take with them.
Now we get to the most important description of this type of individual. This man in Acts is called a “child of the devil”. Did you hear that? What is a child? One answer to what is a child, is a “seed” (Genesis 4:25). Who is the devil? We should all know, the answer to who is the devil, is he is the serpent (Revelation 12:9). Paul was calling him, “a seed of the serpent”. Where do we hear about this in the Bible for the first time? Perhaps you know it is Genesis 3:15. In this verse God is speaking directly to the “serpent”, as he says there will be enmity (hatred) between you and the woman, and between her seed and your seed. Wow, this is very important to understand.
Finally, notice the word description. to “pervert” the right way. This Greek word is G1294 and it means to “distort”. This could be exchanged with the synonym, to “twist” the true way to righteousness. God is saying there are people in the world that are intentionally, trying to turn you away from seeing the truth, to send you to hell with their lies and tricks. This is the antichrist spirit that has been working since Paul was preaching (2 John 1:7).
This type of serpent, being described is full of deceit, guile, subtilty, treachery, and great evil intentions. This type of serpent is a type of their serpent father’s pattern (Satan). This type of “serpent” uses words to deceive, and turn people in a direction they should not be in agreement with. Think of this type of person to be like a warlock or wizard magician that is casting a spell upon someone, they want to do harm to. This type of serpent is working with their father to bring magic, and witchcraft to the people of the world.
This type of serpent’s number one ways of deception; is to first distract from, or plainly silence the truth. This was like Barjesus, did to Paul. Then they will bring people hopeful words of hidden subtle poison. And they do this by hiding and disguising the lies with tasty labels that promote human flesh desires for relief from created threats of death, poverty, sickness, and etc. But whatever they are saying or doing, is actually leading people deeper into the problems that they claim they are being saved from.
Next, let us go through the fourth type of serpent, which is another figurative type to conclude this lesson.
SERPENT #4
Ok, there is a fourth type of figurative serpent, that is representative in the Bible. Serpent 4, characterizes any natural deadly type of poisonous substance. Like Satan and his seed sorcerers can use poisonous words to cause spiritual death, they also can use literal poison to intentionally cause physical death to humans. Satan is first interested in your spiritual death, but physical death becomes a greater priority after anyone becomes a Christian. But remember, Satan always wants to deceive you first.
Once a person is deceived, they can be used by Satan easily, to deceive or physically kill other people. Take for example, the late Jim Jones in 1978, who was a deceived cult preacher that killed a lot of his followers by giving them a deadly poison to drink. Here we had two types of poisons (one spiritual, and one natural) working together to kill a lot of people. This makes this type of spiritual and natural death, one of Satan’s greatest planned strategies, and we will be talking more about this in other lessons, because this is a repeated pattern of poisoning people by the evil one, and it is happening again today on a global scale.
Let us review a few examples of this type of physical poison in the Bible. In Exodus 15, God wrote of Moses and the children of Israel in the wilderness being very thirsty. They come upon a place named Marah, that had only bitter water. After Moses cast a tree branch into the water, it became sweet, and good to drink. It is implied, that drinking the bitter water would have been deadly. Fortunately for the children of Israel, Moses was a prophet of God that helped them, and not a Jim Jones that was trying to kill them.
In Mark 16:18, God informs us that if Christians drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them. In another place, in Revelation 8:10, we can read about a satanic star named Wormwood, that falls from heaven to the earth. This event of evil, poisons 1/3 of the drinkable waters in the world. This passage claims “many” people will die from this coming poisoning. This is just another example of the Jim Jones type of event, on a much larger scale. There are also other types of potential venomous substances, and poisoning methods, that can be given to people through massive deceptive tricks. We will address this subject more later in the series.
CONCLUSION
We have been discovering the Biblical subject of “serpents” and how they threaten the freedoms of human life with poisons of witchcraft. We have found that there were at least 4 types of serpents, that were introduced to us today in this lesson.
There was one type of naturally created serpent that depicts a warning pattern for the other types of figurative and symbolic serpents being given by God in His Holy Word. These naturally created serpents (type 1), are very subtle beings. They can appear not to be there and then suddenly strike without warning. Their poison can literally kill a human in a matter of minutes.
But there is also another type of natural serpent that was not mentioned. This type of natural serpent is very large and powerful. This serpent wraps around its victims, and then slowly squeezes until they are unable to breathe, and the victim dies from suffocation. People today have been dying this way in hospitals. Do you believe this is also related to the modern strategy of Satan? We will be talking more about this in the future, the Lord be willing.
The next more prevalent serpent type number 2 was Satan. This was God’s chosen description of Lucifer who deceived Eve with his tricky words in Genesis 3. Because of Adam’s willful rebellion, spiritual and physical death, both entered into the world. This resulted in the first mention of fear (Genesis 3:10). This enemy deception, caused man to become fearful of their creator God, and He was their only hope. This act of the subtle serpent, made the devil believe that he was in control, but it was through this God created concept of “death”, that literally caused Satan’s defeat (Hebrews 2:14).
The third type of serpent was humans that were called a child of the type 2 serpent, named Satan. According to the law of Genesis 1:12, every seed is produced from the source of its own kind. Therefore, these types of people are almost exact patterns of their father the devil. These humans have been deceived by Satan’s words, and are now controlled to be used to deceive other humans from joining God’s Kingdom. Most of these people do not have a clue that they are deceived, and they are being used for evil, or that Satan even exists. But there are a few top leaders that have worship practices to exalt Lucifer to the position that he desires in his evil heart. Too many deceived people today have fallen into a trap of greed for money and power. But their end is not a good one, and hell will be a place of greater torment for these.
The fourth type of serpent is figurative for a natural poison. It has the similar characteristics of the other three types of serpents, in a more deceptive packaged presentation. This type of poison can be demon inspired, and human developed, distributed, and attractively presented as something good, and beneficial for life. It can be even praised, and worshipped by many. To those that are deceived by the false prophet narratives, it can be easily given out for free, and eagerly and willingly desired to be taken. But to others that can see what is happening, it can be forced upon them with threats of losing some essential modern necessity of survival.
We are nearing the time of the end of the world. The previous days of compromised middle ground harmony between those good and evil, has been removed. Fence sitting Christianity has been torn down, and which side of the world you wish to stand in, has been set before us as a plain choice. God is bringing out prophets today, that are standing with Him, and saying:
1 Kings 18:21 – … How long halt ye between two opinions? if the LORD be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him…
There has been a clear line drawn by God. Your choice to whose side, you are whole heartedly standing with, can, and will determine your eternal destiny in God’s kingdom, or the serpent’s kingdom in hell. But I do not want to end this lesson without giving people hope. Because God loves us so much, He has given us hope, that the serpent will not prevail in this plan against God’s church to overcome us.
According to the Word of God, we (the church) can overcome Satan by the blood of the Lamb (Jesus), and the word of our testimony (Revelation 12:11). We can also read when Jesus gave all Christians believers, His authority over all of the serpent types found in the Bible (Luke 10:19). We have been blessed by the LORD with an indwelling greater Spirit than he that is working in the world (1 John 4:4). But authority given over a serpent is useless, unless it is utilized and applied. Don’t allow the fear produced by a serpent plan, to cause motionlessness.
Thank you for spending the time to read and study the Word of God with us at agapegeek.com. We love you all, and pray God’s best for you. If you need prayer, please just leave us a message. It would be our privilege to pray for you. We also love whenever you pray for us. The serpent is an equal opportunity destroyer. He would love to kill us all, but our God has given us His blood to redeem us from Satan’s authority. Thank you, Jesus!
If you would like to continue reading in this Bible series, please continue with “Part 3” now.
SERPENT WITCHCRAFT PART 1 – WARNING OF THE DECEPTION HAPPENING NOW
(Ver 1.0) This is Part 1 in a series of lessons on the book of Revelation that reveals parallels with world current events. This lesson is a vital prophetic Bible study, on an essential current world topic. This Bible subject concerns one of the most important end-time warnings that God wants to reveal to humans. This plan of evil is revealing Satan’s strategy of coordinated deception, and his plans to try to control every human. Satan is attempting to tell us all lies as often, and from as many sources as possible, to get everyone to believe them. This has been so very successful to deceive too many people. This will be a highly explosive controversial series, that will certainly offend Satan, but could also potentially offend a lot of readers and even Christians. Therefore, be warned up front, if you do not consider yourself to be a spiritually awake and mature Christian, judge yourself to determine if you should continue reading.
If you would like to read the ending summary first, before continuing with the detail, you may go to “Part 6” and then return back to Part 1 to learn more details.
I believe the LORD wanted us to go in a new direction for this lesson series, to help as many people as possible. There are major eternal consequences for being deceived in these last days. Believing the wrong message, could shorten our lives on the earth, or even send us to hell. We will be talking about a nefarious prophesied planned tactic of human control from a serpent. If you have ever read the book of Revelation, you could be like a lot of people and wonder, what does all this mean, and how, and when can it possibly come to pass? The things that were prophesied, have never been possible to take place, in the way that they are stated in the Bible, until NOW. Because of the rapid advancement of technology, we can see so much happening all around us that matches what the prophets of 2000+ years ago wrote about.
God literally told the prophet Daniel, to seal up his book until the time of the end. God said this in Daniel 12:4, where it is written: “Many will run to and fro, and knowledge will increase”. How can words that were written thousands of years ago, and have not changed in the least little bit, suddenly have profound new meanings that no one has ever seen before? This is a very perplexing riddle, unless you understand the writer of the Bible knew the future, and He described things in the terms that only those living in the end-of-time could understand. This is why so much new revelation is coming forth about our times of the end.
For example, without the modern inventions of bullet trains, cars, and jet airplanes, the ability to move around the globe rapidly by people mentioned in Daniel 12:4, was not possible. In the same way, if not for the modern inventions of large-scale computers, servers, networks, laptops, tablets, smart phones, the internet, satellites, and fiber optics, the knowledge of the world increasing, and being passed around rapidly, would be extremely limited. Living in the information age causes us to better understand what was hidden in Daniel 12:4. This is one of the key principles for understanding any end-time prophecy.
Christians should have a great advantage of knowing more about the times, and seasons that we are living in, then the unsaved world. According to 1 Thessalonians 5:4, Christian should not be living in darkness so that the end of days should surprise us. Because we can read and study the Bible prophecies, we can use the foretold information about future events, come alive to us as we watch them occurring.
Currently there is a coordinated satanic plan of evil to overtake the world, that is being perpetrated globally, upon everyone simultaneously! Please take note that this lesson series will be taught using a lot of Biblical, spiritual terminology, representations and symbolism, to keep this message from being muzzled by Satan’s cooperative human IT workers of evil. I believe most mature Christians will understand it, and receive the spiritual message of warning from the LORD.
This website has had people try to shift our work for God by telling us, we should not be concerned with teaching what the Bible says about politics, money, medicine, or anything else that is potentially offensive to some. However, since God speaks about all of these subjects and more in His Word, we will continue to be like Peter and John in Acts 4:19; “Whether it be better to obey God or you, you judge”. As for our website, we will do our best to always obey God.
Let us move into today’s lesson, of the introduction to divine warnings to not be deceived.
#1 – END-TIME DECEPTION WARNING
Christians must become enlightened to the times, that we are living. We also must discern to see the plans of evil, and stand against them, in prayer utilizing the authority given to us by the LORD Jesus (Luke 10:19). Or we will fall into the tricks of our spiritual enemy, to become deceived. We must pray, and seek divine wisdom, revelation, discernment, help and guidance, to counter this severe evil attempt to deceive us. Jesus personally, listed first in His description of end time events, one great warning. In Matthew 24:4, Jesus said the following:
Matthew 24:4 – And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you.
Why would Jesus make this His priority end-time warning, for His people? It would appear to say to us, that this will be Satan’s primary goal, and the basis of his strategy, to defeat us. How are people deceived? Most deception comes from subtle words. We can learn from reading in Romans 3 and James 3, how words can be poisonous to bring people harm and deceit.
We can go back and read about the first deceit in Genesis 3. This is where the ancient serpent tricked Eve with his subtle, and crafty poisonous words (1 Timothy 2:14). Genesis 3 was the first recording of human deception taking place. But reading Revelation 12:9, God declares the entire world will be deceived by this “serpent”, who has grown into the “Great Red Dragon”.
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.
Here we have a very key definition given, to the true identity of the “serpent” of Genesis 3. This serpent is clearly defined to be the devil, also called Satan. This definition also clearly teaches us that the “serpent” was a symbolic name, since the “great dragon” is also a symbolic reference. This spirit being is said to be the source of the deception of all humans. Therefore, we know where the supply of deception seeds come from. But we must also understand that Satan uses two methods working together to deceive people. The first method of deception occurs in the human mind, as we read described in 2 Corinthians:
2 Corinthians 11:3 – But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.
This is an essential God commentary on Genesis 3 about how Satan operated in the Garden of Eden. The Greek word translated as “beguiled” means “to seduce wholly”. In other words, to deceive completely. But it is the location, and method of this deceit that is important to understand. Paul wrote to the church about his concern, that how Satan tricked Eve in her mind, so he was operating in their minds with the exact same methods. Therefore, we understand that thoughts of temptation, and deception come from Satan. Be aware of this. If a thought does not align with the Word of God, cast it out of your mind (2 Corinthians 10:5), with a statement of “It is written” like Jesus did (Matthew 4:10). Now let us look at method 2 of Satanic deception:
Revelation 2:14 – But I have a few things against thee, because thou hast there them that hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balac to cast a stumblingblock before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed unto idols, and to commit fornication.
The second primary method of deception used by Satan, is to use easily deceived people, to deceive other people. We can read about this again in Revelation 2:14. This is another example of a “false prophet”, that was used to deceive the nation of Israel by Satan. In this example, Jesus is rebuking the church for falling into this trap of acting like a Balaam, who was a false prophet. This church doctrine was to introduce stumbling blocks, which represent temptations to be led away from serving God. This teaches us clearly, that even pastors in churches can become a “false prophet” to lead people away from God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Uh oh? We will be talking more about the subject of today’s false prophets as we continue. But let us review the concept of how this strategy works first.
How the Gospel was, and still is spread from one saved person sowing Good Seeds to save another unsaved person, is the exact same method of sowing evil seeds being used by Satan to deceive people. Jesus taught us this concept in the Parable of the wheat and tares (Matthew 13:24-30). Satan will deceive one person in their mind, and used this deceived person to spread the same message of lies to another. The growth potential of this tactic is exponential. This is the Satanic strategy happening today in the world. Satan has cleverly learned that by potentially silencing all other seeds of truth, his evils seeds become more believable. But this strategy will never stand up against the knowledge of God’s truth. Knowing God’s Truth will keep Satan from destroying you (Hosea 4:6). Let us get back into the foundational warning verse of this lesson.
In Matthew 24:4, Jesus starts with the word G991, that is translated as “take heed”. But that is not a sufficient meaning. This Greek word literally means, to open our eyes, to focus upon, and to become aware of something. This something being spoken of, is called “deception”. Remember in Genesis 3:7, God wrote the eyes of Adam and Eve were opened after the woman was deceived, and Adam intentionally rebelled. This statement would appear to teach us, Adam and Eve had their eyes shut, implying they never expected deception of an enemy to come into their garden. This would appear to teach us a pattern, that the Church should learn from.
- We must learn from the first human failure, to keep our eyes open.
- We must learn to expect deception to try to come and kill us.
- Then we must learn, that only agreeing with God’s Word of truth will keep us from falling for the poisonous lies from our enemy.
Some synonyms for “deception” are; a ruse, trickery, a con, dishonesty, fraudulence, and a scam. Other words that can be applied are being “two-faced”, “underhanded”, “false”, “fake”, and many others. Satanic deceptions are lies, that are mixed with selected bits of truths, and usually presented to be enticing. Deception is now happening, all around us. This deception is called a type of spiritual poisoning, because deception has crept into every realm of our society, and human influence, including the body of Christ in the church.
In the past, we thought we could trust our preachers. In the past, we thought we could trust our doctors. In the past, we thought we could trust our government leaders. In the past, we thought we could trust our high court judges. In the past, we thought we could trust our school teachers. In the past, we thought we could trust our news media. In the past, we thought we could trust our employers. In the past, we thought we could trust our family, and friends. In the past, we thought we could never lose our freedoms. But the majority of these people and qualities of normalcy, have been overrun (Ephesians 2:2) with a massive coordinated plan, and strategy of Satanic deception (Matthew 24:4), and redefinition of what is right, and good (Isaiah 5:20). But we need to learn to first trust God, learn His Words of Truth, and make them our FIRST priority. Begin everyday by asking God, “Show me what, I need to know to not be deceived today”.
There has been, and potentially will continue a strategy of Satan to bring a mass coordinated brain washing set of talking points to every human. This was intentionally designed and implemented to cause a spirit of fear (2 Timothy 1:7). This spirit of fear, has been ultimately designed, to produce the human desire, to give up our rights of freedom, and to willingly participate in the demonic take-over and control of our world. How many people do you know today, that are living in fear? I have heard this from too many people, it consumes them and it is because of a “fear of death”. Take a look at these verses:
Hebrews 2:14 – Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil;
Hebrews 2:15 – And deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.
Jesus Christ came into the world to destroy the power of death from Satan. He did this by participating in death and rising from the grave to conquer it. Yes, Satan is still trying to “kill” everyone with his “poison”, but that will only effect those that do not know the truth. Notice what fear does in verse 15. Fear places people into a state of willing lock-downed isolation of obedience, passivity, compliance and servitude. This lowers people made in the image and likeness of God, into a masked, faceless existence, with the removal of all basic human rights to freedom.
This satanic masterful strategy of mass exaggerations and lies, has caused so many people to just do anything that they are told, without any regard to consequences of their choices. This is the practice of human conditioning, assimilation, and acclimatization. Humans are being trained, and programmed, to blindly follow instructions like cloned identical robots, and to just automatically follow the ever-changing voice commands of alleged good sounding leaders. These people create a crisis. that fuels the flames of fear-based deception, to cause people to want to obey.
Did you know that this is what the Bible says, will happen in the future when the antichrist takes control of our world? God wrote about these future events almost 2000 years ago, and we can just now begin to understand how they can happen. We will get into these detailed strategies as we go forward in the Bible study series, if the Lord be willing.
We already read in the opening statements, about Jesus warning His people to not be deceived by any human, and that includes this website. Don’t believe anything we say. We are not God, and we didn’t write the Bible. Please, do your own work, to study and show yourself approvable to God (2 Timothy 2:15). Here is another warning verse, spoken from the lips of Jesus:
Matthew 24:11 – And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many.
Jesus repeats His warning from verse 4, in Matthew 24:11 with the same emphasis, but being more specific with human beings that are deceived by “false prophets”. What exactly is a “false prophet”? Since God in the flesh specifically warns about this, we need to understand it.
God defines “false prophets” differently, then you might think. Many people, that have heard of “prophets”, believe they are someone that just speaks about something, that will come to pass in the future. Then if something said was not fulfilled in a time confirming their thoughts, they call them a false prophet. But that is not an accurate description. There are many examples from God in the Bible, where one of His prophets said something that did not come to pass. This was because people prayed, repented, and changed, and God said this made a difference.
God in 2 Peter 2:1, defines a false prophet and a false teacher, to be someone that denies the LORD Jesus. This definition is interesting because we can find instances like this in the Bible. For example, in Revelation 16:13, God prophesies that there will be a coming false prophet that will be empowered by Satan, and he will certainly deny the LORD Jesus. If you go study this topic you will find that this false prophet is taking people away from knowing God, and pointing them to serve the beast. That is how a false prophet works. But there are other examples of false prophets in the Bible.
If we read in 1 Kings 18:19, we learn a little bit about these types of evil false prophets. There was a very evil ruling queen named Jezebel, and she reigned over the people using fear. She made it her goal to kill off God’s real prophets to silence their words from being heard by the people of the nation. That sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Who is being silenced on the internet, news media, etc.? Then she replaced the real truth from God, with her message. She had at least 400 men, that ate at her table, and she called them her “prophets”. This teaches us a lot, about the subject of “false prophets”.
Here is what we learn in the Bible, about these types and patterns of people. These “false prophets” were sponsored, paid for, and bought by an evil government and ruler. Therefore, the poisonous message, that came from their mouth, agreed with the evil agenda of the Satan controlled ruler in the government. People of Israel, thought that they could trust prophets because of their past experiences with God. So, when the false prophets come with deception to bring them into serving the false god Baal, they are easily swayed away from their true God. Jezebel did a good job at silencing the God message, by silencing most of God’s servants. But God still had an Elijah that He was about to use, to turn the nation back to Him. All of these tactics of fear and silencing are being repeated today, just in new and different high-tech ways.
Deu 11:16 Take heed to yourselves, that your heart be not deceived, and ye turn aside, and serve other gods, and worship them;
The nation of Israel was warned by God not to be deceived to be turned, and driven to serve false gods to worship them. This is exactly what the “false prophets” of Jezebel did and they fell for the trap and trick of the enemy. God says to the church in 1 Corinthians 10:11, these mistakes committed by Israel, were written for our benefit to learn not to repeat, the same mistakes. Yet too many Christians have fallen into the trap of listening to today’s false prophets.
Who are today’s false prophets? We can still see today how people wholeheartedly believe what the false prophets in today’s world say to them. This causes people to be easily deceived. Who in today’s world, agrees with a one-sided extreme government position, and does not allow any other position or opinion to be told? Who in the world today are silencing every opposing opinion? Who in the government today claims God is not welcome in their House of Representatives, or their Senate? Who in the world are agreeable to the murders of innocent unborn children in their governor’s mansions and ruler houses? If you do not know the correct answer, you are probably deceived by them already.
These modern-day false prophets that are agreeable in mass with the Satanic agenda, and who are promoting his false narrative for the overthrow of civility, are called reporters, journalists, anchors, correspondents, news-casters, and editors, but I can think of some other words that are not so flattering. This is why I do not watch, or listen to the false prophet agenda, anymore. Please do not misunderstand. Not everyone in this industry is the devil. Many are good and legitimate, fair, truthful, and news minded types of people. But most of these are only found on limited platforms and have been completely removed from major social media.
CONCLUSION
In this lesson, we learned a lot of good information about the ancient serpent’s modern tactics of deception. These strategies of the devil are being implemented, and utilized using massive coordination, across many platforms of industry and governments. This should be one of the major things to pray against. Decree and declare for a spirit of confusion, to manifest in all of the enemies plans to take control of the world. Take authority over the devil’s plan to control the people of the world with his deceptive lies, and forbid it, in the name of Jesus. Bind the spirit of fear, and do not allow this evil spirit to enter your home, or your mind. True Christ followers, have full authority over the devil according to Luke 10:19.
This lesson series will be labeled as “d-i-s-i-n-f-o-r-m-a-t-i-o-n” by many of the false prophets, and their Jezebel rulers, and handlers. It will be labeled as “conspiracy theory” by many others. But please remember, Noah was a conspiracy theory preacher for 100 years, until it started to rain. Therefore, beware, and don’t believe anything that is written or spoken here, or anywhere else, unless you can verify it for yourself, in your own Bible study. Then hold fast to whatever you find to be the truth in His Word. Stand with God and His Word alone. Finally, please STOP LISTENING TO THE FALSE PROPHET agenda! This should be one of your priorities after reading your Bible. But do not cease to pray.
In the next lesson, the Lord be willing, we will be getting to how Satan is attempting to prepare us for more of his deception. There is a growing real hidden agenda of massive evil, that is not being told to us, by the mass of the fake and false prophets of Jezebel. But stand strong and look for the spirit of Elijah to arise again. There is about to come an Elijah moment of fire, and many will be surprised when they are consumed. This series will be going through key verses in the book of Revelation that show us what is happening in the world today to prepare us take the “mark” of the beast, that could be coming sooner than you think.
Thank you for taking the time to read this short lesson. There is an extensive effort being made to shorten the lessons on this website, for those who have time constraints in this crazy time. But please take note that one way that deception succeeds, is when no one has the time to read and study the Word of God. Thank you again for your prayers and encouragement. Hopefully, you will understand our heart of love to teach the Word of God to every nation. God Bless you and your family. We love you very much, and JESUS IS LORD, and is coming soon!
If you would like to continue reading in this Bible study series, please go to “Part 2” now.
Modern Examples of Deception to Avoid Part 5 – The Deception of Criticism in the Church!
(Ver 2.2) This is Part 5 in a Bible study series that is designed to help us to learn from examples of deception being used by Satan in the modern world that we as Christians should endeavor to avoid. Every Bible study in the series is intended to be helpful as an independent lesson. But if you would like to study the entire series of lessons from the beginning, you can go to “Part 1” first. This lesson series should help Christians to learn that there is more than one type of deception being used by Satan to deceive them. But, today’s lesson will focus only on how some Christians have been deceived into believing that they are the only Christians that are truly saved causing them to believe they are the only ones that are knowledgeable and right in all their doctrinal beliefs.
This type of deception tends to cause these people to denounce all other Christians of differing beliefs to be called names such as “false prophets”, “false teachers”, “heretics”, “ministers of heresy”, etc. Does that sound very Christian to you? This type of behavior sounds more like the devil’s modern-day plot called “the cancel culture agenda”. These people go so far with their mob mentality that if anyone does not agree with their beliefs, they are shouted down to silence them. These types of mobs are very intolerant of any words that conflict with their beliefs. They hate people that speak anything contrary and they call out their opponents with demeaning names for public shaming, like being called a “racist”. If this does not shut the opposition up, they move to the extreme of mob violence and eventually to the even highest extreme of murder to silence people that disagree with them. Wow, what a world we are experiencing.
This lesson is a complete rewrite of an older lesson from years ago. It has been completely updated and revised to hopefully be more kind and helpful. Let us get started in our lesson.
INTRODUCTION
1Co 8:1 Now as touching things offered unto idols, we know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth.
1Co 8:2 And if any man think that he knoweth any thing, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know.
The writer of 2/3 of the New Testament recorded a word of warning inspired by the Holy Spirit for the church. Please agree that Paul would qualify to have more knowledge of the truth than most other Christians both then and now. But Paul who knew so much warns us to not allow our presumed knowledge of the truth to get us into Satan’s trap of pride. The Holy Spirit instructs us clearly to walk in love when dealing with other Christians before we try to teach them what we think we know. I have heard it said this way, that people do not care how much you know until they know how much you care.
Please notice what verse 2 said. God says, if we think we know anything about a subject, we must first realize that we could be significantly ignorant to understand that we do not know the entire truth of the subject. That was my paraphrase of the verse. But we can see that this was what the all-knowing God was trying to teach us limited humans. I believe these two verses describe the initial stages of the downfall of Lucifer. We can learn that it was this type of thinking that Lucifer was imagining in his heart reading in Isaiah 14. Lucifer obviously was self-deceived into believing he knew as much as God. This same pattern of self-deception can be repeated with humans and Christians also today.
This truth teaches us that deception can occur two ways. Christians can be deceived by others (1 Jn 3:7) or we can also deceive ourselves (1 Cor 3:18, James 1:26). A Christian that studies the Bible can fall into the same Lucifer type of self-deception and self-exaltation because of our pride in what we think that we know about God and His Word. You might recall that in 2 Corinthians 12:3, Paul informs us that God allowed a satanic thorn in his flesh to keep him from being self-exalted in pride from all of the revelation of the Word of God that was given to him. If Paul would have filled himself with pride for everything that he knew, he could have fallen to not fulfill what God’s plan was for His life. This is a great description of what happened to Lucifer, when he fell in pride. Remember what Proverbs 16:18 says “Pride goes before destruction…” Let us also recall what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 13:11-12:
1Co 13:11 When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
1Co 13:12 For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
These verses teach us two truths about Paul’s knowledge of the Word of God. First, spiritual knowledge is a process of growing out of an unlearned childish state who lacks any understanding and speaks a lot of childish ma ma, da da, and goo goo words to finally becoming a mature Christian that puts away all of this kind of baby speaking. Then in verse 12 we can see how Paul who knew more than most of us about the Word of God declares he did not know it all. He admits that we (Paul and us) still only know a small part. Wow, that is the opposite of a prideful attitude of thinking that he had a complete knowledge of the entire truth. Newborn Christians have such a limited capacity of seeing spiritual truth. And when these types of Christians criticize others, their words can be used as weapons to offend other Christians to fall away.
If you are a Christian, you should know that this prideful pattern of self-deception occurred several times in the Bible with humans. For example, this is what the Pharisees did to Jesus Christ my Lord and Savior! Religious Pharisees believed they knew so much about truth that they killed their Author of truth on a cross. This type of deception is what is happening in the church and the world today.
We can see very clearly that there are still a lot of pride filled Pharisees types in the world. Where did they get this command to criticize others? Who has exalted them to be the anointed, appointed, and called instrument of God’s swift justice? Is it God? Where did these people obtain the gift of criticism? This must be a spiritual gift that we missed reading about in 1 Corinthians 12. Did you find this gift in your Bible? In 1 Corinthians 12:4 God does say there are many different Gifts but ONLY 1 GOD that gives them all. So, does it make sense to you, that if God has given some in the church gifts to build up the church, that there would also be other gifts that are designed to divide, destroy and tear it down? That sounds like the works of two different opposing Gods to me.
There are deceived Christian people that believe that God is a God who is intolerant of human ignorance. There are even Christians that seem to believe that God is swift to judge ignorant misguided Christians. Could it be that many of these types of Christians believe they know more about the Bible than they do? Could it be possible that these types of people are not pleased with other Christians who are not as perfect as they believe they are? Could it be this is because of a type of prideful attitude towards others that we learned Lucifer had towards God? Why do Christians judge other Christians just because there are differences in Bible knowledge and beliefs? Could it be our pride or prejudices that cause us to call some Bible teachers false just because we do not agree with them?
I believe that we are deceived if we believe that it is only us that have the mind of Christ and only we hear from God. I believe we are deceived if we believe that the Spirit of God only resides in us. I believe we are deceived if we believe the Spirit of God does not teach anyone else but us and our church leaders. I believe that we are deceived if we believe the Spirit of God does not use anyone else but us and our denomination. I believe that we are deceived if we believe the Spirit of God shows favoritism and has selected only a choice few in our own group to carry forth the truth.
Surely you have noticed people who openly criticize and condemn TV and internet preachers as being false prophets and false teachers? Do they do this to save others from going to hell? Could listening to something that is not true be the main reason for going to hell? If it is, we are all going to hell because no one is teaching 100% of the truth because no one but God knows 100% of the truth! I believe listening to these presumed false preachers and teachers is not a sin or going to send anyone to hell. This is why God wrote us an instruction how to deal with this in Acts 17:11. Here in this verse God said to be a more noble Berean type of Bible student and look up in your own Bible daily to prove if what was taught to you was the truth.
If you hear someone criticizing and condemning Bible teachers for what they teach, please ask them “What is the basis that makes someone false or true teacher?” If they say it is the Word of God, then that is the pathway to knowing the truth. Ask them next for the Bible verses for their beliefs that contradict what was taught. If they give you some, go and read them and study them yourself. See if this is what the Holy Spirit is saying to you about the truth. But, if they say that it is their opinion of what they think the Word of God says, that could be a reason for deception. Who says our opinion is right or complete enough to judge? Are we God?
We can see so many of these types of Pharisee types all around us. Especially on the internet. But there are some on TV that make similar claims. It is amazing how easy it is for Satan to deceive people to judge others that they do not know personally or have ever met in person. I believe these types of criticizing judges are not examples for real Christians to follow or try to emulate. In fact, Jesus warned us that we should do surgery to remove the large beam from our own eye before we do some minor surgery to try to remove the small speck from our brother’s eye (Luke 6:42).
In 1 Corinthians 14:1 God commands us to “Pursue LOVE, yet desire earnestly spiritual gifts, but especially that we may prophesy. In verse 3 Paul defines for us what it means to prophesy. He says to prophesy is for us to speak to the church for 3 reasons:
- Edification
- Exhortation
- Comfort
The Greek word translated as “edification” literally means to build a house. That is the opposite of tearing the church down with words of criticism. The Greek word translated as “exhortation” means to “call someone to be near” as in give them an invitation based upon love to come in. The Greek word translated as “comfort” is a word that implies that we need to “encourage” people. This would include telling someone about what they are doing right, good, and well. This means that Christians should bring an emphasis to what is positive in someone in the body of Christ and not negative. This would teach that we should be looking for what they are doing good and not spending all our time trying to tear them down. In other words we should not be examining their every word spoken or written to look for something to trap them or to use to twist against them. No, we should rather be focused to look for the good words that they say and let the others that we may not agree with right now, maybe either just let them go by or go and study the verses to see if they are a true and better choice for our beliefs. I heard one wise preacher teach this concept by saying “Any old cow is smart enough to eat the good straw while spitting out the bad tasting sticks”. So just because someone is not perfect and does not know everything perfectly as we view it, it is still not wise to reject everything that they teach.
SOME EFFECTS OF THIS DECEPTION
My primary concern about these types of deceived people that attack Christian ministers the most, is the fact that there are so many new Christians that can be easily influenced to stumble and fall away from moving forward to fulfill God’s plan for their lives. I believe that it is essential for new Christians to grow up to be spiritually mature and to learn to hear from God for themselves. But deceived Christians who share criticism of other Christians can change the direction of a new Christian’s life very easily. Ungodly criticism gives the impression to some that we are fighting between each other while we ignore our real enemy Satan. Why would God desire for Christians to fight against Christians? Are there not demonic spiritual enemies to war against (Eph 6:12)?
New Christians can be distracted by incomplete or unsupported words of condemnation given by people that claim to be believers. These people can sound so intelligent and can sound so sure and confident in their minds of their judgments. But confidence and intelligence does not make anything true. God may be attempting to lead a new Christian into learning something fresh that He desires them to learn. But Satan’s deception can keep new or even some mature Christians from searching in their own Bible to know if what is said is true or not (Acts 17:11). The ignorance of new believers to understanding advanced spiritual Bible truths makes them much simpler to deceive than someone who has studied the Bible for over 20+ years and was raised in a good church from a young age. This is exactly why Paul was incredibly careful at times to only bring milk subjects to certain new Christians. Paul knew that the deep meat subjects were potentially very highly offensive (1 Cor 3:12) to new babes in Christ. Notice what Paul warned the church in this verse:
Rom 14:13 Let us not therefore judge one another any more: but judge this rather, that no man put a stumblingblock or an occasion to fall in his brother’s way.
Could it be this is what is happening when people judge without having sufficient experience and understanding of the Bible? I believe it is exactly what is happening in the modern church. There is nothing new under the sun.
FOUR MAIN REASONS
WHY THERE ARE DIFFERENCES
IN UNDERSTANDING SOME BIBLE TEACHINGS
When any Christian judges a Bible teacher that teaches something different than what they are accustomed to, this can demonstrate a person’s pride in their own knowledge of the Bible. Usually when someone hears some words that do not make sense they become easily offended at the message. This type of becoming offended can then be followed by their rapid poor choice for speaking opinionated judgements to others. When these rapid judgments are heard by others, they can cause them to become offended also. This can then result in the placement of a spiritual stumbling block that we just read about in the last section.
But we need to see and learn that there are several potential reasons for why someone does not agree with what is taught by others. Most rapid poor judgments are based upon a presumed belief that someone that is different is purposefully teaching something to deceive them. But in fact, there are other reasons that need to be considered to help eliminate our poor snap judgments.
Human disagreement of the Bible can come from one of four main areas of potential misunderstanding. The first possibility is that the teacher may be confused on the subject or ignorant of something else in the Bible that you know that needs to be known by them to better understand the subject. That is called ignorance on the part of the teacher and we are ALL ignorant about many things found in the Bible. Ignorance is not a sin, nor does it make anyone a false teacher. In fact, I have learned a lot of things from Bible teachers that I did not agree with 100%. These types of ministers were very sincere in studying and teaching the Bible but did not see certain things in the Bible that I had learned from my own study. I figured out that these teachers were not intentionally deceiving anyone, and their heart was full of good intentions to provide their message to others. But this is one of the primary reasons that disagreements of Bible truth can occur. It is very normal to find this happening in any church and with any teacher. We are all on differing levels of knowing the Bible. I understand that you could know something that I have not yet learned and vice versa you may not know something that I have learned. Also, some of us are on a first-grade level of learning the Bible and others of us are at the advanced doctorate level of learning the Bible and others of us are somewhere in between. Therefore, I have learned to give other Bible teachers a lot of grace and mercy and I pray that you will do the same for me and for other teachers.
The second possibility for a Bible disagreement is that the teacher could have just misspoken or written something in haste that was just an honest mistake or accident. I have seen many teachers and speakers do this that were both Christian and non-Christian teachers. If you have read all the Bible lessons on this website, no doubt you may have seen where I have made several unintentional errors, typing mistakes, misspellings, grammatical errors, etc. These types of unintentional errors are also normal and do not make anyone a false or even a bad teacher. This just proves that we are all still imperfect humans.
Once, I remember a man that pointed out that I attributed something to Luke in a lesson that he was reading that I should not have done. After I read it, I knew that I had done this in haste and that I should not have written it in the way that I did. I thanked him for his comment that pointed this out and I quickly made the correction. Even though this error occurred in typing a lesson too fast, was without intent, and was corrected, he informed me that he would not be reading any more of my Bible lessons. He was obviously looking for an extremely high standard of perfection that would only fit his level of acceptance in study material content and that was sad. Because of him being offended, there is no telling what he might have missed out on that God wanted to show him.
Imperfections in speech or in writing can cause someone to be offended and this keeps a lot of people from receiving and knowing a lot of truth. But as we learned previously, mistakes do not make anyone a false teacher, it only shows they are learning mortal humans. In fact, God purposefully uses the most foolish imperfect people in the world to confound the wise perfectionists (1Cor 1:27).
Now for reason number 3 that causes people to be easily offended at the teachings of some ministers. We must understand a simple basic truth that not everyone listens perfectly to hear what is really being said. We can see an example of this in John 12:28-29. Here Jesus was praying to the Father and the Father answers Him from heaven with an audible voice. Some that were standing around said it was just thunder and others claimed they heard a voice of an angel. We can clearly learn that not everyone heard the same words, the same way.
There are many words that sound like other words. There are literally many ways for some words to be used that do not mean what someone is hearing them to say. Slang words are one simple way for messages to be easily misunderstood. Figures of speech are another way to misunderstand the teacher. Other words just have multiple definitions and that is a great challenge. Unless everyone is on the same level of every word’s meaning and application there are just a lot of potential ways for a message to be misunderstood. Therefore, we all need to stop and think before we get offended at something that we think that someone said.
Finally, for possibility number 4. Some differences in agreement concerning the Bible subject being taught is possibly some bad news for many Christians. From my experience in studying and teaching the Bible over the last almost 30 years, “I have found that the more I learn, the more I discover that I yet do not know”. This fourth possible conflict situation occurs when a teacher teaches something that someone may consider heresy, but it is only a revelation found in the Bible that they have never seen before. I have found that baby Christians that know the least about the Bible are usually the most vocal critics of things they have never seen in the Bible. Therefore, this type of Bible teacher is not even close to being a false teacher. We learn that the root problem occurs because of the ignorance and improper attitude of the listener who was offended.
We find this type of conflict occurs with more than just the Bible. I have observed this where doctors that are general practitioners are wise enough to not go into brain surgery without having been trained in that specialist field. No, the general practitioner is smart enough to refer the patient to a trained specialist and there are almost never any conflicts between these two types of educated professionals.
I have seen the medial conflict normally occurs between the ignorant unschooled patient that has only read one opinionated article on the internet and their doctor who is more knowledgeable. It is the doctor that has spent years of education and practice and has studied the subject constantly that is opposed by the ignorant patient. Most doctors are only trying to help them. However, the doctor is usually never offended at the ignorance of the patient, it is almost always the patient that is offended at the trained and educated doctor. Maybe the patient searched the internet and found an article that said to do something new and crazy to cure their problem. But when they approach the doctor with their proposed answer, the patient becomes easily offended because they believed a potential false internet article that was overruled by the doctor’s advanced training. Do you see how this analogy of the doctor and patient could apply to Bible teachers and students?
Ok, I will admit that there is a possible fifth explanation for differences in Bible teachings and Bible understanding agreement that causes someone to be offended. It is possible that Satan has deceived a minister to accept a lie and they are teaching it like it was a true revelation from the LORD. These types of ministers come in two types. The first is the one that is deceived and does not know it and the second is one that is just intentionally lying to be used as Satan’s tool for the deception of others. I believe type two is a rare occurrence. Most preachers and teachers desire to know and teach the truth in a loving and kind way, but they just do not know the entire truth.
We can find examples of these types of preachers that preach and teach in the subject of the rapture. Some believe there is no-rapture, others believe pre-trib, others mid-trib and others post-trib. There is absolutely no way that all four types of ministers are teaching the truth. At least three of the four must be teaching something that they believe is the truth but is not in actuality the truth. This type of conflict does not make anyone of these ministers a false teacher, it should however teach us to go into our Bible and find out what the LORD is saying to us. Do not follow people, follow the Holy Spirit and the Bible. Pray and ask the Holy Spirit to lead you into the truth in His Word. Then open your Bible and begin your search. Jesus promised us that if we ask and seek, He will answer, and we will find (Luke 11:10).
I knew a minister that fell into deception once. He started a church and it grew into an exceptionally large group of over 5000 people. He was an excellent anointed Bible teacher, and this was why the church increased. However, deception began to creep into the teachings many years later. This was probably from the people that he began to associate with. Within a short time, he was divorced, and the church went from over 5000 members to ZERO and does not exist anymore. What do we learn from this example? It did not take Christian criticism to topple his ministry. The ministry collapsed on its own weight of deception. Please do not misunderstand me. There was Christian criticism. There was worldly news media criticism. There were government investigations into the church. But it was mostly people who knew the Bible that walked away from the church that caused it to go down. Please read what this wise man said about some real God teachers in Acts:
Act 5:38 And now I say unto you, Refrain from these men, and let them alone: for if this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to nought:
Act 5:39 But if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it; lest haply ye be found even to fight against God.
Can we understand the wisdom being taught to us here? These were the religious men of the day that believed in their heart that they were right, and they knew more than these unlearned men that were preaching Jesus. But who was right? Was it the Pharisees or these called of God preachers? Obviously, it was these called of God preachers named Peter and the other apostles that were with him that were teaching the truth. What did this wise man say to do to them? Notice that he recommended that everyone ignore them and see if it was the work of man or the work of God. If it were the work of God, he said that they would be the ones that were guilty of fighting against God. And if it were the work of only men, it would fail under its own weight and come to nothing. That is an amazing revelation to learn.
NEW REVELATION
What is revelation? The Greek word G602 means “to reveal” or “to disclose”, or “to uncover”. This implies something was previously hidden for it to be made available to be revealed. G602 comes from the Greek word G601 that means “to uncover”. Again, this implies something that was previously covered to not be seen or recognized because of a shield that hid it. Proverbs 25:2 claims “It is the Glory of God to conceal a thing, and the honor of kings to search out a matter”. It appears after studying verses like this that God has purposely hidden things for saved Christian people to search and find.
What we have learned is that God has concealed a lot of information in the Bible in order that He could take the cover off it at the appropriate time. He does this for two main reasons. The first is for us to search His Word to learn, know, understand, and apply it to our lives. The second is to keep the information from His enemies.
The Greek words G601 or G602 occur in 44 verses of the New Testament. I believe God is trying to teach us that there are many secrets that were hidden in the Bible to be found. God calls these “mysteries”. God’s mysteries are the source for God’s revelations. The Greek word G3466 translated as “mystery” means “secrets” as in to shut the mouth and not tell anyone. This is the concept of keeping a silent. But God’s design was not to eternally lock these secrets of His message up permanently by not speaking to us, but rather He designed His Word in a coded fashion to allow Him to uncover them in succession, to be known in His timing. This Greek word occurs in 27 New Testament verses and occurs first in Matthew:
Mat 13:11 He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.
Jesus speaking to the foundation of His church builders tells them the secrets of the kingdom of heaven were given to them to know, but to others it was not been given. Wow, this teaches us even more about the subject of how there exists some people that can see selected truths while others are unable to perceive them simultaneously. What we are learning is the fact that two people can be reading or hearing the exact same words being taught from the Bible and both could be understanding an opposed meaning or interpretation of the exact same words. How can this be? Aren’t the word definitions and meanings the same for both? However, we learn that the entire issue of understanding pivots upon the point of view of the reader or listener. God teaches us this here:
1Co 2:14 But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
Here we discover the main factor for argumentative Bible conflicts. God describes factor for understanding truth to be dependent upon the human condition of being saved or being unsaved and potentially the issue of the duration of how long someone has been saved. Unsaved people are completely natural minded with five senses dominating their thinking. However, saved people are in varying levels and stages of spiritual growth, development, and maturity. Therefore, a newborn baby Christian that needs to be fed only milk subjects may not be able to swallow (understand) very much of the deep meat (spiritual) type subjects that are hidden in the Bible. God called this process a renewal of the Christian mind to be a process of transformation from thinking naturally to thinking spiritually (Rom 12:2, Eph 4:23).
When a new Bible student begins to read the Bible in complete spiritual ignorance there is a never ending supply of revelation and uncovering available from the hidden spiritual words and meaning that God can make available if they desire to know the truth, learn how to look for them and ask God to reveal them. The Holy Spirit on the inside of a Christian desires to lead every Christian into a deep and intimate personal understanding of the Word of God (Luke 12:2).
This is one reason why many carnal thinking Christians can be easily offended at hearing something that the Holy Spirit has taught others on a higher level of spiritual understanding. The main source of conflict and challenge is that this new Christian has not yet encountered, discovered, or seen the subject in their Bible yet. Are we all together on this concept of why some people are offended at some teachers and why they may call them a false teacher, but they really are not?
There is this major problem with teaching new revelation from the Bible on the internet and on TV. There is no filter on an advanced spiritual teaching to keep a natural thinking Christian from being offended by it. Therefore, many will reject and come against it like they did the message of Peter in Acts 5. Christians do this based upon prejudices and a much too rapid rush to judgment before they can test the message using a deep study in their Bible. I know I have said this several times in this lesson but this is a main take away for reading and studying this lesson.
There is almost always resistance to change or any new addition to traditional Bible teachings by human nature. This resistance is like me trying to show my 2-year-old son how to tie his shoes and he says to me “No, I do it”. Can you see how unlearned Christians can act the same way today? This is an incredibly significant deception taking place in the church.
Please go back and read the Gospels again. Notice how many times Jesus was teaching and giving people a message that was essential for them to know who He really was and the listeners’ reaction was to pick up stones to try to kill Him or to throw Him off a cliff to kill Him. Was Jesus telling the Truth? Of course, He was! He was the author of the entire Bible and it was impossible for Him to lie. Jesus proves that truth is not always seen or accepted, and it can even move people to commit murder.
This was a common pattern that occurred in all of church history. Paul came out and taught things that offended many Jewish believers. These early Jewish believers thought these new Gentile believers had to be physically circumcised. But Paul opposed this by teaching a new revelation saying “He is not a Jew that is one outwardly circumcised in the flesh, but he is a Jew that is one circumcised inwardly in his heart” (Rom 2:28-29). Can you see the two natures in conflict in this example? Paul was thinking on a higher level of spirituality than the natural Jewish believers that were focused on some outward visible flesh priorities. Paul won this argument because it was the truth.
Then there were other church history examples. When Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the church door, because he had found things in the Bible that were not agreeable with the church’s practices of selling indulgences, he sparked a nerve in deceived church leaders. The deceived leaders excommunicated him from their church. But, most of Martin Luther’s sound teachings are still being taught today in protestant denominations. He experienced the same type of religious opposition as Jesus and Paul.
Well I have had the same issues. I have had people leave me comments informing me I am of Satan. They are so kind to tell me that I am teaching heresy. They even claim to be praying to God to shut down my website because of the deception that I am teaching. I have learned to ignore them and pray for them. I know what God says in Numbers about Balaam speaking to King Balak who wanted him to curse natural Israel. Balaam said “I have received a commandment to bless, and He has blessed, and I cannot reverse it” (Num 23:20). People cannot curse what God has blessed. Thank you, Jesus.
CONCLUSION
I am not someone who claims to know everything in the Bible. But like most other Christians, I have learned a few things in my life. One truth that I have learned is that there is no one human on the earth that knows and understands the entire Bible perfectly. I do not know anyone on the earth today that understands even a majority of the truth of the Bible. There have been many people that have written exhaustive commentaries on the Bible with a lot of good information that we can learn from. However, none of these represent the complete truth or understanding of the Bible. Many of these commentaries can even contradict each other in certain subjects and verses. Also, there are usually a vast number of scriptures that have no explanation because the writer did not understand it enough to comment on it.
No one knows 100% of the truth and you should have the same realization. We must begin every day of our life understanding that only God knows everything! This attitude gives us a more complete perspective of our humanity limitations for us to become humbler to accept and learn something new from God every day. With this type of adjustment in attitude we might just discover something new in the Bible that we have never seen before.
I have discovered through guidance by the Holy Spirit and deep study that the Bible is much more complex than many humans think. Humans are incapable of understanding everything that the Bible says without God’s tremendous assistance. Some do not believe this, but it is still true. I recently heard of one gentleman who said, “there is nothing hidden in the Bible”. He was implying everything could just be read and understood automatically in the surface text. I wonder if this ease of understanding that he believes in, is why there are thousands of Christian denominations in our world?
Here is a basic fact of truth that we must agree upon. God’s intelligence is so far beyond our intelligence that there is no comparison to be made between us and Him. Therefore, any human that claims that they are the only teacher of all truth is an instrument of the devil sent to confuse and deceive us. Jesus in speaking to the Pharisees said this:
Mat 23:15 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.
Wow, these are very blunt and direct words, aren’t they? I see Pharisees in our world at work today everywhere. They sit in their arrogant churches, mosques and synagogues and seek converts to become a more diligent police force for the spread of their version of the truth. These are the self-appointed thought police of their religions. Instead of being like Jesus they want to ram their religion down our throats and if we do not submit, they will eventually try to kill the unbelievers who resist them. Their philosophy is either you change to our beliefs or we will silence you. That is a demonic attitude and does not resemble the true nature and character of God in any way.
Unfortunately, there are deceived people who try to control others. But I do not recall where God ever says for anyone to go into all the world and attack every teacher, prophet or religion that disagrees with your belief. That is not LOVE! After Jesus was crucified and raised from the dead, He asked Peter three times “Do you Love Me?” Peter said, “Yes Lord” every time. Then Jesus said, “Go and FEED my SHEEP!”. Notice, that in John 21, Jesus never told Peter to confront the false feedings of false shepherds. No Jesus just implied for Peter to become a type of good shepherd and go “feed” His sheep with good healthy “food” of truth. Jesus confirmed this before He left this world.
I believe we have learned that one problem with most people who attack others is based upon the fact that they just do not know much of the truth to teach. It is very much like modern politics. If someone on the right makes a point of truth that cannot be countered with a higher or greater truth by the left, then that person on the left just begins to hurl accusations of racism to silence the speaker on the right. So, these types of people like to tear down others around them using biased charges to distract from their own ignorance. So, going forward Christians should only concentrate on doing this command of Jesus:
Mar 16:15 And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.
Mar 16:16 He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.
This is another selection of the last words spoken by Jesus to His followers. Jesus said very clearly to “GO and PREACH”. In other words, He did not command anyone to go and confront, or go and criticize, or go and persecute, or go and hate, or go and force feed, or go and teach against any perceived evil doers to their face. Jesus never mentioned that Christians should go and try to silence the false teachers. Jesus only said for us to go into all the world and spread the good news food of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That means teach the GOOD TRUTH as we know it and understand it. This is the opposite of condemning others. The good message was that of reconciliation and salvation and not attacking those who are different. By Christians attacking others we become the same as the unsaved world. How does acting the same as evil people convince them to change to become Christians? It does not and that is the problem.
By doing the sayings of Jesus, we can all become a better Christian. Jesus said if we do His Word, we will be like a wise man that built his house on the rock and when the storms of life come upon us, we will withstand them and be unshaken and will not fall (Luke 6:38). Therefore, Christians should primarily focus on bringing the “Good News” to people. The Truth of the Good News of Salvation is what is needed to help others change their beliefs. If we are NOT speaking truth in love, then we are no different than a radical mobster hurling a brick. The only difference is that we would be a deceived person attempting to hurl mean words.
PERSONAL APPLICATION
Let us pray a prayer and ask God to help us not fall into Satan’s trap of condemning other people by calling them a false teacher just because they do not say or teach everything that we believe in 100% agreement.
Heavenly Father forgive me for any words that I have spoken against any of your servants. You said in Romans 14:4 that we should not judge your servants, because you are able to make them stand or fall. Lord God help me to be humble enough to admit that I could be wrong in my beliefs and give me the grace to go and study your Word to see if there are things that I need to change in my personal beliefs. Help my beliefs in your Word to conform and grow into the knowledge of your higher level of Spiritual Truth. Oh, God do not let me be deceived. Help me to discern between truths and lies quickly and accurately. Help me to only accept your Truth and to reject any false teachings of deception. But, also help me not to be critical of anyone that is not teaching what is 100% truth as you have shown me. Help me to pray for any Bible teacher that is not 100% accurate in every area and I will pray that the God of my Lord Jesus Christ, the father of glory may give them the Spirit of wisdom and Revelation in the knowledge of Jesus Christ to know your truth (Eph 1:17).
Dearest God help the body of Christ to unite in one accord in these last days as your Son prayed in John 17:20-21. Allow the Spirit of truth, love, peace, and harmony to become the dominate common bond of unity between every believer. Help us all to be faithful laborers within your harvest field to spread the Good News to anyone that you place across our path. Grant unto us the boldness to speak and declare the Gospel at every opportunity. In Jesus name I pray, Amen!
If you would like to continue in the Deception series please go to “Part 6“.
Modern Examples of Deception to Avoid Part 6 – Why I’m Not A Christian Anymore! A Christian’s Response to a Deceived Man!
(Ver 1.1) This is now “Part 6” in a significantly important Bible study series focused on the subject of modern examples of deception found in the body of Christ for Christians to avoid. If you would like to read the series from the beginning you can go to “Part 1” first. But please understand this lesson will stand alone to be useful and applicable for increasing our spiritual maturity. I have never seen such an increase in the levels of deception in my lifetime. Politics has become significantly corrupt being empowered by Satan’s deception. The news media has been corrupt being used as instruments of propaganda for deception. But we need to know how Satan operates to deceive us and that is the intended design of this Bible study series. I was reading internet blogs the other day and I ran across one that particularly stood out to me. This man had become disillusioned with God, the Bible, Christianity and Christians and he published a list of his top 20 reasons why he walked away from being a Christian. As you read you should discover that this man was raised in country that permits Christianity to exist. You should also notice that his parents raised him to be a Christian by taking him to church. But, somewhere in his life he became offended at Christians that do not live up to his standards. He became deceived and this is why we are going to read his reasons for departing from the faith. So this is a Christian’s response to a deceived man for us to learn from so that we hopefully do not fall into the same trap presented by Satan.
This may be a very controversial subject but we must understand that there are warnings found in the Bible that inform us not to be deceived to turn away from following after Jesus. Here is what I have learned. I see works of deception implemented by Satan to deceive people from remaining faithful to continue in the Word of God to search for, find and believe the truth. If a person finds or is raised in the Word of God initially but does not follow through till the end, they are like the stony soil or the thorny ground that never produced fruit for their salvation. I believe this is what today’ Bible study is all about. We are going to examine 20 statements that this man said were his personal reasons why he turned away from being a believing Christian (Heb 3:12). He was raised by parents who started him on the pathway to being saved but he became spiritually deceived and this caused him to turn around to go in the wrong direction. This is a great example for any new Christians to learn from in order to not repeat the same mistake.
INTRODUCTION
The Bible says a fool says there is no God (Ps 14:1). In the world today a person that does not believe in God is called an atheist. But, God gives this type of person a different title description. I am really not sure if this man who walked away from God still believes there is a God or not. If he does and chooses to not seek Him that sounds just as foolish as not believing that there is a God. In Romans, God says this to people that are not seeking Him:
Rom 1:18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness;
Rom 1:19 Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them.
Rom 1:20 For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:
God clearly says that He can literally be seen and known by observing the things that He has created. Therefore, every human will be without excuse on judgment day. That is a very strong warning to us all. If someone began their life in Christ Jesus but then they turned away to not produce any fruit the eternal consequence are amazingly sad. But the consequences are very similar to someone that has never heard the Gospel. We learn from this that no human will be able to stand before our Supreme Judge God and give an excuse for why we were deceived or did not believe.
This man we are about to review is just an example of someone who still has a tremendous amount to learn about God and His Truth. Hopefully he has not closed his mind to God completely. Hopefully he will come to his senses like the Prodigal son, to come back home to hear God’s truth, and to listen to His messengers. Let us all pray that he will run back to the Father’s house and receive God’s blessings.
WHY HE WALKED AWAY & ONE CHRISTIAN RESPONSE
So here is the list of 20 excuses of this deceived man and my response to each one individually. Please read what I wrote and think how you might answer each one. If you have any better responses, please share them in a comment. Thank you in advance. I will also mention for full disclosure this is a condensed list of his objections to being a Christian. I could not put the entire narrative in this lesson or it would have been too long.
============
1. God is wrathful, jealous, hateful, and kills nations of people like it is a bodily function. He is certainly not just or “holy” in nature.
Please tell me which god you are talking about? You are not seeing accurately about the real God of the Bible. These are a confused set of assumptive judgments about a God that must have never been known or experienced. These accusations appear to be based upon great ignorance and a lack of understanding of the Bible and definitely contain deception.
We will start with what is true. Yes God is Jealous (Exo 34:14). He is not pleased with people who say they serve Him but, only half heartedly. Too many Christians go to church while simultaneously becoming focused upon other gods (Deu 11:16). What about this is bothersome? If you were married and your wife fooled around with other men would you not be jealous? Jealousy is not a sin. Let us move to hate.
There is no hatred found in God except for His hatred for evil (Prov 6:16). God is a Holy God and He commands us to be Holy also (1 Pet 1:16). God’s Holiness demands justice for sin. If there are any acts of judgments upon humans it is because God’s patience has ended and His judgements are executed for cleaning up the effects of evil on the earth. We can find this in Genesis 6:5-7, for example. Let us move to God’s commands to kill nations next.
There are examples in the Old Testament of God commanding the people of Israel to kill every man, woman and child in the promise land. That sounds really hateful, but this was just another act of justice and an attempt to keep the children of Israel from being deceived to follow after these nations false gods which would result in judgment against Israel (Exo 23:31-33). These godless idol worshipping nations were under Satan’s kingdom of darkness influence. They could not be convinced to change to know the true God so they were judged.
There existed in Bible days many godless nations in the world. Many of these had to be judged for their sins of great evil. Many of these had to be eliminated completely so that they would not corrupt God’s covenant people. This is the way of a Holy God in the Old Testament. This changed in the New Covenant because of God’s grace.
Why would humans ignore the existence of evil and human sin to deny the requirement for divine justice and consequences for these wrong human choices? For humans to judge God as being unjust is clearly a denial of a truthful need for justice. If a nation allows murder to occur without consequences the increase of murderous acts would explode. Every time a human would bet angry at someone, it would result in the loss of someone’s life. That would be unjust and unfair, not punishing the person for committing the crime.
Worse still is someone calling God a murderer for judging righteously. Evil sins have consequences (Gal 6:7). Here are a few key verses to learn and understand:
1 Jn 4: 8 “God is Love and he that does not love does not know Him“
Jn 3:16 “God so loved the world He gave His only begotten Son so that whoever believes in Him would not perish, but have eternal life“.
Job 4:17 “Shall a mortal man be more just than God? Shall a man be more pure than his creator?”
Zep 3:5 “The LORD is righteous within her; He will do no injustice. Every morning He brings His justice to light; He does not fail. But the unjust knows no shame”.
============
2. The act of throwing people into infinite torture and punishment for not believing in a Jewish guy from 2,000 years ago was God’s son, or unknowingly worshiping the wrong god, is extremely cruel and sadistic.
Why do you think that people like me spend so much time trying to get people like you to believe in this Jesus? I mean there must be a good reason for this extraordinary effort? I believe this effort of preaching the Gospel of Truth is extremely important and worth every second. There are countless Christians on TV, the internet, in books and in person who try to get unsaved people to see and receive the truth! People must think that we are all stupid for wasting our valuable time warning people about hell. However, Jesus commanded us to go into all the world and preach the good news to every person on the earth (Mk 16:15). Why would He do this? It is because He wanted to warn them about hell and tell them that God is not mad at anyone (Col 1:20). God has forgiven the sin of every human by the personal shedding of His blood once (Heb 9:26). But while this gift of not going to hell is offered to everyone it must be received by every human on God’s terms (Rom 10:9-10). God made it so simple to get saved and avoid hell. All that we have to do is believe in Jesus was the virgin born Son of God who died for our sins on a cross and after 3 days He was raised from the dead and then we must confess Him to be our LORD and we are saved. Why is this wrong? If I told you that I was going to give everyone that came to me a million dollars but you had to do somethings to receive it, does that make me unjust or unfair?
The real question that needs to be asked is not why a loving God would allow anyone to go to hell, but rather why would any human reject the free offer of salvation from a loving God to not die and be eternally separated from Him? Let’s review some verses that confirm it is a human choice where they spend eternity:
Mar 16:15-16 And He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. He who has believed and has been baptized shall be saved; but he who has disbelieved shall be condemned”.
Joh 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
Rom 10:13 For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
============
3. The statements, “God works in mysterious ways,” or “It will all make sense in heaven,” are little more than irrational cop outs. This God allows horrible atrocities to be committed against innocent men, women and children every day.
This is probably one of the few reasons that I agree with you on. Christians can be as ignorant as non-Christians sometimes. Because Christians do not know how to answer a question using the Bible truth correctly they make up a religious answer like “God Works in Mysterious Ways”. That is totally a cop out and I would say that it is the wrong thing for them to say. It would be far wiser for a Christian to say “I don’t know” than to give anyone an opinionated biased untruthful answer like one of these.
But, that does not answer the real question to why God allows evil to be done to presumably “innocent” people. Ok, let us start with asking some basic questions, 1) what does it mean to be innocent, 2) who is innocent and 3) is there anyone that can be considered completely innocent? To be “innocent” is like someone pleading “Not Guilty” while being charged with murder. But this does not necessarily mean they are innocent and not responsible in some way for the death. They could plead “Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity”. This would change our viewpoint dramatically. Now we understand the person is taking responsibility but claiming they did not understand what they were doing when they did it. That is not being “innocent”.
I personally do not know of anyone born on earth that is truly “innocent”. Romans 9:10 quotes a O.T. verse and says “There is none righteous, no not one”. Then in Romans 5:12 God makes it even more plain by saying “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon ALL men for that all have sinned”. Wow, that simply means there are no sinless people in the world and death can occur to anyone because of sin that our father Adam committed. You see in Hebrew 7:9 God reveals to us that whatever our fathers before us did, is what we are guilty of doing because we were in their body. Wow, that leaves none of us innocent or sinless. But, that still does not answer why God allows bad things to happen to sinners.
I have to answer this question this way. In Genesis 1:26 when God created humans He says “Let them have dominion over all the earth”. This was God giving humans responsibility to rule over, manage and control His creation. Based upon this information God must allow whatever humans allow to happen since He has delegated this task and responsibility. Therefore, if humans allow a Hitler to kill millions of Jews on the earth, God must allow it. God is not committing the atrocities nor does He permit them to occur unless we allow them.
We must begin to realize the consequences for Adam’s sin and rebellion against God’s command. In fact, the Bible informs us that the creator God is not the “god” of this current evil world system (2 Cor 4:4), God says that Satan is. We can further confirm this truth by understanding the temptation of Jesus in Matthew 4:8-9 when Satan takes Jesus up to the top of a high mountain and shows Him all the kingdoms of our world. He then tells Jesus if you will worship me, all of these I will give to you. Since Jesus did not dispute this claim to be a lie, we understand the rulership of kingdoms given to Adam in our current world were taken from him and transferred to Satan’s control. What we are learning is God is not in sovereign control of what humans do. God will let you go out and commit 150 murders tomorrow, if that is what you want to do.
So who is doing all of the evil, humans or God? If humans are doing the killing then humans are doing the evil and not God. If humans become wise enough to make the right choice to accept and believe in Jesus Christ this transfers a human from Satan’s kingdom of darkness and evil to God’s Kingdom of Light. Then God comes to live on the inside of a Christian to help them to not do evil, Praise the Lord! Christians still must continue to be in the Word of God consistently to renew their minds in order to change old human habits of doing wrong. God is helping me and He will help anyone else who desires to change to do the same.
But, if other people love evil more than a desire for knowing God and doing good they have that right of choice. A few terrorists went and killed over 2000 people on 9/11, it was their wrong choices that committed the evil and NOT GOD! God is sovereign! Yes! But, God is NOT a Grand Puppet Master pulling everyone’s strings controlling them by force to do what He wants them to do. Humans were created with a “freewill” and given the right to make up their own minds to do right or wrong. When we blame God, we are shifting the human responsibility given to Adam for stopping the evil off of our choices and that is what Satan wants us to believe.
God wrote us the Law in the O.T. In this are found 10 key commandments. These are laws like “thou shalt not lie”, “thou shalt not commit murder”, “thou shalt not commit adultery”, etc. Yet God cannot force anyone to follow them and obey. It works exactly like this in our world. There are laws for people to not steal, commit murder, etc. and yet people ignore these everyday also. So who is to blame? It is NOT GOD!
Will forcing people to do no evil in the world fix those who are evil in their heart or mind who want to commit these atrocities? What would you suggest that God do with all of these evil people to stop them? Are you saying that God should kill them? I think that was your reason #1 complaint that you thought that God kills people for no good reason. But, I have proved that God has plenty of valid reasons to execute justice.
No the only solution for eliminating evil is to change the human heart and mind of every evil human and get them saved to know the LOVE of GOD! That is exactly what I am trying to do. Therefore, I’m not blaming God for evil people, I’m just telling them how they can change to live a life that is so much better than committing any evil following after Satan’s plan.
1Jn 4:19 We love him, because he first loved us.
============
4. Bloody animal and human sacrifices are illogical demands by a divine god as payment for petty wrong human doings. These actions are no different than the rituals of archaic pagan religions. Not to mention the bizarre ritual of symbolically drinking human blood and eating human flesh.
You speak of “petty wrong human doings” in this reason and God allowing horrible “atrocities” in your previous reason. You obviously accuse God of allowing these horrible atrocities and men of doing only petty minor offenses. That is another example of shifting blame where the blame is not truthful. We have already seen that God says there are no righteous people without Jesus and that we have all sinned. Now combine this with James 2:10 that says “whoever keeps the whole law but offends in one point, is guilty of breaking every law”. Wow, that is not exactly good. That means if you don’t commit murder but yet tell one lie you are technically guilty of murder in the first degree. Therefore, there are NO PETTY SINS!
Let us examine your issue with blood, animals and sacrifice. God never performed, commanded or allowed human sacrifices. If anyone was killed it was for a just legal judgment based upon their own evil behavior. The need for the bloody sacrifice of animals in the Old Testament was to teach people the consequences for committing sins. God lays out the requirement for blood to cleanse human sin in Hebrews 9:22. In this verse God says “Almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without the shedding of blood is no remission of sin”. In the O.T. the high priest would take a pure and spotless animal like a lamb and kill it. The innocent blood would make a temporary atonement for human sin. But, this was required every year since people kept sinning continuously. God was trying to teach humans that another final greater payment for sin was required.
This teaches us why Jesus had to die on a cross. His personal choice to come to the earth to be our sacrifice by shedding His innocent blood once and for all, was what was needed. This was God’s greatest payment for human reconciliation and redemption and it alone satisfied His pure and Holy justice requirement to save us from hell. Only the blood of God Himself could pay the price that was necessary. Now, no other blood ever needs to be shed either animal, human or divine. Blood sacrifices have ended and this is now a mute point and a wrong reason not be a Christian. Thank you Jesus!
As far as your references to the saying of Jesus to “eat my flesh and drink my blood”, you are missing the point that was being made. Jesus was speaking figurative and not literally. People do this all the time. We say “it is raining cats and dogs”. That does not mean it is literally happening. This is why people are so easily deceived or offended at the Words of the Bible. They take many words out of context, misapply them, misunderstand them or just misinterpret them and this leads to deception. I will not attempt to explain fully what Jesus was talking about in this reply. But, in order to understand it, we must understand that His flesh was the Word of God. We know this by reading John 1:1-14. Jesus was trying to tell people in order to have eternal spirit life they had to have the Word of God in their spirit.
============
5. If God loves us and wants us to know and believe in him, why be so completely invisible? What is the purpose of being so illusive to those who believe and worship him?
This is actually a great question. But, I do not believe that you understand the God that I know. I believe God talks to me and converses in personal conversations with me to lead me, guide me and help me become more like Him. I believe He teaches me new things every day and I talk to Him and say thank you a lot. This is called a relationship. Real Christianity is NOT RELIGION. If someone does not experience this God that I am describing, then God appears silent. God is an extreme Gentleman. He does not force Himself upon anyone. He chooses to not speak normally unless you focus on Him first in silence. Notice how I described my relationship. I believed in Him. I believed He was leading and guiding my footsteps and helping me daily. I also believe that I hear and know His voice and that He speaks to me personally because He loves and cares for me individually. How does that compare to your beliefs?
Psa 102:2 Hide not thy face from me in the day when I am in trouble; incline thine ear unto me: in the day when I call answer me speedily.
The Bible does claim that God hides from humans at time. I believe He does this to help us. I also believe that God chooses to be invisible to those who do not believe in Him. Then I have learned that God normally speaks to those who want to hear from Him and are listening. Hebrews 11:6 says “But without faith it is impossible to please God, for he that comes to God must believe that He exists and that He is a rewarder of those that diligently seek Him”. God just laid out conditions for His fellowship and relationship with a human. We must have faith to believe that He exists even if we never see Him or hear Him. If we could see Him easily there is no requirement for faith to believe in Him. This removes faith completely and replaces it with personal experience and knowledge. We can experience God but we must normally come to Him first by faith alone. We are required to believe that if we diligently seek Him that He will see our faith and reward us with a personal relationship producing experience. Uh Oh. It sounds like our human ignorance of God’s requirements could be limiting us from learning the truth. Could these choices that we are making be the reason why we are not hearing from God?
Then there is another potential problem, in that you may not know how God speaks so you do not recognize when He speaks. You might be expecting God to speak to you like your parents did. Maybe in a loud audible voice calling you by your full name? However, God does not speak normally in audible voices that everyone can hear with their physical ears. Nor does God normally appear visibly and prove His existence to anyone. However, this does not mean that God did not leave us enough evidence of His existence, if we wanted to find them. This also doesn’t mean that God does not speak in our heart with a still small voice that may appear as an inner thought. There could come a thought into our mind that we say “Where did that come from?” We weren’t thinking anything and suddenly we think about something unexpectedly. That is either God or Satan. If we don’t know the Bible we may not be able to know who it was that was speaking to us.
If God proved to everyone that He was real and existed, we would have no further choices by faith to make in life in regards to God. Also, salvation would no longer be voluntary, it would become compulsory. God will never overrule our right to be wrong or rebel. Either we learn to speak and hear God on His terms or we should learn to expect God will appear silent. Here are just a couple of Bible verses to think about on this subject:
Jer 23:23 “Am I a God who is near”, declares the LORD, “And not a God far off?
Psa 14:2 The LORD has looked down from heaven upon the sons of men To see if there are any who understand, Who seek after God.
============
6. God never manifests himself or performs miracles as he regularly did for the Israelites in Old Testament stories.
This is another narrow minded perspective based upon a lack of understanding and a vast assumption based upon human ignorance. Who says God does no miracles today? This type of attitude can only logically exist in a person that believes they are equivalent to God, who is everywhere and knows everything that is happening at the same moment. The Bible claims God is omniscient (Heb 4:13). The Bible says God is everywhere at once in the world (Prov 15:3)? Do you have cameras in every corner of the world? Do you know every human being? Have you interviewed every human being to see if God has done anything miraculous, great and spectacular for them? If not this is a very deceived and ignorant reason to abandon a God who is. Since no human can prove or disprove that God has done nothing miraculous today, it is not even close to being a relevant reason not to be a Christian.
But, I will tell you that God has done many, many miraculous things for me. The first and most important is that He saved me from my pathway that I was walking that would result with me going to hell. That is the greatest miracle that I know of. Since being saved He continues to do miraculous things in my life. He filled me with His Holy Spirit and that is more than an amazing miracle of everything that He did in the Old Testament. He has led me by His Spirit to change me from being a former very sinful evil man. He is transforming me into a person that closer matches the example that He set in Jesus every day. That is another great miracle. These are just a few of the great miracles He has done for me personally. I could go on, but hopefully you get the idea. Perhaps you are searching for the spectacular and missing the most amazing supernatural things that God does today. Please find out what He will do for you by seeking Him with your whole heart. He will answer and you will find Him.
============
7. Prayers are never answered. Certainly not in the way Jesus described. Prayer has absolutely no affect on the world around us.
Here we go again. This is another example of extreme ignorance. God deals with a similar man in the book of Job. In Job 38:2 God asks Job “Who is this that darkens counsel with words without knowledge”. God goes on to ask Job “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth, tell me if you have understanding”. Wow, this is how almost every human is. We all think we know so much when in truth we know almost nothing about anything.
I assume you are again reasoning based upon your own personal experiences. Could it be possible that you are just praying the wrong way. Could it be possible that you did not understand how Jesus taught us to pray. Jesus teaches us prayer several times and we should learn them all. Also, God says very clearly in the Bible that there are a lot of reasons why prayers are not answered. These can include human sin and iniquity as two of the main reasons why God will not answer a prayer:
Isa 59:2 But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, And your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear.
I can hear your next question. What sin do I do? Unfortunately sin is so much more than we know. Sin does not have to always be just the commission of an evil act like murder. For example in Romans 14:23, God teaches us that whatever we do that is not of faith is a sin. Right now, when people do not walk in faith believing God is worthy of our respect, honor, trust and love, we are in sin. Not acting in faith alone makes almost everyone a sinner at sometime or the other. But that is not the only type of sin we can be guilty of. There are sins of omission also. That occurs when we are able to do something that is right, honest and good but we make the choice to go out of our way not to do it.
What other things stop prayers from being answered? James 4:3 teaches us that people do not receive answered prayers because they are asking for things to satisfy their lustful desires. We can pray for a new mansion to live in or a new luxury car while not being thankful and a good steward of taking care of the one that we have. I heard of a lady once that prayed and asked God to give her someone else’s husband. Hopefully we can understand this was not a Biblical prayer that could be answered. Oh, well that is enough of this subject.
There are many other reasons why God does not answer human prayers but I will leave you with this one. God says in Mark 11:24 “whatsoever things you desire when you pray, believe you received them, and you will have them”. This is one of the most important prayer verses that I know of. God informs us that we must believe and have faith that we have the answer to our prayer request immediately after our prayer has ended. This can be potentially a long time before we see the answer. This means we can stop the answer from arriving by our doubts and unbelief or simply if we choose to stop believing before the answer comes. This is how Jesus taught us to pray. Did you know this before now? Were you doing it this way? We can confirm this prayer, faith and believing principle in relationship with answered prayer delays by reading Daniel 9. Daniel prayed and the answer was sent immediately but did not arrive for 21 days later. So while waiting Daniel continued his praying and fasting until the answer came. The angel that brought Daniel the answer informed him that he was being held up by a spiritual being that resisted the answer from arriving. That is another amazing reason why prayers can not be answered. Christians must realize we are in an unseen spiritual battle with demonic powers. Ok, let us move on.
So when you say prayers are not answered you are not speaking for me. I know God hears and answers my prayers. There have been too many examples. God’s goodness never ceases to amaze me. Thank you Jesus! Here is a verse that we should memorize:
Mar 11:24 Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.
============
8. Jesus did not fulfill major Old Testament prophesies or even fulfill his own promises and predictions.
Wow, you obviously have not read and studied the Bible. Jesus fulfilled over 100 very specific named prophecies found in the O.T. by coming to the earth in the flesh. The mathematical odds of probability for this happening to one person is way beyond the odds of accidental or random chance. Just fulfilling 8 of these prophecies would be like some one taking one silver dollar and placing an “X” on it and then mixing it with enough silver dollars to cover the entire state of Texas in many layers 2 feet deep. Then this someone that hid the silver dollar asking you to go and pick just one of them randomly blindfolded to see if it is has the “X”. What are the odds that you could find that one? Well Jesus fulfilling all of these 8 prophecies was like Him finding the one silver dollar by walking directly to it and picking it up while being blindfolded.
There are so many books and references on this subject, if you are interested in learning the truth. People need to try to do some real research and study before making any such false claims. This is another example of God saying “Who is this that darkens counsel with words without knowledge”. Please go into your Bible and read it. Find the prophecies. They occur beginning in Genesis and continue to the last book of the O.T. called Malachi. Prove to me and the many other Christians that we are not right, if you can! Give us the Bible verses that Jesus did not fulfill. I know that you cannot do it!
============
9. The authors of much of the Bible are unknown. And of these unknown authors, the men who wrote the gospels likely never even met Jesus considering they were written 40-70 years after his death. A far cry from reliable testimony.
This is just another example of tremendous human ignorance and speaking words without any knowledge in the subject of Bible study. The Bible is so well documented and verified that it is foolish to even compare it with any other book from history. There are more ancient copies of this book to verify its accuracy than any other book, by far. This is exactly one reason why the Bible is the most popular best selling book in human history. The news papers have ignored this book as the best seller to diminish its significance. But, not reporting the truth does not eliminate the truth.
I will also tell you that every author of practically every book of the Bible is well known. The only book that I know of that has no direct mention of the author is the Book of Hebrews. But even this book has distinguishing qualities that point us to Paul as being the writer. Every other N.T. book is well identified to be written by the eye witnesses to the literal events and accounts. There are only two books that have been researched and written about from the accounts of eye witnesses and these were the books of Luke and Acts both written by Luke. Matthew, Mark, John, Peter, James, John and Jude were all personal eye witnesses that knew Jesus personally. Please do some serious study before spreading untruthful gossip that you have heard.
God knows who wrote every book of the Bible. The Old Testament Hebrew words are frequently quoted in the New Testament writings. Many times the O.T. author’s name was confirmed with the quotation. For example, Jesus quoted the O.T. to inform us that Moses wrote the books of Genesis through Deuteronomy in Mark 10:4-9. According to Jesus who was God, He was asked about the law of divorce written by Moses and Jesus responded by quoting another law written by Moses in Genesis 2. Wow, that proves the author beyond any reasonable doubt. What we just learned from reading Mark 10 is that Jesus claims the ultimate author of every Book of the Bible was God! You obviously are looking for any false excuse to try to justify your decision. Here is another Bible verse to learn and memorize. This verse contains the word “inspiration” that means “God breathed”:
2Ti 3:16 All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:
============
10. The Bible is repeatedly contradictory with itself, reality, and the laws of morality. Couldn’t God inspire a less poorly written book?
The response of natural young children to any advanced subject is normally the same as people who do not understand the Bible. If we gave a 6 year child a textbook on Advanced Calculus or Quantum Physics and asked them to share their opinion on what it meant, they would probably say it was a stupid, and a silly written book. They would ask where is all the pretty pictures? Where is the real story of the bunny rabbit and the bear? Because someone does not understand what is written, they can easily believe it has a lot of errors and contradictions.
God who is the most intelligent individual we will ever attempt to understand is so far above our level of intelligence that anyone can be deceived to think that we should just be able to read the Bible for the first time and understand it all. But, things in this world don’t perform like this for our children, so why expect God’s word to be automatically understood by any of His spiritual babies? Also notice what 1 Cor 1:27 says about how God chooses specifically foolish things of our world to confound those people who think they are wise.
I was a computer software engineer in the information technology industry for most of my business career. I worked on very large scale complex computer systems These designed software projects were so large that understanding the entire system was a major undertaking. For example they all contained a large data design layer, large sets of business logic, contained with layers of rules and complex divisions of user information and while also containing input, more processing rules and presentation layers. All of these layers had complex sub-components with individually designed objects and modules that had to fit together and work cooperatively based upon guidelines to produce the understood desired and anticipated end result. Why is this important?
From my years of computer experience, I have discovered that the Bible is by far a much more complex set of designed components than any human software design. In the Bible, every single letter, word, sentence, verse, paragraph, section, chapter and book was specifically placed to work together in an integrally designed method of cooperation and collaboration, and design that is not easily replicated without very advanced computer assistance. Since none of these modern computing devices existed at the time the books were written it is impossible for them to have been written without a very major God participation and control.
This has taught me that the Bible was designed and produced by a far greater superior intellect than any human could possibly imagine. The Bible was so well designed that it contains a self correcting set of rules to counter an enemies attempt at destroying or corrupting it. The Bible also contains multiple recorded predictions of things that would happen in the future. These were recorded many hundreds of years before they happened. This proves the book’s origin came from outside of the dimension of time.
If you search the Bible you will find that there are codes and encryptions not easily possible using modern human computers. These hidden codes were designed and placed intelligently under layers of plain Hebrew words that all had real meaning that can be understood. Many times these hidden codes confirm what was written in the plain text that they were hidden in. Wow! I hope you understood this complex claim.
Then there are parables where God uses created items to describe hidden spiritual realities in great detail. This teaches us that whoever designed and created these natural items like “seeds”, “trees” & “fruit” to name only 3 also wrote the Bible. There are also real historical recorded events that are implemented using allegory that teach the same types of hidden spiritual information using literal verifiable human events. Also in the Bible, there is typology, there are patterns, there are symbols, and there are other hidden messages, and concealed information that can be revealed by the author at His will. This is called “encryption”, “concealment” that can be read later by design of the author using “revelation” or the “uncovering” of the hidden divine truth.
This book of 66 book divisions, written by 40 individual writers over the course of around 1600 years is so well planned, designed, organized and implemented, that it anticipates every question that anyone can raise and it resolves them all with an answer somewhere in the book. It contains solutions for every human challenge conceivable. God placed such unlimited information in this book that studying it everyday for 12 hours a day for 100 years, we would not come close to understanding everything that He wanted to teach us from it.
Please approach the Bible with a different attitude along with embracing some humility and you should be able to begin to understand that God’s intelligence is infinitely beyond your capacity to grasp everything that He says right now. God will come down to our two year old child level of understanding Him, if we are sincere and we want to learn. However, God also expects us to grow up and mature spiritually during the process.
1Co 2:14 But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
God says that a natural human is like a two year old child that will never understand the complex spiritual things of the Spirit of God. Because people do not understand the Bible, only proves how natural minded they are. God wrote a complex book of intelligent complex spiritual information, wisdom and knowledge that is impossible for non-spiritual or spiritual babies to understand. But, God wrote the book in this manner to allow people to have their own free thinking choices and make their own individual decisions.
============
11. The Bible is open to interpretation. Everyone interprets it in the way that suits them best or serves their purposes.
You know here is another area that I have to agree with you on. Many unsaved people and Christians’ attempt to understanding the Bible is just wrong. Too many are looking for confirming words and teachers to approve their life style choices and their sins as to being acceptable to God. People often read the Bible with a wrong lensed point of view or motive. We could call it reading the Bible with a pair of rose colored glasses that causes our viewpoint to be shifted or out of focus with God’s way of seeing the intentions and the meanings.
However, much of what people call science is also open to interpretation. Do you discredit and reject all of science, because every scientist does not agree about any or every subject? You can find just as many opinions and theories of how the universe began, and quantum mechanics operates, etc. as you do with any church doctrinal differences. If you gathered 100 people in a room and discussed any subject, how many could you get to agree about anything? So your argument is baseless and without facts and is just erroneous.
We do not throw out the Bible or Christianity just because we cannot get everyone to agree. We are the only one that needs to agree with what God shows us in the Bibles. I am responsible to God to learn what He wants me to know. You are responsible to know and understand what God wants you to know. If you don’t agree with that which I believe He has shown me in the Word of God that is really not going to change my belief.
Please pick up your Bible and ask God to reveal to you what He wants you to know and then start reading slowly and carefully. If a word stands out or raises a question look it up and study it. Find out what it means and how it is used in other verses in the Bible. Find out and learn God’s definition for the word. There is so much to learn. For example this verse answers your concern:
2Pe 1:20 Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.
Even God agrees with you. God says we should not place our own human interpretation upon any of His Words. God makes the claim that He explains every word somewhere in the Bible. Every word, every phrase is explained somewhere but we are given the responsibility to search and find what He means. My basic rule of interpreting the Bible, is based upon one main rule that we just read in 2 Peter 1:20 “THE BIBLE INTERPRETS ITSELF”. Let’s use the Bible to understand the Bible, OK?
============
12. Throughout history, Christians have justified horrific actions by the Bible and its teaching.
Another poor excuse without any real knowledge to confirm the concern. Maybe you are talking about the crusades or something else, I do not know. The errors and mistakes of humans who called themselves Christians, do not discount or invalidate God or the Bible. If you are looking for Christians to be perfect you will be sadly disappointed. If you are looking for Muslims to be perfect, you will be sadly disappointed also. If you are looking for Buddhist to be perfect you will be sadly disappointed. There are no perfect people in the world, we all make mistakes. Please remember that Jesus is the only human to live on earth that is recorded to have never sinned (Heb 4:15).
Just because someone says they are a Christian, that does not make them a real Christian. Jesus tells a story of people who will say “Lord, Lord didn’t we do many things in your name” and Jesus says “Sorry depart from me, I don’t know you” (Mat 7:23). These people thought they knew Jesus and thought they were saved Christians, they thought they were doing the right things, but they were not. So while you compare yourself with others you make yourself to look superior. Just please read the Bible and compare yourself with the perfection of Jesus and His example to live our life and this should cause you to want to change to be like Him and not me or any other human.
============
13. The Bible promotes hate and persecution against women, homosexuals and those who worship other gods or no god at all.
You are obviously not going to the right churches! True Christianity is a church that Loves others and does not promote hate! Just because someone stands up with a sign that says “God Hates Homosexuals” is just their worthless opinion. There is really no difference between their worthless opinion, your worthless opinion or mine. If God hated Gays He would not have died for them to help them get saved (Jn 3:16). The wrong words and actions of people who say they are Christians, could lead you to go to another church if that is God’s will.
Pray for these people that are not being led by the Spirit of God. But do not give up on God and the Bible. There are many good churches who do not promote evil, hatred and bigotry. But, I am also saying that these good churches should not tolerate sin either. Sin is still sin. God loves the sinner, but He hates the sin that they do (Prov 6:16). There is a major difference between hating sin and hating people. We can all change and repent of our sin. God can change our heart so that we do not want to sin anymore. Just don’t get offended at someone to walk away from the only hope you have of not going to hell.
============
14. According to the Bible, nearly 70% percent of the people in the world will burn in hell because they don’t believe Jesus was the son of God.
I do not know where you get your figures, I guess you pulled it out of the air and made it up. However, if you know that is what the Bible says and still want to go to hell you are deceived. However, you are also probably very close to knowing the truth. Matthew 7 13 is where you are referring to. This verse is Jesus recommending that we go through the straight and narrow gate rather than taking the easy way of the wide gate that will permit many to be deceived to enter into it. Please notice in the Bible who it is that is working to deceive people to take this wide way by embracing Atheism, Islam, Buddhism, Mormonism, Jehovah Witnesses, and the thousands of other choices that lead to human destruction. Satan is called the master deceiver in Revelation 12:9 who we are told will deceive the entire world. Without Jesus on the inside of us to help us not be deceived and reading our Bible to learn the truth, we are certainly on the wide path to hell.
However, if we reject His loving offer for salvation and still go to hell by being deceived by Satan that was still our choice. People make a lot of stupid choices. That is not God’s fault. That is a human’s choice. Please don’t follow the majority to hell. Follow Jesus and run to Him. He will not let you go to hell.
============
15. The only reason I was a Christian was because I was indoctrinated into the religion as a child as a result of the culture and region of the world in which I was born.
So what would your chance of salvation be, if you were indoctrinated as a Hindu, Buddhist or Muslim? Would it be better or worse? Do you think that the truth is found somewhere else? Where is your internal and eternal peace found? Rather than being deceived into believing that the truth is somewhere else, why not be thankful that your parents were pointing you in the right direction for you to have the opportunity to see the truth? Say thank you Jesus for allowing you to be born where you were. Say thank you Jesus for giving you the opportunity to be born in a Christian family who took you to church. Be thankful and not deceived.
============
16. Christianity has no more rational or factual foundation than any other religion on earth that I openly reject.
Your ignorance of God and the truth of the Bible is overwhelming me. The evidence and facts found in the Bible are amazingly different than any other religion. Plus I already told you that true Christianity is not a religion, but rather a personal relationship with the real creator God. A religion is just man’s attempt to please a God that they do not know. We all must choose this day who we will serve (Jos 24:14).
Not choosing to follow Jesus to make Him our LORD and Savior is a default choice to choose Satan as lord. There are only two spiritual choices one of the LIGHT and DAY with Jesus ruling and the other as DARKNESS and NIGHT with Satan as ruler. It is a binary choice and no choice is a choice. I pray that you will make the right selection.
============
17. The Christian church is disjointed and can’t even agree with one another.
So are the Muslims all in agreement? Are the Hindus all in agreement? Are the Atheist all in agreement? Isn’t Islam divided into the Sunni and the Shia? Don’t they fight and kill each other regularly? Your argument for the rejection of Christianity is sad. As I said before, if you get 100 people together, you will probably see that 50% of them will believe one way and the other half another way. It is extremely challenging to get everyone to agree on anything. Have you ever tried to listen to eye witness testimonies at a trial? The questioning prosecutor, usually can’t get two eye witnesses to agree on everything that they think they saw perfectly. This is just human nature and part of the inequality of human knowledge, education, life experiences, points of views, prejudices, etc. that make everyone unique individuals. We all have different gifts and abilities. Some see things logically, some do not. Some see things emotionally and others do not. Does that make all of them wrong? Just because my perspective and viewpoint of a verse is different than another teacher does not mean either of us is 100% right or 100% wrong. I love the quotation of Will Rogers who says “We are all ignorant, just about different things!” Therefore, each of us in our varying states of ignorance on any subject, should become more tolerable for each other. because “Only Gods is All Knowing”!
============
18. Christians are not at all ethically or morally different from non-Christians.
You obviously do not know any real Christians or you are not going to the right church. You should try hanging around the right people and quit judging others. We already know that there are no perfect people in the world (Rom 3:23). Even Christians will make a mistake. You are only responsible for your behavior. I am only responsible for my behavior. You can’t change me and I can’t change you. Only God can change anyone to make them more like Christ and that is if only they want to cooperate. So when we see a Christian that is not doing what is right, let us show a little compassion and pray for them (1 Jn 5:16). Let us avoid being a hypocrite that does not see the plank/beam in our own eye while trying to remove the speck in his brother’s eye (Mat 7:3-5).
Rom 14:13 Let us not therefore judge one another any more: but judge this rather, that no man put a stumblingblock or an occasion to fall in his brother’s way.
============
19. Today, powerful church leaders steal, lie and molest young children. The church repeatedly attempts to cover up these atrocities, only to reluctantly apologize as a last resort.
So you are still looking for a perfect Christian to prove to you that God is real. Men and women could always let us down. Therefore if we are looking to humans to help save us we may be looking in the wrong places to find God. I do not defend the mistakes of priests, preachers or church leaders that should know better than to do some of the things that they have done. But, they are not my God and I do not reject God because some have failed. My eyes are not on a human. My eyes are focused upon Jesus and I will pray for anyone that has done anything wrong. I only look to Jesus the author and finisher of my faith (Heb 12:2) and I refuse to let what others do affect me.
Finally, I will say that leaders in the Christian faith are often more heavily attack by devil than are other Christians that are under them. If a devil can help one preacher fail as an example of true Christianity this defeat trickles down to cause many others to be easily deceived. Therefore, we are instructed to pray for our spiritual leaders. This is the opposite of speaking evil about them and spreading rumors.
Heb 13:18 Pray for us: for we trust we have a good conscience, in all things willing to live honestly.
============
20. It is absolutely irrational to continue to believe archaic teaching with the amount of knowledge we’ve gained through science and technology. The Bible reads like a book of primitive folklore, not divinely inspired insight into our true reason for existence.
So again you are so wrong. You have made yourself wise in your own eyes and as a result you demonstrate to real Christians how easy it is to be deceived. You have placed too much value in the words of human science and technology and not enough in the Bible that contains the words of Creator that made the science. Let me ask two very simple questions. How often has science changed its message in the last 200 years? My answer to that is constantly. How long has it been since the Bible’s message changed? I’ll answer that question and say “NEVER”. Yet the Bible is still the most widely purchased best selling book in human history. If so many people can see the importance of the words on the page then maybe you should ask God why can’t I see it?
Not long ago scientist believed the universe was an infinite dimension of space that contained a fixed and static number of stars and planets. Some even claimed the Milky Way Galaxy was the only galaxy. Some even believed our sun was the center of the entire universe. Now science has radically shifted to believe the universe as a whole is finite, and had a set beginning point that originated with a big bang. They have discovered this truth because of the expansion of the universe at an amazing rate of speed. Yes, we have learned a lot through science. But did you know that almost everything that science is discovering was already written about by God in the Bible in hidden forms using non-technical descriptions. You see God created everything we are discovering and He said in the Bible I make known the end from the beginning. Since God can know the end before the beginning we understand that God exists outside of the dimension of time and must have been the creator. Genesis 1:1 clearly teaches us that our universe including the dimensions of space and time all had a beginning. Wow, I wonder how Moses would have known about this over 2500 years ago?
We already can see that scientific knowledge changes day by day. Whereas the Bible never changes. Therefore, since God knows the end has already informed us about what is coming very soon, the Words of God written in the Bible are extremely relevant, consistent and applicable for us all today. There is no revised edition of the Bible with corrections, it still has the same words that were true 2000-3000 years ago. There is still more that science does not know, than what science does know. The textbooks cannot keep up with the revisions and changes, they are happening too fast. You are placing all of your faith in a moving target and God says He never changes (Mal 3:6). God’s Word will never change either (Luk 21:33) Jesus is the same today as He was 2000 years ago (Heb 13:8). That is consistency that we can count on.
You place a lot of value on unproveable human theories. Almost every science lecture that I have observed mentions the word “Evolution” as a way of brainwashing humans into believing something that is fictional. After all the years of archeological research, no valid missing links have been or can be found. I wonder why? Then there is false concept that a universe could violently explode and expand while originating complexly designed living creatures. The complex digital information contained within the Human DNA alone proves an external designer and maker. No complex designed order is originated by disordered confusion. The belief that this can occur over billions of years violates the second law of thermodynamics. This law states everything of ordered design is consistently moving downward into a state of disorder.
Nobody can make us see the truth and it is not my responsibility to force anyone to believe anything. We all have to make our own personal choices and God says in Gal 6:7 that He will not be mocked because a man will reap whatever choices that we make. Please make an effort to not be deceived into believing a false reality that someone has invented in their own mind with the help of hidden spirits tricking them into believing. We have not talked a lot about negative spiritual influences that occur in our world. But there are literally millions of unseen beings that influence people into thinking such false realities. I pray that your spiritual eyes would be opened and that you would be able to see God and to know Him and the reality of His truth.
====
CONCLUSION
I pray that someone has seen something new to think about. I also pray that others will be able to learn from how one man was deceived to walk away from Christianity because of a lack of understanding of what the Bible really says. This is one of Satan’s greatest advantages over humans. Satan has existed on our earth for at least 6000 years and most of us have been here for less than 100 years. He has been deceiving people far longer than you have learned to resist the deception. The only thing that will give us an advantage over being deceived is by us learning what the Bible says with God’s help. We are told that we have the advantage if we are born again and saved because “God the greater one comes to live on the inside of us to help us overcome him” (1 Jn 4:4). His presence will help us if we learn to cooperate with Him, listen to His voice, to learn what we need to do and obey to not be deceived. I would recommend that we pray and ask God for this help.
PERSONAL APPLICATION
If you would like to continue reading and studying in this Bible series, please continue by going to “Part 7” now.
Once Saved Always Saved, Eternal Security Versus Satan’s Factor of Deception! Part 5!
(Ver 1.1) This is now Part 5 in the series of Bible lessons on the very popular misconception called Unconditional Eternal Security (U.E.S.) previously known as Once Saved Always Saved (O.S.A.S). We have covered a lot of information found in the Bible and if you have not read this series from the beginning I might suggest that you go and start with “Part 1” first. In the last lesson I talked about the ongoing Christian Responsibility revealed in the salvation process that is clearly laid out for us by God in the Bible. God uses several metaphorical comparisons to describe our salvation to be like a process, like us having to fight a good fight (1 Tim 6:12, 2 Tim 4:7) or running a marathon type of race (1 Cor 9:24, Heb 12:1). Both of these symbolic types represent our participation in set contests with competing opponents that are attempting to take from us our victory. Clearly these examples give us the established truth that we can lose or fail or quit the contest. Both of these competitions were clearly defined processes of endurance and not simply a onetime salvation event where we start and automatically win like many of the U.E.S. teachers want us to believe. Both process examples have clearly defined beginnings, followed by many middle steps of conflict and struggle with a set well-defined ending. Both examples are processes governed by defined rules of engagement to help guide the outcome but yet not to determine the outcome. In other words, neither process has a pre-determined victor of the fight or the race. In either of these types of contests any of the individuals competing can always grow tired or weary and quit or give up and fall short of the desired initial expectation for victory. Do you start a race to lose it? Do you start a fight to be defeated? In any fight you might just believe that you are the winner from the start, right up until the point in time that your opponent hits you hard and knocks you down. If you believe today that you are running a fixed race or fighting a fixed fight that you have already won, then you are clearly not very familiar with realities of fighting or racing. I really hope and pray that you understand these really basic Bible concepts that God is using to teach us.
Today I am going in a totally new and different direction on the subject of Unconditional Eternal Security using a series of new subjects that I will introduce and connect together to teach the subject of the contribution of the “Deception Factor”. Today’s lesson will be primarily focused on the potential role and effects of deception in the ongoing process of our salvation and how we are warned by God to avoid it. However, it will take me familiarizing you with and reviewing other prerequisite subjects to get us to where we need to be to understand how deception is such a major factor to why we do not have eternal security. Let’s start by first knowing that we have an enemy.
THE REALITY OF YOUR SPIRITUAL ENEMY
The subject of deception is specifically tied to the requirement that a deceiver must exist and be present, willing and able to deceive or deception is a non-issue for every Christian. If no deceivers exist, then no deception is presented as being possible. Was that just way too obvious? 
Therefore I need to focus on the existence of a deceiver using the Bible. I am going to introduce you to the existence of the primary deceiver who is also known as Satan. From Satan comes every other deceiver, so if I can prove his existence in the Bible it should be easy to transition that others exist also. Using my Bible program I searched for the key word “deceive” and found multiple verses on the subject. Satan is described as the individual spirit responsible for deceiving the people of the whole world in Revelation 12:9, Revelation 13:14 and Revelation 20:10. The whole world would be an all-inclusive statement not omitting any nation of people. Remember what I just said! Therefore, Satan qualifies to be the deceiver by definition from God’s Word. Does Satan still exist in the world today? If you said YES, then you are on the right track. If you said no, then you do not understand that Revelation 12, 13 and 20 has not happened yet and only by studying God’s Word can we understand that God says Satan is still present to deceive people in EVERY nation. I just said that again didn’t I? Now, let me ask you do you still exist in the world today? I think if you are reading this Bible lesson you must say YES again. Therefore by God’s definition you have the potential to be deceived because the deceiver is still present here with you. Also notice something new that you have not connected yet to the subject. You see God teaches us in the New Testament that the church is a new “Holy Nation” of people (1 Peter 2:9). However that still makes everyone in the church a potential candidate for deception because we are clearly defined to be a nation. Now do you see why I emphasized Satan deceiving the nations? If Satan is the deceiver of the nations, then we in the church are still the potential victims of his deception by our association to God’s definition of a nation. The Bible is not that hard to see things if you can put them together correctly.
If you did not know it, the Bible declares that every Christian still has a spiritual enemy. The enemy of the church is named Satan. Technically Satan was God’s enemy before he was our enemy but I won’t go there today. Just understand that God’s enemies are now our enemies by covenant relationship. There is an old proverb that says the enemies of my enemies are my friends and conversely the friends of my enemies are also my enemies. Jesus taught us a similar variation of this proverb in Mark 9:40 saying “He that is not against us, is for us”. This Bible fact of the existence of a spiritual enemy is declared repeatedly in the Bible both directly and indirectly (James 4:4). We are first introduced to our enemy as a symbolic serpent in Genesis 3:1 and he continues through the Bible in many forms using many names, descriptions and titles all the way to the last mention in Revelation 20:10. Satan is described as a spiritual opponent that is arrayed against us trying desperately to defeat us. Many Christians have left me comments about Jesus’ outstanding victory over Satan (John 16:33, Col 2:15). They have concluded from these verses that Satan was completely defeated at Calvary thus Jesus rendered him to be a defeated insignificant or trivial factor going forward. However that is just not all of what the Bible says about Satan, the people on the earth including the church, Christians and their role with resisting Satan and many other statements of truth.
Jesus also taught us that Satan was the ruler of a kingdom (Mat 12:26). Jesus further taught us that Satan still had power (Luke 10:19). Understand that this stated kingdom of Satan was not the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven, but a new separate dominion taken from man. We learn this fact by observing what Satan told Jesus during the 40 day temptation in the wilderness (Luke 4:5-6). If you go read Luke 4 closely you will see Satan offering Jesus all of the kingdoms of the world if only Jesus would worship him. Satan told Jesus that these were given to him and since we are not told in the Bible that God gave them to Satan, they must have been taken from Adam. You see according to Genesis 1:26 Adam was given dominion over all the earth by God yet we see Satan claiming to have control of it in Luke. One of the first indirect mentions of this kingdom of Satan is also found in first book of the Bible in Genesis 1:16. On the fourth day of creation God sets the moon (the lesser light) to rule the night and the sun (the greater light) to rule the day. This verse was a highly prophetical statement using hidden symbolic information for the coming of the Son of God into the world. This verse predicts the coming of Jesus into the world on a precise timeline and reveals to us one reason why Jesus has come. The moon in this verse is symbolic of Satan, the Sun in this verse is symbolic of Jesus, the night is symbolic for the kingdom of darkness and the day is symbolic for the Kingdom of Light. Furthermore, the “4th day” of creation is also symbolic for the time of the coming. Jesus just so happens to come into the world after four days from Adam using God’s definition of a day from 2 Peter 3:8. If you do not understand the significance of this information I have a more complete teaching on the subject called “Understanding Night and Day”.
Jesus came personally into Satan’s kingdom of darkness being born of a virgin to bring us light (John 8:12). However this was not external light, but rather internal spiritual knowledge. God’s plan was never to take over Satan’s kingdom of darkness or even to take it back into the light or to establish a rule over it here on the earth; no the plan of God was more precisely to create a new pathway out of Satan’s kingdom for all of those in the dark world that would believe on Christ. The light of God’s day and this new kingdom of God would be formed internally in every believer. This way the light of God would be present in every believer but still separate from the darkness of this world that still remained in Satan’s control. God was in effect creating a new separate Kingdom of God that never existed before apart from Satan, his angels, his kingdom and He was offering all those on the earth the blessed opportunity to come out of their darkness to live in the light of God forever for free through His shed blood. That was a very quick overview of some new things that you have probably never heard taught before and I do not have time to explain them all fully today. However, go through the N.T. and see how many times this kingdom realm of darkness or night is mentioned and then observe the scriptures that say Christians are now in the light of God’s day. Let me give you a couple of the key verses that may help you to understand:
Col 1:13 Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son:
Jesus is being described as the one that has delivered us from the “power of darkness”. There are three basic things that you need to grasp immediately from this incredibly important verse. First, the kingdom of darkness still exists and has not been eliminated. Second, notice that this kingdom of darkness still has power. Then third, notice we that are saved are not in this dark kingdom anymore having been translated into the Kingdom of Light by Jesus. This verse clearly implies that those that are not saved are still in the kingdom of darkness where some spiritual force of power still rules over them. Clearly there is a distinction between two separate spiritual kingdoms of existence being stated in this verse. These two kingdoms must still exist concurrently or this verse is a lie. Clearly the kingdom of darkness still has great power and influence or no one in their right mind would still be in there right now. Also understand by implied inference if anyone has come out from this kingdom of darkness by their freewill choice of salvation, then by the definition of antithesis, they can also potentially return back to that darkness by another freewill choice. I pray you understood everything that I just said to you. It was all extremely important. Let me give you another great verse that contains vast knowledge about this kingdom and this enemy:
Eph 6:12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
Read this new metaphorical case closely, because God gives us another example of a spiritual contest between opponents with an implied winner and loser outcome. To wrestle an opponent is a paradigm process that is very similar to boxing or racing. In this verse in Ephesians you can see that just because Christians are not in the darkness this does not mean we are not still in a spiritual war of opposition with the darkness or the rulers of that kingdom. Who rules the darkness? Clearly this verse is another reference to Satan and his angelic followers as I mentioned earlier. Clearly from this information we can see that these spiritual individuals still exist along with their kingdom if we are currently wresting against them. There is absolutely no way that you can teach that Satan is a non-factor for any Christian today if you correctly balance these verses with the other verses that the exclusive U.E.S. Grace teachers want to focus on.
If defeated Satan had no more power or influence to do any harm to a saved Christian, then why are there so many warnings given to the church in the Bible to the contrary? A truly defeated enemy would have no such supremacy, weapons, ability or present any further risk, but an enemy that still has power and ability to do Christians harm must still be a major danger if we do not know how to counteract his plans and attacks. This spiritual war subject is not my main topic today and I have other lessons that you can go and read about how to be a victorious child of God. Just realize that God has given you the potential for victory by Jesus’ victorious actions and accomplishments but now it is your God given responsibility to enforce the victory and to become the overcomer like I introduced you to in the last lesson. Let’s change to a brand new subject called “Patterns”.
DIVINE GOD PATTERNS
If you learn anything from me today, please learn how God uses divine design patterns throughout the Bible to teach us. I’ve already described to you three direct patterns of process in today’s lesson. One was a race, one was a fight and one was a wrestling match. These were all recognizable patterns of contests with opponents, rules, a beginning effort, a struggle, endurance, and an anticipated end. Let’s get into what a pattern is using additional specific examples. How would we define a pattern? A pattern is normally a set of design templates and instructions used to prepare or to create a new copy of an existing original. The actual copy can be totally different in appearance while being completely similar in design, concepts and principles. That was of course my definition, but did you understand it? Using my 3 metaphorical examples of contests, they appear to be radically different types of games on the surface but yet they all share a set of design pattern concepts that make them joined together with many common similarities. That is exactly what pattern usage produces; copies of an original working model.
Let me give you an example of a natural pattern application on the earth. 
Patterns are used in sewing extensively and they allow the seamstress to turn out multiple new original creations that can be perceived to be similar to the original by observing the design pattern characteristics but not by necessarily observing the materials selected or the individual options being tailored or customized. There is just a general rule of life that it is always easier to copy a working original piece than it is to create something completely new. I learned this concept in programming computers. Working code reuse is always faster and more productive than new code creation. The creation of any original functional piece of work will always take significant trial and error to produce a great product. It took Edison literally hundreds and hundreds of attempts to create a light bulb that worked. But, now they can be copied very quickly and cheaply by the use of his patterned design. Have you ever asked yourself why Adam was made in the image and the likeness of God in Genesis 1:26? Do you understand that Adam was made from the direct pattern of God, his creator? God took a working design and repeated the process to make a man. This was a very significant example of the wisdom of God being displayed. When God made man, God knew that He was coming to the earth as a man so why not make the man from a pattern of Himself an already working viable component?
Understand that the reuse of any design pattern is just a small part of the complete creation process. Natural pattern usage only comes into play somewhere between the initial steps of conception, the design and before the full implementation. Almost every defined process and pattern can be viewed as interchangeable concepts to some extent. For example, any repetitive process producing a positive result can be viewed as a repetitive design pattern implementation and vice versa. I really try not to get too technical in my Bible studies to allow everyone the opportunity to understand the concepts. I try to leave out technical words and phrasing but I have been teaching you the subject of patterns and have had to introduce you to some new ideas to think about. So hang in there and learn what you can about patterns.
Let’s talk briefly about another earthly natural pattern. Any positive process is like making a cake. A cake could be created using great trial and error like Edison making a light bulb. However if the baker wants to forego the learning curve they can go and find an existing working recipe with the exact steps and ingredients used to create a great cake and in a short time they have a copy of one through the use of a known pattern. Therefore the original cook must have recorded or documented the set of specific ingredients and recipe preparation instructions that must be followed exactly in order to recreate the original design, texture, taste and quality. If you do it right the outcome is great and if you miss one ingredient or step then it will probably be a great failure.
So why am I talking about processes and design patterns, templates, sewing, light bulb and cake recipes so much? Patterns are what God used in the creation of our world to teach us about Him and spiritual things we cannot see. For example, the Bible teaches us that all of the hidden qualities of God are clearly seen in the things that He has made (Rom 1:20). This means that what we can observe on the earth around us was from a designed pattern of what already existed in heaven previously and these things reveal God to us. It is also why we need to learn about the concepts of patterns to see what will be coming soon in the future. What we soon realize is something that God teaches us in Ecclesiastes is very relevant to everything we can observe around us. God says “the things that have been are the things that shall be again” (Ecc 1:9). Ecclesiastes and Romans both explain to us that God uses divine design patterns to teach and to recreate the things we can observe. God took working spiritual realities and used their patterns to create our natural world. God then teaches us that these natural things will again be used as patterns for the new spiritual things that will occur again. Let me show you another verse about patterns in the Bible to help you better understand:
Heb 8:5 Who serve unto the example and shadow of heavenly things, as Moses was admonished of God when he was about to make the tabernacle: for, See, saith he, that thou make all things according to the pattern shewed to thee in the mount.
Here we have God describing to us that the things given to Moses on the earth were simply patterns for pre-existing unseen things already found and bound within heaven. In this verse, the original spiritual things created by God in heaven were clearly greater or more significant than the temporary natural things created by the hands of men on the earth. However these temporary natural things given to us by God on the earth also provide us a view into the existence of the spiritual things that we have never seen or experienced. You can clearly see that God gave Moses patterns to use for everything. These patterns will again be used in the design for the coming new heaven and the new earth. Patterns are so very important in the Bible that I should probably do a more complete series on the subject. For now try to understand the existence of patterns is a prevalent reality throughout the Bible. Using our knowledge of divine patterns, we can easily learn about many of the unseen spiritual things found within our past, our present and our future.
There are actually many different ways to name or title a Biblical pattern process using synonymous terms. Some call them similarities, similitudes, resemblances, likenesses, patterns, types or shadows and I even have labeled them by all of those descriptions in my past lessons. I believe that a natural type or a shadow from the Old Testament was usually given to us by God to help point us to a New Testament spiritual reality. For example, Jesus told the Jews to search their scriptures because in them they thought they had eternal life and then Jesus said these were just the words that testified of Him (John 5:39). But, yet you cannot find the direct mention of the name of Jesus, or the direct person of God in the flesh unswervingly mentioned in the Old Testament scriptures anywhere in obvious plain sight. Since I have studied the Bible for many years I can now see Him in almost every chapter, but that is not how I started. God’s use of patterns, similarities, types and shadows were just one of the wise methods of concealing Jesus in the characters and stories of others that are plainly revealed in the surface text. I pray that you are beginning to understand the concept of patterns and how they apply to our Bible study because that is exactly where we are going next in this discussion of U.E.S. Let’s begin to ask are there any patterns found in the Old Testament for U.E.S.?
ARE THERE ANY UNCONDITIONAL ETERNAL SECURITY PATTERNS?
If 
you examine the design pattern of Adam and Eve as recorded in Genesis 2 and 3 you should be able to find Jesus and the church. I will use the pattern of Adam and Eve to help establish and confirm the false reality of the Unconditional Eternal Security teaching. When God created Adam did God make him to be unconditionally and eternally secure? It is very obvious to me based upon the Word of God that Adam was never created perfect or secure since he sinned, failed and fell willingly into the disobedience of God’s Word. Whatever security that Adam thought he possessed, was suddenly completely lost. If Adam was created with “freewill” to sin, to make mistakes and even to depart from the perfect way and will of God, then how can you or anyone else possibly believe that a Christian now does not have the same pattern of choice? What about Adam’s wife Eve? Was Eve created so that it was impossible for her to be deceived? Again it is extremely obvious that the Bible says Eve was deceived (1 Tim 2:14). I am talking about patterns found within creation to see if there are any ways that are still possible for the church to fall away from the Grace of God. Were Adam and Eve created in the extreme Grace of God? I believe they were. They were created without sin, lacking nothing and placed in a near perfect world to live in. Could it have gotten any better than that? However in this great state of Grace, could they still make the wrong choices, of course they did. I hope you are using your brain today to see what I’m saying to you. How are we any different from Adam today in the church? If Adam could depart from Grace then you can depart from Grace!
Let’s back up before the creations of man and ask what about Lucifer’s status in heaven! Did God create the perfect archangel Lucifer with unconditional eternal security? According to Ezekiel 28:15 Lucifer was created in a perfect state yet sin was still found to be in him. Did this sin matter to God? If we observe his destiny in Revelation 20:10 you will understand that even perfect Lucifer is revealed to have no unconditional eternal security when he is cast into the lake of fire. Clearly perfection with no sin is not a statement for possessing security. Where exactly in the Bible can we find anyone with the pattern of Unconditional Eternal Security? Can you find me just one? I’m talking about someone other than the church that you just think is unconditionally eternally secure! If the church is eternally and unconditionally secure then there must be an existing pattern for this somewhere else in the Bible or it is not true for the church either. How can I say that? And why is this even important? It is simply critical because God tells us to establish every word of truth using at the least two or three witnesses (Mat 18:16). If we cannot find two witnesses that confirm unconditional eternal security as a divine pattern then the modern Bible teachers trying to teach us U.E.S. fail God’s requirement. Now do you understand the importance of patterns?
WHAT ABOUT JESUS?
I have searched the Old Testament and I could not find any man starting with Adam that possessed eternal security here on the earth.
Adam never lost his freewill to depart from God’s ways or plan and this pattern repeats to every man born from Adam. If you can find me even one man in the O.T. that God said could not ever fail, then show me the verse. Ok, I’m about to blow your religious mind with a new question to think about. Was Jesus Christ born in the Old Testament? If you are an intelligent and observant Bible student, you already know that Jesus was born a man under the law of the Old Covenant (Gal 4:4). Now let me ask you this radical question was Jesus Christ unconditionally and eternally secure as a physical man? You see I believe that even Jesus possessed the freewill capability for failure, and many religious people will laugh and call me a heretic fool for that belief. However, if Jesus had no potential for failure or sin then God becomes a liar. The Bible says Jesus was tempted in every way just like we are but yet He was without sin (Heb 4:15). The only reason that Jesus was without sin was because He chose to be without the sin as a direct act of His freewill. You see if it was impossible for Jesus to sin, then He was never tempted like you or I. Are you tempted? Have you ever been tempted? Do you fail or have you ever failed? If say yes then you are potentially just like Jesus and Jesus was potentially just like you. Otherwise He would not be able to identify with our weaknesses or our plight. We clearly saw already reading in Luke 4 that Jesus was tempted, but he did not give into the temptations of Satan. This is where Jesus succeeded where Adam failed.
Heb 2:17 Wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people.
Jesus is revealed in the Bible to be the God that became a man exactly like you and I. This was a major paradox and stumbling block to why natural Israel did not accept Him. They knew the Bible says God is not a man (Num 23:19). However they made the major mistake of taking one isolated truth and then ignoring all the others that God is still powerful enough to become a man if He chooses by exercising His freewill. This is the danger of separating one verse and thinking that it is the entire truth. That is an extremely bad and dangerous approach to interpreting the Bible. Do you understand what I am trying to say? I am claiming that the God of creation who created everything has now become an intimate part of His creation and this changes everything. What God was not, God became by His design. Therefore, God as a man was no longer a perfect being incapable of failing or sinning. I did not say God failed or God sinned I just said He had the potential to do that or He was not exactly like us as the Bible has declared. You are going to have to make up your own minds on what you believe; I cannot do that for you. You read the Bible and do the research and the study and see if Jesus was incapable of failure and see if He possessed Unconditional Eternal Security and then notice that even Jesus died on the cross and I believe He went to hell for 3 days to pay for my sins so I would not have to go there. I don’t call that eternal security, do you? Let’s shift our focus and establish Adam as a defined pattern for Jesus and this may help us reaffirm that Jesus was not infallible while in the flesh.
THE HIDDEN PATTERN OF JESUS IN ADAM
1Co 15:45 And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.
Why exactly, is Jesus called the “Last Adam” in 1 Corinthians 15:45? I think that is a very great question. God by direct name association has just linked Jesus Christ to the first created man Adam. This is just a very tricky way of God saying my man Adam was a set design pattern for my Son Jesus to come. This is the beginning of the reality that if Adam could have sinned, then Jesus could have sinned but yet didn’t. However, notice that both Adam’s still died. So they obviously both did possess at least one direct equal characteristic and we will find there are many more if we look for them. I find this study of Adam and Jesus as repeated patterns fascinating. It has great potential for many overlapping truths. Let’s go for another witness to what I am teaching that Adam was a pattern for Jesus:
Rom 5:14 Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come.
Romans 5:14 emphasizes this pattern usage point again to us even more clearly. The Bible says that Adam was a created pattern of the man Jesus to come. We already observed in Genesis 1 where Adam was defined to be a pattern for the creator spiritual God originally, so this is just a further perpetuation of the same God pattern to the physical God. Look up the Greek word definitions and study these verses to understand what concepts are being revealed to you. The Greek word translated as “figure” means a die as struck. Do you understand what a die is? A die produces an exact image of the same print repeatedly. It is a modern copy and paste concept found in the computer design paradigm. The original printing press created by Gutenberg was a die concept for printing one page of the Bible over and over. We soon realize that God did a copy paste of the spiritual type of Himself into the natural form of Adam, which is then transferred as another copy and paste into the combined God man named Jesus. This verse in Romans clearly teaches us that we should be able to look at the man Adam in Genesis and see Jesus and this is exactly what Jesus said we would find if we searched the scriptures looking for Him. Moses wrote down God’s words about Adam, but God’s words were more about Jesus than Adam. The two Adam’s were simply patterns for each other. I believe God created the first Adam already knowing the second Adam was coming to save the day. This is exactly why God did what He did in Genesis 2 and 3 with the first man and his wife.
Let’s stop here briefly again and consider that if the first Adam had a wife does that reveal that the last Adam (Jesus) has a wife also as a defined part of the pattern? Most definitely He does. I have a much more complete Bible study on the subject called the “The Bride of Christ Revealed”. Therefore, I am not going to repeat any of that information in this lesson. If you do not understand the church position as the bride then please stop and study to find that truth and establish it in your heart because it is essential to our pattern discussion today about U.E.S. I will simply say the church is definitely the Bride of Christ and we are the ones that are united in eternal marriage covenant in Revelation 19. Where I am going is that if Adam’s wife was capable of being deceived then the Lamb’s wife is also capable of being deceived by direct pattern association. Pretty simple yet very difficult to find if you do not understand patterns.
THE ROLE OF SATAN AND DECEPTION IN THE CHURCH
In the Grace message of eternal security there is a belief that Satan has no further influence or power over a believer to cause them to ever depart from their salvation. 
The belief popularly states that Christians have been sealed with eternal security and thus Satan is no longer a factor to deceive them anymore. Let me stop there and say that if you currently believe that you can never be deceived then you are clearly already deceived into believing a lie from Satan. What exactly is deception? How can we define it as it relates to the church? I believe deception is believing in something that you think is true that actually is not true. It is like my picture on this paragraph of the fish caught with a decieving lure. The fish believed what he was eating was good food, but it turned out to be something deadly to him. That is exactly the definition of deception for a Christian also. Clearly no Christian in their right mid is intentionally caught seeking to find lies. I believe that every easily deceived Christian is just presented the lie either intentionally or unintentionally by other well meaning ignorant Christians and they look attractive so they end up swallowing them and are caught like the fish. Let’s take into account a scripture that has far reaching implications attached to it for our current subject discussion. You will notice that in this next verse that Jesus is speaking, thus we have God in the flesh stating something very important that we must need to know. Therefore, pay close attention to the words of my Lord and Savior:
Mat 24:4 And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you.
We have to totally write this statement of Jesus off if we want to believe in unconditional eternal security after our salvation. In order to teach security we must conclude that we are smarter than Jesus and that Jesus did not know what He was talking about when He warned us about not being deceived. We either have to call Jesus a liar or we have to explain the verse as being non-applicable to people in the church today. If you read the context of the statement Jesus was asked by the disciples to teach them of the signs of His coming and the end of the age. Therefore the rest of the statements in this chapter are the answers of God in the flesh concerning the end of the age that we live in today. Who are the people that Jesus is speaking of to not become deceived if not us? Many people have tried to creatively explain it away as the Jews before salvation only, but they were not yet living in the last days so that makes no sense to me. Since we in the church who know the truth are the people now living in the last days before His soon return then I believe that Jesus was certainly speaking about us and to us as those that can be deceived. If we are these potential people that can be deceived, what are the consequences for being deceived? Are there any consequences for being deceived? There must be at least a possibility for us to lose our salvation from this warning from God or there would be no need for a warning from God to be given. Do you understand what I just said?
Why warn people not to be deceived if it is impossible for them to be deceived like the eternal security teachers try to teach us? It makes God look very stupid when you teach eternal security. Of course people can easily twist the scriptures to say this information in Matthew 24 does not apply to us because Jesus was only talking to His Jewish disciples. That is just so easy to do. Let’s just ignore the words of Jesus as being not for everyone, but only for a select few that heard them personally! We could do that type of reasoning with every verse in the Bible. Is that a smart way to interpret the Bible and the words of God? I really do not believe that is a valid approach to correct Bible interpretation. In interpreting every verse of the Bible we must always inspect the words that are spoken, observing the target audience they are directed to, while simultaneously finding the context of all of the subjects being discussed. First understand that these words in Matthew were spoken to more than just a few Jews. These select Jews that were hearing are defined directly to be our founding church fathers so they must apply to the rest of the church by direct association since we are now a part of the same body of Christ that they were included in. If you try to separate us from them, then we are a new body of Christ, a separate or different believer set from what they were and that really sounds like a scary belief to put your faith in. These words were spoken in the time context of future prophetical events and not current events, so they must also apply to us and the times that we live in right now. Finally, since these words spoken by Jesus do not state any target audience they must apply to everyone that reads them as a universal statement of truth. If you want to see the truth in the Bible you will see what I am saying is correct, if you do not want to see the truth, then nothing that I say will change your mind.
If Satan and his deception were no longer factors for our further continued salvation, there would be no need to mention Satan again in the New Testament after the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. Many modern Bible teachers like to teach the total defeat of Satan by Jesus at Calvary, however if that was actually true we would not see that Satan was so heavily involved in attacking heaven in Revelation 12 and trying to take over the earth in the other chapters of Revelation. The total defeat of Satan and the removal of his power is clearly not the reality of the text found in the Word of God. In fact Satan is mentioned more times in the New Testament than he ever was displayed plainly in the Old Testament. Why is Satan mentioned more frequently throughout the New Testament and especially in the book of Revelation than any other parts of the Bible? There hast to be a reason for this! I personally believe we find Satan in the New Testament to learn of his ways and his future plans so we are not found to be unaware. I believe that Satan is much more than a non-factor on the earth in the church age and that he is clearly revealed to be the direct enemy and opposing spiritual force to the church. His power and influence over the people on the earth are still quite evident and great. His power to deceive people including even Christians is still as great now as it always has been. This power of deception must be applicable for Christians or we would never find any verses in the Bible like these written to the church:
1Co 3:18 Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise.
1Co 15:33 Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners.
Eph 4:14 That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive;
Eph 5:6 Let no man deceive you with vain words: for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience.
Gal 6:7 Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.
2Th 2:3 Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;
1Jn 3:7 Little children, let no man deceive you: he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous.
These are all commandments of instruction from our God written to the church and each of them contains direct delegated responsibility for believers not to be deceived. Do any of the verses tell you that God will not ever allow you to be deceived? I do not believe God would warn you if it was His responsibility to save you from it. These warnings were not written to unsaved people. Do you see what these verses say to you over and over? What is the central theme for every verse? Every verse contains a cautionary statement from God that says “Do not be deceived”. If the church could never be deceived to lose their salvation from this deception then these verses become pointless and irrelevant commandments and should be viewed as only misplaced suggestions. To believe in eternal security we must ignore these verses or conclude these verses to be non-applicable to us. Either approach is failure to adhere to the truth which always results in a Christian being deceived. These are not lies from God and we must see them to be clear notices to us Christians. I did not go through the entire New Testament and give you every verse that I could have. I only provided 6 or 7 verses to offer you more than enough witnesses to the truth that the church can still be deceived after initial salvation by many different methods. If you cannot see this fact then you are in denial. I will end this lesson with an example of deception that occurred in the N.T. church:
2Pe 2:20 For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning.
2Pe 2:21 For it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them.
2Pe 2:22 But it is happened unto them according to the true proverb, The dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire.
Peter is writing some very important words to the church about certain former saved church members. The wording in these verses is very significant if you do the research and study. God is speaking concerning certain people that “knew” righteousness. Jesus of course is our righteousness (1 Cor 1:30) and He is even called the “Sun of Righteousness” in Malachi 4:2. The term to “know” righteous is a sexual Hebrew description of the relationship that exists between a husband and his wife. The people in the church are in covenant relationship with Jesus the bridegroom making them His bride. God is saying these people were once an intimate part of my wife that I knew and they have departed from me. God clearly says it would be better for them to either stay or to have never been married to him than to leave their salvation to fall back into the darkness. Why is that? It is because they will remember for an eternity their mistake that they made and only they will fully understand what they missed while they are in hell. Lucifer is going to understand this better than anyone. He experienced the goodness of God more than anyone in the church and while he is in hell for and eternity he will constantly be tormented for his mistakes. These are patterns that teach us we do not have unconditional eternal security.
God calls the people who leave their salvation pigs and dogs. Just as dogs return to their own vomit and the pigs to the mire this is the same result that Christians experience when they return to their previous filth and love it. Clearly this is an example of deception being victorious over those that were saved. Clearly these Christians did not heed the repeated warnings from God not to be deceived and are now suffering the consequences. These are words that were written to you. Are you receiving them? I could give you several more examples of this in the Bible, but I really have gone too long in this lesson.
THE FALSE SECURITY OF THE UNCONDITIONAL ETERNAL SECURITY DOCTRINE
I have systematically covered several subjects in today’s lesson connecting them together to help establish the fact that a Christian can be deceived. We started with the concept that we have an enemy. This enemy is described to be Satan the deceiver. A deceiver is simply labeled that because he deceives people. This is really not that complicated. Sure the unsaved people in the world today are clearly deceived, but they don’t read the Bible and these words of warning not to be deceived were not written to them. Therefore, the use of this weapon of deception by Satan is still actively targeted at the people in the church to take them from the church and the truth. Based upon this information alone the doctrine of unconditional eternal security is revealed to be a major false teaching that should be recognized as another way that is designed to deceive you. Do you understand the danger of the U.E.S. teaching? U.E.S. promotes a false sense of security that we have to do nothing to stay saved or to keep from being deceived. It allows Christians to let in whatever they come across without the fear of any consequences. Fear is not always a negative emotion to avoid. God created real fear for you to learn how to avoid something that is not necessarily positive or beneficial for you. If you do not fear gravity and jump off a tall building you will soon be dead. I am really not talking about fearing the devil as in being terrified of his power. The Bible clearly teaches the fact that the Greater One is in us. However, that does not mean that you do not respect his ability like you should respect the power of gravity. These are just basic Christian life lessons to help you understand that you have an enemy and this enemy is not your friend, he has powers and abilities, and he is trying to take you out and down.
Finally, I talked a lot about Bible patterns. This is a very important Bible study concept repeated in practically every chapter of the Bible in some form. Fully grasp this concept and it will change your Bible study habits. Look for confirming patterns of truth in the Bible. For example, I showed you scriptures that teach us that Adam was a pattern of Jesus. This was technically so radical that I could not fully teach everything on that one subject because it could turn into a series of lessons by itself. However I gave you enough information that should help you to learn about Jesus from the pattern of Adam. See what Adam had or was given by God before the fall and this will be a pictured view into what Jesus will end up with minus the evil, the sin and the rebellion. Adam had one wife and Jesus will end with only one wife. Very simple yet profound truths.
The pure existence of human freewill dictates that we view every one of God’s covenants with conditional application. In other words if we choose to remain in the covenant we are good, but if we choose to leave it then we are screwed. What I am saying is if God comes and makes a covenant with you, God is not the problem, you are. You can become your own worst enemy when you believe a lie. Just as natural Israel departed continuously from God’s covenant as a pattern for the church, the church also has that same opportunity to fall away. If the recipient of God’s Grace satisfies the stated requirements and conditions they remain in the relationship with God’s Grace. If they choose to disobey willfully and depart from God’s extended gift of saving Grace then they are lost without a chance for absolution. Learn today that what you do going forward, matters tremendously. Learn to have respect for your enemy and stay deep in the Word of God so that you are not deceived by him. Your salvation is not completely up to God. Sure He will be there for you and help you and will never leave you or forsake you. But, your continued salvation is more up to you than anyone else so that you do not get deceived and decide to leave God or forsake Him. You have a major role in the ongoing process of your salvation to remain faithful, to endure and to overcome. Thank you for taking the time to read and study the Bible. If you have questions or comments feel free to leave them. God Bless as we continue to learn to grow in His Grace.
Understanding Deception in the Bible! Can a True Christian be Deceived? Part 6
(ver 1.2) This is now Part 6 in a series of very advanced Bible lessons about the subject of deception. I have uncovered a lot of new information in this series and today’s lesson is some more information on the subject using the Bible to help answer and clarify a comment that I got recently. In today’s lesson I will focus on a very important question that was raised when someone told me that a Christian cannot be deceived because God will not permit them to be lost. That is a very common doctrine of theology in many churches, but is that what the Bible actually says? If you have not read this series from the beginning, I would suggest that you go and start reading from “Part 1” first. I will warn you up front that this will be a long lesson. I have a lot of things to cover today. But, if you read it all I believe you will learn much more than just the primary subject about deception. In one of my last Bible lessons I taught about Understanding Bible Prophets, what they are, why they exist and what they can and cannot do. In that lesson I paraphrased a verse that Jesus gave as a warning to us (the church). I thought it was a valid paraphrasing, but my commenter thought otherwise and told me why they thought this was wrong about what I said. I basically said a Christian could be deceived, so Jesus was warning us to be careful. I basically took the scripture personally and felt like this was God speaking to me. But, my commenter had a different point of view using a very different perspective of the Bible and tried to teach me how they understood the Bible. I want to say first that I believe my commenter was a Christian and that we are both climbing the same mountain to reach the peak of knowledge and understanding. However, our views of the scriptures were clearly from very different perspectives, like me being on the north side of the mountain and them being on the south side of the mountain. What I was looking at was not what they were looking at so this will at times cause many of the theological differences to occur within the Body of Christ. The only legitimate way to resolve these types of conflicts is for each party to change positions in order to try to gain the view from the other side of the mountain and then combine the two realities into the view from the top of the mountain. Maybe you do not understand mountain climbing. At the early altitude you are many times within the tree line and you have to rise beyond the trees to finally be able to see out. Then as you ascend your view becomes increasingly different until you reach the top and can see in 360 degrees of every side. In between the bottom and the top there are varying stages of revelation, the higher you go is based upon how much you know and have seen. I’m sorry I like mountains so I may have used this analogy before in another blog. When I was younger I liked camping in Colorado on the top of the mountains. The views were so awesome and the lessons of life are clearly learned from the things that God has created. I believe the world was created by design and that nothing occurs by chance or accident. We therefore, have to become smart enough to learn the lesson that God is trying to present to us with creation while simultaneously giving His written Word first priority in everything. Here were all of my commenter’s words that were shared with me.
In the initial paragraph of this week’s publication you state that, “Jesus also warned us that even the very elect could be deceived by their trickery, Matt 24:24.” KJ
Actual quotation from Matthew’s text: “For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.”
Readers need to know that this verse indicates, “IF POSSIBLE!” In other words, God does not allow this to happen to those who are truly saved nor does he even make it possible. However, he is using this language to cause the reader to understand the intensity of deceit that will be in the world during the last days.
Those who abide in Christ and have the Holy Spirit will not be taken captive by the world. The “perseverance of the saints,” is made possible through the indwelling Holy Spirit… “Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.” Phil 1:6 KJ
We’ll I read their comment and I know why they said what they did, but the root of the problem is that there is more than one truth in the Bible and it appears to me that my commenter might have been closed to try to see the other scriptures found in the Bible from my view point. This is why we have so many Christian denominations in the world today. One church likes the view from their side of the mountain that they are climbing on and another church stays on the other side of the mountain loving their limited view of the same verse and we have isolationism occurring from our limited perspective view of the Bible. I have said this repeatedly and I will continue to teach it until we all get it, “there is more than one truth in the Bible and we as believers must see them all in order to view the complete actual truth”. No church should exalt one truth and claim that is ALL of the truth that is necessary for you to know. When people do this that is a very serious misrepresentation of God and the Bible and it oversimplifies them both. It is also a common ploy used for deception by Satan. The devil will tell someone one thing so that they ignore the other more important things and he then has them defeated and they do not even understand that they are in this condition. This was Satan’s approach with Eve when she was deceived in the garden. God said “Do not eat or you will surely die”. But, Satan never mentions that part of the subject. Satan says “You shall be as gods, knowing good and evil”. That was a new truth that replaced what God said in Eve’s mind. God never told Adam and Eve about what the consequences of death meant and Satan avoided the subject by telling them something else that sounded good on the surface. This was a tricky way to deceive someone, if you ask me. It is also the first time Satan deceived anyone in the Bible so it would be a very good future lesson to explore in this series.
You see I do not deny my commenters scripture references, I just have a problem with the fact that they have ignored the other parts of the Bible in order to interpret them in the way that they have. If we do not use the entire Bible to interpret the Bible we are doing nothing but promote the selective isolated doctrines of men and that is foolish. I tried to explain to my commenter that the law of gravity is a physical law of truth that states it is impossible for a man to fly. So the law of gravity was a valid truth that ruled men for thousands of years. Man believed this truth and lived by this law until finally they discovered another greater truth. When mankind learned of the law of aerodynamics and how that it supersedes the law of gravity this new truth allowed man to fly like a bird. So both laws are great truths, but one truth causes the other truth to become minor or insignificant when viewed and applied correctly. This is how the Bible is written. The Bible contains many truths, with some of them being dependent horizontal truths while other truths are independent vertical or hierarchical truths. Ok, I probably went over the head of many readers with that last statement, but this is an advanced Bible study so I will say things occasionally to get you thinking about old concepts in new more complex ways. Please just try to understand that one truth can supersede another truth. Let me give you a Bible example for what I am trying to say; the Bible says “The law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus has freed us from the law of sin and death” (Rom 8:2). This is exactly what I was attempting to say with the example of gravity and aerodynamics. The law of Life in Christ is a much higher law of truth that has nullified the law of sin and death just as the law of aerodynamics has nullified the laws of gravity. I hope you understand these truth concepts, they are very important to know. Let me start by giving you the actual verse that I paraphrased again and show you what Jesus says:
Mat 24:24 For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.
Ok here is the exact words written in the KJV ible and we need to actually see what it says. My first point is to notice the words “it were” are in italics and that reveals to us that these words were not written in the original Greek language and they have been added by the translators so we should technically ignore them. So the original verse says “If possible, they (the false Christs and false prophets) shall deceive the very elect”. I immediately wondered who my commenter thought the “very elect” were if they are not Christ’s church. Then I began to wonder what do the words “If possible” mean? According the Strong’s the Greek word translated as “If” is a particle of conditionality. In other words if this is true this occurs, if this is not true then something else occurs. This is a classic programming paradigm called If Then Else Logic and if you are not a programmer you probably do not have a clue what I just said. Nevertheless, the word “If” is always a conditional statement where something else either given or implied is a determining factor for whether what is stated can or cannot occur. Going back to my programming paradigm, when a compiler comes to an If statement a test is made in order to determine the next instruction to execute. When a test occurs, the next instruction that is executed is based upon resulting True or False condition of the test. Do you understand this? You do not have to be a computer programmer to understand this is how you behave every day. If you are hungry you get something to eat and if you are not hungry you don’t. The term “If” certainly does not mean it is NOT POSSIBLE for this to occur. You cannot get that from the definition of the word at any time. The term “possible” is a Greek word (G1415) that means “powerful” or “capable”. We know from the Bible that with God all things are possible. So we must determine what the word “If” coming before the word “possible” can mean. God uses three other Greek words in the New Testament for “impossible” and these are G101, G102 and G418. If God knows the difference between what is possible and what is not possible, I believe that He knows which word to use in what verse. I would suggest that you go and search the New Testament for G1415 (possible) and G102 (impossible). If you look up the definitions of these two words they are actually very revealing. Impossible is a word of “weakness” and possible is a word for “strength”. Which one is God? All things are possible with God meaning all things are strong with God. However, the Bible says “It is impossible for God to lie”. So God displays “weakness” when it comes to speaking lies. These are fascinating concepts that many Christians have not considered. Weakness is a positive when it comes to sin. But, strength in virtue and truth must be admirable. Because the word “If” occurs before the word “possible” God is saying this is possible but it has specific conditions which must be present to cause it to happen. This is a very simple way of saying you can be deceived under the right conditions. According to my commenter, they said it is not possible for a Christian to be deceived, because God would not allow or permit this to occur. I assume from their logic that they believe God controls the outcome of everything based upon the very popular Sovereign God theological doctrine found within many churches and they must feel that man has no further contribution to make to determine their eternal destiny. Go back and read my commenter’s words again.
Readers need to know that this verse indicates, “IF POSSIBLE!” In other words, God does not allow this to happen to those who are truly saved nor does he even make it possible. However, he is using this language to cause the reader to understand the intensity of deceit that will be in the world during the last days.
Hopefully you can see what they are trying to say? My commenter said “IF POSSIBLE” could be substituted for GOD does not allow this to occur”. Wow, is that what it really said? I am really not sure how anyone can arrive at that conclusion or interpretation of the verse, but obviously that is what they said. That is not what Strong’s said the words meant. Since Strong was a Greek and Hebrew expert I rely on his expertise more than my own or the opinions of people who leave me comments. In other words I’m not going to try to say what the verse says without some collaborating and supporting evidence from someone who is or was smarter than I am. If God tells me in another verse in the Bible that it is not possible for a man to be deceived, then that would be the best. If Strong, Thayer or Nave does not say that either then I just cannot override their expertise with my opinion of what I think it means. So whenever someone says “In other words” you better be careful that what is being stated is an actual equivalent phrasing for what was actually stated. The only way that I know of to how you can legitimately do that, is for you to look up all of the words in a dictionary or a thesaurus and then to see what they mean and if they are really valid synonyms. This is just basic Bible study guidelines and rules to follow. I’ll ask you again “What do the words If Possible mean”? Does it mean it is not possible? I do not think so. God tells us in other places in the Bible “It is impossible for Him to lie” (Heb 6:18). God obviously knows when something is possible and when something is not possible to occur and He knows when to use what word for either case. My commenter seemed to think that God wrote it this way to emphasize a point. But, I still think that this is trying to interpret the Bible in isolation without using the other verses found on the subject to help us to understand what is actually being communicated. For example, if you search the Bible you will find that these exact same Greek words translated as “If Possible” are used in other verses in the N.T. If you go and look at one of them they ought to show us if God uses the words in the same way in order to determine if God is being consistent with His words.
Rom 12:18 If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.
As you can hopefully see if you try to say “If possible” means that it is not possible, you must use that logic in this verse also in order to be consistent. So if you try to apply that logic to this verse in Romans, you would make it say “God does not permit you to live peaceably on the earth with all men. I do not think that this is what this verse is saying, do you? Do you understand this logic? Can you find anywhere in the Bible that it says “God does not permit” when used with the words “If Possible”. If it were not possible for a Christian to be deceived then why would God not tell us that anywhere? I think that would be a very good thing to know if that was actually true. Another point that I want to address is the implied statements being made by my commenter. My commenter implies that they are the “true Christians” and therefore they cannot ever be deceived. Since my commenter did not tell me otherwise I have to assume this is what they meant by examining what they have said. If this is what they believe, I feel very strongly that this is an extremely dangerous theology to base your faith. This would be a great theology if they were right, but if they are wrong then what guarantee do they have that they are not deceived already. Since Bible doctrine and theology is a moving target based upon your current knowledge, there is technically no one that can guarantee what they are preaching today is what they will preach tomorrow exactly. I do not know if you understand that statement or not? Truth is a complex subject and many people want to base their eternal destiny upon their limited knowledge of the Bible and God just might show you a new Bible verse tomorrow that completely changes your theology. Since neither you nor I are God we must be open to learning more at all times and this reality alone should cause us to change our theology as we all attempt to get to the summit of the Bible knowledge mountain. What we all need to do is to research the Bible to figure out the actual truth the best way that we can using all of the information that we can obtain on the subject. Study to show ourselves to be approved a workman that will not be put to shame because we rightly divide the Word of Truth (2 Tim 2:15). So that is what I will try to do again today. You see, I am smart enough to know that I do not know everything. I also think that God is still revealing new things every day. So these two beliefs lead me to be open to change.
Bible study is a rules based system of learning. In other words if you do not know the rules you cannot follow them and therefore there is no way that you will figure out what the truth is. I will not try to give you all of the rules for Bible interpretation today; I have tried to do this in many other Bible lessons so go and read them to learn the correct way to interpret the Bible. I will give you a secret that I use to study the Bible constantly and this may help you if you apply it. When you study a subject search the Bible for the words that you are interested in and find all of the Bible verses that contain those words and then go read what they say. If God uses the same Greek or Hebrew word in every verse then you can be assured you are learning about the exact same subject. Therefore what God says in each verse applies to what is said in every other verse with that same word. This is just a very basic Bible study methodology. You see I know for sure my commenter did not do this or they would have seen what I am going to show you today about the subject of deception. Another Bible study basic is for you to look up the words that you are reading in a Greek or Hebrew dictionary to see what they mean in the original languages. Many times English words have changed and the meanings are no longer the same. For example, in the King James Bible many times the Greek word “agape” is translated as “charity” and this is a total inaccuracy using modern day concepts of the English word for charity. Agape is the Greek word that describes “the God Kind of Love” and that is an important difference between the English word and the Greek word. In fact in the Bible there is more than one Greek word translated as love, how are you going to know the difference if you do not go and search for it? Let me give you the Greek Word definition for “deceive” as it is translated in Matthew 24:24. I think I have given you this definition before in previous lessons, but this is so important that I feel it needs to be restated:
G4105
From G4106; to (properly cause to) roam (from safety, truth, or virtue): – go astray, deceive, err, seduce, wander, be out of the way.
You should see by the definition of this Greek word translated as deceive alone that it causes major problems for my commenter’s theology. To roam or to go astray is a clear description of someone who once was on the path of safety, virtue and truth and they have now wandered from it to become lost. Uh oh? It is very clear to me that the Greek word definition shows someone who once knew the truth, but wandered away from it. Are you a Christian today? If you are then it is because someone presented you the truth and you decided to believe it. Can you knowing the truth now choose to walk away from it? According to the definition of this word it is more than possible. The definition of this word “deceive” says people were in the town of Truth and they wandered off and got lost and now cannot find their way back. What are we going to do with that information? Can you see and understand how to apply this? Do you remember when Jesus said “I am the Good Shepherd? Do you know that we are His sheep? Do you know that His sheep can wander off and decide not to follow the shepherd? According to my commenter’s theology this is not possible, because every one of God’s sheep must have a tight choker collar around their necks with a leash that is tied around the shepherd’s staff, so they cannot stray and get lost. The only way to keep a sheep from straying is to tie them and no shepherd that is good will do this to their animals. Please go search the web and see how shepherds lead their sheep. If you want to learn more on this subject you can read my lesson on “Understanding Sheep in the Bible”. Jesus told a story of a sheep getting lost and Him having to go out and find it (Mat 18:12). Jesus is using a story with natural symbolism to convey a spiritual truth about God and us His people. If you look up the words in this verse you will see “go astray” is the same word translated as “deceive” in Mat 24:24. Uh oh? Therefore, we are talking about the exact same subject, yes in both verses? In this story Jesus says He will leave the 99 to try to find the 1 who was deceived to stray. Who is guarding the 99 while He is out looking for the one that was deceived? Can a wolf come and kill one of the 99 sheep while Jesus is looking for the one? Could the wolf already have killed the one sheep that left the safety of the shepherd? Why did God allow one sheep to leave and become deceived? Oh, yea God is sovereign, omnipotent, omniscient and is omnipresent. If that was all of the truth then why did God use such human examples to describe Himself when He possessed such gret deity qualities? If God is permitted to use all of His supernatural powers then it would be impossible for any of His sheep to get lost in the first place. Since He clearly tells us that a sheep left the flock and must be searched for this tells us God is not in control of what that sheep did. That sheep was deceived to leave the safety of the flock and the shepherd and that is not good for them. I believe that God chooses not to use His supernatural powers by His own choice. If you can find me scriptures to contradict this belief, I will be happy to change. But, I believe that this is the only viable explanation of how a human example of a shepherd losing a sheep could apply to God. If God does not give His sheep the freewill choice to leave, that would make God a controlling manipulator. If you are a married person, is that the kind of spouse that you desire to be married to? I do not think so! Otherwise I have no explanation of why Jesus used this example to describe Himself and us His sheep. Just notice the story of the sheep and see that Jesus says there are 100 sheep and one is deceived and has been lost because they wandered off by their own choice or will. This is what Jesus is teaching to us; His sheep have the right to leave and they can be deceived. Do you understand this?
Let’s back up in the chapter of Matthew and read some other words that Jesus spoke before this statement in Mat 24:24 in order to examine the context of the statement. If you go back to the first part of the chapter you will see Jesus describing things that will occur in the last days. Since we are living in the last days I believe that means whatever Jesus is about to say applies to us. The disciples then come to Jesus privately in Matthew 24:3 and ask Him, when will these things occur? Who is Jesus speaking to in this chapter? My commenter thinks that Jesus is only speaking to the readers, whoever they are. I do not know about you, but I am reader? I wonder if my commenter is also a reader. I guess they think they are not? Since I know of hardly any unsaved people who read the Bible, I’m not really sure who they are thinking Jesus is speaking to. God says in Matthew 24:3 that He was speaking to the disciples and they were the founding fathers of the church. But, my commenter has determined Jesus was speaking to someone else. However, here is the beginning of Jesus’ answer to the “disciples” question:
Mat 24:4 And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you.
Wow, this is obviously a hard saying if Jesus the Son of God is speaking in private to only His own disciples. Jesus clearly says “Beware” and “do not let anyone deceive you”. Does Jesus ever say “It is impossible for them to be deceived”? Is Jesus speaking to the founding fathers of the church? Obviously Jesus does not even come close to saying they cannot be deceived. If Jesus warns His personal disciples, His inner circle of 12 students not to be deceived, it is very obvious to me that they could easily become deceived at any time going forward from that warning. What is a warning? A warning is like when you tell your children do not touch the stove because it is hot. When you said that did you mean it was not possible for them to touch it? Obviously that was not why you warned them not to touch it. This is really not that hard and it only takes a little common sense to see that Jesus would never warn His disciples of something that was not possible to occur.
This revelation alone disqualifies the “Predestination” theology. This knowledge alone invalidates the “Once Saved Always Saved” theology. Here Jesus is speaking to many of the future writers of the New Testament and He says you better be careful or you will be deceived. I will tell you this directly, if it was possible for the disciples to be deceived, then any regular Christian today is in dire straits if they think they cannot ever be deceived. These are very strong words and very important words for you to understand. I also want to point out that this Greek word translated as “deceive” is the exact same word found in Matthew 24:24 so Jesus is definitely giving you relevant information that you need to know about the subject of deception in the last days.
Let’s explore the same information found in Matthew, but this time read it in Mark. Many times one writer will phrase the text in one way differently than the other or they will give you the same information with different words. Plus I like to find two or three witnesses in the Bible to everything that I teach in order to help establish the truth. So let’s turn to Mark 13 and read what Jesus says there:
Mar 13:5 And Jesus answering them began to say, Take heed lest any man deceive you:
Mar13:6 For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many.
If you continue to read down in this chapter you will again see that Jesus is speaking of the last days. Since I believe strongly that we are living in the last days, I believe that if you do not take this warning personally as a True Christian that you can be deceived very easily. Every word of God is written to you personally and this verse does not say “If Possible”. It says “Take heed” and that is something that you are required to do, not God! Too many Christians want to put the responsibility all on God. God will not permit me to be tested. God will not permit me to be tempted. God will not permit me to be deceived and that is just not what the Bible says anywhere. Jesus would not have given us a warning if it were not possible for us (the church) to be deceived. If you ignore these Bible verses and think they do not apply to you, I’ll say it again you are in trouble. Think with me for a second and determine who was present to hear these words of Jesus. Weren’t Judas and the other 11 disciples always present when Jesus spoke? What did Judas do? You probably know that Judas betrayed Jesus and turned Him over to be killed for silver. Was Judas deceived? Absolutely, Judas was deceived. He heard the exact same words of truth that Peter heard and every other disciple heard and he still decided not to believe in them and do his own thing. You can clearly read in the Bible that Satan entered into Judas and this caused him to betray Jesus. It is very clear to me that Satan was present to cause any disciple to fall into deception that would permit him to do so. Only Judas because of his greed for money was motivated to ignore his eternal outcome for a monetary short term gain which he soon regretted. However, if one disciple of the twelve can be deceived every disciple can be deceived. If any disciple can be deceived then you can be deceived.
Think with me for another moment about what Jesus said in Matthew 24:24 knowing the context of the verse are about the end time events. Jesus said beware of the “false Christ”. This is a direct reference to the coming anti-Christ which is probably in the world today somewhere. We know there have been foolish men who have claimed to be the Christ and they have caused many to die and be lost. But, if the anti-Christ is a false Christ and Jesus is speaking a warning to the church, what is going to happen when he shows up doing great signs and wonders that only a supernatural being can do. I believe that many Christian will buy into his false message based upon his overwhelming knowledge of how to deceive people. This is why Jesus said in Matthew 24:24 that it is possible for even the elect to be deceived, they should be careful not to allow this to happen.
My commenter said that a “True Christian” cannot be deceived and by this they imply there are false Christians in the world. They further imply they are one of the “True Christians” that are incapable of being deceived. This is of course a very convenient theology to believe in with great personal benefits. It is no wonder that so many Christians have bought into this philosophy. Now whenever, anyone comes up as having been deceived, they can simply say they were never a “True Christian” in the first place. Of course this is not true using the definition of the word “deceive” that we found. Jesus warned us of the coming “False Christs” and the “False Prophets” who will deceive many. By definition a false prophet is a man who says he is a prophet but who is not. It is the same with a false Christ. Finally, a false Christian is one that says they are a Christian and they are not. I do believe that all of these exist in the world today right now. Both the true and the false must coexist in the world simultaneously by simple logic and reasoning.. However, I am not addressing false Christianity because they are already deceived. You do not ever warn someone about something they have already fallen into, right? You can only try to help them out of their pit of deception if they are interested in getting your help. If not, they will remain in the their deception and be content. So by simple logic found in Matthew 24:24 we can determine that Jesus cannot be speaking to anyone, but a Christian who is walking in the Light of Truth. This would be someone who knows the truth, but chooses to walked away from it to do the wrong things.
Let me talk to you about some modern day preachers that have been deceived. I know of several and I could name their names and you would know who I am talking about, but I will not do that. You will probably know who I’m talking about anyway because they were in the news. Anyway one preacher had a national TV ministry and a major Bible school and obviously was doing great things for God when one day he was discovered with a prostitute. This was not good news for his church or his wife and family. Was he just a false Christian or was he a Christian who was deceived? Remember the definition of the word “deceive” from Strong? I recall that “deceive” seems to be defined as someone who was safe in the truth, but who has now wandered off from it. Was this famous preacher a false Christian or just one that knew the truth and decided to do the wrong things anyway? Do you see how complicated this subject really is? I believe that you cannot say this preacher was not a Christian to begin with or that he was a false Christian based upon the fruits that he had exhibited. Jesus said you will know them by their fruits. But, even a preacher, saved and filled with Spirit of God can be deceived to do the wrong things. Plus the fact that this preacher asked for forgiveness and the Bible says that when you do this God will forgive you (1 Jo 1:9). Let me say that deception comes in varying degrees. I believe that any Christian can be deceived to sin, but not be lost completely if they turn and see their mistake and repent. If my commenter thinks they are a perfect Christian that never sins, they are definitely deceived. If they think that it is impossible for them to sin, again there is deception that has already occurred and they better wake up soon. Let me say again that any Christian is capable of sinning and knowing this fact alone we should realize that Satan is out to try to trick us into going back to what our flesh use to want to do all the time; whether it was drugs, sex, cigarettes, alcohol, food or whatever.
Another preacher that will remain nameless had a 5000 member church in the Bible belt of America. His TV ministry was seen nationwide. I went to his church and I saw all of this first hand, so this is not hearsay or speculation. I saw the church and the ministries grow, I saw the salvation of many people while I was in the church. People would get saved in almost every service. I felt the power of God present and things were happening supernaturally so God was present. I sat under the anointing of God and felt the power of God present so I know he was a Christian. I could hear the sermons and read the Bible verses that were being taught and they were sound doctrine. However, over time I saw a change occurring in the senior pastor and the church. He eventually left his wife and married another woman and began to preach some really strange things. There were many personal and church related problems and issues and this senior pastor soon left his new wife and married another woman. The church went from over 5000 members to it is non-existent today. That church went from awesome to nothing in a very short time all because of one man being deceived by Satan. There was clearly a level of deception that had taken place to take this senior pastor from a great man of God to his downfall. All of these examples are warnings for Christians today. I could give you many more examples, but that is just pointless. Just understand that if it can happen to a major church pastor, it can happen to you. If it can happen to a disciple of Jesus it can happen to you.
Let’s go through some Bible verses in the New Testament and see if God says if a Christian can become deceived or not? You are going to have to read your Bible and study it, but they are not complicated if you can open your spiritual eyes and see what God is saying. I will only focus on scriptures written to the church. The Church is the target readers of the Epistles. All of these letters were written to True Christians for instruction and for correction and that is what I hope they do for you today.
1Co 15:33 Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners.
1Co 6:9 Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,
Gal 6:7 Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.
These are three direct witnesses that convey the message that Christians can be deceived. You do not write to anyone in the Church and tell them not to fall into deception if it is impossible for them to do this. That would be stupid for God to do. Do you understand that? Are these the Words of God written to you and I? I believe they are. I’m sure there are some people who can explain away what the Bible says, but I choose to take the words of the Bible to be truth. I want you to see that three times God writes to the church and tells them it is their responsibility not to fall into deception. If God could stop it from happening, He would not warn you that it could happen. If you look up the Greek word translated as “deceived”, you will see that it is the same one used by God in Matthew 24:24. Therefore, these verses apply to the subject given and it clearly tells us based upon context that a Christian can be deceived. Let’s go though some more scriptures that say this also using some different phrasing.
Eph 5:6 Let no man deceive you with vain words: for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience.
2Th 2:3 Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;
1Jn 3:7 Little children, let no man deceive you: he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous.
Here are three more direct witnesses from the scripture that clearly say “Let no man deceive you”. Notice that none of them said “God will let no man deceive you”. These words are clearly written to the church and the Apostle John even calls us the “children” of God. It is self-evident that even real Christians can be deceived by an active or inactive participation of their own freewill. If you let someone deceive you, you can make the right choices to keep from being deceived. This is a clear assignment of self-responsibility. If God says “Let no man” there is an alternative outcome to being deceived and it comes back to a conditional statement of dependency upon what you do or permit to be done. Therefore, it is an act of your will or the omission of action by your will that causes you to be deceived. Wow, that is an important statement to learn. Let me give you a funny example. When my wife was young her mom would make her a sandwich and she would need a drink or something and have to get up from the table to get it and when she came back someone had taken a bite out of her sandwich. Well this was a cruel joke by her dad, but she got the point very fast. She never left her food again on the table if she got up to get something. It is like the old saying fool me once shame on you, but fool me twice shame on me. I guess what we need to do as Christians is to learn what we need to do to keep the devil from taking a bite of our sandwich and then keep him from doing it ever again.
Deception is a very important subject and that is why I teach on it so much. It is critical for you to know as much as possible on this subject so that you understand how deception can come so that you will be able to avoid it. Deception will come to you in many forms, in many ways and for many purposes. But, one of the ways is through men who wear sheep’s clothing, but are the hidden wolves underneath (Mat 7:15). God would not warn Christians Not to be deceived, if it were not possible. This is just basic reasoning and logic using simple Bible study techniques to help discover the truth. What we as Christians must realize is that we are in a spiritual warfare for the eventual outcome of our eternal spirits. Satan is highly motivated to deceive even “God’s elect ones”. Satan has the knowledge, power and experience to do it and he does not need God’s permission in order to try to do it and this is what you need to know today.
I’ll end this lesson today with another set of witnesses found in the Bible, but these are a little bit different in what they say and how they say it. But you will still notice that they are definitely written to the Church and spoken by Jesus to us. These verses have some very profound words within them and they definitely apply to the subject of deception, even if the word does not appear in these verses. You see there are more rules to Bible interpretation than what I can tell you about in this one lesson. You will just have to read what Jesus is saying and then figure out how it applies to God, to you, the church, Satan and the subject of deception.
Rev 2:7 He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God.
Rev 2:11 He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death.
Rev 2:26 And he that overcometh, and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations:
Rev 3:5 He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father, and before his angels.
Rev 3:12 Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God: and I will write upon him my new name.
Rev 3:21 To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne.:
Why does Jesus speak these 6 times about “those that overcome”? Do you understand that these are all promises or rewards from God of something for something? In other words every one of these promises are conditional. It is totally depends upon the fact that if you qualify for the promises then and only then will you be rewarded with the promises. Do you understand that all of these are the words written to the Church? Are not these people the True Christians who have been given these messages? Maybe you think that you are not in the same church as these people that Jesus is speaking to, and if that is the case you are in trouble. I believe Jesus is making a very serious point by repeating this phraseology this many times. Jesus is clearly saying that you have a Major Responsibility to become an overcomer. What does it mean to be an overcomer? Wow, I guess that is something not too many Christians understand unless they were in the military or played a competitive sport or had cancer and finally got a clean bill of health from their doctor. You see an overcomer is only someone who is victorious. Clearly an overcomer is a winner of a battle or conflict. These statements have vast implications written on them. It means you can be a failure by default. It means that you can be a quitter by choice. It means you can be defeated by your enemy. It means you can stray from the narrow path and follow the crowd down the wide path to destruction. These verses tell me that a Christian can be deceived and not be victorious. It is your choice, your will, your decisions and your actions that will either cause you to win or to be defeated. If you follow God and the truth of His word this will never happen, but if someone comes to you with a great false message and you follow that, you have left the truth and been deceived and God will let you go. It means you are in trouble if you believe that God is not going to allow you to be deceived. I do not see anywhere in these verses in Revelation where God guarantees you victory if you quit or don’t fight or don’t want to win, what do you think God is going to do about that? Do you believe that God is going to override your desire to do your own thing to force you to His things? If you think this you are clearly mistaken. God is not going to make you do the right things. God will not force feed you so that you grow in the truth. All God can do is send someone like me to try to steer you back into the right path and if you refuse to listen I’m sorry but there is nothing else He will do for you.
God expects you to do something and you need to learn what that is. One of the first major prophecies in the Bible is one found in Genesis 3:15 where God says “The seed of the woman shall bruise the head of the serpent”. I know I paraphrased again. But, that was the verse in a nutshell. We all know the serpent is Satan, but few understand who the Seed of the Woman is referring to. If you want to learn who this is you can read my other Bible lessons to find out for sure. But, I will tell that this woman is the church and she is the one that God expects to be victorious. To be under someone’s foot is a symbolic sign that they are defeated by that person whose foot is on them. You can see this many places in the Bible and one place is in Joshua where God told the nation of Israel everywhere the sole of your feet tread I have given to you. Well Israel is a natural typology of the church in this example. Just as Joshua fought to take the promise land, we are forced to fight a spiritual battle to possess God’s promises. What did we read in Revelations 6 times? We read conditional promises? Was the Promised Land conditional for Israel in the O.T.? What if they had not fought the giants, they would have died in the wilderness like everyone else and missed out on the promise. Hopefully you can understand my point.
You see in Romans 16:20, God writes to the church and says “The God of Peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly”. According to this verse in Romans, we are the Seed of the Woman that was prophesied about in Genesis 3:15. It is the feet of the church that God is going to use to bruise the head of Satan. If this is true, then we as a church have a role of responsibility to participate in its fulfillment. I know there are many Christians who believe God controls everything that happens in the world. These Christians have been deceived already into believing they have no role to play, no responsibility for anything and no accountability if it is not done. It is what I preach to be a “No fault” Christian religion. No matter what happens, it was not my fault. I never planted the seeds that caused that to happen! I never stopped it from happening, but that was not my job! I wonder how these types of Christians get up in the morning and do anything all day long. If everything is completely up to God, it would seem to me that we should not try to do anything all day. It would be best, if we all become vegetables and stayed in bed until God bruises Satan’s head and then comes and takes us all away. You see while Christians believe this C.R.A.P. (Christian Reasoning Applied Poorly) they fail to know that God is waiting on them to become strong enough to fulfill what He has planned. Is God waiting for the church? Is that possible? When God describes to us that He has long patience as He does in James 5:7 that is a clear revelation that God is not controlling everything that happens and He is waiting patiently for something to occur in order for the end to happen. If you do not understand what that is, you better learn it quickly because the end is coming soon ready or not. I plan on me being one of the ones that is ready for the end so if you care to join me let’s work together to fulfill the prophecy of Genesis 3:15. It is only when the church is victorious over Satan that Jesus can look at us as being the overcomers as He clearly stated 6 times that He was looking for in the book of Revelation.
If you have read this entire lesson and still want to believe you can never be deceived, I’m not sure if I can say anything else to prove to your otherwise. Deception is a very large and complex subject found in the Bible. Because you do not understand it, you easily misapply the verses to say that it is impossible for you to be deceived. However, God is never going to force you to see the truth. God will let you go to your grave believing in you erroneous theology. But, you will have to tear those pages out of the Bible of all of the Bible verses that I have given to you today in order to still go to church and believe wrong about deception. There were at least 14 Bible verse witnesses to the fact that church members can be deceived. Since the Bible says in the mouth of two or three witnesses let every word be established, I have given you overwhelming evidence to the truth. If you deny it your blood is not on my hands. If you have 3 Bible verses that say a Christian can NEVER be deceived, I would love to hear about them. I have gone on long enough today, so please come back next time and I’ll try to speak about a different subject that may be more popular with everyone and less controversial. Just understand my motivation for doing what I do. If I did not care, I would not try to help you. If I did not love you I would not bring you an alternative viewpoint. Do not think that I am here to criticize you; I am only here to try to help. I know I’m not perfect and I know can say things that offend people, but I do not do it to deceive you or cause you harm. If you could see my heart I think you would understand why I address the subject of deception with such a passion. God Bless!
****************************************************************
If you want to know how to get saved and know that you are with confidence you can go to: How do I get saved?
A Deceived Christian Example To Avoid! Part 2 – Beware the Chicken Little False Prophets Who Proclaim the End of the World is Today!
(Ver 2.1) This is “Part 2” in a Bible study series concerning modern negative Christian examples to avoid and not to follow or become. If you would like to read the series from the beginning you may like to go to “Part 1” first. But this lesson will be a blessing alone. I was on vacation in the mountains when I wrote this Bible lesson. I had not planned on posting anything that week. But, then a national news report came on about a religious zealot in California, that I will not name and he has predicted the end of the world to occur May 21, 2011 at 6 PM Eastern Standard Time in the USA. When a man calls himself a Christian and then ignores the Bible to teach something so ridiculous that it makes the corrupt national news media, it causes a negative perception to be reflected upon every Christian. I have found that if the national news media is reporting a story, the it is either false or it is coordinated to make conservatives and Christians to look bad. And one false prophet can be used by Satan to cause every real prophet of God to look foolish and not to be taken seriously. What if God had sent a prophet to Israel and Israel had already heard 12 other men who called themselves prophets say something that is opposite or different than the real message from God? Doesn’t this make it easier to reject the real message? Sure it does! I did notice in the life of Elijah that he called down fire that consumed the other prophets and thus God got His message out in spite of the false prophets who attempted to corrupt the truth. I believe if you read Revelation 11 about how God will send two witnesses the first 42 months to the earth to get His message out, the same power that Elijah displayed will get the attention of many of the people of the earth. Yet they will be killed and their bodies lay in the street for 3 1/2 days and people will be so happy that they will send gifts to each other in celebration. Wow, I believe this is going to happen sooner than we think.
Well this man in California has supposedly studied the Bible for many years. He is not a young man and he has many followers who have quit their jobs to travel to tell everyone about the prediction. They have spent over a million dollars on billboards to warn the people of the earth. The late night comedians in the U.S. have made light of this prediction in countless jokes. Atheists are planned rapture parties May 23, 2011 at 6 PM to defy the message. People had even printed T-shirts to say how they survived the rapture. Christians are being mocked and ridiculed and are made to look like fools because of the actions of a deceived Christian man who is clearly ignorant of the Bible.
When God gives someone revelation of His word, it is never going to contradict any other previous revelation of the Word of God to cause confusion. Real new truth will always build upon previous truths that we already know. Therefore, we as Christians are forced to know the scripture for ourselves. This man who predicted the end of the world on May 21, 2011 made a very similar prediction back in 1994. Since this prediction did not occur it is very easy to see that he is a false prophet. God never sent a Christian with the truth today prophecies of yesterday have failed. A prophet of God should always speak the truth and what they say better occur. Of course there are exceptions in the Bible where the man of God’s words did not come to pass. For example God sent Jonah to Nineveh and told them they would be destroyed. But they repented and God did not destroy them. That is just one example. But this modern prophecy does not appear to match what occurred in this incident.
If anyone is following a man who has given a date when Jesus was coming to get us and it did not occur then maybe we should find a new Christian to learn from. Also if we are following a man who contradicts another prophet of God or the written word of God it would be easy to fall into Satan’s deception. This man claimed his calculations were off in 1994, but he is absolutely convinced that he has not made a mistake about May 21, 2011. I wonder what thought about his prediction on Sunday, May 21 2011 since nothing happened. I wonder what his followers thought on Sunday May 21, 2011 when they were all ready to go and nothing happened? I know for sure what the world thought of his ignorant godless prophecy; they all laughed at him as they are doing at all Christians right now. How can real Christians follow a man who is deceived? It is amazingly easy if we do not know the Bible. I knew this man’s prediction was not true the moment I heard it. Any could, because his prediction contradicted the words of the greatest prophet named Jesus Christ. He said this and I believe Him more than a deceived modern Christian who contradicts Him.
Mat 24:36 But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.
Jesus implies that He does not even know the day or the hour that He is returning to the earth. If Jesus does not know and the angels do not know, and this includes Satan, Michael and Gabriel, how then can this man know more than Jesus and the angels? He would have to be Father God to be able to predict the end with accuracy. I do not care what revelation that anyone has found in their Bible. If you ignore the prophet Jesus to predict the end of the world you are deceived. Sorry I can be very blunt and direct sometimes. But, somebody needs to awaken Christians to see the real truth.
If somebody does not speak the truth, then everyone will follow deceived people tricked by Satan who can say anything. If we are following a man or a woman who has set a date for the end of the world, you are as deceived as the deceiver. It is the classic blind being led by the blind. So to the deceived people of the world who predicted May 21, 2011 to be the end, I do not criticize you personally (after all I did not name any names in this message), I do however reject the false message of prediction. If the world ends May 21, 2011 then I would have looked like a fool for countering your message. However, since I base my prediction on the Words of Jesus I felt very confident that the world will never end on any day that a man has predicted. I believe my God and His Written Holy Prophetic Word more than the words of just any human. Please everyone that is a Christian let us all do the same.
This was just one modern day deception tactic of our enemy Satan. But, we can all learn from it. This is a very important trap of deception that will occur again. If you hear of anyone setting an exact day for the coming of the LORD, know now that this could be a major reason why it cannot be that day. Let us all avoid being a Christian that sets a date. Also let us all be a type of Christian that studies our Bible and does not follow after a human that sets a date.
I will pray anyone that does either of these. I hope that you will also pray for anyone that you hear of doing either of these. Let us all pray that God will open their eyes of their understanding so that they are not deceived by to follow false prophets or to become one. But to those who want to reject the Bible, the prophet Jesus and the truth to follow their fantasy, here is my heart is extremely saddened because of the deception that has blinded your mind. I pray everyone will learn their lesson and not make other Christians with real messages look like we are all as ignorant. Let us all make sure we are following the Word of God that we know and we see in our own Bible what anyone else is saying and not follow blindly after the words of any teacher. That includes me! I hope this message helped someone today. Thank you for reading, commenting and sharing these Bible lessons with your family and friends. God Bless you all!
A PERSONAL APPLICATION
LORD, I pray that you will help me not be deceived. Lead me far away from anyone that is not proclaiming what you said in your Word and are saying today by your Spirit. Help me to turn from following anyone that is not being led by your Spirit. Open my spiritual eyes to be able to understand your Word and discern between right and wrong, truth and lies, and good and evil. Thank LORD for your faithfulness to me in Jesus Name, I pray. Amen.
========================================
If you would like to continue reading in this series of lesson please go to “Part 3” now.
Understanding Deception in the Bible! Satan Sacrifices His Pawn Osama Bin Laden in the Chess Game of Life! Part 5
(Ver 1.2) This is now Part 5 in a series of very advanced Bible lessons on the Bible concepts of deception. Today’s lesson will be a little bit different than the normal, but yet it will challenge you to think about some things that you may have never thought of before about deception. I have taught you a lot of new and very different things found in the Bible about deception and I pray that you have taken the time to read everything about this subject that I have posted. If not, please go back and start reading this series with the first lesson “Part 1” so that you do not miss anything important that I have said. In the news a few days ago late at night a special report broke into the regular programming with a news bulletin that informed us “Osama Bin Laden was killed”. I listened to these reports for nearly an hour and then the President of the United States came on and gave us the official announcement that it was true. I do not know about you, but when I see things this significant happen in the world I look at them from a spiritual perspective and try to figure out why this occurred right now at this exact point in time. You see I personally do not believe that anything in the world occurs by chance or accident. Nor do I believe that God causes things to occur to fulfill His will or purpose. Based upon my knowledge of the Bible, I believe there are multiple factors involved in everything that transpires on the earth and most of them are either human or demonic initiated rather than those events which are the occasional work of divine intervention. God will intervene when people pray and ask Him to intervene. However, we know from the prayer that Jesus taught His disciples that God’s will is not done on the earth unless we pray and ask for His will to be done (Luke 11:2). This prayer also asks for the kingdom of God to come, so we know the kingdom of God was not already present when Jesus taught the disciples this prayer. If you disagree with those statements, you should learn how to read and see what God says in the Bible before you demonstrate your ignorance and write me a comment about how I’m wrong. The Bible goes on and tells us in 2 Corinthians 4:4 that Satan is the god of this world which implies that God is not the God of this world system. Please understand that God rules in His Kingdom, but we are not living in His Kingdom right now. Maybe you do not understand what I am saying. If you are a Christian, you have the Kingdom of God inside of you, but this is not what you are walking around in physically in the world. God is a Spirit and His kingdom is an internal spiritual Kingdom. If God rules in your heart, then you can show people in the world the Kingdom of God in demonstration, but they cannot see it otherwise. There is also the factor that God says that whatever a man sows, that is what he will reap (Gal 6:7). So when things occur in this world suddenly you need to look at what seeds were sown to cause the things that we are observing to spring up. I know for a fact that Ben Laden sowed seeds of death and I know he reaped death back this week. These are just a few of the factors that cause things to happen in this world. Do you understand these factors?
I personally believe that Adam was created to be the god of this world in the beginning. Then Adam sinned and allowed Satan to come in and now Satan is the god of this world system (2 Cor 4:4). People are the cause of all of the manifested evil in the world as we can clearly see from the life of Osama Bin Laden. But we are also told something else that is very important for us to know and to understand in the Bible. God tells us in the Bible that people are not our problem. Wow, that is not what I saw on TV this week. We had a nation of people rejoicing at the death of a person who was nothing but just a man. I also saw the President’s approval rating that was dropping, suddenly rise through the roof because the U.S. killed a man. There were people in the streets of N.Y. and Washington D.C. that were clearly overjoyed that an evil man was killed. Take a look at this Bible verse and you please tell me what it says:
Eph 6:12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
What does this verse say? Doesn’t God tell us that people are not our problem? If we are in a spiritual battle as this verse implies, we need to understand who the enemy is. Osama Bin Laden is not the enemy since clearly he was flesh and blood. It is the spirit that controlled Osama Bin Laden that is our problem. Guess what is going to happen now? Since we just killed the U.S. number one natural enemy, Satan is going to promote another man to become the new number one. Terrorism has not ceased just because someone died. Satan is the terrorist maker and he is still alive and well on the planet. God clearly tells us there is nothing new under the sun, the thing that has been is the thing that shall be again (Ecc 1:9). Therefore, please do not be lulled into a false sense of security simply because one natural enemy was killed. You can look down through history and see that there have been many evil men who have killed people in the world. Every time an Adolf Hitler is killed a new man is raised up to become another of the same types of evil initiators. Do you understand this? Why does this happen? It is because the same spirit will cause another man to be deceived into doing what the preceding one failed to finish.
The Holy Spirit woke me up early the morning after Ben Laden’s death in order to explain what is happening in the world and since God is smarter than me, I listened to what He was saying. I am going to tell you what He said to me and you can choose to believe it or reject it, I personally do not care which one you choose. God explained to me that our life and the world that we live in are like a spiritual Chess Game. If you have never played the game of chess, you will probably not have a clue what I am about to tell you, but I’ll try to explain it so that you can gain the overall concepts. Chess is a warfare game between two opposing sides, which is played on a board of 64 squares. Sound familiar? The Bible is divided into two opposing sides, God and Satan. Each side in the chess game has 16 different game pieces. One side is usually 16 black pieces and the other side is usually 16 white pieces. But, this is not a racial game, just two colors that are opposites. It really is a traditional good vs. evil type of game. One side is you and the other side is the evil enemy trying to kill you. You are faced with the challenge of defending your pieces while simultaneously attacking your enemy to take his pieces. Does any of this sound familiar like in the war on terror that the U.S. has been fighting for the last 10 years? In the game of chess each game piece has a rank and an order of value associated with them. A pawn is the least valuable piece and the King is the most valuable. You can lose every piece that you have except the King and survive. However, power is another factor and the queen is the most powerful piece on the board and the pawn is the least powerful. There is one unique factor of the game that a pawn can become a queen if it is moved to the extreme farthest square that it can move to. The game of chess is a thinking game of strategy based upon a battle of wits. Therefore, chess is a mental game usually for very intelligent people. Which I do not claim to be one, since I never achieved to the level of a Grand Master in this game. The more you understand about chess warfare the better chess opponent you can become. Chess game players are usually rated based upon their win and loss record. The higher you rating, the better a player you are viewed to be. That was a very quick synopsis of an extremely complex game, but I am not here to teach you about chess today. I am only here to tell you about just one strategy found in a chess master’s execution library that God says happened this week on the news. Many times a Chess Master will use a deception technique called “sacrifice” that will allow his opponent to take one of his pieces, but usually this act of sacrifice is a hidden ploy to gain a future advantage. In other words one side sacrifices one piece now to gain a greater advantage in the future part of the game that has not yet occurred. Did you understand this concept? It is a very advanced technique of deception and it requires extreme intelligence, forethought and planning. In other words the Chess Master may have looked foolish for giving up a key piece right now, but as you watch the game develop you will see the strategy take place and the advantage will change.
You see this is exactly what Satan did this week with his pawn “Bin Laden”. Satan gave up one key piece of his current game plan to gain a greater advantage in the future. Keep in mind Satan has more than one game piece in play at any given time. Satan is using a strategy play here with the sacrifice of Ben Laden. You can tell this by the fact that if suddenly after 10 years of not being able to find Ben Laden we are now able to miraculously find him there was something that transpired to cause it to happen. People like to think that it was the U.S. intelligence ability and that proves our superiority, but this is not the case. Yes the killing of Osama was based upon intelligence work, but who let the information out to them? I personally believe it was Satan and that this was not an accident. If you can see the power of this play you will not fall into the deception that is being presented like many have already done. If you do not understand chess very well then you may not be able to understand what I just said.
What does the world seek after more than anything? Those in the world are seeking after peace. However, Satan will never fully give anyone full peace, only the deception of peace will be presented. People in Washington D.C., in New York and other parts of the U.S. have been jumping on a false security of new found peace and victory and this is what Satan is after. The majority of the U.S. population is suddenly more united and feeling good about the world’s situation. It is funny that nothing technically changed from a week ago, except that one man was killed but the attitude of accomplishment has promoted a single man back into political prominence and dominance. Because there is a coming presidential election next year, Satan desires even Christians to feel like we have the correct man in this U.S. office. You see after the elimination of America’s number one enemy this week, our president Obama went from a non-re-electable man to become a favorite front runner with a very high popular opinion. My personal opinion of the president has not changed, but I am not deceived like many others. I did not vote for the man in last election and I would not vote for him in the next either. You see Jesus said you will know them by their fruits and whenever a man promotes abortions and homosexuality they are not a Christian or a Christ follower. That is just the way it is, even if you do not like it. Jesus said “Why call me Lord and do not the things that I say”. Our president claims to be a Christian, yet his actions prove him as being far from it.
Be not deceived from the things that are external that mean little to nothing in the world. Open the spiritual eyes of your understanding to see the high cost spiritual chess game of life that is being played out behind the scenes. First, start by recognizing who the real enemy is in the world. Satan is the only enemy that you should be focused on. Then the Bible tells us to submit ourselves unto God and to resist the devil and he will flee from us. Then begin to see and understand the world events more clearly in the light of God’s Word which also implies that you know God’s Word. If you do not know and understand Bible prophecy, like the book of Revelation, you are an easy candidate for deception. As long as there is a Satan in the world, we will have evil taking place around us and it will get worse as we go and not better. Take a look at this next Bible verse and pay attention to the warning given:
Rev 12:12 Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.
Once you begin to realize that Satan knows that his time is very short, you will soon see that his rage and anger will increase and he will move into desperation mode trying to kill everyone that he can take with him. But in order to do this he is going to have to raise to power the people in the world that he needs to support his plan. Satan does not want a Christian to be President of the most powerful nation of the world. Satan will use any form of deception that is necessary to accomplish his plan. There is a man of sin coming to the earth and he could be here already. This man is called the antichrist in the Bible and he will oppose God, Jesus, the Bible and Christians and will do everything in his power to disrupt the plan of God from happening. Satan will cause the antichrist to rise to power using these deceptive strategies that I have just taught you about in this series. Deception will cause a false sense of accomplishment and a feeling of new found safety to come on people and this will cause them to look to a man on the earth to solve their problems. I saw this attitude when people elected Obama the first time. They saw him as a savior and exalted him based upon no accomplishments, just words. Now people are doing it again, they have rallied around a president because they think he accomplished something when in reality he has done nothing to solve the root cause of the problem. Satan would not have allowed Obama to find Ben Laden if there was not something else on the agenda. There would have been no accomplishment for anyone to see if there was no dead evil man for the world to witness this week.
Ok, do not get me wrong. I am not saying Obama is the antichrist, I do not know that and I would be crazy to try to speculate who the antichrist is right now. I personally do not believe people will know who the antichrist is until it is too late. But I do believe that we can look for certain clues based upon the Word of God. The antichrist will come in like a man of peace looking like the world’s savior and this should be your first clue of warning. So far this sounds a lot like Obama who was given the Noble Peace prize while never establishing any peace. It just may be an amazing coincidence I don’t really know, unless God says something we will not know. There are other factors, that also point against Obama and one of them is the prophecy in Daniel that seems to say the antichrist will be a homosexual. Obviously if Obama is a homosexual he has us all fooled with a wife and two daughters. So take into account every prophecy and not just some of them. If you have not read my series on the “Antichrist” I would recommend that you do that. I am not technically finished with that series, but since I lost my computer hard drive a week ago I will have to start over on it.
So should the U.S. be in a war on terror? I personally believe that the U.S. had no choice but to enter this fight. So I am not saying that we should have turned the other cheek and not done anything against Ben Laden the terrorists who attacked us. I am not saying Christians should be passive. Nor am I saying we should not defend ourselves. Since there are evil men in the world and the only thing that gets their attention is physical force and power, I believe both of these, need to be demonstrated. That is until Jesus shows up in the clouds and then things will certainly change and that will get their attention all right. No I believe in guns! I believe in using them when necessary! But, I am also saddened to think a man is in hell right now and he has no opportunity to get out. Eternity is a concept and proposition that we cannot really comprehend. Being eternally punished just because you were tricked into believing a lie is a concept that many Christians do not want to believe that a loving God could do. Yet the Bible clearly tells us that the path to destruction is very wide and there are many who go there. This is exactly why I teach like I do. I am plain and direct and I tell it like it is regardless of what it costs me, so that somebody may be able to see it and learn the truth.
When you begin to understand that deception is Satan’s only weapon against you, then you begin to understand you need to learn this subject extensively. If people go to hell because they have been deceived you better make sure you know the truth and that you are not being deceived into this same eternal state that Ben Laden has found himself in. Today’s lesson is a complex small part of the subject of deception but yet it is so powerful that I felt you needed to read about it and to understand it clearly. A sacrifice of one evil man for the promotion of another evil man is how the antichrist will come into power. I believe this with all of my heart. How else would the entire world fall into the rapid deception of following a man, unless they could see him to be the answer to their deepest problems? If a man’s popularity can rise dramatically simply because he killed an evil man, to me that is a sign of a clear act of hidden deception. Since Satan is still the god of this world, we must realize then who is causing these types of things to occur and then figure out why. If you want to believe they are caused by God, you can do that and be wrong. If you want to believe they are just a coincidence, then you can do that and still be wrong again. Please understand and learn to see things with your spiritual eyes and then perceive them with the spirit inside you. Be sensitive to hear the voice of God and He will direct you to know the truth.
I began to learn the game of chess as a kid in 7th grade and I never mastered it. However, I obviously learned enough for God to teach me something from it. When I learned this game, a man named Bobby Fisher was the world champion chess master. I remember reading about his games that he played in the pater and trying to learn the moves that he made and the try to understand why. These concepts apply to Bible study and God if you understand them. The more you know the more God can use to speak to you about. It is a simple concept that God knows everything and we are just kids in His eyes. Learn everything you can from God’s word but then use what you know to understand God, Satan and the world around you. Thanks for taking the time to read my unusual Bible study and for listening to the words of God that He spoke in my heart this week. Until next time, may God bless you and keep you until next time.
If you could like to continue reading in this series about Deception you can go to “Part 6“.
****************************************************************
If you want to know how to get saved and know that you are with confidence you can go to: How do I get saved?
Examples of Deception to Avoid Part 7 – Let’s all Go Protest Some Sinners!
(Ver 2.1) This is “Part 7” in a Bible study series about examples of modern cases of deception found in the church for Christians to avoid at all costs. If you would like to read the series from the beginning you may go to “Part 1” first. However, this lesson is intended to be a beneficial blessing for learning and applying in our lives by itself. I identify with Paul the Apostle of Jesus Christ frequently. I hear myself saying what Paul taught very often. Thankfully I have never been thrown into prison or beaten for what I teach, although I’m sure there are people who read some of these things and would like to do that to me based upon their comments that they leave me. I hadn’t written in this series for awhile. But last night on the news more people who call themselves Christians were given headline making notoriety for their clear acts of planned non-Christian attitudes and behavior. As a result Christians were made to look like haters of humans and I’m sure this is exactly what Satan was hoping for. By the foolish acts of a few people who label themselves followers of Christ every true Christian gets a discredited reputation simply by association of the name. I have learned that not everyone who calls themselves Christians, are Christians. Anybody can call themselves a car, but that does not make us a car. Jesus said you will know them (Christians) by their fruit (Mat 7:20) and clearly these people in today’s lesson are fruitless.
So let’s discuss what these fruitless deceived people are planning to do tomorrow. They are planning to go to the funeral of a famous and renowned individual to picket and protest. In doing this they feel like they are making a statement that will further their message, whatever that is I do not know. They claim that this individual who died blasphemed God and that is why they are making this public statement. So tell me this, if this person did or did not blaspheme God what good will your picket signs make to the body of the person lying in the casket? I can’t see where it will make any difference to them now no matter what you do or say.
Of course there are those who are attending the funeral, I guess that is why you are picketing since they are the only ones that will be close enough to read your signs. What message are you sending to these people? Believe it or not, you are sending an Old Message that has been around for a long time that was done away with by Jesus Christ on the cross.
What I have observed is the fact that there are many people in the world who are living in an Old Testament Law reality and ignoring the New Testament Grace reality. This is nothing new and this spirit has been around since before Jesus came into the world. In the Old Testament, if someone was found guilty of breaking the law, many times they were taken out and stoned to death.
Lev 20:2 Again, thou shalt say to the children of Israel, Whosoever he be of the children of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn in Israel, that giveth any of his seed unto Molech; he shall surely be put to death: the people of the land shall stone him with stones.
This is the attitude of all these people who are picketing in the name of God tomorrow, they would love to stone all of the guilty parties. Yet when Jesus was confronted by the lawyers of His day with a woman who was caught in the act of adultery, what was His attitude and reaction? Did Jesus rush to judgment to pick up the first stone? Did Jesus pick up a sign to protest the sin? Did Jesus even ever speak a negative word against this sinner woman? You should go and read this story before you ever try to pick up a picket sign against someone else’s sins. Jesus told the accusers that “He who is without sin cast the first stone”. Jesus basically ignored the words of the religious lawyers and began to stoop down to write in the sand. I personally believe that Jesus wrote the names, dates and the sins on the ground of those who were standing around ready to cast stones. I believe that some of these men who were standing there were also guilty of having sex with this woman. So when Jesus wrote their names on the ground with the dates and times of their sinful acts, the Bible says they walked away one by one.
John 8 was a New Testament Jesus and God being clearly demonstrated to us. This was God’s reaction to a sinner while He was here on the earth in the flesh. This is a Godly example of how to treat those who are caught in sin. Whenever all of the accusers had left the scene without Jesus speaking any words to them, Jesus looked at the woman and said “Woman where are your accusers?” Then Jesus said “neither do I accuse you, go and sin no more”. This was an act of forgiveness, mercy, love and compassion on the behalf of God. These New Testament acts of God are ignored by those who desire to still stone the guilty. So by anyone holding up condemning words on a sign, are they not casting the first stone? Who died and made us greater than Jesus? In this story of the woman caught in adultery, the only sinless man in the crowd was Jesus and He was the only one that could have legitimately thrown the first stone, but He did not. Wow, that is a very important lesson to learn today.
When one protester woman was interviewed by the news, she was asked “Did God tell you to picket this funeral?” Her answer was not surprising; she said “Every fiber of her being said she was doing the right thing”. Wow, what an ignorant reply to a direct question. She obviously did not feel comfortable with telling a lie and saying God had told her to do it, so she gave an indirect unrelated answer to the question. If this woman was a spiritual lady, the fiber of her being would be different than if she was a carnal natural woman. People can do things based upon many different factors and feelings and emotions are just two reasons why people do things that they do in the world. What we need to realize is that our feelings and our emotions can both be enemies against God and doing the right things to and for people.
There are people who like to drink alcohol and get drunk and they are clearly led by their desires and feelings to do this. Then there are people who take drugs and are controlled by these substances based upon a feeling in their bodies. I will bet that every fiber of their being tells them they need more drugs, but is this the right thing for them to do? Many times doing the right things goes against how we feel. In John 3:16 it says “God so loved the WORLD that he picketed and protested until they changed into doing the right things”. Uh oh, it doesn’t say that does it? The Bible actually says that “God so loved the world that He gave”. Did God feel like giving Himself on a cross? I will guess from all of the pain that was experienced while hanging for hours on the cross this was not a feeling that would be good. The Bible says Jesus sweated drops of blood because of the impending pressure that he was under about going to die on a cross for our sins (Luk 22:44). Jesus prayed and asked His Father three times, “Father if it be possible, may this cup pass from me, nevertheless not my will but your will be done” (Mat 26:39). Doing the right thing should never be based upon a human feeling.
I want to wrap this lesson up with another revelation from God’s word that will cause us to think today. Did you know that most of the New Testament was written by a blasphemer of God by his own admission? How could God possibly make a minister out of a blasphemer? I’ll bet you can’t answer that question today. Do you know who I am talking about? I am talking about Paul, the Apostle of Jesus Christ sent unto the Gentiles. Here are the words of Paul:
1Ti 1:12 And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who hath enabled me, for that he counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry;
1Ti 1:13 Who was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious: but I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief.
Paul previously Saul, says that what he did in his past by killing and imprisoning Christians was done in ignorance. He even claims that he was a blasphemer. Saul was a self-righteous religious zealot that felt like he was doing God’s work by committing evil acts against people that had done nothing to him. Wasn’t Saul judging these people? Didn’t Saul take it way beyond protesting to the next level of injurious persecution? Wasn’t all of these wrongs done because of what these Christians were doing and saying? Wow, isn’t this what religious protestors do today? Doesn’t this apply to how people are judging others like they never had committed any sin themselves?
Do you think that you would have picketed Paul to write 2/3 of the New Testament? Would you ask recently converted Saul to come to your town to preach? I would bet that you would not. This was the kind of opposition that Saul got trying to change to become a Christian. I mean he was a blasphemer! He killed Christians. He put them into jails. Yet some Christians want to celebrate and thank God that He killed this lady at the funeral that they are picketing. People are truly deceived that act with such outward hatred towards people that God loved so much to die for them. Here is what Paul the blasphemer told Timothy to do and it was not to go and protest against sinners:
1Ti 4:12 Let no one look down on your youthfulness, but rather in speech, conduct, love, faith and purity, show yourself an example of those who believe.
As you can see God said that we should be doing something with our speech and conduct must be associated with what God’s definitions of Love, Faith and Purity. This is the example we as Christians should be portraying to others that are unsaved in the world. If you do not understand this, you should look up the definitions of these New Testament words and learn about them fast.
Because some people desire to make a difference in the world they are often motivated to do overzealous acts out of ignorance like Saul did. Rarely does it do any good, but nevertheless they must feel better because they think they did something religious for God. What we all need to do is to learn the differences presented in the New Testament from those given to us in the Old Testament. Because people only focus on the Old Testament verses they embrace a God of judgment with abundant laws and punishments like Saul did. However, the Old Testament is the New Testament hidden and the New Testament is the Old Testament revealed. So whenever a person focuses only on the Old Testament they are only seeing hidden truths about the real God that are revealed clearly in the New Testament. This is one of the greatest mistakes that modern churches can make. Learn the lesson of Jesus with the woman caught in the act of adultery and see what was His reaction and actions towards her. Then ask yourself would Jesus pick up a picket sign with mean judgmental words written upon it and take it to a funeral to protest against sinners? I cannot find that in the Bible, at least not in the New Testament.
So we have to make a choice to do the right thing based upon the New Covenant today and ignore every fiber of our being that screams to us to do something that Jesus would not do. Since Paul was able to change I will pray that we all will also change to know the real will of God to reach the lost. May God enlighten us to see the difference! To those real Christians out there who can see the truth, I would suggest that you also pray for those attending the funeral of this woman that died of breast cancer and then pray for the eyes of the protesters to be opened so that they will come to know the real God who is LOVE!
A PERSONAL APPLICATION
LORD, I pray that you will help me not be deceived. Lead me far away from anyone that is not proclaiming or acting according to what you said in your Word. Help me to turn from being influenced or pressured by anyone that is not being led by your Spirit and acting in real Love. Open my spiritual eyes to be able to understand your Word and discern between right and wrong, truth and lies, and good and evil. Live large in my heart and help me to be a loving light of kindness to the world so that they will desire to be like you in me. Thank LORD for your faithfulness to me in Jesus Name to help me produce your desired fruit, I pray. Amen.
Understanding the Concepts of Deception in the Bible! Righteous vs. Evil Deception! Part 4
(Ver 1.2) Today is Part 4 of a series of very advanced lessons on Understanding Deception in the Bible. We have covered a lot of important information about this subject, so please do not start reading here in the middle of the series, go back and start reading with “Part 1” so that you can better understand what has already been covered in more detail than what I can do today. The church world has widely been taught that Satan is the initiator, instigator, mastermind, leader or distributer of deception in our world and that this deception is always evil. I of course concur with these facts whole heartedly. However, in the last lesson in this series I introduced you to the concept of “Righteous Deception” and I will carry this lesson further today so that you can better understand these new concepts revealed to us in the Bible. What I have discovered by Studying the Bible is that there are several types of deception mentioned in the Bible and some are positive and some are negative. By the Bible definition we can understand that evil deception is when someone comes to you with hurtful or harmful intentions and lies to you to get you to do something that you should not have done. However, I also showed you in the last lesson that the Bible speaks of “Self-Deception” as being a condition where a man or woman has deceived themselves into doing something that they should not have done. You should have gone and looked up the verses that I gave you so that you can better understand this situation so that it does not happen to you. So I gave you several brand new concepts about deception that you should at least be a little bit familiar with by now. According to God’s definitions, a deception in order for it to be a sin must be directed at a person to cause hurt or harm or an expected evil outcome. We clearly saw in Genesis 38 that Tamar used deception for a positive outcome and for the good of God, Judah and the nation of Israel. Tamar was exalted by God for what she did so that she was included in the genealogy of Jesus Christ in Matthew 1. Without Tamar’s intentional deception of Judah there would have been no King David, no Solomon and no Jesus. I know these statements rock your religious boats to no end. I totally warned you in these lessons that I was going to upset you evil deception apple cart so that you would have to see this subject in a new more complex and different way going forward and I hope that you are doing just that.
I’m going to start today’s lesson by giving you another natural example of the use of deception for a good or more positive outcome. Say you are working late at night at a restaurant and about to close up and go home. You hide the majority of your daily money and receipts in the hidden vault in your office and you put the rest of the money in your petty cash drawer. Say you have $5000 in the vault and $500 in the petty cash drawer. Then suddenly an armed robber comes into your business to steal from you. He demands your money or your life so you hand him your petty cash drawer and tell him to go. He asks for more money and you say I gave you money now go. You are clearly attempting to be deceptive while not telling a lie and you convince him to finally leave. You call the cops and they show up and so on. So was what this man did a sin of deception in the eyes of God and the Bible? You see I do not think so, because it matters who are trying to deceive and why. You are not trying to harm this thief you are just trying to keep him from taking everything that you have. This is the way Satan is in the world also. Satan is an evil thief that has come to “kill”, “steal” and “destroy” your life’s work (John 10:10). So how do you handle an evil spiritual thief like Satan if you are God? I believe that sometimes you have to deceive (trick) these evil people into doing the right things. I know there are religious people who are just having fits right now because I implied that God can legally use deception. To deceive someone without sinning requires great wisdom to do and God is the ultimate authority of all wisdom. Why am I giving you this example? I want to show you what the Bible says that God did and then you can better understand this concept of “Righteous Deception” a little better. Read this next Bible verse very, very carefully using your eyes and your brain:
1Co 2:8 Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
In this verse it declares a concept that right “knowledge” is the key to doing what is best for you. What we learn is that if we would have known that the highway was closed, we would not have gone that way, for example. The Bible says in Hosea 4:6 that my people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge. So again knowledge is the key to not being destroyed in the world. Here in this verse, we have an instance of implied active righteous deception being taught to us. The princes of this world are references to Satan and his demonic angels. They are the rulers of this world that God is speaking of. If you look up the Greek word translated as “Prince” it means “ruler”. This verse then tells you that if they had known what was going to happen to them by killing God on a cross, they would not have done it. Do you understand this very complex concept being given? Satan hung Jesus on the cross because he didn’t know what was going to happen and he thought if he killed Jesus this would just get Him off of his planet. It appears to be a clear case of the lack of information from God and wrong assumptions on the part of Satan. This sounds exactly like what Abraham did in Genesis 12, doesn’t it? Abraham withheld information and the king made wrong assumptions and thus the wrong choice. It is very clear that God withheld important information from Satan and as a result Satan did the right things that God needed done. This is really an amazing example of God’s ability to control information in order to get a powerful spiritual being like Satan to do the right thing for God but the wrong thing for himself. You see it was God’s death on the cross that ended His covenant relationship with Satan and the angels forever. Satan is now only in covenant with the humans on the earth, the sons and daughters of Adam. I cover this in other blogs so I cannot repeat everything here. So just understand that the death of God on the cross caused something to happen to Satan that he greatly regrets today. Do you understand how God used deception because He had an evil enemy and how God is justified in using this deception because he was deceiving a deceiver. You can clearly see that this type of deception is a potentially powerful tool when used properly and not for evil. What I am trying to do is to get you to think outside the box and to see that not every deception in the Bible is an evil or a sin. This of course represents a two-edged sword in what I am trying to teach, because there will obviously be some who try to use what I say to justify their evil intentions and only God knows your heart better than you, so you will never get away with using this wrongfully.
So let’s go back to Genesis and look at another example of “Righteous Deception” used for the good of God’s chosen people. In the story of Isaac in Genesis 25-27, Isaac and Rebekah have two twin sons. They however are not identical twins because they look and act completely different. Esau comes out first and becomes the first born in the family who is slated to inherit everything that his father Isaac owns. However, the implication from the birth is that Esau did something underhanded to come out first and Jacob stuck his hand out and caught his brother by the heel. These are clearly symbolic types being given to us of what was going to transpire in the future. So Jacob the “heel catcher” was born second and he is in the natural line to serve his older brother. I’m sure that you are familiar with this story because it is widely taught, but it has probably never been taught in the context of it being a “Righteous Act of Deception”. Jacob’s mother Rebekah comes to him with a plan and here are some of the concerns that Jacob brings up in this chapter of Genesis:
Gen 27:12 My father peradventure will feel me, and I shall seem to him as a deceiver; and I shall bring a curse upon me, and not a blessing.
The mother’s plan was for Jacob to get his father’s blessing by the use of deception. You can clearly see that Jacob is concerned with being labeled a deceiver by his father, so we are definitely talking about a clear case of the act of deception in this story of Genesis. In this story you see that Jacob’s mother comes up with this plan of deception for her husband and two sons. I don’t know why this is the second story concerning the righteous act of deception by a woman. Rebekah tells her son Jacob to go and kill some animals that she can fix his father favorite meal. Then she tells Jacob to go and get some skins to cover his arms, hands and neck with. Why did Rebekah instigate this deception and for what purpose was it done? You might have to go back to chapter 25 to see part of the answer to this question. When the children were still in the womb of Rebekah, she noticed that they were already fighting inside of her. She went to God to find out why and God spoke to her some inside information (literal pun) that was very relevant to this lesson of deception.
Gen 25:23 And the LORD said unto her, Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger.
God says these are two nations of people and only one will be called by my name. Not good news for one of them, is it? Here we have a story that is very difficult to grasp and accept. Esau is clearly a child of Isaac and the firstborn from him, the rightful heir of all of his father’s wealth. But, God said that the elder firstborn would serve the younger second born. You should understand the concept of “Analogies” from the Bible if you have read my other Bible lessons. This is a concept that a natural real story gives us spiritual information about two spiritual brothers that I just cannot get into today. Just understand that there is more information hidden in this story than is on the surface and then go and dig for it. I will help you and tell you that the younger son is a type of Jesus so now go and figure out who is Jesus’ older brother.
Rom 9:13 As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.
So God knew the sons of Rebekah before they were born and God also knew what they would do in this world before they were born. So God let Rebekah in on a secret and this was why she could do what she did and be justified in the eyes of God. So why was Jacob justified in doing what he did in deceiving his father for the blessing?
Gen 25:31 And Jacob said, Sell me this day thy birthright.
In Genesis 25 Esau comes home very hungry and not thinking and asks his brother for food. His brother says “sell me your birthright”. The birthright is the right of the firstborn to own everything of his father. So Esau reasons in his mind that unless he eats his birthright will not do him any good and says this:
Gen 25:32 And Esau said, Behold, I am at the point to die: and what profit shall this birthright do to me?
So then Jacob tells his brother to swear that the birthright will be his.
Gen 25:33 And Jacob said, Swear to me this day; and he sware unto him: and he sold his birthright unto Jacob.
So you can clearly see that Esau sold his birthright to his brother for a bowl of soup and some bread. Esau also gave his word to his brother and in the eyes of God your word is your legal commitment to do what you have said. If you did not mean it you should not have said it, the Bible says. It could be that Esau was playing Jacob for a fool because he clearly still expects to go and inherit the blessing from his father later in this book of Genesis.
Gen 25:34 Then Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentiles; and he did eat and drink, and rose up, and went his way: thus Esau despised his birthright.
You can see that God says the man Esau “despised” his own birthright. This Hebrew words means to NOT Esteem or to disdain, scorn. It is the act of a vile person the definition says. This is certainly not a positive confirmation for what Esau has done in the eyes of God. It also gives legal justification for what Rebekah and Jacob did to deceive Isaac for the blessing that now rightfully belonged to Jacob. There is a lot of things to learn from this story, and one thing is that even though Jacob was justified in what he did, the Bible says that God is not mocked whatsoever a man sows that will he also reap. So Jacob planted the seeds of deception and these came up when he was working for Laban for his wife Rachel. Laban deceived Jacob 10 times it says in the Bible changing the terms and conditions of his employment. Jacob thought he was working for 7 years for Rachel and ended up working 14 years for her. So while you can be justified in doing deception, it usually always comes back to bite you later in life. God however, did not abandon his man Jacob and continued to bless him even though Laban was attempting to steal from him and to use him.
So it is interesting to note that Esau was legally the heir of his father Isaac, but God caused this blessing to go to his younger brother Jacob who became the father of the nation of Israel. So we learn that not everyone that came from Abraham can be called Israel, only Jacob’s descendants. This is an example of righteous division or separation. The sons of Esau were not the chosen ones. What we have seen is a clear use of deception initiated by God. God told Rebekah about the sons in her womb before they were born. I do not know if you like everything that the Bible says or not. Many of these types of stories are very difficult for many to accept. I sure if you wanted to you could come up with alternative meanings and interpretations to everything that I just have taught on this subject of deception. But, I hope that you can see who God was dealing with and why deception was used to cause a positive designed result. I think that I will end this lesson here today. God Bless!
If you would like to continue reading in this series about deception, please go to “Part 5“.
****************************************************************
If you want to know how to get saved and know that you are with confidence you can go to: How do I get saved?
Understanding the Concepts of Deception in the Bible! Righteous vs. Evil Deception! Part 3
(Ver 1.4) Today is Part 3 of a series of lessons on Understanding Deception in the Bible. I do not know if you can tell why I write this blog or not? My number one goal is to help you to understand the Bible better today than you did yesterday. If I can help just one person accomplish this, I believe that is worth the countless hours that I have invested in writing these advanced Bible lessons. If you know God better than you did after you read my lessons then I have succeeded at accomplishing my goal. Today’s lesson is about the complex subject of deception, but this lesson is much more advanced than the first two in the series. The first two lessons were general overviews of your enemy Satan and the techniques that he attempts to use to deceive people in the earth today. The first two lessons dealt with only one side of the subject of deception that I refer to as “Evil Deception”. Today I will introduce you to the other side of deceptin to show you that it can be used for positive outcomes and that will shock many Christians who have never been taught this side of the subject. If you have not read this series of lesson from the beginning I would suggest that you go back and start with “Part 1”. Also today’s lesson is intended for spiritually mature Christians since I will probably go into many things that you have never heard before from anyone and I do not want to cause anyone any confusion so please judge your level of spiritual maturity and make the determination if you want to hear something that is potentially new and controversial. If you do not want to learn anything new, then just go read someone else’s blog for today.
In the previous lesson on deception I talked about Satan being called a deceiver (Rev 12:9, 20:10) of the nations and how God looks upon these actions very unfavorably. One technique that Satan uses for deception is to take a truth and pervert it with an attached or alternative meaning. Another technique of deception that Satan uses is to associate a Bible truth with a false religion, causing Christians to reject it as the truth. Another technique of deception is to take a Bible symbol of truth and to possess it as a satanic symbol so that Christians again reject this truth completely. There are so many complex methods of trickery involved in deception and you should become intimately knowledgeable of every method that you can so that you are not the one deceived in the future. However, today I am going to flip the evil deception apple cart and introduce you to a brand new concept that you probably have never heard anyone speak on before in your life, especially in church. Obviously everyone teaches that deception and lies are an evil sin. But, today I am going to attempt to show you the positive side of deception found in the Bible. Right there your religious mind is probably giving you fits saying “I didn’t know deception had any positive side or use”. What I will show you in today’s lesson is that there are different kinds of deception found in the Bible and how that the Bible says not every deception is considered evil or a sin by God. I guess most people struggle with this subject because they do not realize that there are multiple types of deception found in the Bible and therefore they do not understand how that any level of deception could be permitted at times to achieve a positive outcome. Many religious people look purely at the existence of only one type of deception that they associate with someone telling someone a lie. They then lump all deception into this same basket category as being an evil sinful lie. I had a reader who read one of my Bible lessons on Abraham and left me a comment saying that Abraham sinned. In this story of Abraham, he went around telling everyone his wife was his sister so that no one would kill him to get her. If you read this Bible lesson called “Genesis 12: Was Abraham a Liar?” you should have learned that Abraham never lied, his wife Sarah was his half-sister (Gen 20:12). They both had the same father but different mothers, so they were clearly brother and sister to each other by definition, yet Abraham married his sister and she became the wife who gave birth to the promised child Isaac. So Abraham was clearly guilty of remaining silent on the important fact that Sarah was also his wife and not just his sister and this is all that you can accuse him of based upon what the Bible says. Let me start by asking you this question, is silence a sin? Can you find anywhere in the Bible where it says if I’m silent even on a key point of information that I have committed a sin? I searched my Bible and I could not find one verse that said silence was a sin.
Of course it gets more complex than this because your silence is also tied to your motivation of why you are being silent and that fact alone make this subject infinitely more complex. We’ll talk more about your motivation shortly but, I searched and searched the Bible for a verse that said silence was a sin and I could not find it anywhere. So my reader claimed that Abraham committed a sin of an invented name called a “lie of omission”. According to his definition, a “lie of omission” would be to remain silent in any area that left out any important information that could have been said in order to purposely deceive someone. However, after I confronted my commenter, he had to agree that this term “lie of omission” and its definition was not found in the Bible anywhere and therefore what he had said was a sin came from his own human reasoning. The human intellect is an amazing God given blessing, however it is rarely God inspired thoughts unless you have thoroughly renewed your carnal mind with God’s spiritual knowledge, understanding and wisdom. Therefore, you cannot count on anything that comes from your carnal mind as being the truth. After all of this, my commenter refused to say that Abraham didn’t sin in what he did and he held to the concept that Abraham was therefore still a deceitful liar because he withheld information from the king. Wow, this is a very dangerous approach to take in your Bible interpretation. In Matthew 7:26 Jesus called this action of ignoring God’s word a foolish man who has built his house on sand. To base your beliefs on your own human reasoning instead of the Bible will cause you to be wrong 100 times out of 100 tries. What we must do is to build our house on the Rock of the Word of God and base our beliefs on what God says and only what God says, in order to be assured and have confidence in what we know and teach to others. You know I do not have to be right about everything that I say and teach. I am perfectly willing to change if you can show me the chapters and the verses that say something different than what I teach. I would rather change and be right than to stay with believing an error. However, if you are just telling me your opinion that I’m wrong because that is not what you think is true then you have a major problem, not me. Here is a web definition for the word “deceive” that I found:
Deception, beguilement, deceit, bluff, mystification, and subterfuge are acts to propagate beliefs that are not true, or not the whole truth (as in half-truths or omission). Deception can involve dissimulation, propaganda, sleight of hand. It can employ distraction, camouflage or concealment.
Here are some synonyms for Deception from the Thesaurus:
Trick, Trickery, Sham, Fraud, Con, Cheating, Pretext, Duplicity, Deceit
Wow this is a pretty amazing definition that is all encompassing, isn’t it? However, I noticed two things directly missing from this definition of deception;w with one being the motivation of the individual doing the deception and the other being the purpose for the deception or you could say the expected outcome for the deception. It further does not say or even imply that there are potentially times when deception is good and the results of the deception can cause a positive outcome to occur either. According to this lone definition that I found on the internet you can clearly see that Abraham was absolutely guilty of committing a level of deception for either evil or for whatever purpose. However, I believe that to remain silent is still a key area that is totally different than to deceive someone by telling them a lie. I can find many verses in the Bible that say “Thou Shalt not lie” (Lev 19:11, Zep. 3:13). But, to be silent I have still not found any verses yet that says this is a sin. In this story found in Genesis 12 and 20 of Abraham telling the kings that his wife was his sister, I could not find any verses where God rebuked, chastised or punished Abraham for what he did or in this case didn’t do. Can you find this anywhere? You can clearly see that these kings were either plagued (Gen 12:17) or had a dream from God that told him that he was a dead man (Gen 20:3). So God’s attention was focused on what the kings did and not what Abraham did or still in this case did not do. Do you understand this? So I want to introduce you to the first new factor about deception today that will upset your deception apple cart. This concept is called “Self Deception” where a person has deceived themselves into doing the wrong thing based upon their own personal thoughts, motivations or their natural physical or emotional desires. You can clearly see that the kings in these stories of Genesis 12 and 20 were only interested in themselves and what they wanted. Nobody asked Sarah what she wanted, did they? Of course back then it was a male dominated world and when a male king wanted a woman, there were no options for the woman given to her. When Abraham tells the kings she is my sister, the kings ASSUMES that she is available to be taken like a stray dog that doesn’t belong to anyone. They make a very wrong assumption based upon not knowing all the facts that they could have found out if they had just asked some more direct questions in order to find the truth. You can read scriptures about being “Self Deceived” in Jer. 37:9, Oba. 1:3, 1 Cor. 3:18, Gal 6:3, James 1:26 and 1 John 1:8. There are many factors that cause self-deception and these can involve pride, arrogance and wrong thinking where you think too highly of yourself and see yourself to be wise in this world. You should go and look up these verses to learn how people can deceive themselves and you should be able to see how these verses can easily apply to the kings in Abraham’s story.
There are three basic factors to deception that are critical to understand that are not normally taught. First, there are different types or methods of deception. You can clearly see this by someone telling a lie, but you can also see this by someone just failing to tell the truth. They are dramatically different types of deception in the eyes of God. Second, there are different reasons or motivations for using deception and the intended outcome for the deception. In other words is the person doing the deception doing it for someone’s harm, hurt or destruction or for a purpose of overall good? Then the third factor to consider is who the intended target for the deception is. Is the one being deceived a good person or an evil person? Can the one being deceived do me any harm if they are not deceived? All three of these factors matter in order for any deception to be called a sin in they eyes of God. You see there is an implied problem with deception that you have not fully thought of or comprehended fully. If you take the literal internet definition of deception and apply it as it was written that the omission of information or truth is called “deception” then God is quilty of deceiving us all. Is your God a deceiver? If you only take this definition, He is because He knows things that we clearly do not know and many of them.
Some have tried to conclude that all deception is sin like my commenter and this is just not what the Bible teaches. That statement is really going to shock many of my readers. However, what people have done is taken a complex subject and oversimplified it and caused all deception to be thought of in a negative light. But yet as we continue through this lesson we will see that this is not true. Let me give you an example of some deception that occurred in my life that might shock you. My own mother was a known and practicing deceiver; my mother deceived me when I was just a child in grade school. She tricked me into eating squash when I was a kid by mashing it up and stirring it into my cream corn. They were both yellow vegetables and when they were mixed together I could not tell that the squash was present. You see I liked cream corn but I did not like the squash and I refused to eat it. However, by her trickery and deception of her mixing the squash with my cream corn and then by purposefully not telling me about her methods, I ate it without knowing I was eating it. Clearly she withheld key information and truth from me and clearly it was an intentional act of a hidden deception. By the definition of deceive that we looked at, she is clearly guilty as Abraham was, but, was this deception a sin? Did my mother sin by hiding squash in my cream corn and not telling me about it? According to my commenter he would have said that she did. However, was this not just an example of the practical use of deception to achieve a positive outcome for me? I think that you can see it was the only way that I was going to eat squash so it worked. What was my mother’s reasoning and motivation for deceiving me? Was it to do evil and harm to me or was it to do something good and positive for me so that I benefited? In her mind it was to do good so that I would eat my vegetables and grow up strong and healthy. So hopefully you can see that not every type of deception is a sin from this one simple example. I do not believe that my mother was committing a sin by hiding squash in my cream corn, do you? So let’s change the scenario and say someone hid poison in your food. This of course changes everything dramatically. Now we have a different motivation for a different purpose and the expected outcome of the deception is completely different. Clearly anyone who would do this is well within the realm of committing a horrific sin by using a very similar deception method that my mother was guilty of. I hope that you can begin to see the impact that motivation and purpose play into the role of deception. Do you see the potential dilemma being presented to us from my two examples of food deception? It matters who is deceiving, why they are deceiving, who is deceived and what is the intended purpose of the deception in order to make a determination if it is a sin or not. Just because my mother hid squash in my cream corn and did not tell me that she did it, does not constitute an evil act of the sin of deception. Are you grasping these very important concepts? You see if you only used the web definition of the word “deceive” you can clearly see my mother was guilty of “deception”, therefore she should go to jail or hell. But, her reasons for doing it were justified to achieve a positive outcome for me. This is called “Righteous Deception” and I will show it to you in the Bible so that you can better understand how it works. I pray that you are beginning to see the complexity of the subject of deception and the potential use of deception to achieve a positive outcome for someone.
So let’s go back to the story of Abraham and see who did what, where and why? Abraham was traveling into the nation of Egypt where a foreign government was ruled by a people who didn’t know God. In fact in the Bible Egypt was a type of the world and Pharaoh a type of Satan. According to Abraham’s reasoning, he told his wife to tell everyone that she was his sister so that these godless people would not kill him to get to her. So the motivation of Abraham was not to do any evil to anyone, but to preserve his own life in an uncertain set of circumstances surrounding evil people. It was Egypt who was doing the evil and not Abraham by taking a woman just because she was pretty and good looking. You could compare this to rape today and this is clearly a crime. No one asked Sarah what she wanted; they simply decided what to do based upon what the king wanted. Was that the right thing to do? Obviously God did not think so and that is why He put plagues on the nation for what they had done. So Abraham was dealing with an uncertain evil nation of people who could potentially do great harm to him for what they wanted. So do you see any differences now in this type of deception initiated by Abraham? Abraham never had any intention of harm for any evil purpose to anyone in being deceptive. So by not telling them all of truth; did Abraham lie? I still do not think so! Did Abraham sin? I still do not think so. Abraham’s heart was clear before God. I hope that you can see this.
What I am attempting to show you is that not every deception is a sin in the Bible and you will see some more examples of this in these next verses also found in Genesis. This is a story in chapter 38 is one that is very informative of many things, but I’m only going to talk about the concept of “Righteous Deception” given to us in this story. In Genesis 38:6 you see that Judah the son of Jacob had a firstborn son named Er and Judah got him a wife named Tamar. However, verse 7 said that Er was wicked in the eyes of the Lord so God killed him. Not good for Er! So Judah had three sons the firstborn Er is now dead so Judah gives Tamar to Onan his next oldest son and tells him to have children for his dead brother Er. Onan is also wicked in the eyes of the Lord because he refuses his father’s request and God kills him also. Wow, Tamar is either really bad luck for the children of Judah or something else is going on here. We can read in this chapter that Judah tells Tamar to go to her father’s house and wait for his third son to get old enough and she will be his wife next. So Tamar waits and waits and Judah never mentions it again and finally Judah’s wife also dies. So Tamar does what? What is Tamar supposed to do? In Genesis 38:13 it says that someone told Tamar that her father-in-law Judah was going to a certain city to shear his sheep. So Tamar comes up with a plan of deception:
Gen 38:14 And she put her widow’s garments off from her, and covered her with a vail, and wrapped herself, and sat in an open place, which is by the way to Timnath; for she saw that Shelah was grown, and she was not given unto him to wife.
Here we have a part of the story that is easily missed. You see Tamar could see that Judah’s third son was grown up and she knew that Judah had not fulfilled his word to her. By not doing what he said; Judah has become a liar and that is not good is it? Therefore, Tamar takes off her widow clothes and disguises herself with a veil. In doing this Tamar has taken on the outward appearance of a prostitute and she places herself in the path of Judah on purpose.
Gen 38:15 When Judah saw her, he thought her to be an harlot; because she had covered her face.
So Judah sees the woman Tamar and thinks to himself that she is a harlot available for hire. It is very important to note that Tamar does not ever say she is a Harlot; it is only Judah who has assumed the wrong things based upon a perceived impression of outward looks. Judah could have asked to see her face or spoken with her in many ways to find out the real truth, but he has been self-deceived with natural human male desire. Isn’t that interesting? What we see is Judah has deceived himself into thinking the wrong way based upon human desire and lust and outward appearances. It sounds a lot like what the kings did when looking at Sarah in the first story of Abraham.
Gen 38:16 And he turned unto her by the way, and said, Go to, I pray thee, let me come in unto thee; (for he knew not that she was his daughter in law.) And she said, What wilt thou give me, that thou mayest come in unto me?
So technically speaking while Tamar never says she is a prostitute you have to look at what she says very carefully. It would appear that she is asking for money for her sexual favor, but examine her heart and think again. She is really just asking for what she was already promised by Judah. Nowhere in this story is her deception an evil intentional act for harm to Judah or an attempt to get back at him for his lie.
Gen 38:17 And he said, I will send thee a kid from the flock. And she said, Wilt thou give me a pledge, till thou send it?
Judah tells Tamar he will send her a kid from the flock, but Tamar know who she is dealing with and says she needs some security to insure that he will do what he says. So she says this:
Gen 38:18 And he said, What pledge shall I give thee? And she said, Thy signet, and thy bracelets, and thy staff that is in thine hand. And he gave it her, and came in unto her, and she conceived by him.
So we can see that Judah is still negotiating the price and the collateral like any normal business transaction. Tamar asks for his signet, his bracelet and his staff for collateral. Do you understand the principle and symbolic meaning of these items? A signet was like giving your credit card to someone today. With it they could command you to pay everything that they charge with it. The first time bracelets are mentioned in the Bible it was when the servant gave Rebekah two bracelets for her to become Isaac’s wife, so this is a clear parallel to this story in Genesis 38. The staff was of course a symbol of power and the main instrument of a shepherd to herd his sheep. So Tamar was not asking for trivial things, these were signs and symbols of this man’s identity. In the Bible you can find where it says that having sex with a prostitute causes you to become one flesh with her. So the sexual act is considered to be a marriage covenant between Judah and Tamar. Therefore, Tamar was gathering items that could easily be used to identify him later as the one who had sex with her. Anyway Judah must have missed sex a lot so he agreed and gave her these three items and then he made Tamar pregnant with his children and then he went back home.
Gen 38:19 And she arose, and went away, and laid by her vail from her, and put on the garments of her widowhood.
Tamar departs back to her father’s house and changes her clothes back to the widow garments and then waits. Meanwhile, Judah sends people to find the prostitute with the sheep that he promised so that he could get back his possessions and they cannot find her. Nobody has ever seen this woman, so she was clearly not a prostitute for financial gain or income. So if money was not Tamar’s motivation what was the motivation of Tamar and who did she deceive? It is very clear that it was deception in the “nth” degree. But, I did not see anywhere that said that Tamar ever lied with her lips to achieve this deception, nor do I see where she did it to cause hurt or harm to anyone else. The purpose of this deception was not for evil but for the good outcome of the continuation of the family name of Judah. So in effect this deception of Tamar was only done for the good of Judah and not to do him any evil. This is a very important story in the Bible and you just do not realize its importance right now. So Judah finally hears about Tamar when she begins to show her pregnancy. It’s funny how words in the rumor mill can travel so quickly to everyone. Everyone knew that Tamar was a widow so when she shows up pregnant it is a perceived problem for Judah and the community. So Judah calls for Tamar so that they can put her to death for being a whore, but when Tamar shows up at his house she has his signet ring, staff and bracelets that show who the father is and Judah cannot not deny it because of these facts she presented to him. Judah then makes this statement:
Gen 38:26 And Judah acknowledged them, and said, She hath been more righteous than I; because that I gave her not to Shelah my son. And he knew her again no more.
You can clearly see that Judah was calling her deception a “righteous justified act”. Because, of this woman’s trickery the family line of Jesus has been preserved and Jesus can still come into the world as God had designed. You can clearly see this honor by reading the genealogy of Jesus given to us in the book of Matthew chapter 1. There are only 6 women mentioned by name in this list of father names and Tamar is one of them. She earned a mention of prominence by a simple act of righteous deception. Tamar has arisen to the level of rock star status in the Bible because she used deception for the good of someone other than herself. This is a very important part of deception that is rarely taught and seldom mentioned. Here is another mention of her name in the Book of Ruth:
Rth 4:12 And let thy house be like the house of Pharez, whom Tamar bare unto Judah, of the seed which the LORD shall give thee of this young woman.
Tamar is again mentioned in the book of Ruth as being a righteous woman who did great things for the good of mankind and the house of Israel. You cannot deny that this was deception, but God elevates her to a level of importance for doing this deception that few have understood until today. At no time did God accuse this woman of committing any sin for what she did, do you see this?
I actually have many more Bible verses to go into this subject of deception, but I have gone too long for today. So I will wrap this lesson up with that story of Tamar and hope that you can now see and understand that not every deception found in the Bible is a negative sin in the eyes of God. In my next lesson in this series I will give you some more examples found in the Bible of “Righteous Deception” and these will help to establish the truth in the mouths of two or three witnesses. I hope and pray that you have learned something from today’s lesson that you can take away in growing in your relationship with your God. God Bless!
If you would like to continue reading in this series on deception, you can go to “Part 4“.
****************************************************************
If you want to know how to get saved and know that you are with confidence you can go to: How do I get saved?
A Modern Example of Deception to Avoid – Part 5 Does God Need Your Militia?
(Ver 1.2) This is now “Part 5” in a series of commonsense Christian Bible lessons teaching us examples of modern deception that we should avoid at all cost. If you have not read this series from the beginning, you may desire to go and begin with “Part 1” first. But please understand that this lesson is not dependent upon any previous lesson for it to be understood and applied. Today’s lesson is about deception taking place that creates a worldly attitude that Christians are extremist crazy people that need to be imprisoned or killed. This is exactly the direction that Satan is trying to steer the unsaved world into believing about Christians. It is very much like what Satan did in the nation of Germany in the 1930’s when Jewish people were characterized as evil so that they could be exterminated. That is what is happening again today for Jewish people and for Christians.
MODERN DAY MILITIA
I was watching the news a while back when a concerning news story came across the television. Here was another example of extreme deception that we should avoid in the Body of Christ. I have said this before, but it is good to repeat it. If the news media puts a story on their valuable network time about Christians it is there for a purpose to drive Satan’s planned narrative. Therefore, take these stories and use wisdom to understand they are not there to make Christians look good.
In one state in the US, there appeared a group of people who call themselves Christians, who have armed themselves for a coming battle with the anti-Christ or so the news said. I don’t believe everything that the news always says, but if this is true these people are deceived into believing that their guns and military training is going to make a difference at the battle of Armageddon. How childish and ignorant this appears! The news story seemed to indicate that these people believed that we were living at the end of the age (which is the truth). They also believed that Jesus would be coming back to the earth very soon (which is more truth). They believed that the anti-Christ could be here already and that the end time battle for Jerusalem and the earth was soon to occur (this is also base upon Bible truth). So while they have all this truth mostly correct, they ignore the rest of the Bible and have bought into selective theology to justify their actions. In other words they have been deceived into believing a lie. They must not understand who Jesus is and how powerful that He is.
These Christians are thinking naturally and carnally and according to my Bible that is enmity against God. These people hopefully are saved Christians but they are lacking in a lot of spiritual knowledge, understanding and wisdom to know the POWER OF GOD. Not every person on the earth that calls them self a Christian is a Christian. I can call myself a car and go sit in my garage, but that does not make me a car.
Let us examine this carnal belief using the Bible. Let us start with Moses and the children of Israel leaving Egypt. What does God do? He parts the Red Sea and drowns all of the army of Pharaoh. Did God need anyone of the Israelites to do this? Were the Israelites armed with weapons of war that God required to fight this Egyptian enemy? Did you know that Egypt is a type of the world that we live in right now? That Pharaoh was a type of the anti-Christ and Satan. Did you know that the Bible says that what has been is the thing that shall be again (Ecc 1:9)? Will God need anyone to defeat the armies of the world led by the anti-Christ? I don’t think so! If God did need someone to defeat the anti-Christ , why choose a human? Why not some angels? God has millions or billions of angels that can kill everybody on the planet in a matter of seconds. God sent out one angel in 2 Kings 19:35 and he alone killed 185,000 human soldiers of Assyria. The current population of the earth is approximately 7 billion people. That would only take 38 angels to wipe them all out using the 2 Kings math. Let us read another Bible story about angels and there being no need for human weapons and fighting in a battle on the earth:
2Ki 6:16 And he answered, Fear not: for they that be with us are more than they that be with them.
In this story in 2 Kings, the prophet of God is confronted by his servant who asked “what are we going to do?” You see the enemies of God’s people had surrounded the hill side where they were and there were a whole bunch of them. In the natural they were vastly outnumbered, but Elisha did not panic, and even said “Fear Not”. He then exclaimed this, “There are more with us than there are with them”. At this point in time the servant could count, One + One = Two, against thousands and say what are you talking about? Then Elisha prays!
2Ki 6:17 And Elisha prayed, and said, LORD, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the LORD opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.
Did you notice Elisha did not pray for God to help, or to send help or ask God to do anything, but rather the prayer was to open the eyes of his young servant? This is what these militia people need. They need a word from God’s prophet from His written Word and to pray for God to open their eyes. God did answer this prayer! When God opened the eyes of the young man, he saw the hills covered with the army of God in chariots of fire. Now the servant could see that there were more with them than there were that were against them. Did God need anybody else? Did God tell Elisha to get his sword and fight? You see people who do not understand the Bible think that God is incapable of repeating anything that He has demonstrated before. You have to understand that any spiritual army of God is no match for any natural army of the earth. You do understand that, don’t you? Angels are bigger and stronger than us and we do not want to mess with one of them, much less thousands of them.
These confused, deceived Christians need a revelation from God to understand the power of God. God does not need any gun to defeat the anti-Christ or his armies. If you think He does need you then you are deceived. If we would just read the rest of our Bible and believe that God is God, we will be far better off. Let us stop giving spiritually mature Christians a bad reputation just because some carnal thinking baby Christians have not seen the truth yet. But, the world lumps Christians all together in the same crazy boat. Whenever, some deceived person bombs an abortion clinic, thinking they are doing God’s work they make every Christian come across looking like the same type of foolishness. I know this is actually a plan of Satan to do this. discount and discredit true Christianity, by deceiving a few people to look like crazy evil people.
So how does God defeat Satan and the anti-Christ and those that are arrayed against Him? Like I said if you would only need to read your Bible to find out that Jesus uses only one weapon to defeat every enemy. And this weapon is not your gun or your muscle. So what is this weapon that Jesus uses?
Rev 19:15 And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.
What part of this verse in Revelation sounds like God needs our gun or our whatever! The ONLY weapon that Jesus uses to defeat all of the nations of people arrayed against Him is His mouth. The Word of God is spoken and opponents fall down dead. Out of the mouth of the “Almighty God” will proceed a sharp sword and that is the only weapon that Jesus will need to defeat anybody that comes against Him. If we still do not understand that, I feel very sad for you, you have been deceived.
A PERSONAL APPLICATION
To believe that the Creator of heaven and earth requires human assistance to help defeat Satan, I believe is deception. I believe that this belief would be like little kids playing army. To a real soldier the kids would be amusing. Sometimes I believe God sometimes, sits in heaven and laughs at our childish behavior. So to the militia members and Christians that think that God needs your guns to defeat His enemy, here is our prayer for you!
Dear LORD, please forgive us for being so ignorant. Please give to us your Spirit of revelation in the knowledge of Christ Jesus. Help us to better understand His Power, His Position and His Plan for every human. LORD open the eyes of our spirit that we might perceive the truth as you have given it and intended it. Give us a hunger to read your Word and the vision of how you see your Words and their meanings. We are looking forward to your soon return to catch us up and away from the coming judgments upon the earth dwellers. Thank you, and we are looking forward to returning back to the earth with You riding on a White Horse to rule and reign for 1000 years. In Jesus name we pray, Amen.
God bless you and please pray for us. Your prayers are priceless and we value them immensely. Have a blessed time preparing for His soon coming, but if He has not return before our next lesson is available, live in peace and be led by His Spirit.
Deceptions in the Modern World designed to Deceive and Control Us Part 4 – Is the Government Your God?
(Ver 1.1) This is now “Part 4” in the Bible study series concerning the subject of modern strategies of the devil to deceive Christians. If you have not read this series from the beginning you might like to start with “Part 1” first. But please understand that this lesson is not dependent upon any previous lesson to be understood and applied in your life. I think millions of Americans are being raised and indoctrinated to look at the government as their personal source for whatever they need. If someone needs food, the government invented food stamps. If someone needs housing, they invented Welfare and Section 8 housing. If someone lost their job and needs money the government invented unemployment income. Now the government has been looking to solve everyone’s health care issues by giving a people free Medicare that is again going to be paid for by other rich people. There are a never ending list of deceptive promises designed to trick us into being controlled by the government. All I ask is “Who is Your God”? Do you look for God to help you or is that the responsibility of your government? Do you pray to God or the President or Congress? Is a human your god? I do not think so!
Ignorant Christians obviously vote our congress and president into government office. And I wonder who is their god to them? My point of this lesson is to get us to see that God is still God and that He is capable of solving whatever problem that we are facing right now. This of course doesn’t help anyone that does not believe there is a God. But my Bible says “That a fool says there is no God”, and it is very difficult to help a fool. But for Christians my Bible also says “Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith” (Heb 12:2) Christians should be looking to Jesus as their source for whatever we need. Whatever Jesus did while he walked the face of the earth, He still does today. The Bible says “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever” (Heb 13:8). Jesus has not changed in His love, His actions or His deeds. Whatever He did before, He can do again! Always remember what Jesus did in the Gospels. He healed blind eyes, He healed lame men, He healed lepers, He raised the dead, He fed 5000 once and 3000 another time. Is there anything too hard for our God?
So is the government our source and supply? Are new government programs the answer for our problems? Should we expand the government so that they can solve all of our problems? This might be news to you, but our current government cannot sustain the current level of growth and monetary deficits. Our government will not survive at this rate very much longer. Our government is already bankrupt, financially and morally. If our government was a financial institution they would have needed a bail out a long time ago. We are living in an extremely fragile time and the least little thing can send everything spiraling out of control. The world financial markets are perpetuating an illusion of stability. The governments of the world are uncontrollably spending money they do not have to prop-up the illusion of stability. The world will soon realize that the stage is set for the anti-Christ to appear.
People have been raised and conditioned to look to the government to solve all of their problems. So when the anti-Christ appears on the scene offering solutions for every problem that he has created for you to see, people will automatically jump in that pool with all of their clothes on and soon drown in the waters of confusion and deception.
Php 4:19 But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.
Looking to the government for our answers is exactly what Satan wants us to do. By Satan offering to solve all of our problems we will be deceived into a false sense of security. Everything will appear to be great for a short time. Satan will try to teach us that we can get by without God! He will then attempt to teach that we can ignore the Bible. It is a deceiving plan to teach that people won’t need a God as long as the government feeds them! God doesn’t need to send us manna from heaven as long as we have food stamps.
SO, WHO IS YOUR GOD? Is your God too small to fix your problem?
What we need to do as a nation is to bring back God as our source and supply. We then need to help people who do not know God to see the truth. Then we need to teach these people who are in need to learn how to fish for themselves. As long as the government continues to give out free fish to everyone, no one will be motivated to do the right thing and learn to help others.
Please join me in praying for God to help us to not be deceived by our governement:
LORD, I come to you as our Jehovah Jireh. The God of more than enough supply and provision. As you supplied Abraham with a ram for sacrifice instead of Isaac, you are more than able to supply what is needed to fulfill your plan and your purpose for my life. Help me O’LORD to not place my faith in the provisions of a temporary human government on the earth. Help me to not be deceived by the deception of temporary promises from anyone on earth not speaking Your Words and Your Will, especially people who are being used by Satan. Grant me wisdom to know who to vote for in our elections. Help me to vote for people that do your will and hear your voice. I look to you the creator of the heavens and the earth and declare you be LORD over my mind, my thoughts, my will, my emotions and my Spirit. Thank you for leading me into the paths of truth and life and far from the ways of deception and death. In Jesus name I pray, Amen.
Thank you for reading and studying the Bible about the ways Satan is trying to deceive us in the Church today. These are things we must learn and avoid to follow after. Please leave a comment or press “Like” if you agree with this message. God Bless you until next time.
If you would like to continue to learn in this series on “Deception” please go to “Part 5“.
A Modern Example of Deception to Avoid in the Church – Part 3
(Ver 1.2) This is now “Part 3” in a Bible study series about Christians that follow other Christians blindly without confirming what is being taught in the church is really the truth that the Bible teaches. These are examples that no real Christian should follow. In fact these are examples for Christians to greatly avoid becoming. If you have not read from the beginning of this series you may like to go read from “Part 1” first. But know this Bible study is not dependent upon a previous lesson to be understood and applied. Our subject in this lesson series concerns traps and tricks of deception that Satan uses to get Christians to not know or believe the truth. These are examples that need to be understood so that we don’t fall for them.
We can all learn from positive or negative examples. The Bible is full of both types of people. God wrote the Bible this way to teach us that we are all humans that make mistakes. But He also does this so that we can learn not to repeat their mistakes. Perhaps you recall the classic quotation of Edmond Burke “Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it”. This is a wise saying because it is much wiser to learn from someone else’s mistake rather than to repeat it and reap the same consequences.
INTRODUCTION
Hopefully you should know that I do not enjoy criticizing others and it is my goal to never name any names in what is written. I have learned that there are no perfect people in the world and everyone including me, has made mistakes. But today I want to give an example of a Christian that was living an example that all should avoid. I want to address a stereotypical group of Christian people that are good examples of people doing very unbiblical things. It seems within this Christian group a large portion of these people believe things and even do things blindly without any scriptural basis for their beliefs. In other words they automatically believed in doing something that they were taught in their church without finding out if it is really true. For too many it actually goes much further than that. If they do accidently find out the truth about something in their Bible that disagrees with what they have been taught, they choose to ignore it and refuse to believe it. In other words they put more faith in their deceived church teacher than they do their God and their Bible. That just seems very dangerous to me. How do you know that your church teacher is not another Jim Jones or a David Koresh leading you into a path of deception, destruction and death? Some people want to trust and place all of their faith in a human teacher because of their admiration for their outward looks. We having people in the U.S. voting for people to be president because they like the way they look. Who cares what they stand for or if they are telling us the truth, he is just so good looking. Wow what a deception that is taking place. This is not what the Bible teaches us to do. Read this verse and see what made these people more noble Christians:
Act 17:11 These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.
Here we have a story written by Luke where it describes Paul who wrote 2/3 of the New Testament preached to two groups of people. The first group called “Bereans” were described to be more noble that the second group called “those in Thessalonica”. I guess Paul named names and maybe I should also. But the Bereans do not follow Paul’s teachings blindly. The wise listeners to God’s teachers proved everything that was being taught by searching for them self in their own scriptures in order to prove if they were true or not. That is what I ask you to do also. Don’t believe anything that comes from me blindly. Get your own Bible, your own computer, phone or tablet and search to prove if it is really what God is saying to you. The Bereans were positive examples to follow after but let us move to a modern negative example to avoid.
A MODERN CHURCH EXAMPLE TO AVOID
As soon as I start describing this negative example church to avoid you will probably know who I am talking about. So even though I am telling you who it is, it will probably be very obvious and I really don’t know how to avoid this. In speaking with someone the other day they told me about a conversation that they had with their Christian friend. The conversation was about a Bible subject that everyone should know of. If you have been a Christian for long or you were raised in this church, you know exactly what we are about to learn. Hopefully you have already abandoned this teaching and moved far from the deception that is still being taught.
Blindness is defined as a person’s inability to see the light and this is true for physical or spiritual blindness. Sometimes the light is too bright and it forces some people to close your eyes. Many times our eyes have to adjust to different levels of light intensity before we can see things clearly. But sometimes people see the bright light of what the Bible says and then they just choose to close their eyes to it. They reject God’s bright truth for what they have chosen to believe called man’s traditional teachings. Jesus warned us in Matthew 15:6 that our “traditions can nullify the commandments of God”. To me that does not sound good.
People embrace traditions because of their trust in their teachers and their church. This is just wrong deceived behavior. And this type of behavior confirms the scripture that says “In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them that believe not…” (1 Cor 4:4). You can discover how successful Satan has been in blinding someone, by observing how they react to new Bible truth when you present it to them.
So here we go! In a recent conversation with a friend someone told me that the subject of Mary the mother of Jesus came up. It seems that this deceived person had been taught that Mary is still a virgin and that she was at the same level of importance as her Son, Jesus. This would mean that Jesus didn’t have any brothers and sisters on the earth and that Joseph (her husband) never had sex with his wife. I really do not understand the reasoning or logic behind this belief of the departure of common sense at all. Not only is this a direct contradiction to what the Bible says, it would defy basic human needs created by God. For example, a man not being able to touch his wife after marriage is not normal behavior. We will soon learn that this also goes against what the Bible says about healthy marriage relationships.
The net results of this type of church teaching was the deification of a human woman. Mary now becomes a spiritual being that we are to pray to and can ask to talk to God for you. Mary has been exalted beyond human creation and now becomes the path way to God and equal with God. Now people can say instead of Jesus being the only path to God they have been deceived into believing their are other ways to reach Him. You see I’ll tell it to you very straight, if you are praying to Mary, Mary IS NOT LISTENING. Mary is NOT GOD! Mary can’t hear you. Mary does not appear to people in the world today. Mary could very well be in heaven and could be in the presence of God right now, but there is no way that she is in control of anything or can do anything to affect your outcome or situation here on the earth. This is a deception from Satan and a way that he uses to distract people from the truth of praying to God correctly to get an answer.
I can be very blunt at times and I’m sorry. Sometimes I think you have to shock people in order to get their attention. I guess it is also possible that people don’t realize that the Bible contains God’s words spoken directly to you and I and we need to learn what He says and not a theory being taught to us in a church. If Christians do learn the truth to know and understand it, and still reject it, then they need to know that they are also rejecting the True God Himself. So let’s go through the Bible and see what God said on the subject of Mary:
Mat 1:20 But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.
We know from several verses found in the Bible that Mary was a virgin girl and that the Spirit of God came upon her and she conceived a child. Mary was a normal human female when she was visited by the angel with God’s message. But she was special in that she qualified to be in the right place at the right time with the right genealogy to be used by God. It was important that Jesus be born of a virgin, since He was the Only Begotten Son of God. I really do not want to attempt to explain all of the theological reasons for the virgin birth in this lesson. If you do not understand these I would strongly suggest you find the lessons on this website about the virgin birth and study them in depth. Continuing to read in Matthew the 1st chapter we see that the angel of the Lord appears to Joseph in a dream also and tells him it is still God’s plan for him to marry this woman named “Mary”. He is informed that this child is from God and not from another man and then we are told this statement:
Mat 1:25 And knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son: and he called his name JESUS.
You see in this verse there is a specific reference to sex. This verse tells us directly that Joseph did not have sex with Mary “UNTIL” after she gave birth to Jesus. That means she remained a virgin woman “until” after the birth of her firstborn son that they named “Jesus”. But this statement also means Joseph had sex with her (aka knew her) sometime after Jesus was born. If you want to ignore the Bible for your personal beliefs, then go right ahead and abide in your ignorance. The term “knew” her is a sexual reference. In Genesis 4:1 Adam “knew” his wife and they had a son. This sexual relationship between a husband and a wife is a normal part of the system that God created. To “Know” is a term that means to have carnal knowledge of, to be intimately physically connected with them and literally means sexual intercourse. It clearly means that Joseph was intentionally permitted to have sex with his wife Mary after Jesus was born, but not before. Why was this? Once a woman is pregnant you can’t get pregnant again? I guess I won’t attempt to elaborate on the why, for now. We can clearly see in other verses in the Bible that Joseph did have sex with his wife because it names some of their children. Here is a verse that speaks about Jesus and His earthly family.
Mat 13:55 Is not this the carpenter’s son (Joseph)? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas?
We can see that these people clearly think that Jesus was Joseph’s son. They did not know that Jesus was not his son, they just assumed it based upon how they lived as a family unit together in a traditional household. Joseph is called the carpenter so Joseph was a normal man that had a normal occupation. As far as we can tell Joseph being a normal male would have had normal male sexual desires. So far we see all the aspects of a normal earthly family. Then we are given the names of 4 other males that are called Jesus’ brothers. These four are called James, Joses, Simon, Judas.
Now here is another plan of Satan deception where people are used to try to explain away what we can all read in the Bible. Satan uses our desires for our traditions to establish our beliefs of truth. This deceptive reasoning is that there were no Greek or Hebrew words for cousins, so they conclude that these brothers were actually Jesus’ cousins. Using this perverted logic they can preserve the virginity of Mary and continue to exalt her to a god. That is another example of ignorance gone to seed and growing into multiplied tricks of the devil. Truth always builds upon Truth and lies must be built upon other lies and the cycles usually never cross paths.
Just because the Bible does not have a word for cousin does not mean there are other ways of stating the truth if it was His cousins. If God wanted us to believe that these named men were Jesus’ cousins he could have said His mother’s brother’s sons or He could have used the Greek word G4773. This word was used by the Holy Spirit in Luke 1:36 to describe Mary’s cousin Elizabeth. There are certainly more than one way in the Greek and Hebrew words to describe relatives in the correct terms if God wanted to say something besides “brothers”. God used the Greek word G80 and this word means a “brother”. No you see people want to make Mary their god so they invent reasons to dispel what the Bible teaches for what they want to believe. If we continue on to the next verse we also discover more information about this family of Joseph:
Mat 13:56 And his sisters, are they not all with us? Whence then hath this man all these things?
In Matthew 13:56 we are not only told that Jesus had 4 half brothers, we are also told that he had sisters. We are not told how many, just that there were more than one. So apparently Joseph had a lot of sex with his wife over the years. We can clearly see that Jesus had at minimum 6 half brothers and sisters. If we think logically we can calculate that Jesus was approximately 30 years old when this verse was written. That means Joseph and Mary were potentially a husband and wife for 30 years. During this time period if they only had 6 children that would be pretty amazing in a era of no birth control or abortion. However, we do not know what happened to Joseph, he becomes obscure and hidden from mention after Jesus’ twelfth birthday. So even in a 12 year period to only have 6 children would be amazing. That would be one new brother or sister almost every other year.
Satan is very tricky. His methods of deception are very subtle. Most of the time Satan does not come at us with direct and obvious lies, but he likes to introduce little nuances to the truth to get us to focus on something else other than what God says. The Jewish leadership was tremendously guilty of doing this. They would take the laws of God and add to them. The Jewish leadership would write their own rules, thinking that if they followed all of these added rules, there would be no way that they would break God’s laws. Jesus called this the leaven of the Pharisees (Luke 12:1). This would represent a combination of untruths together with some truths. Satan likes to intermix some of the truth with some subtle lies in order to dilute the pure and render it ineffective. This is still one of the greatest deception techniques of the enemy today and everyone in the church is faced with these same issues.
There are so many churches that teach a watered down version of the Bible. There are way too many preachers and teachers that interject their opinions instead of just teaching the Words of God. If you go to a church that teaches something that the Bible doesn’t say, you are subtly being deceived and totally distracted from knowing the truth. Jesus taught us that it only takes a little bit of leaven to corrupt the whole loaf of bread. I have heard this truth taught and I agree with it whole heartedly. If you want to poison a dog you don’t throw them pure arsenic. You wrap the arsenic up in a steak so that they do not realize they are being poisoned. This is the trap of the enemy and a standard ploy of effective deception. Give the listener a bunch of what they want to hear and then mix in the lies a little bit at a time so that they are hard to recognize. People fall for this more than you think. It is all over the internet, it is all over some church pulpits.
You see this friend that believed Mary was good to pray to, would probably not read a book like Dan’s Brown’s “Da Vinci Code” because it is a totally opposite approach at deception. The Da Vinci Code is a totally fictitious book of lies with just a little bit of truth mixed with it. So while my friend was smart enough not to read that kind of material, they were easily deceived when someone just mixed in just a little fiction with a bunch of truth. I think there are many Christians who need to learn these lessons. Stay away from the Harry Potter CRAP! The Twilight Saga is another good example of material to avoid like the plague. If you are allowing your children to participate in these dangerous forms of entertainment you are making a huge mistake.
CONCLUSION
So this is a lesson about our next type of deceived Christian to avoid becoming. Learn how Satan is working to deceive others and implement safeguards to not repeat examples of failed behaviors. Read your Bible for your self. Study to show your self approved a workman that needs not to be ashamed. Prove everything that is heard in church with your own scripture research. Look for at least 2 or 3 verses that prove what was sad is actually what is true in God’s Word. Then go and search for verses that could contradict what was said. Study, study and study the Bible! And Pray, Pray and Pray! That is the only way that anyone will not be deceived.
Let us all pray for my friend and for friends you may know. Maybe you know some Mormon people. They are some of the nicest deceived people that I have ever met in my life. Whoops I named a name of a cult church. But this is important to know. These people have disregarded the Bible for a book called the “Book of Mormon” that they say came by special Revelation from Joseph Smith in 1830. Mormons call people who only read the Bible deceived but I say people who add to the Bible their own books to take away from reading the real are the ones that are deceived. So let us learn to avoid other books that try to take us away from the Bible also. Anything that distracts you from the Bible is a lie and trick of deception. Let us pray for these people.
LORD, we come boldly to the throne of Grace to ask for your mercy for ________ (add name). I pray that you will open their spiritual eyes of their understanding to have the ability to see and know the truth (Eph 1:17). Satan I bind you from blinding their minds and command you to release your hand deception from their life and mind (Mat 16:19). I repent for every sin that can be used to hold them in deception and ask that it be covered by the blood of Jesus to cleanse them from all unrighteousness in their heavenly record (1 Jn 5:16). I ask you LORD to send forth a laborer across their pathway as you commanded us to pray in Matthew 9:38 so that they may hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ clearly to receive the truth. In Jesus name I pray. Amen.
Thank you for reading and studying the Bible with us and we are blessed to hear from you and everything the Lord is doing in your life. God Bless you until the next lesson.
PERSONAL APPLICATION
LORD, I thank you because I have the mind of Christ. The Spirit of the Living God abides in me. He is my great Shepherd and I hear and know His voice. I am led by the Spirit of God only and the voice of a stranger I will not follow. Thank you for keeping far from deception by granting me the ability to spiritually discern the difference between right and wrong, truth and lies and good from evil. If there is any time when someone is attempting to distract me with an untruth, bring to my remembrance a Bible verse that will clear any confusion. Thank you for saving me and filling me with your precious Holy Spirit and I love you because you first loved me. In Jesus name I pray, Amen.
If you would like to continue to read in this series about avoiding deception, please go to “Part 4“.
A Deceived Christian Example to Avoid Part 1 – Calling Good as Evil and Evil as Good
(Ver 1.2) Today is Part 1 in a Bible study series focused upon how Satan can even deceive people who say they are Christians. Jesus speaking to the disciples in Matthew 24:4 warned them “take heed that no man deceive you”. There are preachers today that believe true and real saved Christians cannot be deceived to fall or turn away from Jesus. It is unfortunate that Jesus did not understand this belief or he would not have warned us that we could be deceived. This Bible study series will focus upon how we can find examples of deception taking place in the world today within the lives of people that say they are Christians. So let us get started with the first example.
I really do not enjoy criticizing other Christians and I plan to never name their names. I realize there are no perfect people in the world including me. But occasionally someone just stands out above the rest as the most incredibly deceived person that calls themselves a Christian that I’ve ever heard of. Yesterday while watching the evening news a story came across the network about a pastor who was going to battle Satan by holding a book burning on Halloween. At first glance this probably does not sound like a bad idea to many Christians, but I was floored when the news anchor started naming the list of materials that he was planning on burning. At first I thought the preacher was going to share about burning Heavy Metal songs, Punk, Rap lyrics, Cult Materials, Porn or other types of similar literature. However, the shocker came when they interviewed the preacher and he said he was going to burn Bibles. Obviously this is what got him on a major news network for public TV consumption. I really thought this man was joking at first. But I gathered from hearing this plan of this preacher that it was true and that he was dead serious on carrying it out.
According to this preacher and I use that term very loosely, only the King James version of the Bible was divinely inspired and came from God and all of the other versions of the Bible were works of Satan. I really don’t understand how dumb or blinded someone can become and still be called a Christian. How did this man arrive at such a foolish opinion. What would cause someone to think any Bible could not be used by God. That seems to be putting God in a box of severe limitation.
You know what I have discovered about people? It seems that the people who know the least amount of truth are many times the most vocal and opinionated against God. It sounds to be that this preacher has his head buried so deep that he doesn’t recognize the difference between good and evil. The Bible actually warns us in Isaiah 5:20 “Woe unto them that call evil good and good, evil”. To burn any translations of the Bible and call it the works of Satan is an incredibly deceived action.
Satan is not in the business of helping people to read and understand the Bible. If Satan had his way there would be absolutely no Bibles available to anyone and obviously he has convinced at least one preacher to help him get rid of them. How many of you realize that there are no perfect translations of the Bible available in print? Did you know that every translation of the Bible has some slanted perspective and/or opinion of the translator mixed with it? The King James Bible while it is the one that I use predominately, I have found many problems with the translation. Obviously by me making that statement of truth, I just got on someone’s heretic and false teacher list. But we must all know that only the original Hebrew and Greek text contains the inspired (God Breathed) words from God’s mouth without errors. We should all just learn Hebrew and Greek and fix this problem shouldn’t we? I guess not, what we should do is just study to show our self approved a workmen unto God who rightly divides the word of truth (2 Tim 2:15).
My guess is this man is also one of those preachers who claims “tongues” is of the devil. It is sad how Christian people have been so easily deceived into believing such untrue things. I’ve watched movies, I’ve seen fights, I’ve seen people in bars drunk, I’ve witnessed acts of violence and terror and not one time have any of these people in any of these places or acts have I ever seen standing up speaking in tongues with their hands raised in praise. I have also never seen or heard of anyone in a bar reading the NIV, NASB, NKJV, or other Bible while they were getting drunk. Isn’t that just a little bit troubling to you?
Every decent Bible translation can be used by the Holy Spirit to reach someone to get them saved. The Holy Spirit is NOT limited to reaching only people who can speak “King James English” of “thee”, “thou”, “thus”, “saith”, etc. When someone first becomes a Christian it is good to get a translation of the Bible that is on their level. Easy to read English words are much more easy to understand than the KJV Bible. Later as the Christian becomes more mature and spiritually aware, other Bible translations of literal translation can be used by God also to help that individual learn.
So here was an example of one deceived man, a preacher who calls a good book called the Bible as an evil work of Satan and obviously doesn’t know the difference.. Let us not take the same bait of Satan to fall into the same trap of deception. Let us avoid following this man as our example. Please join me in praying for this man. Let us pray that God will bless this man with a spirit of wisdom and revelation in knowing Christ Jesus, Amen.
A PERSONAL APPLICATION
LORD, I pray that you will help me to not be deceived. Lead me far away from anyone that is not proclaiming what you said in your Word and are saying today by your Holy Spirit. Help me to turn from following anyone that is not being led by your Spirit. Open my spiritual eyes to be able to understand your Word as I read and hear it and to discern between right and wrong, truth and lies, and good and evil. Thank LORD for your presence in me and your faithfulness to me in Jesus Name, I pray. Amen.
If you would like to continue reading in this series, please click “Part 2“.
The Agapegeek Blog 