Deception Is Living With Us

Can you recognize a false message posing as truth? Can you recognize the voice of the devil? His message is “yea hath God said?”, and his message is false, since the devil is a liar. His message is a flesh and pride satisfying alternative to what the Lord has said in His Word. The first time I ever heard the term ‘discernment’, as in, “Are you involved in discernment ministry”? I had no idea what that meant. I had never heard of it. Turns out, I had been doing that, discerning, all along; not knowing it was called that. I thought this was a normal part of being a Christian; comparing what you hear to the Word of God and noting if there was a difference. How can we discern? We must know, believe in and trust in the Word of God.

There are religions and movements in the world which cry out the false, satanic messages of the god of this world; the New Age movement for instance, which is not new, just the old “ancient wisdom” occult religion of Lucifer that weaves its way back in time through history, all the way back past the Tower of Babel, to the garden.

The interesting thing is, now we are seeing this exact same message in the visible church, in some places. Besides the secular Humanist occult New Agers, who is promoting the devil’s lie the most lately? It is some within visible ‘Christianity’. It is within the visible church.

In mainline liberal Protestant Christianity, there is a movement, not just for ecumenism, but for interfaith universalism with the world’s religions. In seeker, man focused modern evangelicalism; there is the social gospel P.E.A.C.E. plan, which is focused on making this world in this present evil age, through the effort of man, a utopia. The messages you hear in these movements are not God’s message of faith and salvation in Jesus Christ alone.

Some who decided to leave modern institutional evangelicalism have not just rearranged how and where they gather, and how they do church. When I first heard of emergent church a while back, I thought they were interested in getting out of something less than biblical and becoming more biblical, and reaching the lost with the gospel. Turns out, they were interested in becoming skeptics, questioning the Word of God, becoming visionary philosophers and opening themselves up to the possibilities of global spirituality. In other words, they are slowly emerging into the same New Age spirituality that the devil is selling to the world.

God has told us His plan in His Word. He did not tell us to dream and come up with new ideas for how God’s plan will work out. He told us what to do, and told us what would happen, in His Word. We are not to gather in order to question what God has said, to question if it is true out of skepticism. To say you hold the Bible in high esteem, but you hold God even higher makes no sense, since Jesus, who is God, is the Word of God.

Our understanding/interpretation of the Bible is not achieved by the community’s collective responses and thoughts. This is Hegelian dialectic process, which uses dialogue to create synthesis or consensus out of thesis and antithesis. If we have questions, the answers are found in the Bible; that is, answers concerning things that God wants us to have information about.

Saved does not mean having a kingdom of God mindset. God’s plan is not going to become a reality because of us. He will do it. To say, together, WE can become God’s dream reminds me of the attitude of the people in Genesis 11:1-6.

All your words are true; all your righteous laws are eternal. (Ps.119:160)

Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God's wrath comes on those who are disobedient. (Eph.5:6)

Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. (Acts 20:30)

We must all be careful that we are not lead astray, falling into the devil's trap of deception, posing as truth. We must use the gift of discernment and recognize the false teachings from within the church today for what is actually is, the same old lie that the devil sold to Eve in the garden. Do not be deceived!