Do Not Be Deceived

Well, good morning, everyone. I want to read a letter to you to open here. This is actually an email that I received on January 9th, and I will read it with the language as it came to me, and it's not perfect grammatically in the English here, but you'll understand what the point is. Question 1. It is my pleasure to contact you. I know my message will come to you as a surprise. I am Nina, the only child of Mr. Kareem Kunal. My late father deposited $6.5 million in finance company here on the Ivory Coast before he died for onward transfer abroad through diplomatic cargo for investment purpose. This is a confidential matter to be dealt with carefulness to enable us to understand more better with the fund to be a benefit to everyone. Or, if it cannot be possible for the trip here, we can negotiate at any nearby country to come with this fund with all proofs as a witness for the vital truth behind the stories and with the fund. If you are willing to assist me, send me your full data or your information so that I will submit it to the finance company for them to contact you for more details you need to know. Thanks. From Ms. Nina Kunal, the full data that they are asking for is my bank account routing number, social security number, or whatever else I would care to give to this person so that they can rip me off. How many of you have ever received an email like this? This one comes from, I suppose, the Ivory Coast. I've received many of them like this myself, most of them from Nigeria. This is what's called the 419 scam. It's quite common, as you are well aware. Periodically, you get one of these. I certainly hope none of you have given them your full data transferred in any form. Unfortunately, people have. People have been scammed by rip-off artists like this, and it has happened. It's called a 419 scam. There was an article about this and other scams two weeks ago in the Well Street Journal, and there was a picture of someone from Nigeria who was being prosecuted for having perpetrated one of these scams on actually not an individual, but a bank in Brazil and made off with $242 million. It doesn't give the details of it, but these things work. That's why they keep flowing them out, and people fall for it out of whatever reason. So that's called the 419 scam. Just don't ever get involved in one is obviously the thing. In recent weeks, we've been made aware of another type of fraud that was perpetrated, a little different fraud that hit a lot of very wealthy, influential people when a Wall Street financier by the name of Bernard Madoff got caught or came to light that his investment company was nothing more than a Ponzi scheme. A Ponzi scheme, how many of you know what a Ponzi scheme is?

It's essentially what Bernard Madoff was doing. He was drawing billions, possibly upwards of $50 billion, perhaps, will be the final figure here, but he had skimmed and scammed billions of dollars from people into his particular investment company promising big returns, and it turns out that it was not that the money who knows where the money went.

The way a Ponzi scheme works is that I persuade you to invest in my company, let's say $100, and I promise you 25% return. Sounds too good to be true, doesn't it? Well, I start giving you 25% dividends on your investment, but instead of investing that money, I'm doing something else with it, and I'm paying you the dividend out of additional people who I convince to give me their money for the same amount of return, and it goes on down the line like that. And the only way that continues to be maintained is through the ability of my ability to convince people, to defraud people, in essence, but to convince them to give me their money, and I continue to give them returns, but I have to get other people to flow money into the fund to keep it alive.

And that money's not being invested, it's not building up wealth or capital, it is being siphoned off or wasted, and it's able to exist only because more people are defrauded in the scheme. This is what Bernie Madoff was doing, and that's the essence of a Ponzi scheme that was named after a guy named Charles Ponzi who first did this, or at least came to light with it.

Someone told me, or I read this the other day, someone said that we are all victims of the world's biggest Ponzi scheme. You know what that is? Social Security. Social Security. The world's biggest Ponzi scheme. That's another subject in itself. Bernard Madoff was able to do this with some very wealthy, influential, and intelligent people. These were people who had millions of dollars, who wanted more money, and were convinced that his fund was the one to invest in. It's an interesting story that the Wall Street Journal in this article two weeks ago went into detail about it, and the title of the article was Anatomy of Gullibility, Why We Keep Falling for Financial Scams.

The author of the article had actually invested some of his money with Bernard Madoff and lost it. It's an interesting article. It's written from a rather thick, heavy, psychological point of view as to the psychology of why people fall for these scams. It was worth reading about it.

Bernard Madoff is Jewish, and most of the people that he scammed were very wealthy Jews from Manhattan. Steven Spielberg, the producer, is one of those. A lot of foundations, Jewish foundations, cultural and humanitarian foundations were part of his fraud as well, and many of them will go out of business because they lost millions of dollars. So it's a rather far-reaching scandal that we'll read more about as it develops over the coming months.

More information comes out. But this article was bringing out the fact that as the author, who himself had been taken in for various reasons, he talks a lot about the gullibility of people. And he says, in my own case, the decision to invest in one of Bernard Madoff's funds reflected my profound ignorance of finance and my somewhat lazy unwillingness to remedy that ignorance.

This is an intelligent person, well-educated, but he had more money than what he knew what to do with, I guess, and he wanted to make more money. And it was easy to give the money to Bernard Madoff and let him do the driving, to be like Greyhound Bus was for years, leave the driving to us. He said, I had come up with the idea of identifying more financially knowledgeable advisers and trusting in their judgment and recommendations.

In other words, they had too good a thing going to entertain the idea that it all might be about to crumble. He relied on experts, and so many of the others did as well. They relied on experts who were supposed to know more than they did and did know more than they did in terms of the way the financial systems work, and they trusted them.

And they were gullible, and they lost many of them millions of dollars. This is a major financial deception, and that's what I want to talk about today. Not financial deception, but deception. And how and why deception occurs and what it means to us and how we can avoid it, certainly on a spiritual level.

The Bible has a great deal to talk about and to say about this matter of deception. Jesus had a great deal to say about it. If you'll turn over to Matthew 24, you will find where He had some very pointed things to say. In fact, this Olivet prophecy has a number of things to say about deception. It is a key theme in this sermon, this prophetic sermon that Jesus gave when the disciples asked Him what would be the signs of the end of the age and of Your coming in Matthew 24. We are all familiar with this chapter, this prophecy.

And I've been going through it a lot, doing some writing on it, doing some Beyond Today programs on it, in the midst of a series of Beyond Today programs on this very chapter. But I want to focus on what Jesus said here in regards to deception, because it has some teaching for us in this way. It's not something that we need to ignore or think just because we have the truth, we're converted, we have God's Spirit, that we are not prayed to be deceived in any way today or in the future, especially on a spiritual level. But down in Matthew 24 here and in verse 4, as Jesus began to answer their question, what would be the signs of the end of the age and of Your coming? He answered in verse 4, and He said, Take heed that no one deceives you, for many will come in thy name, saying, I am the Christ, and will deceive many. This is the first sign that He gave, and it also is a parallel to the first horseman of Revelation 6, the white horse that had a man sitting on it with a bow and went out to conquer and to conquer, to deceive. It is speaking about religious deception. He is saying here, beware of those who come saying, I am, they come in My name saying, I am the Christ. They come to represent, they represent Christ. They claim to teach as Christ taught, and they don't. He's saying, they're wolves in sheep's clothing, to use another term later on. But He says, beware of them. He said, there will be deceptions, and it will be in My name. Now that is obviously the first and primary aspect of deception here. But when you look at this in a broader context, it's more than just, let's say, false Christian religion. That's primary. We've talked many times about how the truth of God was lost, and a false gospel, and a false Christianity arose. That's all part of it. But there's a broader focus as well. That is a spiritual deception, is really what He's talking about. You can be deceived by something that is non-Christian in terms of philosophy or faith. How many non-Christian religions are there in our world today that deceive people into thinking that that is the teaching about life and about the purpose and the meaning of existence? Quite a bit. Islam does not accept Jesus, and yet it holds sway over billions of people in the world today. Buddhism, Hinduism, other forms of world religions are not Christian, but they deceive. People can be deceived with witchcraft, with sorcery, other forms of occult teachings. Spiritual deception really is at the heart of Jesus' teaching here. And the deception that comes from hiding the knowledge about God, about life, and in all things that are spiritual. I talked in my beginning about a financial type of deception, obviously. That is quite prominent today and has always been a part of human life as well. That's another form of deception. We can deceive ourselves even personally in our relationships. Deception takes many different forms. We can think we want to be happy with this person and convince ourselves that this is the one person we need to live with. And we truly think that's the case and marry that person and find out otherwise that that's not the person that's going to make us happy or we are compatible with. We can deceive ourselves. Or we can allow ourselves to be deceived by another person's charms, talk, promises. How often has that happened? So we can be deceived in personal relationships.

We can let ourselves be deceived. We can deceive ourselves the way we think. It's quite a prominent matter. But Jesus talks about it here a great deal. Down in verse 11 of Matthew 24, He says, Then many prophets will rise up and deceive many. So here He comes back to the thought again of spiritual deception through false teachers. And He says, Because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will wax, will grow cold, iniquity and sin, and the inability to tell right from wrong. Lawlessness takes many different forms, but He says that that will abound at the end of the age, and the love of many will grow cold. So this is wrapped up again here in this particular section. So what do we learn from this? What can we apply to this? Deception can saturate a society. And Jesus here is giving us a picture of the end of the age when sin and lawlessness is abundant, and many are deceived. And a love for God, a love for the truth, a love for one another, a proper human love, grows cold. It takes many different forms and manifestations in society today. But what happens when deception, a spirit of deception, an attitude of deception saturates a society? What happens? What can we learn? Is there something else from the Bible that we can turn to to help us understand this? I think there is. And you might put your ribbon or a marker here in Matthew 24.

We'll come back to it. But let's go back to an episode back in the Old Testament. In 1 Kings 22, I want to point out something that took place in the history of Israel that I think can give us insight into what happens when a society is saturated with deception.

What takes place? Something that we should learn. 1 Kings 22 is set in the days of Elijah, the prophet. Ahab is the king of Israel and Jehoshaphat is the king of Judah. So it's the time when the two nations exist after the separation. But you remember King Ahab, he was the one married to Jezebel. And Jezebel was a Phoenician. She brought in the worship of Baal and other gods. And to be a prophet of God, you had to go underground in Israel during that day. You remember prior to this scene in chapter 22, Elijah has already confronted the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel, rained down fire from heaven and destroyed them.

And that dramatic scene there. But Elijah fled and at this particular point he kind of goes off stage. He's not front and center on the scene. Ahab is still king. A few years pass from the time of Ahab and or Elijah confronting the prophets of Baal. And Ahab and Jehoshaphat engage in an alliance to go to war against Syria. Let's just quickly look beginning in verse 1 of 1 Kings 22. It says, three years passed without war between Syria and Israel. And it came to pass in the third year that Jehoshaphat went down to visit the king of Israel. And the king of Israel, which is Ahab, he said to his servants, do you know that remote in Gilead is ours, but we hesitate to take it out of the hand of the king of Syria. Gilead was to the north and west of where the kingdom of Israel was. It was beyond Jordan to the east of the Jordan River. And it was at that time in the hand of the foreign king of Syria. And Ahab, in verse 4, said to Jehoshaphat, will you go with me to fight at remote Gilead? And Jehoshaphat said, I am as you are, my people is your people, my horses are your horses. So Jehoshaphat and Ahab form an alliance for this particular engagement. And yet Jehoshaphat says, as they're having this council, he said to Ahab, look, in verse 5, please inquire for the word of the Lord today. In other words, let's see if God is behind this.

What is God's will? Remember Jehoshaphat and Judah, they had the temple in Jerusalem. They still had the Levitical priesthood. There was a greater preponderance, let's say, of the truth, to use the term we're familiar with, in Judah and allegiance to God than there was in Israel at this time.

Not that even Judah was completely perfect, but at least Jehoshaphat knew enough to say, we better go to God. Is there a prophet of God here? The king of Israel gathered his prophets together, and these were about 400 men, and he said to them, should we go up to remote Gilead, or shall I stay back? And their answer in unison was, go up, for the Lord will deliver it into the hand of the king.

Now, these prophets of the king of Israel were not the true prophets of God. They were the prophets of the foreign religion of Baal. And Jehoshaphat said, is there still not a prophet of the Lord here that we might ask of him, inquire of him? He wasn't convinced. He didn't recognize the word of these prophets.

So, Ahab, the king of Israel, said to Jehoshaphat, well, there's still one man. His name is Micaiah, the son of Imla, by whom we may inquire of the Lord. And by that he's referring to Yaveh. But I hate him. He doesn't say good things about me. I don't like him. He's been banished.

So, he only has bad things to say. You know, if you know how you turn the TV off or the radio off, or you just shut out someone that doesn't bring you good news, and this is what had happened here. And so, the king of Israel, Jehoshaphat, says, well, don't say such things. Don't talk like that.

The king of Israel said to his officer, to one of his staff, bring Micaiah, the son of Imla, quickly. And so, the king of Israel and Jehoshaphat, the king of Judah, having put on their robes, they each sat in the throne at the threshing floor at the gate of Samaria. And all the prophets prophesied before them, all these other prophets.

Zedekiah, the son of Kaniyya, had made horns of iron, and he went through his little song and dance here. They were all essentially backing up Ahab, because they knew which side their bread was buttered on, and they were encouraging him to go up and to get engaged in this battle. The messenger down in verse 13 that had been sent to Micaiah told him, said, look, listen, the words of the prophets are with one accord. They encourage the king. In other words, they've taken a poll. The polls show that everyone's supportive of this. So, please let your word be like the word of one of them. Speak encouragement. This is what he's whispering before they go in. Micaiah says, as the Lord lives, whatever the Lord says to me, that I will speak. So, he couldn't be bought off. He couldn't have his mind changed. So, he came to the king, and the king said to him, Micaiah, shall we go to war against remote Gilead, or shall we refrain? And he answered him, go and prosper, for the Lord will deliver it into the hand of the king. So, the king said to him, how many times shall I make you swear that you tell me nothing but the truth in the name of the Lord? It's a bit cynical in his approach here. And the prophet said, then, verse 17, I saw all Israel scattered on the mountains as sheep that have no shepherd. He kind of gives a summation of the times here. This is a social commentary. This is what I see. This is the state of the nation of Israel. The people are like sheep with no shepherd, and they're scattered. There's no vision. There's no focus. The truth is not here. These have no master. Let each return to his house in peace is the word that God really says. And the king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, did I not tell you that he would not prophesy good concerning me but evil?

And Micaiah said, in verse 19, this is where he really kicks in his message. Therefore, hear the word of the Lord. This is then coming through the prophet from God. He said, I saw the Lord sitting on his throne, so he's referring to a vision that he had, and all the hosts of heaven standing by on his right hand and on his left. And the Lord said, Who will persuade Ahab to go up, that he may fall at remote Gilead?

So one spoke in this manner, and another spoke in that manner. It's a scene of God taking counsel, it seems, of the angelic hosts and the spirits that are there. Verse 21 then tells us a very strange feature of this. A spirit came forward and stood before the Lord and said, I will persuade him.

I will persuade him. I will persuade Ahab to go and do this. Now, you have to understand the context is that God had basically written Ahab off, as far as the long term was concerned. God was not supporting Ahab because of his wickedness. And the spirit comes forward, and it has to be an evil spirit in whatever way they had access to God's throne. And the Lord said to him in verse 22, in what way? So he said, I will go out and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all of his prophets.

A lying spirit, a deceptive spirit, a fraudulent spirit. I will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all of his prophets. Now, you have scenes in the book of Revelation, especially in chapter 16, of at a time when out of the mouth of the dragon will go a number of different spirits to the kings of the world, the leaders of the nations, to deceive them at the time of the battle in Armageddon. So that is a scene that in a sense can be connected to this to show us that God allows Satan to work and evil spirits to work, putting lying thoughts, proclamations, ideas, plans into leaders, and into, in this case, the prophets, to lead the leader to a wrong decision, to accomplish God's purpose.

And sometimes it's a little bit complicated to understand it all. And on the other hand, it's not all that complicated as we read through this story and just take it for what it says. And so God said, you will persuade him and also prevail. Go out and do so.

Therefore, look in verse 23. This is Micaiah saying to Ahab, the Lord has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these prophets of yours, and the Lord has declared disaster against you. Now, this gives us a little bit of insight. Again, keep in mind the society and the culture. Israel had abandoned the faith, the true God, and long since had other altars been erected in the land and sacrificed to gods that kind of looked like God. And after the Jezebel came in and brought her particular cults of Baal and the influences there, the land was given over to a deceptive spirit that reached from the palace all the way through.

This vision that Micaiah says that he had of the people in Israel in verse 17, scattered on the mountains as sheep that have no shepherd, speaks to a deception and a visionless people because of the religion, the false religion, the deceptive religion that was within the land at that time, throughout the land. You have to go back to the scene on Mount Carmel and Elijah and recognize Elijah's role and place in the story and why he came on the scene at this particular time.

And really meditate for a moment to think about why this scene is and what it's telling us. This is more than just a famine of water for three days, for three years, and Elijah going through a calling fire down from heaven on Mount Carmel. It's far more than that. It is a great deal of deception throughout the land, throughout society. And when that happens to a culture – this is a microcosm of our world today, is the point – when that happens, people cannot tell right from wrong. People look at something that is spiritual and try to gain solace from it, try to gain understanding and wisdom and understanding in terms of life, God, the purpose of being and all.

And yet they are trusting in lying spirits. They're trusting in deceptive ideas. They're trusting in that which is not, and all that was a part of that at that time. This was the context in Israel when Elijah came on the scene and did his work of turning the hearts of the children back to the Father.

One thing you should understand about that concept that Malachi talks about, that's not talking about child-rearing. That's talking about turning the hearts of the children back to the Father in the sense of a spiritual sense of people being turned back to God and to the covenant and to the relationship with God through repentance, a whole people.

Sometimes in the past we have allocated that toward the principle about child-rearing, and that's secondary at best. That's not the primary meeting of Malachi, that statement in Malachi, in the work of Elijah coming to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children. Look at the story of Elijah, and Elijah didn't go around preaching child-rearing sermons.

Elijah was turning the hearts of people back to God, and that's what that verse means, because God was not in the land. And this scene here that we have in 1 Kings 22 is a scene of just how much deception there was in the land, and when it came to the knowledge of the true God, his laws and his ways. There was a twilight on the land. A twilight. Not quite darkness, not quite light. You can see the shadows, you can make out something in the distance, but you're not quite certain what it is. That's what twilight is, that moment or moments before total darkness from the full light of day. You can see forms and shadows, but you can't see clearly. There was a twilight on the land in the days of Elijah because of spiritual deception. A gross spiritual deception. That is one of the key reasons for Elijah's work in the ministry that he was called to do. It was a deception, and that is what we are reading about here in 1 Kings 22, and it helps us to understand something about what Jesus was talking about back in Matthew 24 regarding the deception of the time of the end of the age. He says, many will come in my name saying, I am the Christ. Christ was really speaking to a much larger problem of deception.

Beyond the Protestant church on the street that claims to be teaching about Christ, but is teaching a different gospel. Yes, that's what he's talking about, but there is far more deception in our land today than just that. We live in a time when people cannot discern right from wrong because their deception has led them to so many erroneous ideas that any idea of spirituality is valid.

People are making all kinds of pronouncements, and there are many voices getting a little bit more attention because as we head toward Tuesday's inaugural ceremony of President-elect Obama, people are raising the issue that he shouldn't be putting his hand on a Bible and saying, so help me God at the end of the inaugural oath, and controversy over the prayer that will be given by whomever. In this particular case, I guess Rick Warren is going to be giving the prayer, but the discussion again gets to, we're in a pluralistic, diverse world in society, and calling upon God at the inauguration might offend those who are not Christian or those that are Jewish or Islamic. And so there's this heightened concern. I don't know what will happen on Tuesday in terms of what will be said. I don't think there's going to deviate too much from the traditions of the past. But again, the discussion just points again to the nature of our society today. Yes, there are other ideas out there, and people want those entertained and appreciated, even at the highest level of the inaugural ceremony, the President of the United States. It's just a testimony to the deception that is out there. When we go back to Matthew 24, Christ had one other comment to make about deception in verse 23. He said in verse 23 of Matthew 24, Then if anyone says to you, Look, here is the Christ, or there do not believe it. For false Christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. This has always been kind of an enigmatic verse to look at and to try to wonder, How can the elect, and the elect are talking about the people of God, the people of God, the converted children of God, at the time of the end of the age, the Church certainly would be included in this. And Christ says that great signs, great wonders to deceive, from false Christs as well as false prophets, which puts it beyond false Christianity, to include any deceptive spiritual teaching that is there, about any aspect of Spiritism, spirituality, or whatever. I was fooling around on the Internet last night, and I was looking. I get these little messages from Apple Computer and iTunes that are highlighting things on their iTunes website, various programs and podcasts, and not just music, but educational courses. They sent out one yesterday, and it came into my inbox about the spirituality corner of the iTunes website. You can subscribe to different podcasts and messages from various ministers, rabbis, and religious people. And there was one they had from Oprah, the Oprah network. And it was an audio and video. I said, I don't want to see what she's doing, because I don't watch Oprah on a regular basis. I don't watch Oprah on an irregular basis either. But I was curious as to what she was doing. So it was a video. It was a video webcast. It was the recent one that she did, and I watched the first three or four minutes of it. And hearing this big white, very cheery, but it kind of looked like Superman's Fortress of Solitude. The studio that she had set up, and she was sitting there, and she had three other guests.

And this was a webcast that had been done live, and it was recorded, and it was on the Internet to download. And she had a, I think it was an Episcopal ministry, he had a collar on. Some woman, some other guy with dreadlocks on, and he represented one brand of spirituality. It wasn't a church. And this woman was kind of a, I just for lack of a better term, I called her agnostic after I listened to her ideas.

And then they had this other minister, and Oprah was conducting this panel discussion. And I listened to the first three or four minutes of it, and she had a, she took a deep cleansing breath. They wouldn't open with prayer, they had a moment of silence. And then they took a, let's all take a deep cleansing breath. And so they closed their eyes, and they, I'm watching this, I'm saying, this is an intelligent woman. She's quite successful, and she's putting this stuff out. And I'm sure, I know it's quite successful in terms of a lot of people are watching this. And I said, you know, and she was sitting at a desk, and it was all so surreal as to what she was doing. And I didn't want to get in, I didn't have time to get into the rest of the message. But that's a very dominant form of spirituality today. And her particular form of spirituality transcends gender, transcends race, transcends religion, and is quite popular. I understand that. I'm not, she's pretty smart, as well as pretty wealthy. But this is, that's just one part of it. I mean, there were dozens of other programs that you could subscribe to, download to your, what do we call those things? iPods. Or iPhones. I got three of them, why do I forget? And listen to, but that's all part of what is out there in the market, in the marketplace. And then there's some pretty strong occultic influences, too. I was reading in USA Today that during the recent holiday season, you know what the dominant selling book was? 20% of all book sales during the recent holiday season was from one author. Anybody know who that author might be? Nope. Stephanie Meyer. Stephanie Meyer. Who knows who Stephanie Meyer is and what she writes?

She's written four novels on teenage vampire romance. And it's basically the idea that this teenage high school setting and this girl falls in love with a guy, and he's a vampire. He's a good looking vampire. And he's from a family of vampires. They're all foster children of another vampire. And he's a doctor, or the father of vampires. A doctor. Convenient for a vampire. But these are the rage. The first novel's been made into a very successful movie. And I would like to see the movie, but then I don't really want to put that stuff into my mind. I picked up a book at the library that was talking about it, and the movie and the book series, and I read through that just to kind of get the synopsis. And it's a very, very well done movie. And the pictures, and I can see why it, I understand why teenage girls, especially, are attracted to it. And boys too, I suppose. I have to digress for a minute. I will admit, when I was a kid, that I went to the movie to see Dracula when it came to the theater. This was in the late 60s. We didn't have DVDs, Netflix, or the Internet, so you wanted to see something, you got to go to the theater. They re-released that 1930s movie, and it came to the theater. And it's all with a bunch of friends. We went to see it one night. And it was packed. The theater was packed. And I'd read about the movie culturally for years, and so I had to go see it. And I'm not going to ask you if you've seen it. You probably have. That's fine. When the first scene in the movie came on, when Dracula was shown, Bela Lugosi, he was at, I think, the bottom of the stairs. It wasn't Rhett Butler at the bottom of the stairs, but it was Bela Lugosi, and he was looking at his intended, or whatever.

And that was the first scene in the movie when you see Count Dracula. And he's got this dramatic pose, and he's looking, and it fills the screen. And when it came on, the whole audience in this theater where I was, the whole audience with one voice erupted in laughter. I'm serious. This was 1968. It was a joke. It was a joke. I mean, it was comic. And of course, you know, that image of vampires, you know, was laughed at through the 70s on Sesame Street with the Count. And it became a comic joke. As I was looking at the pictures of this latest iteration of vampires through the Stephenie Meyer's book and movies, it's not anything to laugh at. There's nothing comic about it.

The deception has taken a different turn, and it is very alluring. And that's why there's the big book sales and the movie sales. And I can see, I can just see from the pictures in this particular oversized book that I was looking at, that that is alluring. And I want to do some writing on it, and you ought to at least read some of the stuff before you write on it or see it.

And I thought, I don't have the time. I don't want to get my mind immersed into this, so I'll go see the movie. Then I thought, no, I don't really want to see the movie either, because I don't like putting that stuff into my mind. So I don't know what to do. Maybe some of you have some suggestions about that. But what really has appalled me is to realize and to find out here that so many of our teens in the church and young people are reading that stuff and are just absorbed with it. And I just, I stand here, I guess, I still, I have the ability to be shocked. After 35 years in this job, I still have the ability to be shocked. And I know that the Harry Potter series was gobbled up as well in the same way.

And I worry that if Satan was able to deceive people on the Sabbath in the Holy Days in God in the mid-1990s in the church, where will the next deception come from, and how? Where will it work? If we are not exercising our senses to discern between right and wrong, good and evil, righteousness and unrighteousness, then this particular verse will be ripe to be fulfilled as the times progress and our society continues to be caught up in deception. And we can't kid ourselves that just because we have God's Spirit, just because we are in the church, we can't be deceived again. We can't lapse into deception. We can't. That's why Christ talks about it here. That's why there are other warnings about deception through the Scriptures for us to learn from and hopefully heed. Let me quickly go through a few points to purge deception. How to purge deception from some scriptural teaching that I think we all are well reminded about.

1. It is important to love the truth and to love truth. The truth, the doctrines, the teachings that we call in house the truth, but also just to love truth and things that are pure, things that are good, things that are right and noble and pure. 2. To cling to the true teachings. In 2 Thessalonians 2, I won't turn there, I'll just refer to it, but it talks about another time of deception to come when a man of sin will be revealed. And it talks about loving the truth, having a love of the truth. We have to continually for the faith, we have to value the truth. Don't ever get to the point where you undervalue the truth. And we think that the Sabbath or the Holy Days, the knowledge of God and His personhood and who Christ is, and these elements that we have defined as our doctrinal truths, don't ever get to the point where we undervalue those. At times, because of our struggles and our personal trials, there is a need and an inclination for us to want something else. We want to be encouraged, and we need to be encouraged. And we, ladies and men, as we read the various books that are part of the book clubs, and we find sources of teaching and encouragement, they all have their value and they have their place. And what I'm saying is, understand that as we seek and go to gain encouragement, inspiration, whatever, it's all got to funnel right back into the truth.

It's all got to come back to that. And nothing at any time should ever cause us to undervalue the trunk of the tree truths.

And I don't discount our need to grow in knowledge and to grow in grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Just always have to be vigilant and be careful that we don't let ourselves get deceived and be deceived.

The first step toward deception is to discount the truth in all of its forms. The truth and truth.

Which leads me to the second point. Avoid all that is false.

Avoid false people. False people. Who would lie? Who would deceive? Who would manipulate?

2 Timothy 2 Verse 16 Paul warns to shun profane and idle babblings, for they will increase to more ungodliness.

Stay away from idle and vain profane babblings. Things that are not true. Teachings, sayings, ideas, philosophies. Anything that is not true. Anything that promotes ungodliness. In any form, in any guise, stay away from it. Avoid it. That's what he says. Shun it like an ommishman shuns those who leave the Amish faith, which we're all familiar with around here.

Have nothing to do with it. Even go to, as they would, eat on different plates.

The Amish, if they do come around one who's been shunned, they won't eat from the same plates and dishes that they eat from.

Shunning is an interesting art, if you're familiar with it.

But shun it. Leave it. Don't have anything to do with that which is false. That which promotes ungodliness.

Number three is to stir the Spirit. Stir up God's Spirit, back in chapter 1 and verse 6 here in 2 Timothy.

Paul says, I remind you to stir up the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands.

Stir up the gift of God. Stir it up, the Spirit of Truth. Because it is that Spirit of Truth that will lead us into all the truth, Christ said in John 16.

The Spirit of Truth will lead us to all truth. God's Spirit shuns ungodliness. It has nothing to do with that which is false.

So keep that stirred up and ask God to help us use it to discern and to understand when we are being enticed, being influenced, being moved by that which is false.

And then finally, pray not to be deceived. There is a specific prayer that is offered here in Psalms, Psalm 120.

To not be deceived, Psalm 120. Psalm 120.

In verse 1.

Psalm 120 in verse 1. It says, In my distress I cried to the Lord, and he heard me.

Deliver my soul, O Lord, from lying lips and from a deceitful tongue.

This is a prayer for deliverance from deception.

Just two short verses. But it could make a good prayer for us to remember that God would keep us from a deceitful tongue. From things that are not true. From things and people, ideas that are false.

Love the truth, avoid what is false, stir up God's spirit, and pray not to be deceived.

Christ is very concerned that his people in the time of the end of the age would not be caught up in the deceptions of that period.

We can see from the history of Israel how a culture and a society and a people can be immersed in deception by lying spirits that go out to deceive.

If we can avoid that, we can make sure that we are going to be among the elect that do endure and avoid that deception at the time of the end. It's very important. Pray and ask God to help us all hold and cling to things that are true and not be deceived.