Logical Fallacies Refuted in the Bible

We have some of the children going now to the Sabbath school. It's nice to see them have their Sabbath classes while we have our Sabbath class here for the adults and younger teens. I see Steve and Shailie. It's really nice to have her here, too. There is a deep truth in one of the scriptures that has always gotten my attention. It's in Proverbs 23, verse 7. It simply says, For as he thinks in his heart, so is he. So the way we think can determine how we act. A person actually consists of the thoughts that he develops, that he has a habit of creating, and it's going to determine a lot of the decisions we make and the actions that we take. If our thinking is off base, so will our conclusions and decisions be as well. We may have to pay very dearly if our thoughts go off on a tangent, go off and lead us into something that we shouldn't be getting involved in.

And to me, this was an important subject when I came into the Church as a young man.

I was called by God. God opened my mind to his truths. But I didn't have a clue how to think, how to manage my thoughts, how to develop them.

I didn't want to be impulsive and let my thoughts just go wherever they wanted to. No, I wanted them to be like horses that you can tame and train and guide. I didn't know how.

I even read a book called The Art of Thinking by Ernest Demnae. I thought, maybe he has some good ideas on how to think properly. It was helpful, but it didn't really advance me very much. But it made me aware there are ways of training your thoughts to help you along the way in life so your thoughts don't guide you. You can guide your thoughts.

And so one of the main problems we have is that people are not taught how to think properly in school, colleges. Many times they don't give you much help. They can teach you different subjects, but not how to think correctly and to do it where you will end up with skill and success because your thoughts are guided. They're managed. You can focus and pick between the good thoughts and the bad thoughts.

Now, one of the things that have helped me in life is understanding that there are what they call logical fallacies, ways of thinking that are incorrect, that are illogical, that many times people will use to deceive and to fool others. And so if you're aware of that strategy, aware of the deceit involved, you won't be tricked. And so that to me was very valuable to learn how there are ways to persuade people in the wrong manner using what is called these logical fallacies. Now, I want to define what a fallacy is. Fallacy is a wrong way of thinking. They are errors in our reasoning that undermine logic of an argument. In other words, it becomes illogical. It's something that is not correct, but it is given in such a way that it can fool a person. The word fallacy comes from the Latin, which means to deceive. And so we don't want to be deceived by others. So it's important to know if you are going to develop right thinking, is what are these pitfalls that you can fall into if you are not careful?

It is important to be able to refute these wrong ways of thinking because Satan uses them to deceive people. And humans use these wrong ways of thinking to deceive, too.

Look at the politics today. Constantly, we are seeing ways of trying to persuade others that really don't hold water. If you understand what those fallacies, those deceitful ways, then you can discard them. You will not be fooled by them. And I find that to be so valuable. I remember developing maybe 40 years ago what is the art of reading, which is to actively read a book, not passively. You can just read a book, listen to what it's telling you, and then just sort of forget it. When I take a book, to me, I'm in a struggle with the author asking him, how can you prove this, what you just said? What is your basis for this? Oh, I put a question mark here. That's not well-substantiated. That is not well-supported. And I'll put a question mark, and I will underline what the important points are. In other words, I am engaging the author and saying, you're going to have to convince me. I'm not going to swallow what you're saying. And so after years of this, you learn to discern, to discriminate or distinguish what people are writing. You're not going to just fall for anything they say. But again, it takes active listening and active reading in order to apply these tools in our thinking processes. Notice what the Apostle Paul said in 2 Corinthians chapter 2 verse 11. 2 Corinthians chapter 2 in verse 11. He says, he's talking here about a situation in the church. And then he says in verse 11, lest Satan should take advantage of us, for we are not ignorant of his devices. Term devices and other translations is given as schemes or tactics, his tricks, that we should not be ignorant of the way he tricks people and he wants to trick us. So if you're aware of these logical fallacies, these wrong ways of thinking that people try to convince you of something through those, then you're going to refute. You're going to defend yourself and you're going to reject their persuasive attitudes. In Revelation chapter 12, we see that Satan is the master schemer. He has all kinds of tricks to try to deceive us. He uses all of these logical fallacies to try to persuade us. And we're going to look at some examples in the Bible over these logical fallacies and how the Bible refutes them. In Revelation chapter 12 in verse 9, it talks about Satan. It says in verse 9, So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, the one that was in the garden of Eden, called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world. So he's done quite a job using these wrong ways of thinking, all of these ways of tricking people.

Coming up with tactics, he says, he was cast to the earth and his angels were cast out with him. In verse 14, I mean, verse 4 of this chapter, it tells us that the dragon took a third of the stars. And in Revelation, stars is one of the symbols for angels. Revelation 1.20 tells us that the stars are symbolic of angels. And here in verse 4, it talks about the dragon pulling with him that was thrown to the earth a third of his angels. So those angels that were with him, they were deceived. He was able to deceive all of them with his trickery, with his persuasion, and he has deceived mankind with all of this, these deceits, these schemes. So it is important for us to be aware of wrong type of thinking. So if somebody tries to pull the wool over your eyes, tries to deceive you, you say, oh no, I know that trick. I'm not going to fall for it.

In Jeremiah 17.9, it tells us it's not just the Satan who uses these tricks on people to persuade and to fool them. Human beings.

In Jeremiah 17 verse 9, it says, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? God answers, I, the Lord, search the heart. I test the mind, even to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit or the result of his doings. And so it tells us that our minds, if we allow our thoughts to go that way, we can use them to deceive people, to turn them from God's ways into man's ways, and it has happened throughout time. We are not immune to this, but if we know some of these tricks that he uses, we can also realize how to overcome them. Notice in Ephesians chapter 4, well, this is the goal. The Apostle Paul was always educating the churches where he served, getting them to be aware, don't fall for wrong types of thinking or people that use deception. He says in Ephesians chapter 4 and verse 11, it says, and he talking about Christ gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers. So he chooses among the congregation who is going to be given different responsibilities. It's not something that we should seek.

We should all seek to be good members, faithful, loyal, participating, and then God will give us responsibilities. He will give us chances to serve him in different ways, but we have to be faithful and constant if we want to be used more by God. It says in verse 12, the purpose for giving these different positions is for the equipping of the saints, for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God to a perfect man. This means a spiritually mature person knows how to use the thoughts. He knows how to use the mind also in actions, how to carry them out properly. We come to the unity of the faith, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. That is the goal, to come to think as Christ would with his thoughts, his attitudes, when we come up with different actions that we face. How are we going to handle the situations? It says that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro. This is talking about being immature, spiritually immature, that we're still going back and forth. We're just tossed by different attitudes and thoughts, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine. People are not anchored. They listen here for a while. Oh no, then I'm gonna go and look, it's okay. Check things out. We don't have a problem with that, but also make a decision where you're going to sink your roots, not be rootless, because a plant that is rootless is not going to thrive. You have to sink your roots deep in the sand or in the ground. Goes on to say that by the trickery of men in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, they're not able to discern who's saying what's truthful and not using and twisting the truth and trying to persuade through emotional appeal or through what we're going to see these different fallacies, because they're very powerful. If you let them catch you and captivate you, it's very hard to resist them once you've opened yourself to them. It says, but speaking the truth in love. Yes, being truthful with the right loving attitude behind it, they may grow up in all things into him who is the head. Christ, growing up, he is the goal. It's not the minister. It's who the minister is directing the people to, equipping them with the tools to better discern, to better emotionally and spiritually mature themselves. He says, from whom the whole body, talking about the church, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, everybody cooperating according to the effective working by which every part does its chair, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love. So we are all part of the work. We're part of the body, and we have responsibilities to serve, to do our part, whatever it is that God calls.

And so that is the goal. And now, for the rest of the message, let's see three of those examples that I mentioned about these logical fallacies in the Bible. I can only cover three because of the lack of time, but these are three of the most common fallacies out of about 25.

25 wrong ways of thinking, and I went over them a bit last night, and just about every case of these logical fallacies, the wrong ways of thinking. I could find examples in the Bible where people were fooled and deceived through them. So the Bible gives many examples. I'm just going to highlight three of these logical fallacies. This means wrong ways of thinking that people accept, and they fall into them. Let's go to Genesis chapter 3. Probably this is the first logical fallacy that we find in the Bible. Genesis chapter 3 has to do with Adam and Eve, so there's not any way we can go back further as far as human beings are concerned. We know the angels, a third of them, were deceived through all of these schemes that Satan set up for them, that they fell, and as they say, they swallowed it, you know, hook, line, and sinker. These angels, they really made the most atrocious mistake they could have following these wrong ways of thinking. But here's the first one. It happened to Eve. Satan was a perpetrator. He was the deceiver. She fell for his logical fallacy. Let's see. In Genesis 3 verse 10, talking about...

Oh, I'm sorry. Genesis 3 verse 1. We're going to go to verse 10 later, but let's go to Genesis 3.1. It says, Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord had made. God did not choose to manifest Satan as a fallen angel that looks like a dragon. He probably would have scared Eve to death. She never would have heard him. So he took the guise of an animal, and angels, they can possess animals. We've seen them in the Bible. Balaam's donkey actually was possessed by an angel and talked to Balaam at a case. But going back to this, it was Satan talking there, and he said to the woman, Has God indeed said, You shall not eat of every tree of the garden? God had just spoken to Adam, and then Eve heard it as well, that you have everything you can eat in the garden except one tree. That is not your property. That's God's property. Don't trespass. Don't steal. I mean, God could have put barbed wire around the thing if He wanted to, but He said, No, I'm the authority. I'm telling you, don't do it. Everything else is available to you, including the tree of life. But Satan came along, and he framed this question for his advantage. So he framed it in a negative point of view. He says, So, he said, Has God indeed said, You shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

Now, technically, he was what is called the framing effect. The way he was saying it is he was leaving out the positive side. He didn't say, Well, God told you not to eat of this tree, but guess what? You have all the other trees to eat, and you're going to enjoy all the other ones. No, he left that out. Conveniently, he left out the positive part. So when you try to deceive a person, many times you use this first logical fallacy called the framing effect, just like you're framing a picture. See, you're leaving everything else out. What did Satan do? He made a picture in words pointing to the one tree in this whole beautiful garden. So she would focus on that. Oh, wouldn't you like to touch that tree? Wouldn't you like to eat of its fruit? And people are duped. And unfortunately, Eve was deceived. Now, we have to give her credit that whereas Satan framed it this way, she said here in the reply, verse 2, and the woman said to the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree, which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, you shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die. Okay, so in a sense, she broke that frame. She said, oh, God said we can eat the rest. But then she says, but we can't eat of this because we're going to die. And the implication was, you're going to die in the next instant. See, God didn't say how long it was going to take, but you are going to die because of the consequences. And so what did Satan do? As a clever lawyer type argument, he says, oh, okay, she didn't bite here with the focus on this tree. I'm going to focus on, you shall not die. You see, she doesn't know how long it's going to take because she's afraid she's going to die immediately. So I'm going to frame it that, no, you're not going to die at this moment. God didn't say how long it was going to take. And so she kind of said, well, you know what? He didn't say how long this was going to take. And then he put out the beautiful reward here. If you take of this, notice what he says.

Verse five, for God knows that in the day you eat of it, your eyes will be open, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. He says, you're going to receive extra knowledge that you don't have, and you're going to receive something that you should want. This is going to make you far more powerful. And so, again, the way Satan framed it, he made it look like it was going to be so positive for her, she forgot. She took Satan's word for it that she was not going to die. And guess what? And she took the fruit, and then she gave it to her husband. They began to die on that day because they could have had the tree of life, and they would not have died. So they had a choice, but this was going to be a death it was going to take a long time. But from that moment, you know what? Their lives began to count down to death, and that's the payment that they received. So Satan was wrong. They did die. The Bible tells us Adam and Eve did die. And so this is the framing effect that you have to be so careful.

You present or frame the argument to make it appealing by emphasizing what might appear attractive to the person and reasonable and leaving out the evidence against what they're doing. It's very common. This tactic is used by con artists. It's used by seducers.

The guy says, oh, I'm going to frame it. Oh, yeah, I'm in love with you. And, oh, I care so much for you. But I'm not interested in living with you the rest of my life and loving you. And the woman does, oh, he said so. And oh, see, they framed it in a very short-term thing. They fall for that guys and trick. Also, it is used in politics. You see the framing effect. It's a classic. What we're seeing today, here's one scene that they're questioning, and you'll see some, and they'll just frame it around everything that backs their idea, and they leave out the rest. Now, I think some are showing both sides. They're framing it more in plus and negatives, but there's one side that just, from what I have seen, they just are putting on the negative spin and never recognizing the other side to it. And so this is a way to deceive people by giving them partial information, not complete, not balanced, but just lopsided on one side.

Here's another case of framing the argument to your advantage that is found in the Bible. Notice in 2 Samuel chapter 15, this would be an interesting book to write one day, which is logical fallacies refuted in the Bible, because here we see a second one in 2 Samuel chapter 15. Starting in verse 1, this is a case of one of David's sons, who also did the framing, did the partial information to win over followers. Second Samuel chapter 15 verse 1, it says, after this it happened that Absalom provided himself with chariots and horses and 50 men to run before him. He wanted people to draw attention to himself. Now Absalom would rise early and stand beside the way to the gate. So it was whenever anyone who had a lawsuit came to the king for a decision that Absalom would call to him and say, what city are you from? And he would say, your servant is from such and such a tribe of Israel. Then Absalom would say to him, look, your case is good and right, but that there is no deputy or advocate of the king to hear you. And so before the person got to speak to David, Absalom would come and say, well, oh, here I am. I'm the king's son and I want to hear your case. And then he would always give the person the favor. As you know, in a lawsuit there's always two different sides, adversaries. They're trying to solve their case and win it, but he would sympathize. Whatever was the situation, maybe the person was absolutely wrong, but Absalom would say, no, you have a good case. You have a strong case. I believe you are right in this. Boy, that person really felt great having that support. It would go on and say, in verse four, moreover Absalom would say, oh, that I were made judge in the land and everyone who has any suit or cause would come to me, then I would give him justice, implying my father's not doing a good job. But if I were there, then you would get your cause defended. You would win your case. Verse five, and so it was whenever anyone came near to bow down to him that he would put out his hand and take him and kiss him. So he was the one that won the person over with his friendliness. Here's a prince of Israel, a very important person, and he was there embracing and kissing the person on the cheek and showing how much he really cared for him. See, he was framing everything to his advantage and against his own father. He was discrediting his father before the people.

Verse six, what was the result? In this manner, Absalon acted toward all Israel who came to the king for judgment. So you see, he didn't say, well, you don't have a good case here. I can't really back you. No, he backed everybody. So Absalon stole the hearts of the men of Israel. And so this is the way Satan deceives people, too. He gives them favor. He says, oh, it's God who wants to punish you. But me, I understand you. I would forgive you. And so you have a piece meant. You have kind of spoiling the child mentality here to win over the child. And so Absalon, once he had everybody in his pockets, he rebelled against his father and overthrew his father. And David had to flee with his men. So it's a very useful, very effective trick that is found in the Bible. But it's wrong.

So he sweet-talked the people, gave them what they wanted to hear, and made them feel vindicated. And we've seen it. Years in the church, people get pulled. Oh, people really care. Oh, this person really cares. He understands my case. And they'll steal the hearts of the people. And we know David was one of the greatest kings. He was one of the most caring. But you have somebody undermining him and deceiving people. Not using judgment to judge properly, but in order to curry favor.

Of course, again, modern politics has to do a lot with currying favor. Paying people off with jobs or with money or whatever it is, it's very sad. Doesn't mean then people are getting the righteous and faithful leaders that they need.

So Absalom is the second case. Even in Paul's day, he also warned the brethren, be careful of this framing effect. Notice in 2 Timothy chapter 4. 2 Timothy chapter 4.

This is a prophecy that became fulfilled and is still, to this day, being fulfilled. In 2 Timothy chapter 4 verse 1, Paul says, In other words, from God's word as the basis for things, to teach his laws and his ways, be ready in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, exhort, with all long suffering and teaching, for the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine. But according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers, and they will turn their ears away from the truth and be turned aside to fables. So again, the framing effect. Here come others and say, well, yeah, God's law is hard to keep, but here we have grace, and God gives us license to be able to break God's law. So don't worry about it. And God gives us authority to change the law. We can change days of the week. We can change holy days to others. You see, it's the way you are framing it. And some people, they want to get out of obeying God, of following him faithfully. And so you have all of these watered down versions that are just there for you. And they will promise you, oh, God doesn't really care that much whether you eat pork or not. Oh, you don't have to tithe or not. Just give a little offering. That's good enough. Don't worry about what God said in the Bible. After all, we're under grace now, and God will understand. That's why it tells us about turning grace into licentiousness or license. Don't listen to those type of leaders. They'll lead you right out of God's ways and his future kingdom. Now, in this first case, I'd like to show you in the Bible where the attempt by Satan to frame his arguments were refuted, were rejected by Jesus Christ. When Satan resorted to this old trick of framing things, of leaving out evidence that was not favorable to Satan, Jesus Christ saw through that wrong argument. Let's look in Matthew 4.

Matthew 4.

Verse 1. It says, Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. So here, the devil had his tricks to pose on Jesus Christ. He was sure Jesus Christ was going to fall into these traps, these wrong thoughts. And when he had fasted 40 days and 40 nights, afterward he was hungry. Of course, he was famished, very hungry. Now, when the tempter came, notice it's one of his titles, the tempter, the trickster, the deceiver, the seducer. When the tempter came to him, he said, If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread. Also, again, he framed it. You're hungry, Jesus. You haven't had anything to eat. And you have the power to create bread. You can multiply bread. You have that power. Use it. Now, again, he framed it. And he left something out. Is that why God gave you this power? So you could just use it according to your own will whenever you needed to, whenever you felt there was a necessity. Is that what God transmitted to Jesus? And so Jesus saw through this deceit. But he answered and said, It is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. In other words, Jesus said, this is not why God gave me this power to just, anytime I'm hungry, anytime I'm thirsty, I just go and create water or create bread or do anything like that. Impress people with my needs are going to be fulfilled with the power that I have. He said, no, no, I'm going to submit myself to what God has instructed me in His Word. That is following His will and not the devil's will or my own will. So He broke that framing effect. He realized that Satan was leaving out. Are you going to make bread and follow your own will and not your father's will? And so, okay, Satan was rejected at this time, so he went to the second ruse or trick. Then, in verse 5, the devil took him up into the holy city, set him up on the pinnacle of the temple. That's the highest part. And said to him, if you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, he shall give his angels charge over you, and in their hands they shall bear you up lest you dash your foot against the stone. And so here Satan quotes Scripture, but again, framing it in such a way that he's leaving out vital information that undermines his argument.

Jesus Christ again saw through that, guys, and he said to him, verse 7, it is written again, you shall not tempt the Lord your God.

So he saw that Satan was framing the case to use his powers, impressing others there. Everybody around the temple could have seen him floating in the air. That would have been an impressive miracle. But is that what God gave that power to do, to impress others as a spectacle? No, that's not what God gave Christ, that power. And he said, you shall not tempt God. I am not going to use my power, and God is going to say, why did you do that when that's not what I authorized? It's almost like if you worked in the military and you're working under the admiral of the fleet, you're in charge of one of the ships, and you've got the fastest ship, big battleship, and it's the fastest.

And so you decide, well, these other ships are not as fast, so let's just go fast and beat everybody and impress them. Don't you think you'd get a call from the admiralty saying, sir, were you authorized to do that? Is that what you're using your battleship to impress and to disobey the orders? You'd get fired over that. Well, that's what Satan was tempting him to use the power for his own benefit to impress others. And so Jesus Christ did not fall for that trick as well. And then the final one in verse eight, it says, again, the devil took him up on an exceedingly high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory.

And he said to him, all these things I will give you if you will fall down and worship me. So it talks about Satan basically governing as the secret ruler of this world. So all these others, they thought they were ruling on their own, but no, Satan was behind the scenes. And he said, I will make you the world conqueror.

You will be the greatest conqueror of all if you just bow down, if you accept my authority and power. Oh, I will make you big and powerful. And Satan again saw, he framed the effect in such a way that he left out. Well, this is not what God told me to do. And Jesus said, away with you, Satan, for it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God and him only you shall serve. I'm not going to serve you. I'm not going to have your patronage. And I'm not doing things your way. Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and ministered to him.

So angels came, fed Jesus Christ. But you see, he was always obedient to the Father. He always stayed within the limits of the authority God the Father had done. And so try to always see if there's a framing effect when somebody is trying to persuade you of something. Are they leaving out part of the information and doing everything so it looks favorable to them? Let's go to the second fallacy. Genesis 3, 10 through 13. Genesis 3, 10 through 13. In this case, it was Cain who fell into this trick.

Genesis chapter 3 verse 10. I'm sorry. This is Adam. We'll get to Cain in a moment. Genesis 3, 10. What does Adam do when he finds himself guilty of having eaten of the tree? So he said, I heard your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid myself.

And he said, who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat? Then the man said, the woman whom you gave to me, to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate. And so this is the second type of logical fallacy. It's called the red herring fallacy. We don't use that term here. It's a British term about this small fish, which is very smelly.

When you pull them out of the water, it just smells bad. It's worse than a sardine type of thing. But it's a red fish, and it smells terrible. And when the aristocracy there, and the British, they had their famous fox chases, the fox hunt. You know, they'd all gone up, and they'd go chase with their dogs this fox, and they'd let the fox go, and then off everybody went.

Well, there were some people that objected to that, because at the end, pretty nasty thing, because the dogs caught the fox and then just tore them apart. So there were some that said, oh, we don't want this. So they would pose themselves. They would hide themselves behind some trees.

And then when the fox went through, they would get the red herring, and then they would go another way. And the smell was so strong that all the hounds, the blood hounds, they'd go and they'd turn, and they'd follow the path of the red herring.

And they couldn't smell the scent of the fox. So this is a way to distract people, the red herring, so you don't concentrate on the real truth and the argument. They try to mislead you and distract you away from the truth. This is what Adam did. He tried the red herring trick about, oh, God, don't focus on me. I'm not the problem. See, the red herring, I'm going to push it so that you can smell out my wife.

She's the one you should blame. And so people, they'll deflect the blame. This is very typical. Yeah, you're guilty, but then you say, oh, no, no, but look, this other person, they're the ones that are really guilty. You should focus on them. And so this is the red herring fallacy. Another case of this is the following chapter, Genesis 4, verse 8.

This is Cain. In verse 8, it says, Now Cain talked with Abel his brother, and it came to pass when they were in the field that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him. Then the Lord said to Cain, Where is Abel your brother? And what did Cain do? Did he say, Yes, Lord, I'm guilty? Do you think Adam said that? No. He said, No, I don't know. Am I my brother's keeper? You're not going to find the guilty person here, Lord.

No, somewhere else. Go look somewhere else, because I didn't do anything. See the red herring. You distract from the actual committed crime. This is very typical. And then, verse 10, God said, What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground. So God wasn't letting him get away with this, detracting and deflecting the blame to someone else.

The last one, real quickly, 1 Kings chapter 1.

This is called the halo effect fallacy. Halo effect. Remember how in some of the Catholic paintings, they have people with halos on top, you know, very saintly. So this is used the halo effect, 1 Kings 1.

It says, Now King David was old, advanced in years, and they put covers on him, but he could not get warm. Okay, so he was having a problem. He couldn't warm his body. It happens many times to older people. They just stay cold too often. The circulatory system is not working properly. And so then in verse 5, it says, when Adonijah, one of his sons, when he saw his father, was getting weaker and weaker and close to death, Adonijah, the son of Haggith, exalted himself, saying, I will be king. And he prepared for himself chariots and horsemen and 50 men to run before him, just like Absalon had tried to take over the kingship. Now Adonijah did the same thing. And then you have this parentheses, which is a comment by the author. It says, and his father, talking about David, had not rebuked or disciplined him at any time by saying, why have you done so? Father let him get away with things. He was also very good-looking, so a very attractive person. His mother had born him after Absalon. So after this case here, Absalon already had died, and so this was kind of like the son that substituted for Absalon. So David had this soft spot in his heart for Adonijah. But this is what is called the halo effect, that because you're impressed with the person, you're impressed maybe with their looks, with their personality, and everything else, that you let them get away with things. You're not judging correctly. And so this became a spoiled child. The Knowledge Bible commentary says about this verse, the author threw more light on Adonijah by recording that he was a spoiled, undisciplined young man who had apparently received much admiration for his good looks, more than for the quality of his character. Evidently, Adonijah expected that his plot would succeed more because he was a popular figure than because he was a capable person championing a worthy cause. So here they took advantage of his father's weakness and exalted himself. And of course it caused a whole disaster. Eventually Solomon had to put to death his brother because his brother wanted the position so badly. So we see this halo effect, this, well, I can't move myself and I can't convince myself to apply the principle of discipline as I would someone else. And people take advantage of that. It's the wrong way of thinking, the halo effect. And so brethren, we've seen here three examples. There are like 24 different fallacies in the Bible that you can find people doing the wrong type of thinking. But the important point is that God is calling us to be judges in the future, to be kings and priests. We're going to judge. It says even the angels there in 1 Corinthians 6, and we need to have the proper way of thinking and avoid these pitfalls of false logic. Don't fall for these deceptions that Satan has so cleverly done. And if we do so fall, brethren, we're going to be able to think straightly, not be fooled by what we listen, by what we read, or by what we hear. But we're going to judge righteously and with discernment.