The Bible, with which we are concerned, is replete with ancient examples of deception - that insidious, lurking factor in so many biblical scenes. In many cases, deception is the forgotten antagonist to Christian understanding.

In the third chapter of the Bible, Eve, the mother of us all, was seduced and deceived by the serpent. Into the pristine beauty of a new creation came sorrow and sin. Adam's sin was greater because he knowingly partook of the forbidden fruit; but Eve, as St. Paul makes clear, was deceived.

So creation was marred by deception. Lies and murder were soon to follow. Murphy's law had begun to operate: all that could go wrong did go wrong.

To seek to follow God and love Him is completely naive if one chooses at the same time to ignore the existence of a deceiver and the possibility of deception. And by implication, if there were no deceiver, then there was no need for the discernment that Eve simply did not have.

The Gibeonites

Not far into the Book of Joshua (chap. 9), the Gibeonites perpetrated an exceptional ruse on Israel. Joshua had just led the Israeli army through the Jericho and Ai campaigns. The Israeli army was taking no prisoners, so the rest of the land trembled before it.

At that point, the Gibeonites disguised themselves with old clothes, dry bread, and shabby footwear. "We've come from a distant country"; they said, "make a treaty with us" (Josh. 9:6, NIV). Joshua and the elders did so only to discover that the Gibeonites lived right among them and that they had bound themselves not to destroy them.

So, just inside the promised land was deception.

In analogous thought, Christians have often considered Egypt as a type of the world, the wilderness wandering a type of struggle in the Christian life, the Jordan River a symbol of the experience of the fullness of the Spirit, and the promised land a symbol of life in the Spirit.

And one cannot help but notice, if we accept the typology, that as soon as the ongoing conquest of the promised land began, there was the confrontation with deception and a need for discernment which Joshua and the elders did not have.

The implication of the analogy is clear enough. In living the victorious Christ-life, one must expect to encounter deception. It is part of the walk in godliness. To focus on deception is, of course, unhealthy, but ignorance of it is deadly.

The Words of Jesus

In verse 15 of the seventh chapter of Matthew, the Savior pronounced some dramatic and unusual words. He announced the coming of false prophets who would prophesy in His name, cast out demons in His name, and do many miracles in His name; and further stated that He would reproach them for their words of iniquity (Matt. 7:22-23).

He made it clear that a good tree brings forth good fruit and a bad tree brings forth bad fruit. The prophets who have good character, who travel with their own wives, and who pay their own bills are the ones to be relied upon.

The preacher involved in an adulterous affair but still preaching and still winning people to Christ and still defending himself before his wife, is deceived. Good works do not a prophet make; nor do healings, deliverances, and miracles demonstrate that a prophet is a man of God.

We do not think that Jesus was setting Himself against the supernatural works He did and which He commissioned His followers to do.

But He was saying that one can know a man by his moral character. And one must never judge a man by the miracles he performs.

This may sound like heresy, especially in this existential, charismatic age. And indeed the convinced charismatics among us have more trouble with this passage than any other because it plays down the supernatural. It presents the possibility that many charismatic entrepreneurs are false prophets, workers of iniquity.

But one should not take an anti-supernatural position on the basis of these words. There are other Scriptures which make clear our Lord's desire to work miracles today. "'Have faith in God,' Jesus answered. 'I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, "Go, throw yourself into the sea," and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours'" (Mark 11:22-24, NIV).

Still the warning is inescapable. Miracles tend to deceive. And they will deceive the undiscerning.

John

The aged and beloved apostle has given to posterity and to the church one of the most dramatic passages on discernment to be found in the Bible. In 1 John 2:18-27 he refers to an anointing and to the antichrists who will precede the great Antichrist. Personally, so long as I presumed an antichrist to be only a political figure, I failed to catch the deep- er meaning of John's written concern. But an antichrist is really, according to the meaning of the word, an anti-anointed one, or one with a false anointing. Antichrists, then, are religious figures with an anointing too, except that the anointing is false.

Now when one reads this passage through again, he sees that the contrast is clearly between a true anointing and a false or anti-anointing, remembering that the false anointing is no less real for being false. A false anointing is necessarily an action provided by Satan and activated through a demon spirit, even as a true anointing is an action provided by Jesus Christ through the agency of the Holy Spirit. When Jesus discussed false christs, he was describing those who are falsely anointed ones; John's antichrists are persons with a clear anointing, but an anointing which is against Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

The Greek prefix translated anti in John's writing also has another significant meaning, "in place of."^l If one wishes to say that the antichrists John wrote about had a "substitute anointing," an anointing in place of the real one, he would not be doing a disservice to the text.

The implication of passages like these is not a comfortable one, especially for those groups in evangelicalism who pursue the "anointing" but tend to disregard or overlook moral qualities. According to John, an anointing must be examined in view of its source. This kind of appraisal of spiritual anointings in our day would produce some fascinating and worrisome discoveries.

Undoubtedly the realization would dawn that there really are many among us with anti and substitute anointings! More on this later.

The Apocalypse

In John's revelation of Jesus Christ there are some interesting passages. In the thirteenth chapter, deception is accomplished by the use of miracles. The beast, later revealed to be the Antichrist, seduces the people with the prodigies and miracles performed.

In the nineteenth chapter, the beast and the false prophet are both hurled alive into the lake of fire because they have seduced with miracles the people who have actually received the mark of the beast.

Seduction in the scriptural world is best accomplished by miracles. And for those who are going to be discerning, miracles are things to watch; religious leaders also.

The Iranian Revolution was begun and carried forth by a militant Moslem leader, The Ayatollah Khomeini. From Paris, with cassettes and spoken messages, he orchestrated a revolution that filled the streets of Tehran with millions of marching feet and toppled the two-thousand-year-old dynasty of the Shah of Iran. The whole city clamored for a man. A religious man, he proved in the end to be more powerful than any modern army could be.

Imagine, then, similar scenes in Boston and Bombay, Buenos Aires and Paris. London and Moscow. Tokyo and Washington, Jakarta and Los Angeles, Toronto and Mexico City. Imagine the populace in every nation marching and shouting for the same man. Only a religious figure will ever be able to accomplish a thing like that. The Antichrist -when he comes, will be a religious figure who will by Khomeini-like persuasion seize the reins of political power of the whole world. Plenty of supernatural acts can be expected. When a nation is to be deceived, miracles work best. When a world is to be deceived, miracles will be the tools to do the job. Let us be clear at this point; we speak of the seductive, deceptive use of miracles. Christians should and do pray for the sick and see them healed. Humble Christians have prayed for the dead and seen them raised. There is no possibility of taking the Bible seriously and not believing that God is the God of the impossible. The promises of Jesus Christ make clear that the miraculous is to be a part of the church age.

I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father (John 14:12, NIV).

 Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete (John 16:24, NIV).

But it remains true that the massive use of miracles will ultimately deceive all mankind. Who then will exercise discernment?

This section cannot be concluded without reference to The Deceiver. Satan, The Devil. The Evil One. There are many names for this angelic prince once called Lucifer. The first sin was his. Jesus testified that [in God's pre-creation world] He saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning (Luke 10:18). Eve was Satan's first human victim, but Adam followed forthwith. Jesus Christ resisted his overtures and persuasiveness. Instead, Jesus went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed by him. Satan struck out at the cross. His final stroke against the Son of God became the Almighty's resurrection plan. Satan resisted Paul on his missionary journeys - in vain as it turned out. He has battered the church through the ages. He will lead one last failing rebellion against God Almighty and will be overthrown by the fire that comes down from God out of heaven (Rev. 20:7-11). His end is eternal torment in the lake of fire where the beast and the false prophet will be. The smoke of his torment will ascend upward forever (Rev. 14:11).

And Satan it is who is the deceiver. The demons and fallen princes who serve him in the world of darkness have a primary objective - the deception and destruction of the church. Incessant attack upon every Christian believer is the satanic battle plan; deception, the basic strategy.

Chapter 6