The Church Series (Extreme Deception) Pt. 33 (WARNING) Rated FG-7

Extreme Deception
Satan is the deceiver. We see in the Bible how he undermined truth as a necessary precursor for other moves he wants to make. Jesus says Satan “always hated the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, it is consistent with his character; for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44). He deceives leaders and uses them to carry entire groups of people into falsehood, away from God and their mission. Satan doesn’t come into the church to cover people with open sores or explode their skulls like in the movies. He comes to deceive them.

Sometimes Satan is so successful at extreme deception that it’s hard to fathom. Satan has convinced the church to believe incredible lies. Today, people who reject all biblical authority lead whole denominations with millions of members. By infiltrating nonbelievers into places of Christian higher learning, the Father of Lies has successfully churned out thousands of pastors, bishops and priests who have lost their faith in Scripture and how take their lead from the variable thought patterns of Satan’s own world-system. Churches led by these people cannot and will not point people to Christ because their leaders don’t believe the gospel themselves and never preach it. Satan has deceived the church to believe as long as Jesus and God are mentioned, the gospel is being preached.

Other formerly Christian groups have been deceived into placing additional sources of authority alongside the Bible. Anytime we reckon a second authority as equal to Scripture, it ends up eventually replacing Scripture as the true source of revelation. These cult groups and churches drift further and further from biblical teaching with essentially no constraint, and once the church authorizes humans to generate rulings and visions that have equal authority with the Word of God, anything can happen. Satan can literally take over such groups, leading them to commit atrocities in the name of Christ: slaughtering (spiritual death), stealing (the offerings), lying (false teaching); you name it. They may present an image so grotesque and bizarre that they drive the watching world away in horror.

I find these cases of extreme deception in church history make for fascinating study. How could a church become so misguided that they would believe God called them to torture people to death (spiritually)? Why would millions of people give their hard-earned money to leaders who deny every aspect of Christian gospel? Baffling! The central answer to these questions is the awesomeness of Satan’s power to deceive. He has proven ability to convince millions of normal people that they are following Jesus even while they directly or indirectly support evil.

I will not dwell long on egregious examples of Satan’s deceiving work. But these cases are important to examine for two reasons.

First, these masterpieces of deception have shaped the non-Christian world’s view of Christianity to a saddening degree. November 2007 Republican senator Chuck Grassley investigates allegations of misuse of church funds. Believers shouldn’t have difficulty understanding why some non-believers feel such hostility and scorn for the church. We have failed to learn what they know about the sad record of “Christian” misbehavior and foolishness. Most churches are reluctant to discuss such events in any detail, perhaps because they worry that it would be “divisive” or because they don’t want to be too negative. A surprising percentage of Christians go so far as to defend, minimize, or excurse past wicked actions, thus further implicating themselves and Jesus in the evildoing, Neither Jesus, Paul, nor the other New Testament authors had any such reluctance when sternly denouncing false teaching and wrongdoing in the church. Christians should learn about church atrocities and denounce them firmly.

Second, these extreme cases should give all of us a healthy respect for Satan’s lying power, and even a measure of fear, because that same power is headed our way and is already among us. What makes us think we are any different or better that millions of other Christians (including well-trained leaders) who have succumbed to his lies to such devastating effect? Apathy or sloth in the face of such power is amazingly foolish.

Defense
It may seem simplistic, but the best defense against outland deception is the public reading of the Scriptures. Paul tells Timothy, “Until I get there, focus on reading the Scriptures to the church, encouraging the believers, and teaching them” (1 Timothy 4:13). When we exposit entire books of the Bible in context for people in the church, they become more resistant to deception. He didn’t say in the church, but to the church. We have to read the Bible to our family in our homes.

The church also should heed Paul’s instruction to “learn not to exceed what is written” (1 Corinthians 4:6). Any time we view the church leaders or tradition as having authority on the level of Scripture, we are wide open to deception. Most of the worst episodes in the church history have been base on extra-biblical authority: visions, discovered texts, special translations, or bodies of tradition considered fully blinding. So many churches are following a vision of man and not God. Building a kingdom of lazy Saints. The church must listen to Proverbs 30:5-6

Every word of God is pure; He is a shield to those who put their trust in Him.
Do not add to His words, Lest He rebuke you, and you be found a liar.

Church leaders need to be accountable to their congregations, and that means their people should be able to read and interpret the Bible for themselves. In some extreme cases Satan has been able to remove the Bible completely from the hands of most Christians and thereby has removed their ability to hold leaders accountable to the truth. For a thousand years it was illegal to translate the Bible into languages laypeople could read. Today, thousands of churches still have their members convinced that the Bible is indecipherable and useless unless one has professional training. In this environment, the church is rendered defenseless against false teaching. Entertainment has replaced the teaching of God’s word. Prosperity has replaced spiritual growth and relationship has been replaced by membership. Disciple has been replaced by expecting a blessing bench warmers.

Subtle Corporate Deception
Satan’s subtle forms of deception are far more germane to mainstream evangelicals, and these can be just as effective in blocking God’s purpose in the church. Satan doesn’t need to convince us that evil is good to achieve victory; all he has to do is move the church somewhat off the center of God’s revealed counsel. This arguably can be even more effective than outlandish deception; it’s harder to recognize and therefore has great staying power.

In subtle deception, Satan also doesn’t need to persuade believers to deny central teachings, such as Christ’s atoning death, his resurrection, or even biblical authority. Instead, he seeks to shift the emphasis from the important to the unimportant and misleads people on more peripheral issues. The resulting group may bear little resemblance to the church described in the New Testament.

We’ve already seen one clear of this. Churches in the grip of fottress theology become incapable of being “all things to all men” (1 Corinthians 9:22) like Paul did, and the result is predictable: Ingrown churches don’t reach meaningful numbers of people for Christ and instead merely compare to attract one another’s members. These groups usually agree with all the major scriptural doctrines but have put a spin on more peripheral biblical teaching in a way that stalemates their witness.

Extremist groups abound today, and they often unintentionally heap disgrace and contempt on Jesus. Many TV preachers, snake-handlers, and legalistic groups are in this category. All of us know local groups that are exceedingly strange not because they deny central Christian teaching but because they dwell on minor or even questionable issues to such an extreme that it overshadows any truth they may teach. The overall picture presented to the world is bizarre and creates aversion to Christ.

Defense
To counter subtle deception, Christians must learn not only to teach what Scripture teaches but also to emphasize what Scripture emphasizes. Emphasis matters when we seek to reflect the full council of God. Thinking Christians should constantly be asking themselves. “Does this take on Scripture accurately reflect the emphases found there or are we camping out on issues the Bible hardly mentions? Are the issues we talk about out of date because the Bible itself says they’ve been superseded by later development? Are we ignoring important teachings in the Word? Scripture repeats emphasized truths often or teaches them with emphatic language, and we should do likewise.

Members also should examine the effect a group’s teaching has on their progress toward achieving God’s mission for the church. Careful discernment is important. Huge churches may only be filled with people lured away from others churches, and we’ve noted that mere numbers say little about weather churches are impacting Satan’s kingdom. Popularity contests between churches have nothing to do with our mission, and they don’t win people to Christ and seeing those new believers discipled, trained, and released into ministry must have something right. Speaking about how to discern false teachers, Jesus said, “A god tree produces good fruit, and a bad tree produces bad fruit (Matthew 7:17)