You Are Being Fed ‘Strong Delusion’ Kelly Durant 10-26-14
2 Thessalonians 2:10-12
10 And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. 11 And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:12 That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
2. Most of us know how gullible and easily deceived we can be as people! If Christians get deceived by all kinds of false doctrines and how much more the people of the world will believe anything! A perfect example of deception could be compared to that of an anti-Christ leader such as Adolf Hitler. Years before the war ended he was worshipped as the savior and answer to a desperate world with the worst inflation in history. Remember, Hitler was blessed by the Catholic Church and followed by millions of Christians! It should horrify you to think how many so called Christians out there can so easily be deceived by a leader!
Today we are studying deception from 2 Tess. 2, which is set in the context of the end-time, when the charismatic anti-Christ will appear: 2 Thess 2:3 Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;
How do we as weak human beings accept strong delusion? Our logical yet illogical minds want hope in a supernatural salvation; God performs that in us in that respective position if we let Him. But a person disconnected or shallow with God and His sanity and peace will worship any deranged being, especially when they have a show of messiah-ship or supernatural power. As people we are always in search of answers, and in the absence of them, we invent them in our minds or flow with the winds of the world getting herded as sheep to the slaughter to whatever evil is trending and popular. The masses get swayed by the media. Never has the media lied to the public feeding us lies as it is doing today!
Also, deceptions and beliefs are passed down for generations until finally someone with God’s truth in their lives questions and challenges them. How many misconceptions of life have you lived with until now? How many cultures have started strange beliefs and practices lasting for centuries and even millennium? Adam & Eve taught their children to respect God, and many of their descendants knew God and the truth, but they all did not remain faithful. Those alienated from the truth or the deceived children had opportunity to know the truth later through the chosen Israelites, but history revels most of them rejected it. Today, God’s people who are Christian, who are in word and deed loving God and others and living holy lives, are the authentic ones in truth totally living free from delusions. However, all others live life delusional and diametrically opposite to a life of love as Jesus taught. Strong delusion creates hypocritical people.
3. I pray for everyone around me to live happy and blessed, growing in truth and wisdom, advancing in prosperity and knowledge. But this implies that you and I must war against the lies and liars deluding people. But exposing their evil agendas is not enough. People are only enlightened and protected from lies by the study and obedience to the Word of God! How does His word lead us in truth? Jesus said John 6:63 It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.
The word of God transforms you and me by the Holy Spirit to indwell in the truth! Millions of people with testimonies bear witness to how they were once deceived by the lust, greed, and pride in the world but then they became free. John 8:32 ‘And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free’. Religion itself cannot change evil hearts. We see religions today who murder in the name of their god. A Christian however, if authentic, has a relationship with Christ, and he or she becomes God fearing and loving and compassionate with a new nature like the nature of Jesus himself. A new conviction takes place causing he or she to abandon the deceptions of lust, greed, pride, anger, bitterness and ‘deny their selves’ in order to adapt totally the loving beautiful character of Jesus Christ.
Here is the delusion problem, in other religions those deceived follow some charismatic man’s teaching and/or they imitate the founder or leader. By doing this, they are doomed to repeat the same errors of the deluded leader. Most erroneous prophet leaders have led people to war for gain, or into prideful selfish illusions believing they are enlightened. The world’s so called holy sites or self-proclaimed written down revelations from god are supposed to authenticate their false claims to divinity. To outsiders it is obvious they lived under a crazy distorted reality of illusion, but to those who get hooked, the lie is the truth to them.
4. Let’s discover some of the past delusions of the so called great cultures and keep in mind the present to discover current cultural delusions. A delusion, as you know according to the dictionary is, ‘A belief held with strong conviction despite superior evidence to the contrary.’ The Egyptians, for example have this symbol of the dung beetle as the sacred God that rolls the sun across the sky each day.
How did they conclude that there must be a cosmic beetle in the sky in charge of the function of rolling the sun from morning to night each day? Weren’t these people amazingly intelligent and master builders with an unmatched perfection of aligning pyramids with stars? Talent, intellect, and power does not stop delusion!
I personally believe it is demonic spirits that fed these ancient ones misinformation. The obsession of Satan and his fallen angels is to subvert man away from the worship of God to the worship of his creation. The Egyptians were very idolatrous and had a half human half animal gods for everything! (Read more in Romans chapter 1). Exodus 15:26 And said, If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God, and wilt do that which is right in his sight, and wilt give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians: for I am the Lord that healeth thee. The obvious is that their medicines and practices were making them sick physically and spiritually sick as well! Compare this to Santeria and other false remedies practiced today in Miami and worldwide.
They were a culture that despite amazing feats of constructions with intelligence, were totally deluded and deceived in their worship and thinking. Today people admire their structures, but recall they were one of the first to record curses, to use witchcraft, and create crazy stories of gods and the afterlife. They invented nature worship, superstitions, ritualistic customs, and deceived many other cultures that followed them in this example throughout the ages. All anti-Christ leaders deceive with demonic presuppositions. Hitler stated that “By fighting off the Jews, I am doing God’s work”.Delusional people always feel justified their evil!
5. Jesus told us in Matt 24: And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come. God is never unjust to withhold the truth from anyone, nor does God lack compassion for those who have grown up deceived by evil and deluded by the world’s various beliefs and cultures of today. God’s plans are for the gospel to reach every person everywhere through his witnesses. God’s word is spreading through the internet.
As a kid I would wondered how will it happen that everyone will know but today we know that not just television but the internet reaches much of the world’s population. The internet users of today are about 2.5 billion (about 1/3rd of the world) and in 20 years I have read it is projected to reach close to 100%! It’s crazy but Bill Gates and many others are giving away computers to the poor so everyone will have one. The equation is this; the truth of God is reaching many people through the internet but sadly many prefer lies and deception to the truth.
Almost everything in life has 2 uses, either for good or for evil. A knife can be used for food prep to sustain life, or it can be used to kill and take life! The same is with the internet transmitting concepts, religion, ideologies, and beliefs. Depending on what is practiced, it will serve for good or for destruction. Despite the existence of dozens of millions of legitimate Christians out there communicating, all of us know that there are many millions more seeking to deceive, rob, and enslave.
6. We find in Isaiah 5:20 Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!
This is exactly what is happening today in almost every area of life! Deceivers, in order to persuade you to their dark side, attack the good you esteem and call it evil when the fact is it is that they are truly evil! They call the evil good, and boast its legal by man’s laws, but all they are doing is accommodating their sins. The world offers everyone all the self-destructive sins they could ever dream of but Christians recognize these deceptions as Satanic and are appalled. So what about the anti-Christ wolves in sheep clothing subverting the gospel with false gospels?
Currently, deceitful churches seem to be multiplying. I recall in Atlanta meeting pastors in meetings and some even boasted that they had gained their members by robbing sheep. How does that work? They gain others to their church not from the lost community, but from people who were already happy going to their own church. These evil pastors would tell them that their church is wrong and false and that they will go to hell if they didn’t switch to their church and doctrine!?
Take note: people who deceive quite often accuse others of what they themselves are guilty of practicing! They accuse other churches of false doctrine and yet they practice false doctrines! If you, however, live a life of holiness then lies will be revealed to you by the Holy Spirit! John 16:13 Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come. Do you see how delusion works on those without the Holy Spirit?
7. The ‘falling away’ of today is revealed in many churches and the frightening part is they may even accept and promote the anti-Christ when he comes on the scene! Didn’t churches do something similar with Hitler just 70 years ago? May God help us to expose churches that have become delusional accepting erroneous trends promoted by the anti-Christ ‘prince of the air’ which includes media. In Revelation chapters 2 to 4, 6 of the 7 churches were rebuked as not being worthy in the purity and holiness of Jesus Christ! We are seeing the same pattern of their sins deceiving again today as people in many churches are being cold and unloving, are accepting evil people as leaders, are accepting false prophecy, and they are lusting for money, or engaging in diverse forms of sexual promiscuity.
Every day we hear of racial discrimination, but what about how we are suffering from ‘truth’ discrimination! The problem today is the Word of God (the truth) has been disenfranchised in our satanically influenced society. The truths of God have been discriminated against and disallowed in government buildings, schools, colleges, companies, media, and even in people’s homes to the point that people today cannot make correct judgment calls on anything anymore because they are lacking in the most important information of all, the Word of God, the truth!
The last part of this verse of today in 2 Thess 2: 12 says it all, that the people were condemned because they “had pleasure in unrighteousness”. The main reason a person does not want the truth near them is because that it contradicts and convicts them of their sinful actions. John 3: 20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. 21 But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.
8. So we are living in the time of strong delusion where truth rejecters and haters of Christians receive praises and front page media attention! The problem is we never hear about the demise of those who place a lie for the truth, and replace evil for good, so how do they end up? In the last verse we read, “That they all might be damned who believed not the truth”. This implies eternal separation from God where all the evil spirits of all time share the same burning jail cell!
If you investigate criminals in jail and what heinous acts got them there you will discover their confessions come from delusions of the devil. Many had fun seeing others in fear as their victims! Did you know there are many people who are so deluded that they actually believe they have super powers as a real sorcerer, vampire, or as Satan himself? All of these crazy people who have committed horrible acts and murders were usually influenced by a strong delusion that they wanted to make a statement of their greatness against humanity. But how horrible and unjust it is that they harmed innocent ones and did not get an appropriate punishment! Jail time does not resurrect a dead loved one! The delusion of having great power is Satan’s favorite tool! It is pride! Hitler killed innocent Jews believing he was doing God’s will!
So God is justified by allowing evil doers to “be dammed” because those under any type of willful delusion and not under the truth choose it by their own freewill and they, being highly destructive, deserve to reap what they deserve. Jesus says in Matthew 12:30 He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad. People are either behaving loving like how Jesus is, or acting like Satan, and the consequences are either heaven or hell for eternity!
9. Propagators of delusion, who are obviously anti-Christ individuals, being religious, political, or criminally narcissistic mental cases, will all be judged severely for rejecting the truth of God! Basically no man can ever answer to God that he or she has never heard any truth at all. The obvious is there exists a universal sixth sense in every human of what right and wrong is, and the truth of God’s principles are universal, omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient.
Practically every culture has held the conviction that to kill an innocent being is a crime that should be punished. Almost every religion promotes morality and being good. Political powers as well demand Godlike attributes such as loyalty, dedication, and devotion. Truth is purity, righteousness, justice, wisdom, light, goodness, holiness and more; truth is consistent and not relativistic having its source from God himself. Delusion, which is the lie replacing the truth, is insulting, destructive, and invoking condemnation and shame!
A final truth from God’s son: John 14:6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. Being connected to Jesus protects you and me from being deceived.
10. We must recognize deceptions! We must vehemently reject all lies from the lying news media, the lies from our culture, the lies from leaders, and reject the delusions of pride our minds default to. Only the acceptance of the truth, wired deep in our brains will permit a continuing salvation from the deceitful world! We must have our hard drives erased and rebooted with God’s program or we are destined to crash and burn from our own viruses!
Everyone wants to live forever and, if honest, everyone wants love and happiness in life, and God offers this but it only comes through His truth. Due to deceivers and evil doers around us, we will never be able to live out the heavenly bliss God while here surrounded by evil people. A final judgment will be the retribution on all liars. Those that love lies and live deluded and keep wanting it that way may continue on sick lonely but with their spirit will be detained in the same hell jail as those who believed the lies of Satan like them.
But those of us who have the truth are free forever! Once someone is freed, there is no longer a binding to the cage and chain of lies and deceptions that once darkened the spirit. Pray for Jesus to come into your life and to free you with the Holy Spirit from all lies and lying influences of people and cultures so you will experience the truths of God that will leave you in awe and wonder!
