The Great Impostor

Impostor - a person who practices deception under an assumed character, identity, or name.

Ferdinand Waldo Demara Jr

was a prison warden, a monk, a lawyer, a sheriff’s deputy, cancer researcher, teacher and a religiously-oriented psychologist, Died a Baptist Minister

Surgeon

- In reality he was actually none of those things.

- Just a great photographic memory

- Known as "The Great Imposter",

- Demara born in MA faked his way through life

- His most famous exploit was to masquerade as surgeon Joseph Cyr (sire) aboard the HMCS Cayuga, a Royal Canadian Navy destroyer, during the Korean War.

During his time as a surgeon on the Cayuga

- Demara performed surgeries

- Infections stopped with lots of penicillin.

- He performed surgery on 16 Korean’s

- Demara would disappear to his room with a textbook on general surgery and proceed to speed-read the type of surgery he was to perform, including major chest surgery.

- Amazingly, none of these patients died as a result of his surgery.

Ironically it was because of his skill as a surgeon that Demara was exposed. According to this article, the removal of a bullet from one wounded soilder made the papers, and when the mother of the real Dr Joseph Cyr read that her son, who operated a civilian practice, was now in the war, she rang him only to be assured by her son that he was indeed still in civilian practice. She then contacted the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and Demara was exposed for the fraud that he was.

His life and exploits would go on to inspire a movie and the name of a band. When asked to describe why he did what he did, Demara is said to have responded "Rascality, pure rascality."

Ferdinand Demara died in 1982.

The Great Impostor Lives On

This master of illusion has turned angels into demons, kings into animals, pastors into predators, and sheep into wolves

It can swagger with self-importance one minute before writhing in self-contempt the next.

He has hats for every occasion

Its closets are stuffed with masks of deception.

What I find troubling is that without realizing it I’ve walked, laughed, and cried with this impostor.

❶ THE IMPOSTOR’S DISGUISE

My exaggerated sense of self importance.

- In one word — PRIDE

- v. 8 - If we say we have no sin

- v.10 - If we say that we have not sinned

Blind Pride I’m OK, You’re OK - 1969 - Self help

– I’m OK I do not need to do anything

Arrogant Pride – I won’t be corrected or humbled

Protective Pride – I don’t think outside of my world, I don’t speak because I might be confronted I don’t act I might get hurt

- Quick to blame others

– I don’t want to be embarrassment or fail..

Vain Pride – How will I look? What do people think of me?

Procrastinating Pride – We can change anytime we want so we never change

Apathetic Pride – Being preoccupied with our own life With it’s problems and selfish delights

- No one else maters.

Moody Pride – Life is based on my feelings. My reaction to uncontrolled events in my life

Spiritual Pride – People see my outside but inside I am prayerless insensitive to the Word and undisciplined with my thought & walk

Pride is self-delusion.- Not seeing how we really are

- That we won’t bend.

- Humility is a bitter pill.

- Pride leads to self-destruction.

- Looking out and living only for me is sin

❷ THE IMPOSTER EXPOSED

What is so bad about sin?

- Sin is blatant rebellion against God

James 4:17KJV

17 Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.

- Sin is enticing it offers temporary rewards and pleasures.

- We are faced with choices.

- We need to consider the consequences of those choices.

- Sin is bad because it hurts.

- It produces suffering and pain.

- It separates friends and destroys relationships.

- It leads to violence, addiction and untimely death.

- It locks us in our own prisons of heartbreak, misery and fear.

- Good never comes from it

- Everyone is infected by it

- Romans 3:10KJV

10 As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:

Romans 3:16-17KJV

16 Destruction and misery are in their ways: 17 And the way of peace have they not known:

Isaiah 59:2KJV

2 But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear.

❸ THE IMPOSTER TRANSFORMED

v. 9

FIRST — Conviction - To believe

SECOND — Confess - Acknowledge, Admit

- To agree that I am a sinner