Transcription
Hi, today's video is going to be a short one and uh if you can stick around especially for the last half of this video as I feel uh it's very important.
uh in John 8:44 Jesus tells us that the devil is a liar and he is the father of all lies. And so this is something in particular that that we can take to the bank that we know about Satan. And God judges all of his creations by what is in their heart. That's how he judges. That's what Jesus himself says. And that's why his judgment is just. And so what that means is that Satan can never get away with anything with God. However, if Satan were tried in an earthly court, you know, based on human laws, and the devil had a really good lawyer, he'd probably get his client off on a technicality.
When we look at what Satan told Eve in the garden, he doesn't really contradict necessarily God's commandment not to eat the tree. Satan instead questions Eve on whether that's what he really said since he's simply asking a question. A good lawyer would probably get him exonerated on that point. But then Satan gets a little more bold, telling Eve, "You will surely not die." And even this though is excellent material for Satan's lawyer to play with in an earthly court because he will bring into doubt what Satan actually meant by the word die. And he will raise the question, no doubt, on whether God meant that they would experience a spiritual death or a physical death. He would also point out that Adam and Eve didn't literally die a physical death that day. Perhaps the death that God referred to was their separation from God. Since God is life and the source of all life, Adam and Eve's separation from God was a kind of death. And indeed, death would enter into the world and all men would die. But regardless, Satan's lawyer would probably win the argument in an earthly court by making the argument that what God intended by the statement, "You will surely die," is somewhat unclear. And what Satan meant when he said you will surely not die could be interpreted in different ways as well. And then finally, Satan tells Eve that she would become like God, knowing good and evil. Again, I would ask whether or not this could be proven as an outright lie in an earthly court. If you stopped at his first statement, you will be God, you would have a case. But since that statement does not end with a period, but rather a comma and goes on to specify knowing good and evil once more, Satan's lawyer would likely get his client off on the charge that this was a lie.
But earthly courts are different from the heavenly one because earthly courts are not about the heart of a matter, but often rest almost entirely upon technicalities. God judges the heart. With him, every case ends in justice being served except in those cases where the blood of the lamb has washed away the crime. And for this reason, Satan stood convicted that day of the crime of deceiving Eve with evil intent.
But aside from the case of Eve, we also see that Satan quoted scripture to Jesus in order to tempt him. Satan is a liar and the father of all lies. But aren't the scriptures true? So once again, Satan used truth in order to get a person to do the wrong thing. And by these two cases alone, and surely we can find others, we should begin to see a pattern emerge. And that pattern is Satan spoke truths to Eve to get her to believe the lie that she would benefit from partaking of the forbidden fruit and disobeying God. He spoke truths to try to get Jesus to abandon his mission. And so the takeaway I see is that Satan uses truth to deceive us. He uses truth in a way to get us to believe a lie. And this is something we desperately need to be aware of.
Now, many of you probably already know or understand on some level what I've just spoken about. But what the Holy Spirit revealed, which I think many people do not yet understand, is that there is something within each one of us that can detect truth when we hear it, regardless of where it comes from. And this is why Satan mingles truth with lies. The truth is the honey that makes the bad medicine go down. And this is how it works. In a very brief synopsis, God breathed life into our little bodies that were developing in the womb, which is imparting a spirit into the body, thereby making us a living soul. That spirit within each of us came from God. Our brain, however, is ignorant of all of this because it was literally formed in the womb. It knows nothing and it must learn everything the hard way step by step. But our spirit knows the truth.
Now, if you have a Mormon background, the Book of Mormon calls that part of our spirit that knows the truth the spirit of Christ, saying that it is given to every man to know right from wrong. The secular world calls it a conscience. You know, that little thing that bothers you when you've done something wrong. Jesus said he is the truth. So this spirit of Christ is the spirit of truth, but it is not the same as the greater portion that only the disciples of Jesus can receive which we call the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Instead, this is a smaller portion of God's spirit which is designed to help lead us to God in the first place. People can ignore this voice. They can disobey it and even suppress it. Indeed, they can even snuff this voice out entirely, essentially murdering the truth within them, which Paul refers to as people who have seared their conscience. But because people have portion of the spirit of truth residing within them, being a part of that spirit that God poured into you to cause you to become a living human being, you have built within you a truth detector which goes off anytime you hear and see truth. Unless we're completely hardened to that truth because of some tradition or some bias that we have. But if we're open for it, that spirit within us will testify to that truth. And this explains Satan's tactic from the very beginning. Because he knows how we are made. And he knows what works. He knows that if he tries to sell us a lie without truth attached to it, probably aren't going to buy what he's selling. So he will attach as much truth to the lie as necessary in order to get us to swallow the lie. In fact, the devil will give you as much truth as needed, even great mysteries perhaps previously unknown to man, so long as the net result is a gain in deception.
And this is why it is so very important to understand this because when it comes to a religion or a church or a doctrine or teaching or a particular text, you know, it could be a revelation or a book that is claiming to be scripture. Be assured that within every false religion, every false church, every false doctrine, false teaching, false revelation or false book claiming to be scripture. Satan has surely infused it with truths so that your inward truth detector will go off. Some deceptions have more truth and others have less. It all depends on the audience and what is required to lead people astray. And for those who lack experience in how these deceptions work, who have not yet gone through the hard knock school of learning by experience, possibly having been deceived a time or two or three, and eventually overcome those deceptions through a hard one battle with the help of the Lord, which has humbled you and taught you what to look for. And for those who are not yet fully trained in the foundational principles that are found in our scriptures that are found in the Bible and in the Book of Mormon established to correct us and help prevent us from stumbling. Without these things, deception is all but assured. Unless your default is simply to reject anything new or different. But this really isn't a solution either because odds are if you are that closed off, not only will you miss things that the Lord is doing, but you have likely already accepted any number of lies because they were simply grandfathered in as part of whatever tradition you were raised in.
If you do not have experience with and have not learned what to look for in regards to deception, you're going to read that new book claiming to be the sealed Book of Mormon or the brass plates or some record by a lost tribe of Israel or some bit of Egyptian papyrus that has supposedly been translated or you're going to hear that revelation or someone saying, "Thus saith the spirit. it and you're going to hear or read things that appeal to you that might perhaps confirm things that you already hold to be true, but you will also encounter things that that little truth detector within you indicates are true or at least true on some level. And you're going to make the tragic mistake that countless many of us have made and believe and say that you have received confirmation of the truth of that book or that revelation by the Holy Spirit. But you will have been deceived because just like Eve along with whatever truth there is, you also have swallowed the lie. And in the end, when you do the spiritual math and add up whatever truth you think you gained along with the lies, the total comes out to 100% deception. Whatever truth you may think you've gained will have done you no good. And I will tell you why. If you Google this right now, you'll be able to confirm what I'm saying. Rat poison is 99% good food and only about 1% poison. If it were not so, the rats would not eat it. And it's the 1% that kills them. And in the end, the 99% good food that they consumed in the act did them zero good. And so it is with Satan and his deceptions. He might mingle 5% truth with 95% lie. Or he may dole out 50/50 mix of truth and lies. Ultimately though, he will give us as much truth as needed so that we digest the lie. And even the truths that he gives us are ultimately a form of poison. By accepting them as given in the package that they come in, those truths are distorted and they will distract and eventually destroy you. They ultimately estrange us from God and his ways and keep us from the truth. Jesus is the truth. And when we accept distorted truths mingled with lies, we end up with a distorted version of Jesus that we bow to. This is how Satan is transformed not only into an angel of light, but he is even transformed into a false messiah for us to worship. Amen. And until next time, God bless. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat.