Deception is Deceptive

Recently my pastor touched on deception–how some preachers & teachers of the Word will start off bringing sound doctrine from the pulpit, but then as time progresses, they will subtly begin to introduce another gospel–a false gospel. The fact is that many people are being lured away because they can not see the transition that took place, and they continue trusting in a man rather than depending on the Holy Spirit. As the Bible says, “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God.”

But that reminded me of a video (below) that I had seen previously about a frog. They took the frog and tried to put it in a pot of boiling water–it wouldn’t get in. But then they put it in a pot of room temperature water on a stove, and it did get in, so they gradually turned up the heat instead. The frog didn’t notice because it was simply adjusting to the subtle changes as the heat was rising. By the end of the video, however, the frog had perished in that same boiling water that it had refused to get into in the first place. (The real frog was not actually harmed, btw.)

But think about that. When the heat was there in full force, it was easily recognizable, but when introduced in small intervals over time, the frog was easily deceived. But I brought all of that up to say, a key characteristic of deception is that if it was obvious it wouldn’t be deception.

Deception isn’t going to come at anyone in an obvious way. There are things that may deceive another believer that wouldn’t deceive you at all. When the person tried to put the frog in the boiling pot, that was not deceptive because the frog could easily see exactly what was taking place and avoid getting in, but through a different approach, it was still able to be tricked. Many are continually being deceived because pride would tell us we can’t be deceived–often because of the amount of knowledge we have or because of a gift that we may operate in. That makes the deception easier for the enemy because we aren’t even looking to fortify against the attack in that case. The Bible says, “Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able successfully to stand up against the strategies and the deceits of the devil.” So if you know that you aren’t prone to believe a flat out heresy or a blatant lie because you are well-versed in the scriptures, then the enemy is likely going to try to deceive you with the truth–adding a few scriptures into a faulty concept that might make sense to your natural mind, or causing you to question, as the serpent did to Eve, “Did God really say…?” when it comes to His Word. In Matthew 4, Satan even tried to come at Jesus with the scripture to deceive and manipulate Him into serving evil. The Word of God warns, “Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour,” and not forgetting that “the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons.” Without understanding the potential for deception, many of us will experience the same fate as the frog in this video–too knowledgeable to fall for the obvious, but oblivious to the subtle ways through which the enemy will try to achieve to same outcome. Examine your beliefs, test everything that is said, and remain alert & watchful.