Recognizing Deception and Apostasy
	Can you be Deceived ?
Recognizing Deception and Apostasy

Part I

RECOGNIZING DECEPTION

What They Don’t Want You to Know!

CHAPTER 1

THE NEED FOR DIVINE REVELATION

God makes Himself known to man by divine revelation.  Man does not understand the things of God with his mind alone.  In fact, we were alienated from God and enemies in our mind (Col 1:11, Romans 8:7)   We need a renewed mind (Romans 12:1)  “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life.”  (John 6:63)

Understanding spiritual things does not come from studying, reading or thinking about God.  Nor does it come from exercising your will and demanding to know about Him or opening your emotions to feel God.  You can’t get to God by following a formula or a form, by going to a church or a “holy man”.  There are no intermediaries!  You understand God when He reveals Himself to you! 

Man is made up of a body, soul and spirit. Only the human spirit can comprehend God. “God is spirit and those who worship Him, must worship Him in spirit and in truth.” (John 4:24) Let me paraphrase, “God’s essence is spirit, and those who want to fellowship with Him must do so with their human spirit.” This is the essence of the Christian life. It isn’t about doctrines, teachings, acting a certain way, going to church and Sunday school. It is about having a relationship with God!  It isn’t about learning, studying, thinking, meditating.  It is about touching God with your human spirit.  If a glove is made in image of a hand, it does not fulfill its purpose until filled by a hand.  In the same way, man is made in the image of God (Genesis 1:26) but man has no purpose until that “God-shaped void” – the human spirit is made alive and indwelt by Him!

Please read John 3. Because of sin and the fall of man, the third part of our being, the human spirit was dead. A learned Jewish priest comes to Jesus and asks,

“Rabbi, we know that you have come from God as a teacher; for no on can do these signs that you do unless god is with him.  Jesus answered and said to him ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.’  Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can a man be born when he is old?  He cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born, can he?’  Jesus answered, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.  That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.’”  (John 3:2-6)

So what happens when we are saved?  Our human spirit is brought to life and the human spirit is literally “born again” as the Spirit of God brings the human spirit to life and takes up residence. Once that happens, we have divine revelation inside us. All of a sudden our human condition and what God did in the God-Man Jesus Christ makes sense. We find ourselves drawn to Him, thankful to Him and in love with Him. There is a change, a spark of life that every young Christian experiences. It is not an intellectual experience, not an emotional experience, but a spiritual experience that can’t be explained rationally.

With revelation from the Spirit in us, the more we read the Bible, the more it makes sense.  When we read it before, nothing made sense.  Now it does.  We understand God’s eternal plan and purpose, how from the very beginning of the Old Testament, He had a plan on how to bring man back into fellowship with Himself. In Genesis 1, it says, “Let us make man in our image…”  If you use the example of the glove, what is it made for? To fill it up with sand? With water? No, obviously the glove finds its purpose and meaning when a human hand fills it. No other animal was made in His image - only man! But proud and arrogant man tries to fill that “God-shaped” void with everything but God - knowledge, possessions, pleasure, etc. Instead, we try to create God in man’s image. We sense there might be a "Supreme Being" up there, so we make God into what we think He should be. Man worships the sun, the moon, the elements, teachings and doctrines. But unless we accept God’s plan and have our human spirit made alive, we have only our vain imagination, not true revelation.

The Bible says “those who seek me diligently will find me.” (Proverbs 8:17) If you seek Him you will surely find Him. No one can do it for you. It is not a matter of joining a church, of believing a set of teachings or of changing your behavior. It is a matter of opening your heart and asking Him to reveal Himself to you and, whole heartedly accepting Him and His plan for your life and giving yourself completely to Him.  If you want to know what the Bible means and know the author of the Bible, you need to have your human spirit made alive by being “born again” and then you will have the inward revelation and you will have a relationship with God Himself! Christianity is about “relationship,” not “religion.”  All religion is about doing things, trying to be good, living to a standard.  Christianity is about having a relationship with God and letting Him change you day by day.

Now that isn’t to say that man hasn’t reduced formal Christianity to dead religion. Frankly, the clergy/laity system, the stately church buildings with their crosses and stained glass windows, the grand choirs and worship groups, the “order of worship” have little or nothing to do with the true church. Can you imagine the early church with a printed bulletin telling them what they were going to do and when?  Where is the Holy Spirit’s leading in that?  Can we anticipate His move the week before when the bulletin is printed and the songs and prayers are selected?  No, that is merely religion, not true Christianity!  If you have ever lived in the south, you have seen cultural Christianity at work and all the rules you have to live by.

The early church was made up of common men and women who were so excited by the new inner life they had discovered, so willing to give up everything, including their lives for the love of their Savior and God. The problem with today’s Christianity is that it just goes through the motions.  Congregational singing and pastoral prayer are hardly spontaneous and representative of the working of the Holy Spirit in His body.  The priest or pastor stands up to preach and teach, and the average person just sits there dutifully and listens to the same thing week after week, month after month and year after year. The clergy may be regurgitating canned sermons, or he may really know how to touch the Lord in his human spirit and get fresh revelation from the Bible.  But they impart the knowledge, not their ability to get that revelation to others.  If the clergy really knows how to touch God, why don’t they impart their ability to the laity and work themselves out of a job?

So, getting back to recognizing deception, if you depend on others (from your pastor to great Christian books to Christian tapes and/or programs on the radio) for your revelation, you may be disappointed. There are two basic reasons why. First, as we shall see in the next chapter, the pastors and priests are probably telling you the wrong thing because they are just passing on the same out of date teachings they have received. And second, and more importantly, the only real protection you have is your own real personal relationship with Jesus Christ. If you have that, the Bible will come alive for you and the Lord will open your eyes to what is really happening in the last days. Your inward sense will be so heightened that you will see through the lies and the sham, and have the strength to stand against the tide of opinion and the friends opposing you.

I would encourage each of you to develop your relationship with God and be willing to follow Him wherever He leads. Learn to listen to His still small voice and obey it. Shame on the clergy for perpetuating their jobs rather than passing on to the saints their supposed ability to be close to God and get revelation from the Word! You will not recognize deception if you follow a man or his teachings. You need to have your own relationship and your own revelation! You will answer to God on judgment day for what you do, and blindly following other men won’t get you off the hook. In fact, later we will show how many so-called Christian leaders are going down the primrose path of deception. The Bible clearly says that there will be a great falling away of Christians in the last days and this is not what is being preached from the pulpits today.

So that’s what this book is all about, “Recognizing Deception”. Satan is out to deceive and he has had a lot of success. Christians are deceived all the time. Cults are full of “born again” Christians who have been drawn away. And the fact of the matter is we are all susceptible, if we are just living in our “natural man” rather than in the spirit and a “renewed mind”. For anyone to say we somehow have an immune pill from being deceived is wishful thinking, because it should be obvious that Christians can be and are deceived all the time. Some Christians say that “when the time comes they will know what to do”.  But, if we don’t know the Lord and know how to discern the times today, the chances are not that great we will be successful tomorrow.

This is all the more reason why you need to base your Christian life on your own relationship with the Lord, rather than depending on what the experts tell you. You need to band together with other Christians in living communities reminiscent of the early church. You need to realize that you will probably suffer the loss of all of your possessions, many relationships you hold dear and eventually your own life. Don’t be attached to the world and possessions. Steel yourself to the heartache as battle lines are drawn. The Bible says that son will turn against father and father against son, mother against daughter, brother against brother. Only a real relationship with God will protect you from the trouble ahead enabling you to overcome the tide of deception sweeping the church.

Only divine revelation will protect you from the coming deception.  You need to get out of the box of your culture and the Christian institution.  Read the Bible and ask the Lord to speak to you with an open heart and mind.  Remember, the Bible tells us the church in the last days will fall away, so be careful.  And if you are a Christian in the “western world” and can’t see what is happening in the church today, you may already be deceived!  The church has been “slip sliding away” for years now, but we are as frogs in the water pot who have gotten accustomed to the rising temperature.

Continue to Chapter 2

 How We Got Off Track

Go back to Chapter 1

Go back to the beginning