A Temcat study
COUNTERFEITS - 5
The Tricky Lie
What
is the false idea that leads God’s children to go after worldly or
pagan teachings and ideas? Perhaps if we take a good look at it, we
can get the very root of the tree and cut it down.
I
am going to tell you exactly what it is. Are you ready?-It
is the idea that there are some good things, some special good things,
out in these false religions that would be a great help to us to know
about. It really says that there are good things in Satan’s realm
that God has not given to us, and the only way we can learn them is to
go study heathen teachings and learn about what other religions
believe.
We
actually feel, when we think this way, that God’s Word to us in the
Bible and Spirit of Prophecy, is not complete. There are other real
valuable things that we have to go after, and then when we learn them,
we can bring them back and put them with our religion to make it even
better.
Notice two verses with me, before we continue our story: “For I
testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this
book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him
the plagues that are written in this book:” Revelation 22:18
Most
people think it is OK to add something to their religion, that is not
mentioned in the inspired writings, but what does God say? He says
“No! Don’t do it!” He even says that those who do it will
receive the PLAGUES. And that means they will be lost with the wicked!
“Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen,…” Jeremiah
10:2
We
hear so many people today teaching that we need to study other
religions, even non-Christian religions, so we can better help them to
see truth. Some also feel that each religion has some good things
that we can gather up and add to our religion to make it even better.
They will tell you that God didn’t give ALL His truth to just one
group.
Didn’t
He? He most certainly did! He did it with Israel and he did it also
with the Advent Movement. Both times he wanted them to share it with
the world, but He was very clear that we are not to go searching for
what we think are missing pieces, and try to add them in. There are NO
missing pieces, boys and girls, NONE at all!
Does
that mean that no other religion has ANY truth? They all have SOME
truth-Satan
has to mix some truth with his lies or nobody would believe it. BUT-and this is very important-there is no TRUTH that God has not already given us!
There
is certainly some good food in the dumpster at the back of my
building, but I don’t have to wade through the garbage for the sake
of a bit of food, when I have a cupboard full of pure, clean food to
eat!
You
see, poison mixed with food is much more dangerous than poison by
itself, labeled ‘POISON’. It is the mix of truth and lies that
Satan always uses to catch everybody, and sad to say, he does catch
most people. I think we need to remember that. Most people are going
to be fooled by Satan and end up lost! Jesus says so. And one of the
reasons this is happening is that people are not content to stick with
what God gives them and tells them about salvation-they want to add their own ideas onto it-to make it ‘better’.
This
warning that God had John write in the end of the book of Revelation
was a very important one. Even at that very time, people were coming
into the early Christian church, bringing the idea that they needed to
‘make it better’ by adding ideas from other religions. In the 100s
and 200s A.D. many Pagan scholars and priests came into the Christian
faith.
Some
of them were not like the people at Ephesus, who burned their books of
magic and paganism, and followed God’s truth only. Oh, no! They were
looked up to in their heathen religions as learned men, and they were
not happy to throw all that away and just follow the teaching of the
Bible. They did not want to sit down and learn like a mere beginner!
They felt they were smarter than God, and they could make Christianity
even better than Jesus had made it, by adding their own ideas to it.
And so they did.
They
added and added and changed and changed. They even rewrote the Bible,
mixing in their heathen ideas. (This changed Bible is the one that ALL
the modern popular versions like NIV and others are from!) And what
grew out of their mixtures? The great system of religion we know as
the Papacy, which the Bible shows us is a vicious BEAST!
Years
ago I made this same mistake. I had not really studied the things of
God as deeply as I should have. I thought I knew it all, and the Bible
or Spirit of Prophecy didn’t have anything new and wonderful to
teach me. Now this was my first mistake! I now know that you can study
the Bible and the Spirit of Prophecy all your life, with the help of
the Holy Spirit, and you will NEVER, NEVER run out of new and
wonderful things to learn!
Then
I easily made the second mistake, I thought pagan religions had ideas
and information that God had not given to His people, and I needed to
go and gather them up and mix them in with my religion. Now, boys and
girls, I want to tell you that it is often on the subject of HEALTH
that Adventist’s get the idea they need to study worldly things to
learn more, and have an even better health message than God gave to
us. I want to tell you,
this is not true. Our health message AS IT WAS GIVEN to us is
complete, and wonderful. Our problem is that it has been so mixed with
worldly medicine now, that most of us don’t know the real message
any more.
So
it is often through things like Yoga and New Age and Oriental medicine
and Martial Arts that Adventists get lured into mixing with and studying
Pagan religions. You see, boys and girls, all these things ARE really
pagan, spiritist religions! You can’t learn them without learning
spiritualism.
Satan
is so happy when one of God’s children wanders in and sits down at
his feet to learn from him! Oh yes indeed! And he moves in to give you
wonderful feelings and experiences so that you are truly sure that,
yes, there is really something good here that I need to learn and
bring back to Adventism; something that God didn’t give me.
Some things SOUND so good, and you see people who claim to be
really blessed by them. You see them do amazing things that
you feel you want to do too. And when you start learning it, you feel
that you are OH, so much smarter than those other dummies in the
church that say, “Don’t mess with that, it is from the devil!”
You
laugh at them, and all the time the devil is having the biggest laugh!
And he is binding his ropes around you and leading you further and
further away from God, all the time telling you that soon, if you just
keep studying and practicing, you will do wonderful things and have
perfect health. But God is the only LIFE-GIVER! And as you move away from
Him you loose life bit by bit.
You
see there is something very important we all need to learn if we would
understand God’s ways; It does not matter what a person says-he may claim the most wonderful set of beliefs and rules for himself
and urge you to have them too. But man’s word has NO POWER in it!
God’s Word has POWER! When God says; ‘Thou shalt’, or ‘Thou
shalt not’, there is the very power in those words to allow you to
obey, if you take hold of them and say, ‘I will do it!’ Man’s
words have NO such power.
Someday
I will tell you more about my journey into darkness looking for light;
but right here I want to say, when by the wonderful kindness of Jesus,
I did escape and return to His Word; I found there everything that I
had thought I could find in spiritualism, and didn’t. I found the
most complete and wonderful truth ever given to mankind. Boys and
girls, there is nothing in this whole wide world that is good, that
God has not already given to us in the Bible and the Spirit of
Prophecy.
Never
let Satan fool you into thinking there is something wonderful in
spiritualist books and religions that you don’t have far better with
God. Never forget Satan is a cheat and a liar, and his only real goal
is to get you destroyed forever!
Continued =^..^=
COUNTERFEITS - 6
'Angels of Light'
Do
you think that you would be able to identify a person who is working
for Satan and has evil angels controlling or helping him? I am sure
you think you would, perhaps you say that they would be weird people,
sneaking around in the dark and doing strange things. Maybe some are,
but I have to tell you today, that most are not!
Remember
that the Bible tells us that Satan is now coming as an 'angel of light'
and his angels too. What is an ‘angel of light’ to you? Perhaps
you are in trouble, or having a hard time and someone comes along and
is so nice to you, and they help you with your problems, and soon you
are feeling so happy about that person. You say, “My, you have been
a real angel to help me like this!”
Now
maybe this person is a good friend, who honestly helps you, and maybe
they are a real Christian, who loves Jesus with all their heart and
shows His love to others all the time. But Maybe; this is one of those
‘angels of light’ that are really ‘angels of darkness!’
I
want you to learn a secret that most people don’t know about; the
same devil that can cause people that he controls to do very bad
things, can cause them to be real good, nice and sweet also! Oh, yes,
he does it all the time. One of the ways he tricks people into
marrying his agents is by making this man or lady so nice that the
Christian person is totally fooled. They think, “Oh this man/lady is
such a good person, I know they don’t believe in my religion, but
with such a good person, I am sure it is OK anyway.”
Oh
yes indeed! And hundreds of young Christian people are fooled by this
and choose for close friends, or even marry people who are of other
religions, or that don’t even believe in God; just because Satan was
making that person be Oh so nice to them! Then, after Satan gets them
married, he has lots of fun, because by disobeying God’s commandment
in the Bible, that we are not to marry unbelievers, he has caused us
to sin against God.
This
removes some of God’s protection from us and allows evil to come in
and meddle in our lives. AND he then gets this person that he controls
to be as bad and as mean as before the marriage they were nice!
The Lord Jesus had Ellen White write to us the warning, that if
we marry those who do not believe the message we believe, we will have
a home where the shadows are never lifted! Yes, and Satan’s angels
are lurking in those shadows. Instead of our home being a little
heaven to go to Heaven in, it will be a little hell on earth!
I want you to take a special look at these words from the
Desire of Ages. If some of the words are too big for you, ask someone
to help you understand it. It is so very important that all of us
understand it.
“When
the soul surrenders itself to Christ, a new power takes possession of
the new heart. A change is wrought which man can never accomplish for
himself. It is a supernatural work, bringing a supernatural element
into human nature. The soul that is yielded to Christ becomes His own
fortress, which He holds in a revolted world, and He intends that no
authority shall be known in it but His own. A soul thus kept in
possession by the heavenly agencies is impregnable to the assaults of
Satan.
“But
unless we do yield ourselves to the control of Christ, we shall be
dominated by the wicked one. We must inevitably be under the control
of the one or the other of the two great powers that are contending
for the supremacy of the world. It is not necessary for us
deliberately to choose the service of the kingdom of darkness in order
to come under its dominion. We have only to neglect to ally ourselves
with the kingdom of light. If we do not co-operate with the heavenly
agencies, Satan will take possession of the heart, and will make it
his abiding place. The only defense against evil is the indwelling of
Christ in the heart through faith in His righteousness. Unless we
become vitally connected with God, we can never resist the unhallowed
effects of self-love, self-indulgence, and temptation to sin. We may
leave off many bad habits, for the time we may part company with
Satan; but without a vital connection with God, through the surrender
of ourselves to Him moment by moment, we shall be overcome. Without a
personal acquaintance with Christ, and a continual communion, we are
at the mercy of the enemy, and shall do his bidding in the end.” Desire
of Ages, Pg. 324
The
first part tells what wonderful things that Jesus will do for you when
you give all your heart to Him. The second part warns us that if we
don’t give ALL our heart to Jesus, Satan still has power over us,
and sooner or later, we will be captured by him and dirtied and
destroyed.
This
also warns us that if our friends are the kind of people who may go to
church or claim to be Christians, but still like to do worldly things
and have worldly entertainment as often as they can; they are still
people controlled by Satan and he can work through them to tempt us
and do us harm.
You
see, most of us have been taught to think that all of us are really
good people at heart. But do you know a secret? This is a lie-and it comes from spiritualism! The Bible says nothing like this at
all. The Bible says: “…there is none good but one, that is,
God.” Mark 10:18
What
does the Bible warn us about our ‘good hearts’? “The heart is
deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know
it?” Jeremiah 17:9. So if you think people, including yourself, are
‘basically good hearted’, then you are fooled already, by one of
Satan’s lies.
Notice
that it does not just say ‘deceitful’, which means it lies to us,
but that it is deceitful ‘above all things’! In other words, your
heart and my heart are the biggest liars around!
God
is telling us that our hearts, that is our inside mind and feelings,
are so tricky that we even fool ourselves! We need to pray and ask
Jesus to show us the truth about our ‘heart’ so we can ask Him to
come in and change those tricky, wicked hearts.
Until a person has done this
and Jesus is truly in charge of that person’s tricky heart, he can
still be used by Satan to do his nasty work!
Continued =^..^=
NEXT
