That is what it means when it says ‘God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie’. God doesn’t deceive them, No, of course not- they insist on being deceived, so God has to withdraw His protection and the liar, Satan sweeps in and they are carried away by the muddy torrent of delusions. 

Notice this sad verse-Re 22:15 "For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie."

This tells us the fate of those who received not the love of the truth; instead they love and make lies and end up outside the city to be destroyed with the wicked.

Exposing the Lies

I want to make this point crystal clear, anything out of harmony with the scriptures is not truth. Satan is putting forth the concept that man is immortal in himself. And of course he tells his followers that he is able to give life and do anything for them that they want. Why does he try so hard to make us believe we are all powerful and immortal?

The TRUTH is that only God, that is God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, have underived life. All other lives in the universe are dependent upon the life of God. If we think that we have life in ourselves, then we are not so worried about God’s authority. "He’s just bluffing when HE warns us, "The wages of sin is death!" After all, we can’t really die." God only deals in truth, He never bluffs.

Satan is a powerful angel, he- has great power to influence our minds and bodies, great hypnotic ability and can do things that to us seem impossible; but he has no life in himself. 

This is a truth he knows but refuses to accept. He cannot give life to his followers. He cannot even heal when it is a case where real life-giving power is required. There are many people who go to occult healers, the ones that get ‘healed’ are usually the illnesses with strong emotional or psycho-somatic aspects. Those with problems that would require real creative power, often seem to get well for a while, only to have the problem reoccur later. That is because he can hype them up with hypnotism and feelings for a while, but he has no power to give life or to re-create; only the Life-giver has this power.

Satan can destroy and kill, and he does when God finally is forced by our stubborn refusal to allow Him to save us, to withdraw His protection; but he can’t give life. He can’t even keep his human servants alive when it is so valuable to him to do so. If they get sick and die, he can do nothing about it. His only recourse is to impersonate some of them like he has in spiritualism and make us think they are still alive or they are contacting us from ‘beyond’.

This brings us to a great understanding of the 1,000-year period when Satan and his angels are going to be left here on this desolate earth, while all the saints are in heaven. Satan has boasted to his followers that he will resurrect them and they shall live forever in his kingdom. Well, God is going to give him his chance. He is going to have 1,000 years to resurrect the wicked dead whose bodies will litter the earth. He won’t be able to do it; he will finally realize that only God is the source of life, his life included.

But do you know what he does when God finally returns for the judgment of the wicked and He resurrects them to meet their sentence of death? Why he goes right back into lying as soon as he has someone to lie to! He runs out into the crowds of the wicked and tells them that he resurrected them and now they can take the city from the saints and live forever on earth with him as king. He is indeed a liar and the father of it. Remember that when you find your heart reaching out to believe in ‘magic’.

Are Miracles the same as Magic?

Often when people come up against something that they can’t explain away, where it surely appears that supernatural agencies are at work, they are then sure that it must be from God, or they will think it proves the dead are interacting with them. But they don’t take into consideration the myriads of fallen angels in this world that are totally dedicated to deceiving you and tricking you into believing their lies instead of the Word of God.

Re 16:14 "For they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty."

2Co 11:14 "And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light."

But what about when God really performs a miracle, is it the same as magic? No, there is a big difference. Take for example when Jesus fed the 5,000 + people from a small lunch. It wasn’t some kind of magic; He is the Creator and has the power to create. He used the same power to feed the people that he uses in nature every day to feed the multitudes of earth, He just accelerated it, that’s all.

He can recreate- He can raise the dead, heal and restore by using the same power He used to create everything in the first place. The power is in God, He is the only being who has life in Himself; but Satan has no such power in himself and neither do we. Satan can impersonate the dead, and really fool us, but not truly raise them. He can oppress people and make them sick and then by removing his oppressive power make it appear they are healed, but to actually heal people like the man blind from birth that Jesus healed, he can’t because that took real creative power.

Signs and Wonders

What about the things people are calling miracles these days? Statues of Mary that weep tears or blood? It is very easy for Satan to cause a few drops of blood or tears to appear on a dumb idol. That is easy for him, and there go thousands of people all amazed and because they do not choose to believe the Word of the Living God, they are fooled by a devil’s trick with a dumb idol. What is even more sad is the things that people think are ‘proved’ by these happenings.

So I have a plaster saint and all of a sudden I find blood or tears on it. What does that mean? Well, really all it means is that a fallen angel, (or a dishonest person) put tears or blood on my plaster saint. It doesn’t mean my plaster saint is really alive, it isn’t a sign from God to tell me to worship the idols as the Bible tells me not to do that. It isn’t even the collective minds of all the people worshiping the idol that causes it to happen, no - it is merely ‘devils working miracles’ seeking to deceive the very elect.

What about when a heathen idol really ‘drinks’ milk? It is easy for the devil and his angels to slurp up milk or in some way get it to disappear when it is offered to the idol. Does it mean the idol has power? No, the Bible says idols have no power, only the demons that are involved in them. Does it mean that the idol is going to do something wonderful for you? No, it can’t do anything for you, and the only thing the devils want to do for you is to trick and destroy you.

See what I mean about anything that is not in harmony with the scriptures being untrue? When we study and learn what the Bible says, then if we see an idol drink milk or bleed or cry, we simply say, "yes, there is old Satan trying to trick people into disobeying God" and we walk away and seek to warn others not to believe his lies.

There is another terrible trick Satan is using a lot today, he gets people together then hypnotizes them and makes them act in strange ways, he takes them captive and gives them all sorts of ‘wonderful feelings’, and thousands think it is the Holy Spirit. 

But the Holy Spirit never makes people do weird things, God never plays games with people; that is Satan’s field, he invented games and he loves to play games with the tender hearts of people and fool them and destroy them.

Friends, if you read about the Holy Spirit in the Bible, you will learn that He does a lot for us and in us, but He never makes us speak gibberish or bark or roar, or run around out of control. This is a deception and people say, "see, God is with us! So we are right in breaking His laws or He wouldn’t be blessing us". 

Get hold of the Bible folks, and if it is not in agreement with the Bible, it is a lie, it’s the bait on the mousetrap and you are the mouse.

God Working Within His Laws

God’s power is working marvelously every day, in feeding us, protecting us, healing us but it is seldom thought of as a miracle as He is so dependable we take it for granted and He usually works through His own laws of nature. Nevertheless, there is real creative power at work in us and around us every day. Even when it seems a ‘miracle’ has happened, it doesn’t mean that God is not working through His own natural laws. 

For example, when an airplane flies, is that because the natural law of gravity is magically turned off? No, it is because there are other laws that counteract the law of gravity and allow the plane to fly.

You know, science can tell you how gravity works and they can measure it and calculate it; but no one really knows what it is. The Bible tells us it is the power of God holding the universe together. What makes a seed grow? Man can’t make a seed that will grow- no, it is the power of God; the Life-giver that makes a seed grow.

God can work through natural laws we know nothing about, and yet, God is not limited by His own laws, He works with them and through them but can work outside of them also if He sees fit.

NEXT: