Antichrist and Zombies

The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. -- 2 Thessalonians 2:9-10

Again we see that deception is the enemy's weapon.  Flip Wilson's 'Geraldine' used to say, "The devil made me do it."  This is an easy excuse and incorrect.  Rather, as James tells us:  Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.  But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.  Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death. (James 1:13-15) 

The problem is that a desire is generally rooted in something good.  It may get twisted into a macabre thing, like topiary that is shaped into a monstrous image, but the root is sound and legitimate.  All too often we are deceived as Eve was into disobedience, seeking that which we already possess.  The Serpent told her that she could be "as God, knowing good and evil", yet the man and woman were made in the image and likeness of Elohim from the start.  They already knew that obeying God was good and disobeying Him was evil.  The bargain they made was for dust, ending in death and bitterness.

There are no doubt exceptions, but in the majority of cases, I doubt that sexual pleasure is the primary motivation for adultery — as silly as that sounds.  Most of the time, adultery is about power, emotion, and status.  People feel neglected or oppressed in a relationship and think that a new partner will give them the attention and freedom they deserve.  Envy, greed, and slander are also rooted in a quest for control and dominance.  Yet the Lord told mankind from the very beginning that we have dominion over all the earth — just not over one another for we are all responsible to one Master. 

It is not necessary to seek to satisfy any need or to grasp for any good gift outside of a relationship with our Father.  He will pour into our lives everything we require, satisfying every desire at the root, like abundant rain that soaks down and is drawn up from the ground.  By comparison, yielding to temptation and seeking satisfaction in the world is like squirting water on a leaf.  You can't keep most plants in good health merely sprinkling a little moisture the leaves and branches.  Nourishment has to come up from the hidden roots for life and growth and fruitfulness. 

It all comes down to whom — not just what — we are going to believe.  God speaks the truth.  He cannot do otherwise and still be God.  Sometimes that truth is uncomfortable, disturbing, even confusing.  There is truth that will be incomprehensible to us, especially at the beginning.  Speaking for myself, if I lived twice as long as I have, much would still be beyond my comprehension.  On the other hand, our adversary is a liar and the father of lies, as Jesus said (John 8:44).  The devil will not tell the truth except in halves, distorted so as to serve his deception.  It is not just a matter of choosing whom we will serve.  We need to decide whom we will believe. 

In order to believe God, we will sometimes have to trust Him in spite of illusions, the "false signs and wonders" to which Paul refers.  This spirit of lawlessness, or the antichrist spirit, if you prefer, has a long history.  It is entrenched in the thinking and understanding of the old nature.  It is relentless and so tied to sensory perception that — despite it being rendered inoperable, it has the appearance of living on.  Zombies really are everywhere.  And they really do eat away at your brain. 

I confess that sometimes for days, even weeks, even months on end, I am living more like the walking dead than a son of the Living God.  It is not all that hard to get caught in the cycles of pressure, fear, stress, work, and worry.  We are apt to get locked into focusing on getting to the end of the day — and, honestly, even as we are believing the true report, some days are going to be a challenge just to survive.  But love the truth even when the thorns of it pierce the flesh.  As painful as it may be, it sharpens our awareness, deepens our understanding, awakens, and quickens, and it will cling to us even when we might rather let it go.   

Selling the Lie

For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. – Genesis 3:5 (ESV)

I suppose something Gagdad said the last few days got me on this track. Though I may have mentioned it in passing before, I don’t know that I’ve told the whole story. I was thinking about it while riding the tractor last evening. It is a cautionary tale.

We had this friend named David who called us one Saturday and invited us to his house the next morning for a sort of Bible study. We had met him, his wife, and their son at a church near where they lived. We had since moved across the Metroplex, so it was a good, long drive from our house north of Dallas to beyond the southwest corner of Fort Worth. David was pretty adamant, though, that he wanted us to meet a man who had become, as he said on the phone, “a spiritual father” to them. We arrived the next morning at the appointed hour and took our seats in the very small living room of their house. In a few minutes, two men entered. One was average size. The other man was above average height and extremely obese, but quite well-groomed and well-dressed in upscale casual clothes that managed to fit him despite his enormous girth. The men sat down opposite my wife and I.

With no prayer or preliminaries, the fat man began to speak. He was articulate. There was an air of intelligence about him, but nothing he said was very deep or penetrating. Within a couple of minutes I realized what he was saying and what he probably was. Glancing at my wife I saw that she was puzzled and confused. She had not been able to follow the fat man’s rhetoric.

Honestly, if the man had come up to me on the street with such ridiculous banter I would have laughed in his face or called the cops to pick him up before he got himself in trouble. But I wasn’t on the street. I was an invited guest in the home of a good friend who was buying into the fat man’s story. Somewhere along the way, the fat man had picked up quite a bit of Christian, evangelical jargon. He may have even been a sincere believer at one time or another. Perhaps the truth he heard was twisted by his mind. Perhaps he saw an opening, a way to be “as God”, to draw love and attention, even devotion to himself.

The fat man had a day job. Care to guess what it was? If you guessed car salesman, you are correct. Every car salesman – any good salesman, really, knows all too well that the world is just overflowing with sad, hungry, vulnerable people who will buy whatever a person is selling to make themselves feel loved and accepted and important. Though the fat man was making an outrageous claim about himself, he wasn’t really selling himself.

My friend, David, was an engineer as well as being a licensed minister. His wife had a degree in music and was an accomplished classical pianist. Their son was a near-genius young man who was entering a prestigious university early, with academic scholarships. These were not stupid people. Nor were they people unfamiliar with the Bible. David had been preaching and teaching for a number of years as had his wife. If the fat man had simply made his claim like a madman, they would have rejected it as the utter madness it was.

Instead the fat man had told them that they were chosen to be part of his inner circle. He said, yes, I am God the Father (it makes me shudder just to write that), but you are the foundation of this new revelation. The fat man did what every successful cult leader does. He sold them an inside line, a valuable connection, status, and position. We look at someone like this or Jim Jones or Father Divine, even the lesser offenders like Robert Tilton or Benny Hinn (by the way, David and his wife were, prior to this, financial “partners” of Hinn’s ministry and had reserved seating at his events), and we wonder how people can be fooled by such blatant falsehoods. The trick is not what we believe about the salesman, but what we believe about ourselves.

David told me after this, when he was involved in a movement almost equally ludicrous, that he had always felt that he was destined to be someone great, to be world famous and renowned. That was about the last conversation I had with him. Some people just won’t learn.

Why was I not drawn in? Part of the credit undoubtedly goes to my wife. If she had been more sympathetic to the fat man, it would have been harder for me to do the right thing. Adam’s love for Eve was a critical part of his decision to reject the truth. Another part is my sense of humor which helps keep things in perspective. I do not take myself too seriously. That was the main difference between David and me. Credit for that goes to my parents. And one more thing -- the temptation wasn’t really aimed at me.

Very little credit goes to my native skepticism. Skepticism has no truth in it. As a defense against deception, it is more like barbed wire than a wall. It slows things down, but it will not hold up against serious bombardment. People who are merely skeptical are almost as easy to fool as those who will believe anything.

In the end, David’s wife decided to become the wife of the fat man. At that point, David had a sudden flash of insight -- too late. Their lives were torn apart and shattered. Their son was thrown into confusion and destruction. The fat man gathered a few more followers. I don’t know what happened to him, or my friend’s wife. Perhaps the fat man had a heart attack and died before he could really get going. Or, perhaps, he is still out there somewhere, deceiving and being deceived.

I mentioned that the fat man didn’t really target me with his temptation. I am vulnerable to other deceptions than the one that destroyed my friend. Mine run more along the lines of the material. I have no room to sit in judgment on another’s weakness. I simply point out that there are spiritual temptations that ensnare spiritual people. Just because someone is advanced in the spiritual realm does not mean he or she is in the clear.

Before I close an overly long post, I will add that there wasn’t much I could do to confront the problem. I tried when we went to lunch with David and his wife after the fat man and his associate left. I voiced my doubts and pointed out some of the contradictions, but they were already intoxicated by the prospects of being part of a new work of God, elevated to the status of the Twelve Disciples of Christ. When the break came between David and his wife, we once again made the long drive down. This time, I spoke very plainly about what was taking place. It made no difference to the wife or to the additional followers who surrounded the fat man. They responded by saying that I did not understand, that I was rejecting the new revelation as the Pharisees had rejected Christ. They proved to me that ultimately we deceive ourselves.

After Its Kind

Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness. You know that He appeared in order to take away sins; and in Him there is no sin. No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him.

Little children, make sure no one deceives you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous; the one who practices sin is of the devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning. The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil.

No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother. – 1 John 3:4-10

For some of us this is a very troubling passage. You can hear people explain away the concept by emphasizing the word “practice” and talking about habitual, persistent sin. I think it is more enlightening to go back to Romans and read chapters 6 through 8, maybe throw in chapter 3 to start.

Speaking strictly for myself, I know that within me lies the potential -- and often the intent, to do right, and I know what is right and what is not about 95% of the time. With most decisions in the course of a day it is easy enough to know, if not always easy to do the righteous thing. There is a small but very important subset of possibilities over which we will have to pray, struggle and agonize, but a lot of life is pretty simple if we just want to do right. And therein is a key to understanding because, just as within me I find an intention to do right, there is also, very often, an impulse to take a different way, to do the wrong for my own benefit, pleasure, ease, or profit. What John is pointing out is the very obvious: Dude, listen up. The wrong? That’s not God.

Who am I fooling if I claim to be born of God yet live like the devil? Why would I do such a thing? Forget the sin part for a minute. I think in general the mainstream of Christianity spends too much time talking about what we should not do. Most of us have that down. Knowing God and being known of God is what we are after. It’s like the Karate Kid. How far along would the kid have gotten if he had just hung around outside the old man’s place and talked about how great the old guy was or how he knew all about karate? We do the good stuff which is the God stuff so that we know God, and, as Jesus says, more importantly, so that He knows us. This is why simply being conventionally and acceptably good, as many atheists are, is insufficient. They know the conventional moves to be accepted in the open class with all the rest of the losers. Chuck Norris is still going to kick their asses because they’ve never encountered the Master personally, so they don’t really know how good good is. If you are “as good as anybody else”, then as the over-all relative goodness declines, you decline with it. In the end, as with the dumbed down SAT’s or inflated currency, it doesn’t mean what it used to.

Another thing we learn here is that Christ was revealed to humanity in order to destroy the works of the devil. Focusing only on externals, it is hard to see how that has worked. The devil has built an impressive edifice, but it is founded on a lie. You can be as gods, knowing good and evil. Jesus destroyed the very foundation of the devil’s work by destroying that lie. The Lord lived never knowing evil. By knowing Him – the Good – only, we can truly be as gods. For what else would the sons of God be? (No, I’m not a heretic. It just sounds like it.) By shunning evil we are “not missin’ a thing”, as REO Speedwagon used to say.

Jesus took away sin, as the anti-type scapegoat, and thus broke down the barrier Adam had erected between God and man. Man is no longer left to an isolated, relativistic existence. In that isolation, he was not as a god but rather as a devil, for that is the devil’s nature. Don’t blame it on the devil, for, though it was his free choice once, he can now no longer help himself any more than we could. The laughable part of Satan’s lie was that “your eyes will be opened” -- quite a statement coming from the eternally blind. We were all locked in the soul subbasement together, and all we had were the remotes. Is it any wonder we did so much damage?