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What we should know about the Enemies of Truth.

For 6000 years Satan the devil has been luring mankind away from serving and worshiping God. He is very well experienced at it. He knows just what to do and how to do it. He is very skilled, but he is not perfect. He does not succeed with everyone. Do not let him succeed with you.

To avoid being tricked or fooled by Satan it is well to know his techniques. And what are they? Well, he has different tried and true methods that work well with different people. We will take a look at them. It is important to realize that we are not alone. We have a helper if we allow ourselves to be helped. That is the key. The Bible says: oppose the devil and he will flee from you. James 4:7

Very good and valuable counsel, but let us take a look at the techniques used by the devil and his cohorts.

Tradition

Tradition has always been one of the devil's most effective tools. Just think of the arguments for tradition. Things have always been that way! The ideas we inherit we usually accept without question. If someone comes along and questions a traditional belief, are you going to believe all the wisdom of the scholarly men for 1000 or 2000 years or are you going to believe someone who comes along and says it is not true? Those faithful scholars over the centuries cannot be wrong. Yes they can! Jesus said of the important religious scholars of his day that they made the Word of God invalid by their traditions.

Ofttimes, traditions are an accumulation of error. Satan lured Christendom into accepting erroneous beliefs and doctrines, often appealing to tradition. He lured them away from the true faith into grievous and God dishonoring error, and as years passed these errors became ossified and turned into doctrinal pillars of a church that had lost its way and been led astray. The true faith was abandoned in favor of false and unchristian doctrines and teachings that denied and contradicted what our dear Savior had taught. The wise and scholarly can be wrong and common folk that believe and follow the teachings of the Bible can be right, as Jesus said in prayer to God. Matthew 11:25

Another technique of Satan is to cause people to deny his very existence. Satan is vain but he also really enjoys fooling people. Jesus believed in Satan and indeed knew him, but even if Satan did not exist we can see his tricks in action.

How else do Satan and his lackeys try to fool you, and try to get you to believe false doctrines?

Repetition

Studies have shown that if something is repeated often enough people come to believe it. Take the Trinity. This is the doctrine that there is God the father, God the son, and God the Holy Spirit (ghost), and these are not three gods but one God, and that they are co-equal and co-eternal. This is often called the three-in-one doctrine. Despite the fact that no advocate of the Trinity can find any scripture in the Bible that either names or describes the Trinity, many believe not only because of inherited tradition but because of repetition.

Despite the fact that their doctrine is absent from the Bible they not only believe it but they struggle to make some scriptures appear to support it. Their scholars have even intentionally altered the text of the Bible in an attempt to make it seem to agree with their godless and anti-Christian doctrine.

At times, in the past they have used physical coercion to make people agree with them even going as far as torture and burning at the stake. While physical coercion has now been mostly abandoned, other forms of coercion are still in use. A good example of psychological coercion much used in the past, although less so nowadays, is scaring by threatening that those who do not accept their doctrines will burn in an eternal, unending realm of pain, torment, and agony in a perpetual fiery hell.

And Satan has other tricks. One briefly alluded to above, is mistranslating the Bible in places so it will seem in agreement with Christendom's devilish false teachings.

There is another technique that has been used, and that is selective quotation. They isolate a scripture and then attempt to spin it so it appears to have a meaning that will agree with their false and blasphemous doctrines. In other cases, when they cannot spin a scripture, they will use excuses, trying to explain it away claiming it doesn't deny their teachings.

One obvious example is John 14:28 where Jesus said: "my father is greater than I." Their problem is obvious. The Trinity doctrine says Jesus and his father are coequal. So they disingenuously argue that he was meaning that his father was greater while he, Jesus, was on earth. The problems with that argument are painfully obvious. If you are equal, you are equal wherever you are. And anyway, that absurd argument is rejected and put to rest in First Corinthians 11:3 where God's Word says "the head of the Christ is God", and these words were written more than 20 years after Christ was enthroned in the heavens by his father.

Another technique in our day has been to drown out the truth in a river of propaganda and burying it in a sea of sometimes discordant voices. There is so much religious propaganda out there, with thousands of voices on the Internet, radio waves, and printed material, attempting to drown out the truth of God’s holy Word.

An old and effective trick of Satan is to send out blind guides who seem important and are often charismatic. Jesus said of those guides But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because you shut up the kingdom of heaven in front of men, for you do not enter in yourselves, neither do you allow them that are entering in to enter. (Matthew 23:13) One very important scripture is Second Corinthians 4:3,4 which shows that Satan has blinded unbelievers, and unbelievers are not limited to those who don't believe in Jesus. In fact, in our day as in Jesus’s day most of the blinded unbelievers are those who show by their beliefs that they do not accept all that Jesus taught. They do not believe all that he taught, so it is in this way they are unbelievers.

So why do they believe those false teachings? Look at it from their point of view. We know that if our doctor gives us advice we believe it because we trust our doctor, and it can also be because we like our doctor. So too with our plumber, and electrician, dentist, auto mechanic, etc. They are experts. We are not. So it is generally true that we accept what they say.

Even much more so, will we be inclined to believe what our religious teacher tells us.

We can see the power of Satan's techniques and why they are effective. It is difficult and uncomfortable to go against those we might feel know more than we do, especially if we like them, respect them, and maybe even love them, and even if we suspect that what they say might be flawed. This makes us very vulnerable. It is very hard for most of us to go against this form of opposition especially if it appears to be friendly. It takes courage and fortitude, and trust in our own judgment. That is why we should always seek divine guidance in such matters. If we waver in our confidence in our own judgment, we can always be sure of God, if we rely on him, but we must not allow ourselves to be swayed by men.

Add to this that some doctrines seem comforting. Keep always in mind that Satan has three trademarks. They are lies, deceptions, and slander. This is what he used back in the Garden of Eden, and this is what he uses now. All these techniques we have just looked at and the others he uses all involve one or more of these trademarks, and usually all three, and if you recall what happened in Eden as narrated in Genesis 3:1-7 then you know exactly what he is going to do to us and everyone else as well.

So what can we do? Here is what the inspired Word of God tells us at Ephesians 6:10-18a:

Finally, be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of his might.

Put on the whole armor of God so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.

Therefore take up the compete armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm.

Stand therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the readiness of the gospel of peace.

Besides all this, taking up the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the evil one.

And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God.

With all prayer and supplication praying at all seasons in the spirit, and stay alert with all perseverance, and prayers for all the holy ones.

We have commented on the false claims that the Churches make about God and Christ Jesus. Let's now take a look at the truth about God, Jesus, and the holy spirit that the pure word of truth, the Holy Bible teaches.

The true teachings of the Bible.

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