What is the great deception in the Bible?

But there should be another test yet: not His coming in the Father's name with the simple aim of doing His will and glorifying Him, but another to come in His own name. This would suit the Jew — man. Self-exaltation is his bane, and Satan's bait, and therein utterly irremediable ruin under Divine judgment. It is the man of sin113 in contrast with the Son of God, the Man of obedience and righteousness; and, according as we have heard that Antichrist comes, even now there have come many antichrists. But the presence of Antichrist will be according to the working of Satan, in all power and signs and wonders of falsehood, and in every deceit of unrighteousness, to those that perish, because they have not received the love of the truth that they might be saved. They would not have the true God and eternal life in the Son become man and suffering in love for man; they will receive Satan's man when he sets up to be God. This is the great lie of the end, and they will be lost in it who rejected the truth in Christ.

However this may be judged by those who hear it, we must remember that there will be also another cause of a most solemn nature, which is plainly revealed: God is going to pour out a judicial delusion on Christendom. It is certain that He will not only inflict severe blows of judgment, but give men up to believe a lie — the great lie of the devil. Here is the great truth of all times: — that God, the God who has now revealed Himself in Christ and by redemption, alone is the due object of worship. So far then is this message, to my mind, from being a strange thing that it appears exactly suitable to man as then situated, and no less to God's wisdom and goodness.

Rev. 20:3. — No “more deceive the nations until the thousand years were completed.” The career of Satan from his first connection with the human race (Gen. 3) till his imprisonment in the abyss has been one of cruel, heartless deception. He has falsified the character of God; he has blinded the minds of men to the nature of sin and to its eternal consequences, and has so misrepresented the Gospel that millions are morally ruined by the ready acceptance of that which is “another gospel.” “The whole world lieth in the evil one” is indeed a sweeping declaration‎ ‎(1 John 5:19, R.V.). This solemn statement is in no wise exaggerated. The race in its then living entirety, save the elect, is at the last gathered under the banner of Satan,‎ only to find out when too late that all have been miserably deceived (Rev. 20:7-9).‎

“He who is called,” referring now to personal names, (3) “Devil,” and (4) “Satan.” The two former titles are descriptive of character — cruelty and subtlety; the two latter names, Devil and Satan, refer to the dragon as a person. The devil is an actual historical being, and in the Greek of the New Testament is used only in the singular. “Devils” should be “demons” (R.V.). As the devil, he is the accuser, the traducer, and tempter. As Satan, he is the open and declared adversary of Christ, the public enemy of God and of His people (see Job 1; 2; Zech. 3; Matt. 4; Eph. 6:11; 1 Peter 5:8).

The special work of Satan is next stated, and one to which his untiring energy is directed. He “deceives the whole habitable world.” The human instruments in effecting his purpose (Rev. 13), and God’s judicial judgment upon Christendom, i.e., the habitable earth, are not here named. The prime mover in all is alone before us. By God’s permission Satan deceives all embraced within the prophetic scene (2 Thess. 2:7-12), whoever may be the persons employed, or whatever the means used, Satan himself is the leader in luring on the world to its moral ruin. Christianity having been abandoned, God gives up in retributive justice the guilty and apostate Church, and the mass of Judah as well, to believe the lie of Satan, in presenting the Antichrist as Israel’s promised Messiah and king, backed up by signs of a miraculous character. The bait is eagerly swallowed. “The whole habitable world” is deceived thereby. Then, however, Satan keeps in the background; here in the light of Heaven he stands fully exposed. He was the unseen but spiritual and personal power behind Herod (compare v. 4 with Matt. 2:16). He is equally so in the judicial blinding of Christendom by his great satellite, the Antichrist, or second Beast of Revelation 13.

Rev. 12:9. — “He was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.” The threefold repetition of the verb cast out is meant to emphasise the fact of the ignominious expulsion of Satan and his angels from Heaven. Who these angels are is a question shrouded in mystery. All we know is that they constitute Satan’s militant host, and are cast out of Heaven with their distinguished chief. Satan can then no more enter God’s presence and accuse the saints to Him, nor can his poisonous breath ever again infect the holy atmosphere of the heavenly places. The heavens have to be cleared of evil as well as the earth, and the ground on which both spheres are to be purified and reconciled (Col. 1:20) is the sacrifice of Christ (Heb. 9:23). How complete, therefore, and far-reaching in its results is the blood of Christ!

But there was one to whom the garden of the Lord, with its happy human inmates, amidst that blissful scene of light, peace, love, and harmony, was an eyesore, for it reminded Him of a still brighter, higher and happier place which he had forfeited. Through his own wicked error he had fallen from his own steadfastness. And ever since his character had been to envy and hate everything that was of God, and therefore good, and to try and defile and destroy everything which God had established in and for blessing. He determined to blight that fair and happy scene and its inmates with his poisonous breath of sin, and not only so, but to dislodge Adam from his seat of supremacy, and to usurp his place as the prince of the world, by making man to obey him, and to disobey God, and to believe him who made God a liar. And when the sun was shining, through the verdant branches, on the golden fruits of the trees of the Paradise, and upon the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that was in the midst of the garden, the serpent made its noiseless approach, and began the attack upon the weaker part: the woman taken out of man. The very first word. ("yea") implied suggestion, and the very first sentence a suggestion and suspicion against God's goodness, until it waxed bolder, and made God a liar, man not only permitting it, but acting upon it. Alas! the old tale is ever new, and will be, to the end of the chapter.

Further, the serpent held out as a bribe the good of evil. In eating the forbidden fruit, your eyes will be opened, and ye will be as God, knowing good and evil. God is jealous; I am your friend. He would keep you ignorant and in leading strings. Take my advice: be independent and know for yourselves as He does. As he veiled the doom of transgression, so did he set off the bribe in glowing colours; and as Eve stayed to listen, she was tainted with his pestilent breath. She received the lying foe as her best friend when his slander of the living and true God entered her heart. Open sin and ruin followed without delay.

As the Lord will manifest His presence in overwhelming power and glory, so will the presence of the lawless one be according to Satan's energy in every form of power and signs and wonders of falsehood to deceive and destroy. The same disbelief which refused the evidence of God's power and truth in Christ will fall under Satan's lie in these powers and prodigies. They are superhuman. Wonders were wrought to a certain point by Pharaoh's magicians. In another way we see surprising effects by natural agents in Job's trials. But here similar language is employed about the man of sin as the apostle Peter used about the Righteous One (Acts 2:22). They will be real miracles to promote falsehood, not pretended ones. The issue will be, not only his own perdition, but the deceiving of all his followers to everlasting ruin because they did not receive the love of the truth that they might be saved. His lie, the deceit of unrighteousness, will be incompatible with salvation by Christ and the truth. They all perish.

The apostle then gives the moral reason for so stern a judgment. “And for this cause God sendeth them a working of error that they should believe the falsehood, that all might be judged who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness” (v. 12). God's sending a working of error is judicial hardening. Satan follows with his deceiving marvels of power to drag down all its followers to perdition. It is divine retribution. They renounced the truth and salvation with it; they loved the lie. They must perish. The elect of that day escape solely by divine grace, as is true of all the elect in any day.

If you turn to 2 Thessalonians, you will see the same, where Christianity is concerned, in connection with the apostasy: "Then shall that Wicked be revealed … even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan, with all power and signs, and lying wonders." Of course they are all "lying," but still they are "powers, and signs, and wonders" - words verbally identical in the original with those used by Peter when he preached of "Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs." That is, Antichrist does the same things - lying, of course, but the same as regards men's apprehension of them - which proved Jesus to be the Christ, and the same things that proved Jehovah to be the true God. By these means he blinds and deceives the people, and leads them away to worship the dragon and the beast. He does this by bringing down fire from heaven and leads them to recognise the false Christ as the true one, by doing the same things - falsely, of course - as Christ had done. You cannot conceive a more awful and solemn thing, than that men should thus be given up to strong delusion, to believe a lie, and to be subject to the power of him, whose coming is after the working of Satan, with all power and signs and lying wonders; and it is not surprising that the apostle should be so impressive in his warning, when he says, "This know, that in the last days perilous times shall come."

"And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you. For many shall come in My name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many" (vers. 4, 5). In the Epistles it is never exactly such a thought as warning persons against false Christs, for the Epistles are addressed to Christians; and a Christian could not be deceived by a man's pretensions to be Christ. It is most appropriate here, because the disciples are viewed in this chapter, not as the representatives of us Christians now, but of future godly Jews. We, as Christians, have nothing to do with the destruction of the temple; it does not affect us in any way. These disciples were, as the godly remnant of the nation, looking for the Messiah to bring in glory. The Lord, therefore, warns them that if any should arise among them, saying, I am Christ, they were not to believe them. The time was come when the true Messiah ought to appear. And He had appeared, but Israel had rejected Him, hardening themselves in the lie that our Lord could not be the promised One. But Israel had not given up the hope of the Messiah yet, and this exposes them to the delusion spoken of here (i.e., to persons saying, I am Christ). At any rate, the rejection of the true Christ lays them open to the reception of a false Christ. Our Lord had warned them of this. "I am come in My Father's name, and ye receive Me not. If another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive." If a messiah were to come full of self and Satan, the nation should be given up to receive the false, as a just retribution for having rejected the True. The disciples were the representatives of godly Jews, and were warned of what should befall their nation. But take the epistle of John and what have you there? "Beloved, believe not every spirit." Why? Because the great thing that the Church is distinguished by is the presence of the Holy Ghost; and the deceit which we have to watch against is false spirits, not false Christs, though there are many antichrists. The danger of Christians is grieving the Holy Ghost — nay, listening to false spirits. "Believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God, because many false prophets are gone out into the world." There are false prophets now, and evil spirits work in them. In these days, faith both in the Holy Ghost and in Satan's power is very much weakened. People only look at the man; whereas Scripture makes a great deal of God and of Satan. What gives Satan power over a professor of the name of Christ is the allowance of sin. Satan has not one atom of power against a child of God who is looking to Jesus; but where self is allowed, it is an opportunity for Satan to come in.

But the apostle returns here to the comforting assurance of how amply God has provided even for His babes, in view of such things as these. It is to the little children that he says: "But ye have an anointing from the Holy One, and ye know all things." Strange that may seem at first; yet he manifestly does not mean that they have anything like perfect knowledge, but that in this anointing from the Holy One, in the power of the Spirit who abode in them, they had really the capacity for the judgment of all such things as might be presented to them. In this character, as led of Him, they knew the truth. They had but to be subject to One abiding in them, who searched even the deep things of God. He had not written unto them, then, because they did not know the truth, and as if they were now to take, so to speak, his bare word for it. No, they knew it, and that no lie was of the truth. These things never really intermingled — the lie and the truth. Men may indeed seek to mix them together, and for those who are not of the truth themselves the imposition may stand; but God does not leave His people to the imperfection natural to them, and there is not one lie that they have any need of accepting along with truth, which they cannot distinguish from it. Moreover, the spirit of falsehood naturally tends to come out in its true character. It may hide itself in sophistry at the beginning, but the power of the enemy more and more is seen in the opposition to Christ. In the Jewish form it may deny that Jesus is the Christ; in the Christian form it will deny the Father and the Son. The great Antichrist in whom the full reality of these tendencies will appear will join the Jewish denial of Jesus being Christ with the antichristian denial of the Father and the Son; and here the point of controversy is always Christ Himself. Men may, after a sort, as we well know, own the Father when they deny the Son. In our own day, "the universal Father" is held prominently by those who, in fact, deny the Son. But the apostle tells us that those who deny the Son have not the Father either; and that, on the other hand, "he who confesseth the Son hath the Father also." How can one truly confess the Son without confessing the Father? But the Father only — whose Father may He be? Yours and mine, of sinner or saint alike! The most emphatic affirmation of the Father, therefore, may go with the most perfect denial of the Son; but the apostle warns us against any possible deception here. All this is merely Satan's substitute for truth, not the truth; with all its large liberality and plausibility. The very One in whom, as we recognize Him, we see God manifest in the fullest way is denied by it. Christ Himself is the central point of controversy, and he who confesseth the Son must surely accept the Father.