What do We do when We Know someone we Love, Trust and Respect is Deceiving Us?

I have no idea how to explain the mood I am in to you.  I am writing to warn you against someone many of us know and trust and who you may have even come to love.  I love him, but I cannot trust him — not anymore.  He has been saying things that have deeply trouble my Spirit.  I know what he is teaching people is wrong, but I have been wrestling with how to warn you about this man without sounding like I am attacking him.  I thought about not writing this at all.  I know that I am an imperfect messenger and that I could do more harm than good.  But I have also felt the weight of the Lord’s hand pressing on me today and I know that He will not give me rest until I write this post.  So it is with the confidence of knowing that I am not the author but merely the instrument by which this message is being written that I bring this warning to you: “Beware that your hearts are not deceived, and that you do not turn away and serve other gods and worship them.” (Deut 11:16).  It was Christ, Himself, Who warned us that there will be ravenous wolves who will enter the flock seeking to destroy it, and that they will come dressed in sheep’s clothing and bearing messages of peace [and I would add love].   Now I am asked to warn you that the people who are most effective at deceiving us are often the people whom we hold in highest regard.

It is important to understand that we are living in a time of growing lawlessness.  But it is more important that we understand the source of this lawlessness.  Without a law-giver, there is no law, and where there is no law, there can be no violation of the law.  This may sound confusing — until you think about it for a minute.  If there is no law against a lion eating a zebra, then the lion cannot be charged with murder.  The same applies to man.  So, if there is no law, then there can be no right or wrong, good or bad.  Yet, each of us knows that right and wrong exist.  This is why it is important to understand that, if right and wrong exist, then there must be a law-giver. But here is the more important point: if you reject the eternal Law Giver and decide that you can decide right from wrong on your own — as many in our society are doing today — then you are claiming to be the law giver; you are placing yourself in the seat of God.  This is exactly what the man I have been listening to on the radio has been telling people we can do: each of us, individually.  He is telling us we can decide right from wrong for ourselves.  This is a lie!

Setting aside the logical fallacy in thinking that every individual can determine right from wrong for themselves, I want to focus on the Spiritual trap that await those who accept this line of thinking.  In the oldest book of the Bible, Job debates three of his friends, and then a young man who has been listening to the four men speak offers his thoughts on the issues.  In the course of this conversation, Job deduces that the very existence of this universe testifies to the necessity for a Maker, and that this maker is God.  Job then says that the Spirit of God makes it possible for him to understand that  an imperfect creation such as man can never justify himself enough to come into the presence of a perfect God.  God’s Spirit also reveals to Job that a perfect God will be perfect justice: He would never compromise His law the way men compromise their laws.  However, Job also realizes that, if this perfect God made man with free will and a capacity to love, then God must also be love — perfect love.  And if God is perfect love, He would provide a means by which fallen man could enter into His presence.  Job then deduces that God will send a redeemer to plead man’s case before God.  It is in this redeemer that Job placed his faith and trust and it is by this redeemer that we can know Job was saved.  But the man I have been listening to on the radio has been telling his audience something different.

Job was a patriarch: he lived under the covenant of Abraham, before Moses and the law.  Moses gave the law to the Hebrews, who became known as the Jews, but they worshiped the same God — Yahweh.  Christ gave us a new covenant, but again, Christians worship the same God.  Paul explains this very clearly in the book of Romans.  He tells Christians that they are the wild olive tree and have been grafted into the domestic olive tree (Israel) through the blood of Christ (the cross).  Although many have either missed or misunderstood it, there is a continuity here that stretches from Abraham and Job to today.  Look at Job.  He said God’s Spirit is what helped him understand the things of God.  This is the Holy Spirit.  God the Judge is the same as God the Father.  So Who is the Redeemer of which Job spoke?  Well, Job said this Redeemer will plead the case of man before God, but who can plead with God but God?  So this Redeemer is none other than Christ, the Son.  There we have the Trinity and the Messiah, and we find it in the oldest book of the Bible through to the newest, Revelation.  Yet many seem offended by the idea that God would provide only one means to salvation.  The man I listen to on the radio is one of these people.  The Truth is we should not be offended that God gives us only one way to salvation: we should be amazed that He gave us any way at all.

Now, this man on the radio uses the language of Christianity, and of Judaism, but he does not mean the same things.  He has changed the meaning of the words he uses, and that changes the message.  He calls Christ the Messiah, but — in his mind — Christ is a man, born of carnal knowledge with a woman and who is not capable of Redeeming us entirely by his own sacrifice on the cross.  This man also believes that Christ and Satan are physical brothers, born of the same mother and father.   The man on the radio also believes that  — if we are good enough and learn enough — we can become gods, ourselves.  To him, this is how Jesus became the savior: by providing an example of how we can become gods by living the perfect life.  I have even heard this man tell his listeners that the most important words any person can speak are “I am,” as in “I am good enough,” and “I am worthy.”  This man believes we can justify ourselves to God through our. But Scripture teaches us that opposite.  The Bible says that our best works and most righteous acts are but filthy rags to God (Isa 64:6).  To the man on the radio, Christ did not pay the full price for our sins: He only covered the difference we could not work off on our own.  This is not the Gospel of Christ: none of this is what Scripture teaches us.

Then today, I hear this respected, trusted and loved radio personality tell his audience that Islam is equal to Judaism and Christianity.  All the stuff this man believes about God and Christ and Salvation I can forgive.  This man on the radio has been deceived.  But on the subject of Islam, I know this man knows better.  I know this man understands Islam because I have heard him say he has read the Qu’ran and knows about the Hadith (sayings and customs of Muhammad).  He has also explained the Caliphate to his audience, which is the ultimate expression of the Islamic State.  So, when this radio personality tells his listeners that Muslim Clerics are radicals and are perverting Islam, this radio personality is being dishonest!  If he has read the Hadith, then d until the entire world becomes Muslim.  When he tells his listeners that Islam can be separated from politics, he is lying!  He knows that the Caliphate is a theocracy and that Islam commands the creation of the Caliphate.  And when he tells his listeners that Islam worships the same god as Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, he is lying!  Islam actually denies the God of the Bible.  I understand that these are strong words, but they are also true.  It is one thing to speak from ignorance, and I am willing to allow that this man has been deceived about the true path to salvation and now, though it is in good faith, he teaches others the wrong doctrine.  But it is another thing to tell people things that are not true when you know they are not true.  That is a lie, and where Islam is concerned, this radio host is lying to his audience.

I beg you to understand that the man I listen to belongs to a faith with a similar history as Islam.  Both were started by a single man with an earthly agenda.  Both claim to have been visited by a being claiming to be an angel.  Both had an experience connected to a cave.  Both these men claimed they were told that the Bible had been perverted and they had been chosen to bring new revelations to mankind.  Both call Christ the Messiah, but both deny His true nature.  Both deny the Trinity and Islam denies that Christ is the Son of God, while the other religion denies His virgin birth.  According to the Apostle, John (whom Christ loved), this is the very definition of antichrist (1 John 2:18; 1 John 2:22; 1 John 4:3 and 2 John 1:7).

In both cases, Islam and this other religion, a different ‘gospel’ is being taught.  Both have sought to change God’s Word for the glory of men, not for the Glory of God.  But there is a problem for the people who follow these religions and that is Galatians 1:6-10:

Perversion of the Gospel

⁶ I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you ^[c]by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel; ⁷ which is really not another; only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. ⁸ But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel ^[d]contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be ^[e]accursed! ⁹ As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel ^[f]contrary to what you received, he is to be ^[g]accursed!

¹⁰ For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bond-servant of Christ.

[Galatians goes on to warn against being mislead by people teaching about a different Jesus from the one the Apostles taught.  This is yet another important area where  these other religions differ from Scripture: Islam and the Mormons both teach a different Jesus.]

Hundreds of years before Muhammad, and hundreds more before Joseph Smith, the Apostle, Paul, whom Christ chose to spread His True Gospel to the Gentiles, clearly and forcefully told the disciples of Christ’s True Gospel to reject anyone — even and angel — claiming to teach a new gospel or a new revelation.  And yet, a follower of Mormonism is on the radio regularly telling people that Islam is equal to his faith, and that both Islam and Mormonism are the same as the Judeo/Christian faith.  This is contrary to what Christ’s chosen messenger tells us (Paul), therefore, it is lawlessness.  The people who claim Mormons and Muslims worship the same god as Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are placing themselves in the seat of God.  They are declaring they have authority over God.  I understand that it may not seem that this is what they are doing, but there is only one way we can change God’s word and that is if we have authority over God.  So, when these men try to change what God said through His prophets, they are claiming authority over God.  This is lawlessness.

All of this has happened by deception, my friend, and deception is what I have been compelled to warn you to guard against.  Please, remember and heed the warning in Deut 11:16:

“Beware that your hearts are not deceived, and that you do not turn away and serve other gods and worship them.”

And the very words of Christ:

And Jesus answered and said unto them, “Take heed that no man deceive you; (Matt 24:4)