False Light, False Lightness, False Depth

I. This study warns against some of Satan’s subtle tactics to deceive men into the bondage of false religion. A. There is valid light. PSA 119:105; JOH 1:9; 8:12; 2CO 4:4. B. There is valid lightness. MAT 11:30. C. There is valid depth. LUK 6:48; 1CO 2:10; ROM 11:33. D. Satan has deceptive counterfeits of these principles which gain many souls. II. Beware the deceptions of false light. A. Satan is transformed into an angel of light, and his ministers likewise. 2CO 11:13-15. 1. They are ministers of a counterfeit righteousness: by outward marks, genealogy, group identity or works. ROM 2:19, 25-29; MAT 3:9; GAL 2:21. 2. They will mingle given righteousness with merited righteousness, as did the false teachers among the Galatians who were frustrating grace, not upholding it. They have earthly concerns at heart and are enemies of the cross of Christ. GAL 6:12-13; PHIL 3:18-19. 3. They will deny provided or imputed righteousness their proper glory and function as cause and evidence, respectively. ROM 5:19; 4:3. 4. The weakest of them are religious sideshow hucksters that are rightly mocked but the strongest of them have great piety, oratory and academic prowess who deem the unitiated as unlearned and ignorant men. JOH 9:34; ACT 4:13. B. Such “Light” is more akin to Ignus Fatuus (marsh gas, which is a bioluminescence sometimes visible over swamps which leads the unwary wanderer into trouble). III. Beware the deceptions of false lightness. A. False religion may be characterized by superficiality, ease and smoothness. ISA 30:10; JER 23:32. B. Remember that false religion is described in Scripture as a strange woman. It is as the temptress/adulteress who conquers souls by alluring attributes that appeal to emotion and lust. REV 17:3-5 c/w PRO 7:1-23 c/w ROM 16:17-18; GAL 4:16. C. A counterpart of the strange woman is the foolish woman. PRO 9:13-18. 1. She is simple and attracts the simple. 2. What she lacks in knowledge, she makes up for with advertising. 3. Her bait is the same as the strange woman: the lusts of the flesh. 4. The church that is little more than a social club where you can wallow in comfortable ignorance is a decorated morgue. v. 18. 5. What the simple need is not what facilitates their ignorance, but the wisdom of God's words. PRO 9:4; PSA 19:7; 119:130. IV. Beware the deceptions of false depth. The masters of false religion are not all mental flakes. A. The strange woman is characterized by depth. PRO 2:18; 5:5; 7:27. B. We read of “...the depths of Satan” (REV 2:24). C. The wicked may have deep thoughts. PSA 64:6. D. There is counterfeit wisdom which rivals God's wisdom. ROM 1:22-23; JAM 3:13-18. E. We are warned against being spoiled through philosophy and the vain puffing up of the fleshly mind. COL 2:8, 18. F. It was not through plainness or even filthiness but rather through subtilty that Eve was beguiled from the simplicity of God's words. 2CO 11:3. 1. subtilty: Acuteness, penetration, perspicacity; = subtlety 1. 2. False religion, like the strange woman is “...subtil of heart” (PRO 7:10). 3. It should not take reams of paper and sophistry to explain what God really meant when He forbade graven images. EXO 20:4. 4. The multiplying of words is no proof of correctness. JOB 34:37; 35:16; PRO 10:19; ECC 5:3. 5. Measure the validity of the complicated by the plain: What does the verse SAY? “Nevertheless, what saith the Scripture?...” (GAL 4:30). 6. If you become convinced that understanding of Scripture is impossible for the average saint and that an initiate of some kind of enlightened order decides truth for you, you have been hoodwinked. a. Satan played the role of the enlightened initiate in Eden. (1) Angels are indeed of a higher order. PSA 8:5; LUK 1:19. (2) God later even gave His law by angels. ACT 7:53. (3) But God communicated His will directly to man in plain terms that depend not upon an angel's interpretation, nor anyone masquerading as such. (4) The saints are rather to measure, instruct and judge angels from the truth the Holy Spirit has given in Scripture. 1CO 6:3; EPH 3:10; GAL 1:8. (5) Consider the folly of those who both presume to receive special revelation and to speak in angels' tongues. (6) (COL 2:18) Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, b. Some things are hard to understand (2PE 3:16), not all things, nor impossible. c. False religion is noted for self-contradictions and enigmas that are relegated to the realm of “inscrutable mysteries” in order to evade their obvious inconsistencies and implications. Darkness is the strange woman's ally. PRO 7:9. (1) Example: an eternally generated son: How can someone be eternally coming into existence? (2) Remember that the ways of the strange woman “...are moveable, that thou canst not know them” (PRO 5:6). She is a chameleon shape- shifter that blends and bends whenever necessary. (3) Beware of the system of religion that has a fluid, shifting doctrine or a capricious method of Bible interpretation that changes according to the whim of its leadership. (4) False religion's leadership may even declare concerning its enigmas and inconsistencies, “Thou canst not know them.” (5) “Corruption in doctrine works best when it is unfettered by any explicit statement of that doctrine. Error loves ambiguities. It does not desire to state its position clearly, either because it has no distinct position to state, or if stated, it would stand convicted of iniquities in the eyes of all honest and God fearing men.” (Martin L. Wagner, Freemasonry, An Interpretation, p. 539) d. God's truth should be plainly declared. 2CO 3:12; 4:2. (1) plainness: Openness, honesty, or straightforwardness of conduct; frankness or directness of language. (2) “We speak not only with all confidence, but with all imaginable plainness; keeping back nothing; disguising nothing; concealing nothing: and here we differ greatly from the Jewish doctors, and from the Gentile philosophers, who affect obscurity, and endeavor, by figures, metaphors, and allegories, to hide every thing from the vulgar. But we wish that all may hear; and we speak so that all may understand.” (Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible) (3) Scripture has nothing froward or perverse in it, and God's promise is to bless sincere inquirers. PRO 8:8; ISA 45:19; HEB 11:6. 7. If, when all is said and done, you end up concluding that definitions of words and grammar are just “slavish literalism” which must take a back seat to a superior method of interpretation, you have been hoodwinked. God chose to communicate to man in language, not signs, symbols or feelings. The Second Person of the Godhead is the WORD. a. All languages have signification/meaning. 1CO 14:10. b It follows, therefore, that the successful communication of ideas depends upon an understanding of words and grammar common to both the transmitter and the receiver. c. Be wary of anyone who trivializes the importance of a reliable glossary of terms (dictionary), primary definitions and recognized conventions of the arrangements of words (syntax). 2TI 1:13. d You cannot know the context of a passage without first knowing the meaning of the words in that passage. 8. If, when all is said and done, “depth” ends up concluding that you should not do what Jesus or the apostles plainly said to do, or that what they left us in Scripture is inadequate (as Satan implied in GEN 3:5), then you have been hoodwinked. 9. If, when all is said and done, “depth” to you means that you cannot test your “deep” religious leadership with the Scripture, then you have been hoodwinked. JOH 5:39; ACT 17:11. 10. If, when all is said and done, “depth” ends up concluding that the Holy Scripture is lost, too complicated, dangerous for the average person or contradictory, you have been hoodwinked. 11. Jesus died to take away your sins, not your Bible or your mind. 2TI 1:7. V. (2CO 11:3) But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.