I am writing this on April Fool’s Day. No kidding! April Fool’s Day is an annual custom on April 1st consisting of practical jokes and hoaxes. Jokesters often expose their actions by shouting “April Fools!” at the one they’ve fooled. Mass media can be involved in these pranks, which may be revealed as such the following day. The custom of setting aside a day for playing harmless pranks upon one’s neighbor has been relatively common in the world historically. However, can being fooled only be considered a harmless prank or a joke? Did you know that Satan is the great deceiver? Does Satan work harmless pranks or jokes upon humanity, including Christians?
“And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds.” (2 Corinthians 11:14-15)
“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)
“And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.” (Revelation 12:9)
“And when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be released from his prison and will come out to deceive the nations that are at the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them for battle; their number is like the sand of the sea.” (Revelation 20:7-8)
There is a Slavonic word which is translated into English as “prelest” for lack of a precise equivalent, although it is often translated as spiritual delusion or spiritual deception, accepting a delusion for reality in contrast to spiritual sobriety.
Prelest carries a connotation of allurement in the sense that the serpent beguiled Eve by means of the forbidden fruit. Here prelest is defined in greater depth and explained the two ways in which it is applied.
Spiritual deception is the wounding of human nature by falsehood. Spiritual deception is the state of all men without exception, and it has been made possible by the fall of our original parents. All of us are subject to spiritual deception. Awareness of this fact is the greatest protection against it. Likewise, the greatest spiritual deception of all is to consider oneself free from it. We are all deceived, all deluded; we all find ourselves in a condition of falsehood; we all need to be liberated by the Truth. The Truth is our Lord Jesus Christ (see John 8:32-14:6).
Let us assimilate that Truth by faith in it; Let us cry out in prayer to this Truth, and it will draw us out of the abyss of demonic deception and self-delusion. Bitter is our state! It is that prison from which we beseech that our souls be led out, that we may confess the name of the Lord (see Psalm 141:8). The enemy that hates and pursues us has cast our life into that gloomy land. It is that carnal-mindedness (Romans 8:6) and knowledge falsely so-called (see I Timothy 6:20) where the entire world is infected, refusing to acknowledge its illness, insisting, rather, that it is in the bloom of health.
It is that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God” (I Corinthains 15:50). It is that eternal death which is healed and destroyed by the Lord Jesus, Who is “the Resurrection and the Life” (John 11:25). Such is our state. In addition, the perception thereof is a new reason to weep. With tears, let us cry out to the Lord Jesus to bring us out of prison, to draw us forth from the depths of the earth, and to wrest us from the jaws of death! For this cause did our Lord Jesus Christ descend to us, because He wanted to rescue us from captivity and from most wicked spiritual deception.
The means whereby the fallen angel brought ruin upon the human race was falsehood (Genesis 3:13). For this reason did the Lord call the devil “a liar, and the father of lies…, a murderer from the beginning” (John 8:44). We see that the Lord closely associated the notion of falsehood with the notion of murder; for the latter is the inevitable consequence of the former. The words “from the beginning” indicate that from the very start the devil has used falsehood as a weapon in murdering men, for the ruination of men. The beginning of evil is in the false thought.
“Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ…” 2 Corinthians 10:5 (KJV)
The source of self-delusion and demonic deception is the false thought. By means of falsehood, the devil infected humanity at its very root, our first parents, with eternal death. For our first parents were deceived, i.e., they acknowledged falsehood as the truth, and having accepted falsehood in the guise of truth, they wounded themselves incurably with mortal sin, as is attested by our ancestor Eve, when she said: “The serpent deceived me, and I ate” (see Genesis 3:13). Thenceforth, voluntarily, or involuntarily, our nature, infected with the poison of evil, inclined toward evil that, to our perverted will, distorted reason, and debauched heart, presents itself as good.
As human beings, we do not have the freedom to choose good. Before God regenerates us, we can only choose evil. The freedom we have does not function as complete freedom, but rather under the unavoidable influence of the wound of sin. Thus is every human born and cannot be otherwise; and for this reason we all, without exception, find ourselves in a state of self-delusion and demonic deception.
From this view of man’s state with regard to good and evil, the state that is necessarily characteristic of each human being, we arrive at the following definition of spiritual deception, which explains it satisfactorily: spiritual deception is man’s assimilation of a falsehood that he accepts as truth.
From the time of man’s fall, the devil has had free access to humanity. The devil was entitled to this access, for; through disobedience to God, man has voluntarily submitted to Satan’s authority and rejected obedience to God. However, God has redeemed man. Jesus Christ defeated Satan and has bound him in chains. Now, Satan is not entitled to free access any longer. To the redeemed man He has given the freedom to submit to God, yet can still be deceived by the devil. The Christian’s freedom may manifest itself without any compulsion, and the devil must be permitted access to the Christian. It is quite natural that the devil makes every effort to keep man in his former subjection to him, or yet to enslave him even more thoroughly. To achieve this, he implements his primordial and customary weapon–falsehood. He strives to deceive and delude us, counting on our state of self-delusion. He stimulates our passions, our sick inclinations. He invests their pernicious demands with an attractive appearance and strives to entice us to indulge them.
However, he that is faithful to the Word of God, submitting to the power of the Holy Spirit, will not permit himself to do so; through faith he will restrain the passions and thus repulse the enemy’s assaults (see James 4:7); struggling against his own self-deception under the guidance of the Gospel, subduing his passions, and thus gradually destroying the influence of the fallen spirits on himself, he will through faith pass from the state of deception to the realm of truth and freedom (see John 8:32), the fullness of which will be given through the overshadowing of divine grace.
He that is not faithful to Christ’s teaching, who follows his own will and knowledge, by submitting to the deception of the enemy, passing from a state of self-deception into a state of demonic deception, may fall in grievous sin, and yet, by God’s gracious mercy, in the end he will not become totally enslaved to the devil.
“You can be sure that no immoral, impure, or greedy person will inherit the Kingdom of Christ and of God. For a greedy person is an idolater, worshiping the things of this world. Don’t be fooled by those who try to excuse these sins, for the anger of God will fall on all who disobey Him.” (Ephesians 5:5-6)
“Therefore, let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.” 1 Corinthians 10:12 (NKJV)
Pray to be kept from Satanic deception. Don’t be fooled!
In The Hands of the Refiner 