In an article entitled “the Religious Origin of Fake News and Alternative Facts,” a finding is presented that suggests that Fundamentalists and Charismatic Christians are more susceptible to deception than others, indicating that it’s because of yet another factor called “truthiness.” Truthiness is defined as being a gut reaction to facts: if it feels right and it fits into my perspective, then it’s the truth.
AS believers, we need to understand that
1. Just because a person is born again does not make them “deception proof.”
2. Just because a person is faithfully religious does not make him or her “born again.”
The Lord would not have warned His disciples to “take heed and be not deceived” if there was no danger that they could be deceived. It does not matter how many things you are or were deceived about.
For example, For 25 years, I was deceived about speaking in tongues, . Yet the Holy Spirit did not release me from the deception until He was ready to do so. He simply stepped in when He chose the time to be right and started unravelling things. What I remain cautious about is this. Just because I am undeceived NOW, does not mean that it is impossible for me to be deceived again. For me to think otherwise would be both pride and arrogance and I do not want God to resist me.
So what is deception?
Deception has to do with thoughts in the mind. Simply put, we believe a lie or a half truth. The worst of it is the assumptions. if you start off with even one little wrong assumption, everything else falls like dominos.
In my pastoral counseling work, I am observing how a person can start out with truth and how the enemy can use the truth they have received and lead them into a lie. What happens is that the enemy takes advantage of our misconception of truth. He uses the weaknesses of our personalities to lead us into believing what suits us best.
This realization is humbling me quite a bit. I believe that once we are given truth, we have to seek God in prayer to help us not to misunderstand truth for our conception of truth may cause us to walk in error.
So my question is “how do we make ourselves fool-proofed to deception?”
I think we can all start the process of in-deception by examining our spiritual experiences. We need to consider how we got deceived, what was it about us that caused us to be open to the deception, and how did we come out of it?
In order to be undeceived, one has to WAKE UP!
Waking up is connected to all aspects of your being, spirit, soul and body. Here is what Jessie Penn Lewis in “War On the Saints” had to say over 100 years ago about waking up:
The deceived believe, laid claim to positions to which he had no right, for with the entrance of truth he discovers he was neither so advanced, nor so spiritual, nor so infallible as he had thought. He built his faith about his own spiritual condition on assumption, and left no room for a doubt, that is, true doubt, such as doubting a statement that afterwards turns out to be a lie, but in due season doubt finds an entry to his mind, and brings his house of infallibility to the ground.
He knows now that what he thought was an “advanced” experience, was only a beginning, and that he is only on the fringe of knowledge. This is the operation of truth. In the place of ignorance is given true knowledge; in the place of deception, truth. Ignorance, falsehood and passivity; upon these three the enemy silently builds his castles, and unobtrusively guards and uses them. But truth pulls his strongholds to the ground.
By the entry of truth, the man must be brought to the place where he acknowledges his condition frankly, as follows:–
(1)I believe that it is POSSIBLE for a Christian to be deceived and possessed by evil spirits.
(2)It Is possible for ME to be deceived;
(3)I AM deceived by an evil spirit;
(4)WHY am l deceived?Then comes the facing of the fact that (1) “ground does exist; and (2) the seeking for knowledge as to what the ground is.
In order to discover the ground, the believer must first, in a general sense, get a fair conception of what ground is;note 8 for he is liable to be deceived in (1) putting down to “possession” what belongs to something else, and (2) placing to something else what belongs to possession. He may confuse ordinary conflict, i.e., the perpetual battle in spirit against the powers of darkness,note 9 with conflict which comes from possession. And when the deception and possession are of long-standing, the spirits of evil may get the believer himself to defend their work in him, and through him fight tenaciously to guard the cause of his deception from being brought into light, and exposed as their work.
They thus get the believer himself, in effect, to take their side, and fight for them to keep their hold, even after he has found out his condition, and honestly desires deliverance; one of the greatest hindrances being the effect of an assumed position concerning spiritual experiences, which believers are loath to examine, and part with.
Group 5: Preparing For End-Times 
Reblogged this on pamsheppardpublishing and commented:
To be undeceived, we have to be willing to discard EVERYTHING we believe and assume that we know. In other words, be prepared to examine everything like a devil’s advocate.
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This is great. I learned this too that: “just because a person is faithfully religious does not make him or her ‘born again’. As your comments say, in the Bible, the Lord warns his people not to be deceived. It’s obvious that there is massive deception out there in the Christian world. It’s time that we start examing ourselves and our salvation experiences, we should be asking is it a counterfit salvation experience or real?Same thing with spiritual manifestations, it’s very important to not automatically accept it but instead to try it and see if it be of God otherwise if it’s the enemy, he will be allowed control over us. Satan can take your own assumptions and make it even worse by adding his own lies to you and it turns into this cascading domino affect like Pastor Pam mentioned above.
The last part of the Jesse Penn Lewis excerpt is true: some people have a hard time examing and accepting the truth about their spiritual experiences and beliefs. There can be a lot of fear related to that too.
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Trying the spirits is a must in the times we live in – i foolishly used to think you judge a spirit by how you feel, if its doesn’t feel right its from the devil. if you feel good about something, it comes from God. One thing i had to do was to stop judging spiritual experiences by feelings, also as Pam mentioned in the video, i had to stop thinking i knew everything.
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Every believer needs to examine the foundation that they have built their faith upon. Faith is not a human decision or acceptance. It is nothing that we do. It is all about starting at ground zero and stripping down.
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it’s good to examine where your faith comes from, if the enemy has any ground, he gets exposed while you test your beliefs. If you dont examine, you put yourself in danger as the ground the enemy has remains hidden and he starts taking even more ground, cause the end goal is full possession.
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This article is so complete and full. This is the paradigm shift that is needed in these last days that should challenge the believer and cause him/her to examine their salvation. Once they do, they will realize the need to detox from all religious behaviors, question all learned practices and to do so without fear.
What an incredible article!
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This is an excellent post. It really helps those who are still in the church and perhaps noticing some things, or maybe someone who has felt led to leave the church, but need some guidance and direction as to what they are experiencing, and how they need to move forward. For me, I KEPT seeing stuff OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN, and so I felt compelled to search deeper, and go on a quest for truth. I let go of everything I was taught in the church and started over. I went through RELIGIOUS DETOX. My family members and other people I know who I used to attend church, and who are still in the church do not yet really see this, and don’t really understand my position of staying out of the organized church. I was not too proud to admit that I wasn’t sure about my salvation and consider that perhaps I really wasn’t saved, and I learned to assume everything was false, until or unless the Lord has shown me otherwise. The biggest thing I have learned from this is “don’t believe everything you hear.” I had NO SOLID ROCK. I went to so many different churches, and was taught so many different beliefs that the truth was, I didn’t know WHAT I believed. And I didn’t care that I didn’t know. I was ready for the Lord to show me the TRUTH…not some religious tradition that had no foundation for me to stand on. The interesting thing is that all those years IN CHURCH, the cross, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ never impacted me. I was not impacted by the cross, death and resurrection UNTIL I left the confusion that floods the churches. It was like trying to listen to and understand a bunch of gibberish that just did not make sense to me, all coming from several different directions. It GOT IN THE WAY of me being able to clearly hear God. I feel like NOW I can actually HEAR from the Lord, whereas before it was like trying to hear someone talk to me in a crowded room. I am so grateful to be free of that CHAOS that exists in religion!!!
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i saw alot of things that didn’t add up in the church but i mistakenly thought that this is what it is! i was so wrong & foolish, when the power of God moves people get healed, set free and most importantly get Born again! this is not happening in the Institutional Church because there is no power of God, people have been deceived into worshiping the fake Jesus and they suffer from the plagues that come with that.
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