The Fine Art of Deception

It is no secret that I am extremely bothered by the increasing fascination with vampires. Well, wait, let me rephrase that. I am extremely bothered by the increasing fascination that Christians have with vampires. And anyone who would like to honestly argue this point with me, well, all I ask is that you show me somewhere, anywhere in the bible where you could justify this so called entertainment. Because opinions I am not interested in, issues like this, I'm simply interested in the black and white of God's word. 

This morning I was with a group of women, none of whom I had ever met before. One of the women started talking with great excitement about the new Denzel Washington movie that's coming out. How Denzel seems like such an upstanding Christian. How this movie looks so great, it's all about the final "Holy Bible". Wait, what!? The final Holy Bible? Is not the one sitting next to me the first and final authoritative Word of God? And honestly, that wasn't the first warning that set my spirit on alert. My first "warning" if you will, was that Hollywood was sending out yet another film to try and depict what God has to say, because I'm sure that God is sending Gabriel around to big film producers asking them to please get the word out.



The bible (the real bible) warns of this in 2 Timothy 3 & 4. Chapter 3 verse 13  says that "evil men and impostors will grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived."I see lots of impostors popping up these days, claiming to have the way to God, the hidden interpretation of the bible, the secrets of Jesus etc.


So that's would be talking the ones doing the deceiving, but what about the ones being deceived? Chapter 4 verse 3, "For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables." If that doesn't sum up what I'm seeing all over the place, I don't know what does. So many Christians are looking to trade in the truth for entertainment, God's Word for fleshly desire. They will twist the Word to suit their wants and make no apologies for it. There's no arguing with them (I was actually warned today to not bring it up). 

This may seem like such a small, insignificant issue in the big picture, but how do you think any deep deception starts? Do you think the enemy is so blatant and stupid to say something so outrageous like, "If you dance like a chicken and bark like a dog while barefoot in the middle of March, 7 angels will appear and tell you who the anti-christ is." Um, no, last time I checked the devil knows the Word inside and out, better than probably 99% of Christians and his specialty is the twisting of the Word to the unsuspecting Christian. He likes to fool us, make us comfortable, think that this little bit of godlessness is ok.

I think the devil is loving this whole vampire business. I mean really - those are his creations and here we are, God's creation, and we can't get enough of them. We think they're such great, harmless stories, our teenage daughters fantasize over which evil creature is hotter, our teenage sons want to emulate their look. Oh yes, the devil is eating this up, God's kids drooling over, spending their money on and fighting with each other over his monstrosities.

Hollywood will continue to try and come up with a better "story", if you will, than God's truth, but they can't and they won't. But the real question is, how many of God's kids are going to get sucked into the lies of the enemy all in the name of entertainment. I urge everyone, before you drop $8 to go see a movie, or tell your kids they can go see a movie, ask God if you should. Is that so hard? Oh, wait, ask and then wait for Him to answer. I don't believe that God is out to keep us from having any fun. But I do believe that He is trying to preserve us. I do believe that He is looking for an army of believers who won't compromise, who do know what He says and aren't ashamed of it. I believe He's looking for mothers and fathers who will tell their children, NO! You cannot read that, you cannot watch that. I believe that He's looking for teenagers who will stand up and say that God has more for them than passing fancies and trendy crushes. I believe that God is searching the earth. When God sees me, when God sees you, does He see a faithful servant or a finicky follower? Well, that's between you and God.