GOD’S WORD FOR SEPTEMBER 24 ~ ~ Colossians 2:4-5 ~ ~ “And this I say, lest any man should beguile you with enticing words. For though I be absent in the flesh, yet am I with you in the spirit, joying and beholding your order, and the stedfastness of your faith in Christ.”

If, of all the millions of living things on Earth, a few creatures happened to look like something they are not and this helped protect them, we might put it down to chance. However, the creation is filled with too many creatures who practice look-alike deception to put it down to chance.

Africa’s southern deserts have a plant called living stones. In a desert, any vegetation can be a welcome source of food or moisture. In this setting, a plant that doesn’t look like a plant has an advantage. And living stones look like nothing more than just another rock in the sand. Wasps can be some of the nastiest insects in nature. An insect in Costa Rica called the mantispid looks very much like the feared wasp, even up close. Then again, the hover fly looks like a wasp and sounds like a wasp because the frequency of its wing beats is almost identical to a wasp.

Treehoppers have a very odd body shape that comes to a point on top. Not only do they look like thorns, but they usually stay on bushes that have thorns, orienting their bodies on the branches just like true thorns. This effectively hides them from hungry birds. Larval plant hoppers use a different form of deception. They attach themselves in groups on branches, orienting their frilly and feathery bodies together so they look like a flower!

The clever forethought and planning involved in nature’s deceptions rule out any thought that these creatures designed themselves.

It is truly amazing what the God of the Universe has done in His creation!! We can only touch on a very small percentage. I don’t know if we will know it all if we study it for eternity!!!

I believe that everything God created has a message for us, even, (maybe especially) these “deceivers”. There are people in the Church who are using the same tactics. The devil will always copy God. He cannot create, even an idea. He just perverts and reverses what God does.

He can disguise himself as an angel of light, covering his evil, and the false teachers that work for him disguise themselves, as we’re told in 2Corinthians 11:13-14:

 “For such men are false apostles, deceitful workers, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ.  No wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.”

That’s why we’re told to watch for the deception that is increasing so quickly in the world today. We can see it in literature and internet, we see it in teachers, and we see it in fellow church members.

We must ALWAYS, ALWAYS, compare everything to the pure Word of God. That means we need to be in the word daily, so we have the discernment to know when something doesn’t sound right, and expose it before they lead many astray.

When being trained to expose counterfeit money activity, FBI agents spend much time studying every detail of the real money, including all security devises in the printing and ink. They study the testing of the real thing to prove its authenticity. They know it inside and out, literally. That way, they know immediately when a bill is a counterfeit, because they know the real thing so well.

THAT is how we need to be with the Word of God. It should be built right into our hearts

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