This was the warning that Jesus gave to his disciples. It was a warning that particularly applied to the days leading up to his second coming, when deception would become a major problem. It is a warning that is desperately needed today as lies and fake news flow through the media arteries of the world, as people are duped into sexual exploitation or financial scams and as spiritual deception pervades the Church.
Sexual Exploitation
The latest warning comes from the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), that “girls aged between 11 and 13 are increasingly being tricked and coerced into performing sexually over their own webcams”.1 These self-made images and videos end up being given worldwide distribution on the internet. IWF’s Chief Executive, Susie Hargreaves, described the films children are making in their bedrooms, using their phones, as a “national crisis”.
Parents and grandparents need to be alert to the dangers faced by their children from adults posing online as teenagers, who try to befriend young people and groom them. The IWF report said that victims were getting younger as more children have access to cameras on their phones and are left unsupervised in their bedrooms. The dangers facing children have never been greater as adults, with evil intent, flatter them, telling them they are beautiful, or pretending to be looking for models.
OneCoin Scam
Crypto-currency: Already being used to exploit the ill-informedThe age of deception is not only affecting children, but also unwary adults, especially the poorest and most vulnerable who are looking for easy money. The biggest financial scam in the world is slowly coming into public knowledge since the disappearance of Dr Ruja Ignatova, a German-Bulgarian businesswoman, who appears to have successfully carried out the greatest pyramid Ponzi of all times, cheating a million people out of their savings.
A report published in The Week2 says: “Six years ago, Dr Ruja was a consultant working in international finance. Then she heard about bitcoins, the strange new digital money not backed by central banks or governments. As bitcoins’ price started to rise, Ignatova saw an opportunity. Rather than invest, she went one better and designed her own: ‘OneCoin’. It was, she claimed, simpler and safer than its better-known rival.”
Jesus’s warning about deception is desperately needed today.
Ignatova set up offices in London, Dubai and Singapore attracting investors from all over the world, with vast numbers of people sending their money and setting up OneCoin accounts – from millionaire investors to impoverished villages in rural Uganda. By the middle of 2017 OneCoin had reached 175 countries, and was estimated to have pulled in more than £4 billion, with some estimates putting it in excess of £12 billion pounds.
In October 2017, Ignatova was due to speak to a large audience of OneCoin investors in Lisbon who, like others around the world, were waiting for the day when they could cash in their coins for real money at the banks. But she never arrived. Her crypto-currency was, in fact, an old-fashioned pyramid scam: there was no technology behind it. The people who had invested – many of them small businesses or individuals using their life-savings – are still looking for news of her and expecting the day when they can enjoy their riches; a day that will never come.
Spiritual Deception
Meanwhile, many charismatic Christians are being deceived by the ‘New Apostolic Reformation’ or NAR, about which we have written before.3 The latest NAR deception to hit unwary churches who do not carefully check the biblical basis of the teaching they are offered is coming out of Bethel Church, California, whose senior pastor is Bill Johnson.
Bethel members pray for the dead to rise4 and have also been known to lie on the graves of dead saints to somehow absorb their spirituality.5 Then they carry out so-called ‘impartations’.
One of Bethel’s School of Supernatural Ministry graduates, Tyler Johnson, who has a BA in theology (and matching earrings), is the director of ‘Raising the Dead’ teams and already claims 15 successful raisings.6 The ‘Dead Raising Team’ website, which includes no testimonies of these miraculous events, says that they have over 60 of these teams around the world.7 They offer a training programme of which they say, “The goal of this training is to bring a renewed mind to the ones being trained, through scripture and revelation, as well as a tangible encounter of abundant life with our beautiful God, Christ Jesus.”
This is all based upon a misuse of the words of Jesus to his disciples in Matthew 10:8 in the erroneous belief that every Christian can be taught to perform miracles at will.
The age of deception is not only affecting children, but also unwary adults – including charismatic Christians.
Deception in High Places
Those who watched the BBC2 programme8 this week on Bishop Peter Ball would probably have been shocked at the level of deception it revealed. Peter Ball was the popular monk who became widely known as the ‘Charismatic Bishop of Lewes’. He rose to fame in the Church of England when he was promoted to Bishop of Gloucester and became friends with Prince Charles and many prominent establishment people and politicians.
The programme revealed an excruciating level of deception involving teenage boys who were conned into believing that their suffering at Peter Ball’s hands had spiritual value in drawing them into the sufferings of Christ. Sadly, it was not only the young men who were deceived. The level of deception went right up to the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey. I had discussions with George at that time, but I had no knowledge that he had withheld crucial evidence from the police. Surely, there should be no cover-ups and no compromising with deception.
Biblical Warnings
The Golden Calf (James Tissot)
In the Bible, warnings about deception go right back to the time of Moses when he had to deal firmly with the great deception of Aaron, who claimed that he had just thrown some gold rings and bracelets into the pot and out came a golden calf for the people to worship!
The prophets were outstanding in their condemnation of deception. In facing a false prophet who was doing great harm, Jeremiah said “Listen, Hananiah! The Lord has not sent you, yet you have persuaded this nation to trust in lies” (Jer 28:15). Jesus went even farther in condemning the Teachers of the Law and Pharisees as hypocrites, for deceiving the people with their teaching on trivialities while neglecting “the more important matters of the law – justice, mercy and faithfulness” (Matt 23:23).
The age of deception foretold in Scripture by Jesus (Matt 24), Paul and Peter (2 Tim 3; 2 Pet 2) appears to have dawned in our lifetime. Never was there a greater need for the truth to be declared in the public square! Surely God has preserved the faithful remnant for this task. Of course, there is a cost – it is the cost of discipleship. But studying the word of God and faithfully declaring it brings its own reward, because only truth can overcome deception!
References
1 BBC News, 15 January 2020
2 11 January 2020.
4 E.g. read about the latest controversy here.
6 Correction: an earlier version of this article listed Tyler Johnson as being Bill Johnson’s son. This is incorrect and the sentence has now been amended. Our thanks to the reader who alerted us to this error.
7 http://deadraisingteam.com/. Bethel Church hit the news in December when it tried to rally worldwide prayer to raise the daughter of one of its worship leaders, who had died aged two.
8 Watch the programme here.
