2 Vital Steps to Avoid Deception

How will a person know if they are deceived? If the only things they hear, or read, or see agrees with their deception; if the only influence on their thinking, reasoning, or opinion supports their belief system, how will they discover the deception? If the only information permitted reinforces the misconception, how will they know that what they believing is a lie? Following the death of Joshua, the elders of Israel continued to lead the nation in serving the Lord. They remembered the teaching of Moses. They had seen the mighty hand of God bring them victory over enemies who were greater and stronger than them. They beheld the amazing miracles God performed on their behalf. The next generation after the elders had not heard the teaching of Moses. Whether their parents did not pass on the family faith or the Levites and priests failed to accurately teach and preach the Word, that generation of the children of Israel did not know the Word of the Lord. They did not see the mighty working of God. The spiritual leaders failed to nurture and cultivate the living presence of God. Jehovah became a mythical being. In their spiritual blindness and lack of knowledge of the Word of the Lord, they began to develop their own truth. “Every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” The results were disastrous! “Then the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD, and served the Baals; and they forsook the LORD God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt; and they followed other gods from among the gods of the people who were all around them, and they bowed down to them; and they provoked the LORD to anger. They forsook the LORD and served Baal and the Ashtoreths. And the anger of the LORD was hot against Israel. So He delivered them into the hands of plunderers who despoiled them; and He sold them into the hands of their enemies all around, so that they could no longer stand before their enemies. Wherever they went out, the hand of the LORD was against them for calamity, as the LORD had said, and as the LORD had sworn to them. And they were greatly distressed” (Judges 2:11-15 NKJV). <