Signs, Wonders, and the War on Truth

Now, the Bible speaks about signs and wonders. It says some things about them that are good, and some that are very frightening. I want to turn to 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 and read a few verses there, beginning at verse 9. 2 Thessalonians 2, verse 9.

“The coming of the lawless one, that's the title of the Antichrist, is according to the working of Satan with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie, that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.”

So Paul says here there are such things as lying signs and wonders. There are true signs and there are lying signs. True signs attest the truth, lying signs attest lies. Satan is fully capable of supernatural signs and wonders.

Unfortunately, many in the charismatic movement have the attitude that if something is supernatural, it must be from God. There is no scriptural basis for that assumption. Satan is perfectly capable of producing powerful signs and wonders to attest his lies. And the reason such people are deceived is because they did not receive the love of the truth. On such people, God will send strong delusion.

That's one of the most frightening statements in the Bible. If God sends you strong delusion, you will be deluded. I think that is one of the most severe judgments of God recorded in scripture: sending these people strong delusion. They will be condemned, these people, because they did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

Therefore, signs and wonders are not a guarantee that something is the truth. There is only one sure way to know the truth. It is the word of God. Jesus said in John 8:32,

“You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

There is no other way to be sure that we can escape deception in these days, except that we know and apply the truth of God's word, the scripture. In 1994, for the first time, I was brought into fairly direct contact with one of the groups where these manifestations were occurring. A group of leaders went to some of their meetings and returned all excited, saying that they'd experienced something wonderful and we all needed to experience it. They said, “Now, you don't test it. You don't try it out. You don't examine it. You just open up to it and receive it.”

That was the first time that I really began to be suspicious of some of these things, because such a statement is directly contrary to scripture. In 1 Thessalonians 5:21, Paul says to Christians,

“Test all things; hold fast what is good.”

So, if we do not test things, we're disobeying scripture. And anybody who tells us not to test things is himself not in harmony with scripture.

Our hearts cannot be relied upon to give us the truth. Proverbs 28:26 says,

“He who trusts in his own heart is a fool.”

So don't be a fool. Do not trust your own heart. Do not rely upon what your heart tells you, because it is not reliable.

Again, in Jeremiah 17, verse 9, the prophet says,

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?”

The word ‘deceitful’ in the Hebrew is a very interesting word. In 1946, I was attending the Hebrew University in Jerusalem as a guest student, studying the nature or the law of the Hebrew language. I was listening to the head professor in this field at that time, talking about this verse, Jeremiah 17:9,

“The heart is deceitful above all things.”

He gave reasons which I cannot carry over from Hebrew to show that this form of the word ‘deceitful’ is active, not passive. It doesn't mean that your heart is deceived. It means that your heart deceives you. So you cannot trust your own heart.

The professor gave a very vivid picture of what it means to find out the truth about your own heart. He said it's like someone peeling an onion. You peel off skin after skin, but you never know when you've reached the last skin. And all the time, your eyes are watering.

So that has remained with me now for 50 years, such a vivid, scriptural warning against relying on my own heart to tell me the truth. There is only one source of truth, and that is the scripture.