Is It Fair for God to Send Us Delusion?

Tom:

Thanks, Gary.You are listening to Search the Scriptures Daily, a program in which we encourage everyone who desires to know God’s truth to look to God’s Word for all that is essential for salvation and living one’s life in a way that is pleasing to him.Dave, we have a couple of questions left in chapter eight of your book In Defense of the Faith, and they relate to the topic of evil, as most of our listeners know that have been following the program for awhile.Before we get to them however, what about evil?What is it and where does it come from?Can we give our listeners a general idea about it?

Dave:

Well it’s pretty simple.It comes from the heart.And by heart, we of course, have to mean the will.The selfishness of creatures, that God has made, have that capacity.And any creatures made like humanoids, if there are any out on any other planets, which there are not, but if there were, they have the power of choice and they would make less than godly decisions, being less than God.Sin is defined as coming short of the glory of God.

Tom:

So it’s anything that’s contrary, any thought, word, deed, action?

Dave:

Anything contrary to God’s will.Now there are those who have taught and still are teaching that God causes everything.We won’t get into that.We talk about that in my book What Love is This?Luther for example, wrote a book The Bondage of the Will.Calvin agreed with him.So did Augustine.They said man had—

Tom:

Augustine preceded them, but—

Dave:

Right, but they got their ideas from Augustine.That man has no will, no power of choice, but everything that he thinks, wills, does is God doing it for him.That is not biblical and it’s not rational and it’s a libel on the character of God.It makes God the author of sin.So Jesus said out of the heart of man proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornication and so forth.This is what defiles a man and James said every man is led astray and enticed of his own lusts.And he says the heart conceives it, so it’s pretty clear from scripture, and I think we all know.In fact, Augustine said, “I knew that when I sinned I sinned, I did it.”And yet he contradicted himself.So evil is anything less than God’s perfection and it comes from the heart of man who is a fallen creature.Now amazingly, it began in the heart of Lucifer, the most beautiful, powerful, wisest being that God ever made, as far as we know.

Tom:

In heaven.

Dave:

Yes, there he is right in—

Tom:

In the presence of God.

Dave:

Yes, right in the presence of God, that’s all he ever knew.And there it began and he said in his heart, “I will be like the most high.”He had an ambition to be like God, which is the ambition of most human beings today.All false religions, self-realization, Yoga, and so forth—this is the lie of the serpent.This is taught by the Mormon Church: “As man is, God once was.As God is, man may become.”Every Mormon male, well many of them don’t even aspire to it, because they’re not qualified to even get into the temple where you go through the rituals to bring this about.At least the first stages of it.But supposedly, every Mormon male has the ambition of becoming another God.That was Satan’s ambition.

Tom:

Dave we also find it, we are talking about religions, and we also find it psychology.It’s the heart of psychology—self, self deification and that’s where it ends up.

Dave:

Right, so sin is basically rebellion against God.It’s the ambition that I can do what I want to do.I can be what I want to be.God created me, but now I’m in control and I can do and be what I want to be.On the other hand, man does have a will.And I think you’ve got the first question here and it indicates that.

Tom:

Yes, but we were in heaven just a minute ago with Lucifer, but he took that to this planet.He brought it to earth.He seduced Eve on that very basis, but if you look at her response to him, you find out again, as you said, it’s the heart.She thought about this.She brought this into her heart and there were things with regard to what she desired—self.Here we go, and as you said, this was direct disobedience against what God had commanded.

Dave:

Yes, the serpent told her she could become one of the gods, too.So, yes that’s what sin is.It’s conceived in the human heart and it is self against God.

Tom:

The first question, again this comes from Dave’s book In Defense of the Faith.We’ve been using that for a number of weeks now and these are questions Dave has received over his many years of ministry and he put them together.And we are using them because it’s a good way to get into some thoughts out there.Thoughts of men that are either biblical or they’re not biblical and that’s what we’re wrestling with.

Dave:

Well they have troubled people, or they have been asked by atheists in the attempt to undermine the Word of God to prove that God doesn’t exist and so forth.

Tom:

Yes, question: I have been greatly troubled by two statements in the Bible: 1) that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart (Exodus:4:21And the LORD said unto Moses, When thou goest to return into Egypt, see that thou do all those wonders before Pharaoh, which I have put in thine hand: but I will harden his heart, that he shall not let the people go.
See All...; 7:13-14; etc.; and 2) that God will give people a “strong delusion that they should believe a lie, that they all might be damned who believed not the truth” (2 Thessalonians:2:11-12 [11] And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: [12] That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
See All...).This seems so obviously unjust that it has shaken my faith!Furthermore, it seems to make God responsible for evil or at least a partner in it.Can you help me?

Dave:

First of all this deals with something we already started a bit.That is whether man is capable of responding to God since he’s a sinner and he is selfish, is he capable of anything other than that?Well I think we have enough examples.Even the Calvinist says man is not as evil as he could be.You have examples.Even some unsaved men, maybe one or two, I don’t know how many, but I think there would be a number of examples of heroic courage where a person risked and even lost his life to save the lives of others.Some guys fell on hand grenades to save the lives of their buddies.

Tom:

I have a friend who during WWII, a friend of his did exactly that for him.He ended up with shrapnel right in the middle of his forehead.He still has an indentation there today, but he forever is thankful for what this man who never knew the Lord did for him.

Dave:

Yes, so the teaching is that man is so totally depraved, so sinful, dead in sin, and so forth.The Bible does say that.But Christ also says, “Awake thou that sleepest, arise from the dead.The Lord will give you life.”Well this is Paul speaking and Christ says, “The hour is coming and now is when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God and those that hear shall live.”The gospel is an appeal to all mankind.Whosoever will may come.So first of all, the very fact that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart proves something very simple.That he wasn’t totally evil.That it wasn’t totally impossible for him to obey God—to hear what God wanted him to do.Moses comes and God says “Let my people go.”It was not totally impossible for Pharaoh to do that; otherwise God would not have needed to harden his heart.If he had to harden his heart, then his heart couldn’t have been totally hard could it?2) Why would he do that?Well the Bible tells us back in Exodus, that Pharaoh hardened his own heart.We get that twice before it ever said that God hardened his heart.God tells Moses at the very beginning, “I know that he will not let you go.”So he’s an evil man, these are his slaves; he does not want to let them go.However, the point comes during the process of these plagues, the plagues become so frightening, and they are so overwhelming that he’s going to cave in.He wouldn’t want to.He’s not going to give in for the right reasons.He’s simply going to give in.That’s like everybody that’s in hell would want to get out of there, not for the right reasons, but because of the horror of what they are facing.So that was Pharaoh.But God was not done with him.He was going to execute judgment on all the gods of Egypt.Therefore, in fact, the word in Hebrew is “he gave him the guts,” he gave him the courage, the backbone to keep saying no.He wanted to say no.He was frightened to death and would have said yes for the wrong reasons, so God helped him to say no until God was through bringing his judgment upon Egypt.Now the same thing is true of those of whom Paul says “God will send them a strong delusion to believe a lie.”But what does it tell us about them?“For this cause he will do it, because they receive not the love of the truth, but have pleasure in unrighteousness.”These are people who do not want the truth, so God is simply helping them to believe the lie they want to believe for his own purposes.So that Antichrist will have the power that he must have in order to give the final, it’s not the final proof.The final one comes in the millennial reign of Christ, but one of the ultimate proofs of the evil of man.God is going to say “Satan, Antichrist, go ahead, I’ve taken my church out, I’ve taken my bride out and there’s no one to oppose you. Now do what you want.Build your paradise; turn this world into a beautiful place built upon the self will of mankind.Go ahead.Give it a try. And God will give them a strong delusion to believe the lie, the very lie which they want to believe and are determined to believe.So you find in the Book of Revelation that even when the plagues—

Tom:

Dave, let me read this.This is Revelation:16:9-11 [9] And men were scorched with great heat, and blasphemed the name of God, which hath power over these plagues: and they repented not to give him glory. [10] And the fifth angel poured out his vial upon the seat of the beast; and his kingdom was full of darkness; and they gnawed their tongues for pain, [11] And blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, and repented not of their deeds.
See All..., “And men were scorched with great heat, and blasphemed the name of God, which hath power over these plagues: and they repented not to give him glory.And the fifth angel poured out his vial upon the seat of the beast; and his kingdom was full of darkness; and they gnawed their tongues for pain, And blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, and repented not of their deeds.Wow!Now that is—

Dave:

That is staggering.That shows the evil of the heart of man.

Tom:

We talk about a person searing his conscience and so on.But this is staggering.

Dave:

Tom, you get the example.We see it often.A criminal gets caught and he supposedly repents.He doesn’t really repent of what he did.He repents because he was caught and he’s hoping that will mitigate his punishment a bit, maybe get him off with a little less punishment.But his heart has not changed.Given another chance to do evil and boom! He does it.So this is simply exposing the evil of men’s hearts.It’s not causing men to do evil.

Tom:

Dave, this next question sort of wraps up, or at least it addresses something that we’ve been talking about throughout the whole chapter and that is—well I’ll just read it.The Bible says that we must obey God because this is His universe.Doesn’t that make Him a tyrant?You say He gave man freedom to choose good or evil, but hasn’t He stacked the deck so that man is forced to go God’s way or be damned?Is that fair?Now Dave, before you answer that—this question is a reflection of here’s what we are talking about.The heart of man.You know you take another look at this a certain way and we’ll see, God’s really the problem here.Wow!

Dave:

Well Tom, on the one hand it seems like a legitimate question.Are we dangling over the flames of hell, do it my way, turn or burn.I’ll drop you in if you don’t.

Tom:

Well it’s a reasonable question, out of ignorance.

Dave:

Yes, but Tom we face that every day.Look, you’re diagnosed with some disease.The doctor gives you the diagnosis and he says here’s the alternative.I mean you either change to a high fiber diet or whatever, cut out the fats and the sugar and get some exercise or you are going to have a fatal heart attack.Now are you going to call the doctor a tyrant because he lays out those alternatives?No, the alternatives are a part of the facts of life, part of the situation.The fact is that if you disobey God the consequences are severe.It’s like a guy is in an airplane at 37,000 feet and he wants to open the door and step out. Birds can fly, why can’t I?I mean grandma said there was this thing called the law of gravity, but that’s narrow minded and dogmatic.Why should there be laws?Why should there be laws of chemistry and laws of physics and so forth?Because if there were not, you would have chaos.I never know—I put some innocent things together in a test tube and it blows up the world.Or I try to be a high jumper and try to get over seven feet and what do you know, I just keep going right on through the clouds.

Tom:

Or you spend $5000, take a TM course, learn how to levitate—they can get about a foot and a half off the mat, but if they ever got onto it, what would draw them back?

Dave:

So Tom, the answer to the question is it is innate in God’s very nature; the Creator of the universe that anything that is contrary to his will is going to be harmful.Otherwise, his will would be harmful.So anything that is contrary to God’s will, anything that disobeys him, he’s the Creator of the universe.You can disobey him by trying to disobey the laws of gravity or whatever.It’s not that God is to blame; these are the facts of the case.Furthermore, why not obey him?Why not do his will?Why must a person be so egotistical?

Tom:

Self-centered.

Dave:

And self-centered and determined that they are going to do it their way?It’s like a little child who demands his own way.Unfortunately we have an awful lot of homes in which they allow that little child to act like a tyrant and become a tyrant and everybody’s afraid to cross the child.He might throw a tantrum.

Tom:

And Dave, interestingly the more the child is indulged, the greater hatred the child has for the parents.You see that over and over again.

Dave:

Oh yes.The more they want—so on the one hand it sounds like a legitimate question.Well God has stacked the deck.If you do something against his will, it’s going to be disastrous for you.On the other hand, this is the way it ought to be.Otherwise, we’ve got a bunch of little gods running around here, each one trying to rule over his own empire.Who do you want to be in charge?The God who created the universe, the God who IS love, the whose tender mercies are over all his works, the God who really loves us sincerely, deeply, fervently, eternally, wants to bless us, or do you want to be in charge?Do you want everybody to be able to do their own thing?Now I think it’s only right that the God who created this universe should be in charge.His way is best.You learn to trust him and obey him.It’s like that old hymn we used to sing many years ago: “Trust and obey, for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.”So I don’t see what the problem is.It’s like—let’s say that I am a multibillionaire and you are my son Tom, okay?You have rebelled.I said, “Tom, look I’ve got everything for you, everything that you could possibly want.”This is not a good illustration, “but all the luxuries, everything, beautiful mansions to live in and you say no, I’m going to go out and be a street person.I’m going to scrounge around in the gutter.I’m going to get myself on drugs.I’m going to become an alcoholic.I’m going to destroy myself.”And I say, “Tom, I don’t want you to do that.I love you, I want to give all the blessings and benefits that I can.”“You say, I think it’s really mean and nasty.You’re such a tyrant.Unless I do it your way, you’re not going to let me enjoy myself.”Tom, you’re not going to enjoy yourself.We better go back and explain this.If somebody hears me trying to counsel you Tom, they’ll think you’ve really gone astray.But that’s the situation.It’s like the illustration that Christ gave of the prodigal son.The prodigal son turned his back on everything that the father had to give him.It was when he came to himself, it says and he realized the folly of what he’d been doing that he finally made some sense.He did what was right.So that’s the way it is.This is the very basic fact of the universe.

Tom:

Dave, one of the things I think about: loving God.We’ve talked about it on the program before, but that’s at the heart of much of this and this question.If this person knew God, really had some understanding about God, you couldn’t do anything but love God.So that’s what I said earlier, this is out of ignorance.I taught chapel at a Christian school for about a year and it was from pre-kindergarten all the way through eighth grade.There’s a range of kids to try and minister to!But one of the things that I figure well, this is going to cover the whole group.The sanctuary of the church, the pews, they had three sections and I would go in—I wouldn’t do this every day, but I would do it as often as I could.The kids loved to get loud and so on.And I said, “Look, when I point to you,” and I’d start with the pews on the left side, I would say, “you guys yell out HE,” and then the middle group I said, “You yell out IS,” and the group on the right hand side – GOOD!”The whole idea being that we were talking about God and I would point to each group and they would scream out, “HE IS GOOD,” and actually now I remember it, “GOD IS GOOD!”That’s the way I would direct it and I felt as simple as that might be for the smaller kids, I wanted them to have an understanding. And of course, through my teaching I gave them understanding of why God is good, but I wanted them to really take that into their heart, into their mind that God is good!There’s nothing that he does that is not perfectly good and good for us.But it takes a little bit to get there.It takes knowing him, obviously.It takes receiving his Son.

Dave:

Well we have to allow him to reveal himself to us and that’s a problem.And it’s a problem for Christians Tom.David said, “One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after that I might dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life to behold the beauty of the Lord.”How much do I know of the beauty of the Lord?How much time do I really spend with him getting to know him?How often do I tell Christ that I love him and how often do I express my gratitude that he would die for my sins and pay the penalty.We can become so self-centered and taken up with other things that we don’t have time for what is most important and that is to know God and to allow him to have his way in our lives.