Some who claim to be Christian think they will know (due to a wonder/experience) when they encounter the true God. But without Truth as your life and foundation, signs and wonders will lead you to a deceiving spirit. The Devil and his deceitful spirits/messengers rarely appear as a horrible beast. They usually come to us through pleasant thoughts/ideas that justify our greed and human desires. Surely, they are subtle (snakey). Matthew 16:21-23 “From that time Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day. Then Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, ‘Far be it from You, Lord; this shall not happen to You!’ But Jesus turned and said to Peter, ‘Get away from Me Satan! You are an offense to Me, for you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men [human desires].”
2Corinthians 11:14 “And no wonder! For Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light.” 11:3“But i fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.”
In Deuteronomy 13:1-3, God instructed His people (the Jews): “If there arises among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams, and he gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder comes to pass, of which he spoke to you, saying, ‘Let us go after other Gods’–which you have not known—‘and let us serve them,’ you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams, for the Lord your God is testing you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.”
In Matthew 24:23-26, Jesus said: “Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Anointed One!’ or ‘There!’ do not believe it. For false christs [false anointed ones] and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. See, I have told you beforehand. Therefore if they say to you, ‘Look, He is in the desert!’ do not go out; or ‘Look, He is in the inner rooms!’ do not believe it.”
2Thessalonians 2:9-12 “The coming of the lawless one 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.”
1John 4:1 “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world.”
Revelation 13:8-18 “All who dwell on the earth will worship the fake Christ, whose names have not been written in the Book of Life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world … Anti-Christ’s prophet performs great signs, so that he even makes fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of people. And he deceives those who dwell on the earth by those signs which he was granted to do in the sight of the beast, telling those who dwell on the earth to make an image to the beast who was wounded by the sword and lived. He was granted power to give breath to the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak and cause as many as would not worship the image of the beast to be killed. He causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man: His number is 666.”
