'God Is a Liar'
From Satan's Ten Most Believable Lies
by Dave Breese
Most rebellions begin with the corrosive emotion of resentment.
While talking to Eve in the garden, Satan had successfully introduced the proposition that God is a moralist so severe that He simply cannot be pleased. This produced resentment in Eve, laying the groundwork for a new attitude in her life, affecting her relationship with her heavenly Father. This new attitude is mistrust. Because of Eve’s response to his first doctrine, he boldly moves from a question to an assertion. Satan is now quite dogmatic: “you shall not surely die.” Here is revealed the second doctrine of the devil, namely, “God is a liar; He cannot be trusted, and His Word is not true.”
Satan is emboldened to make this evil assertion because of Eve’s exaggeration of the divine prohibition. Eve indeed attempted to repel the satanic thrust that everything is evil by saying. “We may indeed eat of the fruit of the trees of the Garden.” At this point, however, she shows that she has already been partly subverted by Satan’s statement, in that she states a revised version of God’s warning concerning the tree with the forbidden fruit. She says, “But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die” (emphasis added). The fact is that God had made no such prohibition. His rule was simply that the fruit of the tree must not be eaten. He had said nothing about touching the tree. Here, Eve is beginning to rationalize, setting up a false basis on which she may later blame God, complaining that His laws are too stringent and therefore impossible to keep. Satan quickly detects this rationalization and moves ahead aggressively in his plan. He now declares, “That’s a lie, you shall not surely die.”
In making this statement, Satan gives us two useful clues about himself. The first illustrates the nature of his activities; the second reveals another point of his doctrine.
As to the nature of his activities, we can now discern the fact that Satan moves in the lives of people from a lesser degree to the greater. He begins his assault by establishing a small beachhead and moves from this point of moral fault into a program of larger conquest. He ultimately intends to consume us, but this devouring begins with the smallest nibble. He conceals his objectives, making it appear that he is devoted to our happiness. Behind this smoke screen of hypocritical compassion, he veils his true intentions. He promises freedom from death but in fact is a murderer from the beginning. He has no compassion whatsoever!
Satan still uses the same technique of entrapping his victim little by little, until the person is committed to him. No one was ever lured into alcoholism by having presented to him the picture of a hopeless drunk draped over a mailbox or retching in the gutter. The working of Satan is usually initiated in the smallest things, like social drinking, and only later develops into the yawning chasm of despair that wine invariably produces.
The initial attractiveness of sin does not prefigure its consequences. That makes it most difficult to warn sin’s novice adequately of the hideous thing he will finally make of himself.
Now, having established his beachhead of doubt, Satan moves to consolidate his position, expanding from doubt to denial. “Thou shalt not surely die.” In this, we see the second doctrine of Satan. God is a liar. His word is not true. Satan again affirms that another system of truth takes precedence over the word of God. Here is the first appearance of an alternative epistemology. Truth has been newly defined. Satan has postulated another authority more final, more “true” than the very Word of the living God. So began the first problem of the universe, the problem of truth. Ever since this first lie, the world has repeatedly asked the question, What is truth?
Satan’s answer to this question is that truth is anything except the word of God. Consistent with this false doctrine, he continues to confuse the issue of final authority in many ways in our present world. He works to get people to believe any one of his many alternatives to truth. He would have us accept the proposition that truth is ever changing (relativism), or purely personal (subjectivism), or only what we can see (empiricism), or encounter experiences (existentialism), or purely syllogistic (rationalism), or completely abstract (platonic idealism), or events (phenomenalism), or synonymous with creation (patheism), or a blend of the seen and the unseen (psycho-physical monism), or workability (pragmatism), or a hundred similarly false alternatives. The history of thought is the account of efforts by successive generations of thinkers to re-answer the vital question, What is truth?
Since Satan introduced it, the problem of truth and error has made impossible the solution of any other problem that confronts the human scene. Every difficulty that has ever beset men has come because of an inadequate answer to the question, What is truth?
What is truth?
Purely human rationality cannot answer that question, for all answers that involve the use of reason must begin with a premise that is not based on reason. We must turn to another source, and there is only one other source.
That other source is revelation. The reason for this should also be quite obvious. Being finite beings, we have no way of discovering ultimate truth unless that thing, or force, or person chooses to reveal himself to us. Being finite beings, we must depend on revelation for the knowledge of ultimate things. Do we have such a revelation of final truth? Yes. That final truth is the Bible, living Word of God. The Bible claims the unique distinction of being the Word of God. The phrase “thus saith the Lord” or its equivalent occurs over two thousand times in the Old Testament. Isaiah said, “Moreover the Lord said unto me. . . For the Lord spake thus to me” (Isaiah 8:1, 11). David claimed, “The Spirit of the Lord spake by me, and his word was in my tongue. The God of Israel said, The Rock of Israel spake to me” (2 Samuel 23:1-3). Jeremiah asserted, “Then the Lord put forth his hand, and touched my mouth. And the Lord said unto me, Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth” (Jeremiah 1:9; 5:14; 7:27; 13:12).
The New Testament writers make the same claim about the inspiration of the Old Testament, asserting that the prophets spoke the Word of God. “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets” (Hebrews 1:1). Old Testament prophecies concerning Jesus Christ were considered to be what the Lord had spoken by the prophet (see Matthew 1:22, 2:15). Luke claimed that the Holy Spirit spoke “by the mouth of David” (Acts 1:16) and also to your fathers through Isaiah the prophet (Acts 28:25). The Jews of Jesus’ day believed that the Old Testament was the infallible Word of God, accepting in every detail the testimony of its writers that what they said was what God said.
We also have the testimony of Jesus Christ as to the inspiration and infallibility of the Word of God. In Matthew 5:18 He says, “Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no way pass from the law, till all be fulfilled” (NSRB). This passage makes clear how highly Jesus regarded the Old Testament.
Christ, in many ways, restated the infallibility of the Old Testament Scripture. In Mark 7:13 He says, “Thus invalidating the word of God by your tradition which you have handed down” (NASB); in Luke 16:31, “If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.” In Luke 24:27 He say, “And beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself”(NASB); in John 10:35, “The scripture cannot be broken.”
Looking forward to the revelation of God being progressively revealed in the exact words of the New Testament, Jesus said, “But the Helper, the Holy Spirt, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you” (John 14:26, NASB).
Add to this the testimony of the apostle Paul who wrote at least thirteen of the twenty-seven New Testament books. He wrote to Timothy, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works (2 Timothy 3:16-17). The word inspiration is the Greek word theopneustos, which is a compound of theos (God) and neustos (breathed).
In another place, Paul explains how revelation took place with him and with other writers of Scripture. In 1 Corinthians 2:12-13 he says, “Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words” (NASB).
The possession of this faithful Word from God gave Paul his claim to authority. He said, “If anyone thinks he is a prophet or spiritual, let him recognize that the things which I write to you are the Lord’s commandment” (1 Corinthians 14:37, (NASB).
Peter adds to our understanding of divine revelation by saying. “We have also a more sure word of prophecy, unto which ye do well to take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts; Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not at any time by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:19-21, NSRB). Because of inspiration, Peter is able to write, “For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away; But the word of the Lord endureth for ever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you” (1 Peter 1:24-25).
The Christian’s faith that the Bible is the very Word of the living God is utterly confirmed by every proven fact of learning that comes from outside the pages of Scripture. The findings of science, archaeology, psychology, history, chemistry, physics, and all other areas of inquiry, in discoveries that bear a relationship to the teaching of the Word of God, confirm without exception Scripture’s claim to inspiration.
Truth produces results in lives. Millions of individuals call themselves Christians, claiming that their lives were transformed when they accepted the testimony of the Word of God at face value and received its offered Savior as their personal Deliverer from sin. This is the subjective argument, but it is an unshakeable source of biblical confirmation within the lives of those who have received the Bible as the Word of God and believed in Jesus Christ.
The existence of this mass of unimpeachable data, called the Bible, infuriates his infernal majesty, the devil. This is the reason that, as he said to Eve, he now says to this world in a thousand ways, “God’s Word is not true; don’t believe Him; believe me.” Our generation, perhaps more than most, has seen the activity of Satan as he attempts to promote his second cardinal doctrine in many impressive ways. The person who would believe the Bible is pressed upon by many subversive voices that would beguile him into accepting some foundation for truth other than Scripture. Indeed, the Bible itself has been attacked in this century such as never before.
That attack began in the last century with Julius Wellhausen, one of the men who rules the world from his grave. In the late 1800s, German rationalism gave to the world the Graf-Wellhausen theory of Scripture. Wellhausen advanced the view that the Old Testament should be looked upon, not as the Word of God, but as an eloquent collection of documents written by capable scribes who gave their impressions about God, their witness to revelation.
This was the first modern attempt to place human reason, the ability of the human mind to analyze things, above the inspiration of the words of Scripture. This great attack of reason upon revelation became more and more successful as “thinking” people decided to pay themselves the compliment of being the judge of what the Bible teaches. Properly understood, the Bible judges us far more than we judge it.
German rationalism, with its higher critical view of Scripture, broke upon the Western world around the turn of the century. These sub-Christian ideas carried everything before them and created within Christianity a new phenomenon called liberalism. One after another, the major denominations of that day were subverted by the higher critical point of view, leaving the view that the Bible is the inspired Word of God and giving the right of critical judgment to the reason of men. For them, reason superseded revelation, and the Word of God could no longer be trusted.
Looking back now, we can see the catastrophic results of the denial of the truth of Scripture in the early part of this century. The liberals’ slogan “Every day in every way, I am getting better and better” has been destroyed by two major wars in which millions have been killed. Wars, depressions, crime, and every form of evil continues to grow in our society. All of this gives the lie to the liberal suggestion that social action can fundamentally improve the course of mankind. The progressive degeneration of liberal theology finally produced the most obscene announcement in the history of the world, the absurd news that God is dead.
The latest version of pseudo-Christianity is Liberation Theology. Here God is contextualized into the social structure and is seen as identifying Himself with the poor structure and is seen as identifying Himself with the poor and oppressed. The result is a Christian Marxist hybrid that some say bridges the gap between Christianity and Marxism. In Liberation Theology the message of Christianity promises economic instead of spiritual liberation. Christ becomes a social revolutionary instead of a Savior.
Corrupt theology has also produced a corrupt “new morality.” This religious establishment has produced the most godless concepts and anti-Christian philosophies imaginable to man. Church groups are now declaring that trial marriage is a legitimate involvement. (The Bible says, “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” Exodus 20:14). They have assured us that homosexuality is a legitimate expression of feeling. (The Scripture says about the things that are done of them in secret, “Let it not be once named among you, as becometh saints,” Ephesians 5:3.) They have advocated revolution against government. (The Bible says, “The powers that be are ordained for God,” Romans 13:1).
This list seems endless of the false points of view taken by some factions of our present religious establishment, When one rejects the final authority of the Word of God, he begins a process of corruption whereby his whole thought structure becomes a vast delusion.
Virtually all of the problems of our present age have come because we have turned from the truth of revelation to the sinking sand of mere human philosophy. Every psychiatric clinic, every automobile accident, and every graveyard testify to us that human reason is neither infallible nor eternal. Despite the obvious untrustworthiness of human reason, Satan still continues successfully to advance his argument that it is possible to place final trust in something else beside the Word of God. We must turn from the voice of Satan to the careful study of the Bible. A knowledge of the Bible is our best protection against the wiles of the devil. We do well to establish early in our lives the conviction that the Word of God, as against any alternative voice, will be our final authority. In making the decisions of live, we will never find the correct course unless we are willing to establish that course on the basis of the final authority of Scripture. We never will be able to establish a moral base for our lives and for our children unless that final reason for the moral course that we take is, “The Bible says so,” Why is it wrong to steal? Because the Bible says, “Thou shalt not steal.” Why is it wrong to commit adultery? Because the Bible says so. Why should children obey their parents? Because hte Bible says so. Why should we worship God only? Because the Bible says so. Since God knows what is best for us, if He tells us in His Word not to do something, we had better believe it must be wrong for us.
Our old enemy, the devil, can twist any other human argument into a new basis for his hellish corruption. We must not allow him to twist the Word of God or cause us to believe that Scripture is no longer a solid foundation on which to build our lives. Any person who follows the leading of anything apart from the clear and final truth of the Word of God is believing and committing himself to the devil’s doctrine. He is rejecting the true doctrine of Jesus Christ. We will surely then sin against God unless we are protected by both a knowledge of and a commitment to the truth of the Scripture.
One of the additional implications of this doctrine of the devil is that there are no adverse consequences to disobedience to God. “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he not also reap.” God said, “The way of the transgressor is hard” (Proverbs 13:15), but Satan would have us to believe that sin is fun. God’s Word warns, “The wages of sin is death,” but Satan is still at work pushing the opposite point of view. Modern thought would still have us believe that the path of sin will produce fun, happiness, fulfillment, and worthwhile achievement in life. We are never told about the suicides, diseases, and agonizing deaths of people who have believed Satan’s philosophy. Every person who rejects the Bible and attempts to live without Christ is a fool, subverted by the second doctrine of his infernal majesty.
Satan's Ten Most Believable Lies