8 The Genuine the Counterfeit

God tested Adam and Eve by giving them a very simple command to obey and telling them what the results would be if they broke it, but He did not explain the reason He was testing them. Neither of them had actually seen Christ create them or anything else, so their faith in God’s word that He was their Creator, and their love for who He was and all He had done for them, would be demonstrated by their choice of obedience to His command not to eat from the tree. Satan is the master of deception and he approached Eve on the grounds that since she had not seen God create them, how would she know that He was actually their Creator and authority who made the rules for His creation to run smoothly by, and he made her wonder if God was jealously trying to keep them from entering a higher sphere as His equals by denying them access to the tree that would give them godlike qualities and power to make their own rules of life. To help us escape his devices, Pastor Bohr studies five methods of deception that Satan used on Eve and will also use with great success at the end of time. Acting like an angel of light and working to deceive, not only with worldly conduits, but especially with many influential leaders under the guise of Christian religious authorities, he will perform signs, wonders and miracles, misuse and misquote God’s Word, and get people to rely on their senses, emotions and internal impressions of “being led by the Spirit of love“ rather than on the Word of God and its clear Ten Commandments which define what true love is, in order to try to deceive even the very elect if possible. Satan will especially attack the sign given in God’s Law that points to who our Creator and authority is. The majority of the world and of professed Christians will be lost “because they did not receive the love of the truth that they might be saved“, but believed “the lie“ and “had pleasure in unrighteousness“ (2Thess.2:10-12). The counterfeit will pan itself off as the genuine and we must be prepared to resist what Eve fell for and overcome the way Jesus did when He was tempted by the devil in the wilderness