Beware!
Beware lest anyone cheat you (spoil you) through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ. (Colossians 2:8 NKJV)
The War
To be spoiled is to be a loser in a war and to have all your goods and riches taken by the victor. There is a war going on in the world today. It is a war between good and evil, between lies and truth and, ultimately, it is a war between Christ and Satan. The spoils of this war are the souls (or the eternal existence) of people on earth. The Lord wants the humans He created to be with Him in heaven for eternity and Satan wants to make sure that they are lost to Him. Satan has no use for the souls of men other than to rob the Lord of that which is rightfully His.
Philosophy
There is only One Truth, but there are many lies. Satan doesn’t care which lie a person believes so long as they don’t believe the truth. He is a hater, a liar and a murderer. When we talk to people about their eternal destinies and they start out their conversation with “It seems to me,” I assume that they are being misled by their own thinking or their own philosophy. Many people study what they consider to be great philosophers in deciding what to believe about God and eternity. Others study church doctrine. Most people that I talk to do not quote the Bible and its promises when I ask them what they truly believe.
Empty Deceit (or Lies)
When a person starts out a spiritual conversation with the statement, “I don’t believe,” or in some cases, “I can’t believe,” I assume that they have rejected the simple truth of the Scripture. Some say they can’t believe in a God that would crucify His own Son. Some say that they can’t believe in a God of retribution as found in the Old Testament. Some say that they can’t believe that only those who believe like I believe will go to heaven. They say the earth is filled with people who have never heard the Gospel and they can’t believe in a God that would condemn such people. (We could spend some time on the faulty premise that there are people who hunger and thirst after righteousness who have not heard the Gospel, but we will leave that for another time.)
Then there are those who simply reject the idea of a Creator God in spite of all the evidence that the beauty of nature and our own consciences give us that there is a creator.
So which Philosophy and Empty Lie is our Achilles Heel?
Recently, I talked to a couple of young men who were kind and intelligent. They had questions about this whole religion thing with people in their families involved in many different religions and philosophies. I tried to impress them with good reasons for believing that the Bible is dependable, that it is the word of God and that one really doesn’t need to know much more than the promise found in John 3:16 to go to heaven. I was tempted to give them some literature but instead I instructed them to read the first three chapters of John’s Gospel. I am more and more convinced that it is better to have people read the truth of Scripture than it is to have them read what somebody wrote about the Scripture even though there have been many helpful things written about the Scriptures. Even though helpful things have been written about the Scriptures, many have written things that seem right but that don’t stand the test of Scripture. That is why I usually suggest that people go back and read the original document. If they find the King James Version hard to understand, I sometimes suggest that they read the New Living Translation.
There was one thing I tried to impress upon these two genuinely sincere young men. We don’t get “do overs.” In life we are told that we learn by our mistakes. I worked with an accountant who would say, “We learn by doing. . .it over!,” when a partner reviewed his work and made suggestions. But unfortunately, we don’t get to live our lives over. Once we die, that’s it! We have to get it right the first time.
The “It seems to me” approach to eternity and the “I won’t or can’t believe” approach to Biblical truth is being used by Satan in this war for souls. Please if you are reading this, don’t allow Satan to win.
Bruce Collins
Meditation for the week of May 28, 2023