Counterfeit circumstances

If you have been a Christian for any length of time, you have no doubt realized by now that Satan is a liar and a deceiver. In John 8 Jesus referred to him as the “father of lies” and said that there is “no truth in him.” From the Garden of Eden on, Satan has been using deception to manipulate and control people for his own selfish ends. Deception is defined as, “the act of causing someone to accept as true or valid what is false or invalid.” And this is precisely what Satan does.

One of the clearest examples of deception is the act of counterfeiting. A counterfeiter has one goal – to make one thing look like something else of greater value. By imitating an original, counterfeiters are able to deceive people into believing something worthless has great value. And this is exactly what Satan seeks to do on a regular basis. Through an extensive counterfeiting operation, he attempts to make people believe that his lies are actually the most valuable commodity on earth – The word of God.

In 2 Corinthians 11:14 we are told that, “Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.” This indicates that Satan will sometimes actually appear to people as an angel claiming to speak the word of God. A number of false religions and cults have started this way. But this is not the only way in which Satan attempts to counterfeit the word of God.

One of the ways Satan attempts to deceive people is through counterfeit circumstances. By this I am referring to manipulating certain circumstances in order to give the impression that they are from God, when in fact they are not. As with all counterfeiting, the way this is done is by making a careful study of the original – in this case circumstances that are from God, and then imitating them as closely as possible.

In Exodus 7:10, in obedience to God’s command, Aaron threw his staff down on the ground before Pharaoh and it became a serpent. But the next verse tells us that Pharaoh called for his sorcerers and they did the same thing with “their secret arts” – a reference to the power of Satan. This same thing happened when Aaron used his staff to turn the waters of the Nile into blood and again brought forth an abundance of frogs on the land. In both instances, we read that, “The magicians did the same with their secret arts.”

Clearly this story shows that Satan is able to imitate a genuine miracle of God. But this really shouldn’t surprise us considering that 2 Thessalonians 2:9 refers to the coming of the “lawless one,” (Antichrist) as being “in accord with the activity of Satan, with all power and signs and false wonders, and with all the deception of wickedness.”

But this story of Moses and Aaron’s encounter teaches us some powerful truths about Satan’s counterfeiting operation. First, it reminds us that in order to have a counterfeit, there must be an original. This tells us that Satan is most likely to try and introduce a counterfeit situation immediately after we have had a genuine God-initiated experience. (There is a great example of this in Matthew 16:16-23)

This story also shows us that eventually, Satan’s counterfeiting operation will not be able to keep up with God. After the plague of the gnats, we are told that “the magicians tried with their secret arts to bring forth gnats, but they could not.” Eventually, the power of God will outlast and outshine the power of Satan, and it will be obvious to all which is the original. In the meantime, Jesus warned us to, “See to it that you are not misled.” And just like the people who are trained to detect counterfeit currency, the best way to do this is to study the original – the words, ways and works of God – until we know them so well that we will be able to spot one of Satan’s counterfeit circumstances at a glance!