Introduction: How Does the World Work Without God?
There is a question that many of us ask ourselves, even if we do not always dare to put it into words: How does the world work without God? We awaken to life, we grow up, and we find ourselves in the middle of a multitude of rules and ways of doing things. We practice them because they were imposed on us, because there is knowledge that others established before us, and we follow it without knowing how it was created or how the world we live in really operates. We wonder how people who are outside the knowledge of God and His revelation sustain themselves; how the world goes on; how things function; how different ways of life are formed and developed, and how peoples develop. Some reach a very advanced level of technology, others fall somewhat behind, and there are nations that set the rhythm and the pace of the world. How does all of this come about?
This chapter was born from a burden the Lord placed on the heart to teach and explain, for the benefit of parents, of students, and of all of us who ask questions and do not understand how things happen. It is a subject that has been worked on on various occasions, and it is closely tied to the theme of lies and deception: deception is not established in the first instance, but is a path that results from a lie that has been embraced. If a lie is not embraced, a person cannot walk in deception.
The Individual and Intellectual Capacity
The first thing we must consider is the individual. People are not all alike; we have different capacities. There are established measures for evaluating a person’s capacity to learn, known as intelligence quotient tests, or IQ tests. These tests classify people as normal, outstanding, highly intelligent, and geniuses; that is, people who have come into the world with a capacity for learning and for understanding their surroundings that surpasses even that of the most intelligent, and who for that reason stand out as prominent figures.
These geniuses go on to study scientifically and to discover things: in the social realm, how man behaves; in the realm of science, how numbers behave and where certain formulas lead; in the realm of medicine, how to develop treatments. Technologically and intellectually, they offer answers to many questions. Why, when I throw an object, does it fall to the floor and stay there, unless it bounces? This is how laws begin to be formulated, such as the law of gravity, and this is also how theories begin to be created.
What Is a Theory, Really?
When we hear the word theory, we must understand what it means: it does not mean that it is a truth. A theory means that someone studied something, observed something, and reached a conclusion; that conclusion is their theory. Precisely because it is a theory, it is not something permanent. Throughout history, many theories of exceptionally brilliant people, who explained how things work and set the world in motion, have already expired. Every time we hear “the theory of such-and-such,” we cannot take it for granted. There are theories in physics, such as thermodynamics; in society; in psychology. But there is one that concerns us in a particular way right now: the theory of evolution.
Every theory is born from a hypothesis, and hypotheses are questions. A person asks a question and begins to investigate until he gathers everything that can answer it. When he finds information, whether through observation or physical findings, he concludes: “This is my theory.” But what happens when the one who formulates it has an IQ superior to everyone else’s? No one stands up and tells him that it is not so, because no one has anything with which to debate him. All the theories that have been imposed on us, we end up believing, because we have no way of saying, “Let us study this; it is not so, because of this and that.”
Several theories have arisen about the origin of man; it is said that there are seven or, rather, six, because one of them is the truth. In other words, there is not just one theory, as many people have in mind. One person said that man comes from the monkey; others rose up and said that man came about in some other way. But society, and the Department of Education, settled on one of them and said, “This is the most accurate.” That theory was created through hypotheses, deductions, observations, and findings—such as the discovery of a body found in a certain condition—and those who hold it argue that everything is consistent and that it all makes history. It was intellectually outstanding people who created it. Anyone who wishes to go deeper should search and study for himself; the platform from which this is taught exists to bring the truth of God, not so that people can spend their time taking notes on how many theories there are.
Nebuchadnezzar and the Theories of the Origin of Man
Let us go to the book of Daniel, chapter 4, and read from verse 29 through verse 33:
“At the end of the twelve months he was walking about the royal palace of Babylon. The king spoke, saying, ‘Is not this great Babylon, that I have built for a royal dwelling by my mighty power and for the honor of my majesty?’ While the word was still in the king’s mouth, a voice fell from heaven: ‘King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is spoken: the kingdom has departed from you! And they shall drive you from men, and your dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field. They shall make you eat grass like oxen; and seven times shall pass over you, until you know that the Most High rules in the kingdom of men, and gives it to whomever He chooses.’ That very hour the word was fulfilled concerning Nebuchadnezzar; he was driven from men and ate grass like oxen; his body was wet with the dew of heaven till his hair had grown like eagles’ feathers and his nails like birds’ claws.” (Daniel 4:29-33, NKJV)
What happened to Nebuchadnezzar physically? He looked like an animal. What kind of animal? He ate grass like an ox, but physically he resembled a bird: his hair was like eagles’ feathers and his nails like birds’ claws. Had he died in that condition and someone had found his body, another theory could have arisen—that man may have come from birds. And yet God established it that way for that man. There are entire communities of men whom God has given over as beasts, as animals; even today there are places where there are people who, honestly, look like animals when you see them.
That is why it cannot be stated categorically that man descended from the monkey. That is a theory. Whoever has believed that theory, or believes that a theory has more power than the truth, must remove it from his mind. From childhood, in school, we are told that evolution came, that man came from a monkey and kept evolving; but man has not been able to prove that. Everything that is a theory is subject to disappearing or changing. One only has to look up how many theories have already been discredited: every time a person with superior knowledge arises and begins to investigate, he realizes that the previous theory lacked this or that, and the theory is rendered void.
Nevertheless, the people of God still fear theories and do not know how to face them. If someone says that man descended from the monkey, the church has nothing to say; it merely answers, “No, that is not so; God created him.” And the other person replies, “But they discovered this body, and this one, and this one, and it all fits together.” Then the believer is left stammering; he does not dare say more, because the response is, “Prove to me that God created him.” What is he going to say? What is it that happens in the church? It is quite simple: everything that is in the Word is by revelation. If you do not have the revelation, even if you read it, you will not believe it; and if you do not have the revelation, even if you tell someone, it will come out hollow; it will not be convincing.
God’s Wisdom Does Not Compete With Man’s IQ
We have no reason to hide from theories or to fear them, because the wisdom of God cannot compete with the IQ of the human being. Let us read in Ezekiel, chapter 1, beginning at verse 4:
“Then I looked, and behold, a whirlwind was coming out of the north, a great cloud with raging fire engulfing itself; and brightness was all around it and radiating out of its midst like the color of amber, out of the midst of the fire. Also from within it came the likeness of four living creatures. And this was their appearance: they had the likeness of a man. Each one had four faces, and each one had four wings.” (Ezekiel 1:4-6, NKJV)
“As for the likeness of their faces, each had the face of a man; each of the four had the face of a lion on the right side, each of the four had the face of an ox on the left side, and each of the four had the face of an eagle.” (Ezekiel 1:10, NKJV)
Whoever reads that whole chapter is left astonished and asks: What is this? It is God’s creation and the way God operates—something that the technology we have has not yet reached. Man has not yet been given anything like it. And the technology we will face within a year or two will leave us speechless: it will be such a violent and astonishing technological change that we will not believe it. Meetings are already being held to bring about a world in which people do not work and robotics does everything; there are already meetings about this. Meanwhile, the Church still suffers from a lack of understanding.
The only way to face what is coming, and all the theories that will keep opening up and being imposed on man, is to understand what a theory is: the thought of a person with an intellectual capacity above that of the entire population, so that he cannot be debated intellectually because one does not have the capacity to do so. Perhaps among us there are people who, if given an IQ test, would turn out to be brilliant, even geniuses; but there will always be someone who rises above and brings a theory and some advances, and people will have to submit, because they cannot cope with it. What, then, is the position? Revelation. The one who does not walk by revelation has to walk by theory; if God has not revealed it to him, he has to take the theory and accept it, because he has nothing else.
That is the difference between the church, the chosen, and the children of God, and everyone else: we do not need an intellectual capacity to establish the truth. Otherwise, God would be unjust, for only someone so brilliant could make theories, the world would walk by them, and everything would seem true because it works: the theory of relativity, the theory of this and of that, and the rockets that go back and forth. I cannot debate that, because I do not have that level of intellect. All I have left is revelation; but the one who has no revelation has nothing left but theories and submitting to the world as it is.
Theories, Sickness, and Faith
Let us take another example. Louis Pasteur established the theory that diseases come from microorganisms. When someone gets sick, the first thing done is a blood count and a culture—of blood, of urine, or whatever—to find out which microorganism he has and give him the corresponding antibiotic. But let us notice one small detail: those microbes are always around, and we do not get sick. What, then, makes us get sick? The body’s defenses go down. And why did the defenses go down? Because of spiritual principles. Jesus said it: that the person should go and sin no more, so that nothing worse may come upon him.
This is not to say that doctors are wrong or that being a doctor is wrong; there are given moments in which they are useful. But a person without revelation may be facing a spiritual problem, taking five hundred pills, without it being resolved, because it is spiritual: there is a sin, or a curse entered, or the enemy came, took advantage, moved up his agenda, and made the person sick. Since the person is subject to the various theories, he subjects himself to bacteria and viruses, which are indeed active in the body when the defenses go down, because that is the mechanism that is used. But the Lord rebuked the fever, and the fever left the person. What does this mean? That there is a fever that is a spirit, and that a fever is rebuked. Yet, since one lives in the theory of the pill, whoever has a fever takes an antibiotic. We live in a world full of theories of people with the intellectual capacity to study and arrive at them; but theories are not categorically the truth: they are an explanation, and people look for explanations.
The answer to this is in the Word:
“For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom;” (1 Corinthians 1:22, NKJV)
The Jews, having the Torah, the books of Moses, and the prophets, wanted to see signs. The church is still that way: “Speak to me in tongues, interpret tongues for me; otherwise God is not speaking to me.” God may be speaking to the person, but since the person is not speaking in tongues or interpreting them, he concludes that God is not with him or that it is not God who is speaking. They ask for signs: “If He is God, let Him come down from the cross and save Himself.” And the Greeks ask for explanations: “Explain this to me.” But faith in the Son is faith, and faith is action without seeing and without explanation: God spoke to me, and I follow the instruction. Man, on the other hand, demands to be given an explanation in order to understand, to be shown the evidence, and from there theories arise: “I studied this, I looked into this, I understand that this could be so.” That is a theory; it does not mean that it is so. Every time we hear the word theory, we know that it can change or be eliminated.
That is why, when we are told about the theory of evolution, we must say without fear that it is false. God created man in His image and likeness, and He governs all things, from man to nature. That is immovable. Whoever has that revelation should not hide, or flee, or be afraid of being told that he does not believe what someone else is teaching. No one has to be ashamed of his faith or hide it. If a classroom is discussing something in particular, one should not allow oneself to be shamed; we are not going to debate or argue. We can say respectfully: “I am sorry that you cannot have the blessing and the faith that I have; I respect you, because the Word is not for arguing.” One cannot impose on someone who has no revelation that he abandon a theory. Nor can one change the world, because the world is against the Word; we are not in the world to change it, but God keeps us in the world.
It is sad that the church carries a theory, because then it cannot explain how the Lord was caught up, how Elijah was caught up: a chariot of fire came, and it was a chariot of fire. There are manifestations in the Word that belong to this time or to the time that is coming, and they have already been manifested in it. The church has not been able to separate itself from what the world has imposed in order to walk by the Word; it says, “But there is also this theory, and that one, and I cannot debate them.” What are you going to debate? You do not have the intelligence that man has, but you have a revelation that man does not have. One thing is the intellectual capacity to create ideas, and another thing is revelation; they are two different things. What should we seek? Not signs or human wisdom, but revelation.
The church is called to seek revelation, and revelation is brought by the Holy Spirit. One should not go to a man to be given revelation; the Holy Spirit gives it. Through the Holy Spirit, counsel can be given to a person who truly has a foundation on which a word may be released; but if there is no foundation, there is nowhere to hold it. We must first come out of what the world has established so that the Holy Spirit may then bring us revelation. There are two things that cannot walk together: the theories of man and what God says. They are not on the same level: the theory is below, and what God says is above. Who will attain the wisdom of God? No matter how wise a man may be, he will never attain it. God created man in His image and likeness; things happened on the earth, and still happen, in which man has been degraded.
The Lie, the Hypothesis, and Deception
This subject is tied to the one we began to study last week: lies and deception. We defined then that deception is not established in the first instance; it is a path that results from a lie that has been embraced. Although when we speak of hypotheses and theories we appeal to scientific language, which is not used in the church, it is exactly what men and women end up doing, even if we do not call it that. A lie is nothing other than a hypothesis; and when a person remains in it, he establishes it as a theory, which becomes his theory. It is true that the person will not call it a theory; he will call it his philosophy of life, his lifestyle, his way of being. But it is exactly the same.
It is important that we understand that we cannot walk in hypotheses or in theory. One of the evils that exist within the church, when interpreting the Bible, is that hypotheses are often created that, with popularity or virality, become theory. Again: within the church it is not called a theory, it is called doctrine; but it is the same principle. A man of faith and a woman of faith walk by the revelation of the Word of the Lord, not by what we ourselves are constantly fabricating. We must be very careful, because we could be forging hypotheses that will eventually lead us to walk in deception: to embrace a hypothesis is to embrace a theory.
The Age of the Earth and of Man
I want to add, regarding the theory of evolution, that the earth and the universe were formed millions and millions of years ago. The earth was not formed six thousand years ago, and it is very important that we understand this. How is this proven? Ezekiel 28:14 gives us the key to understanding. The prophet declares to Lucifer, to Satan, that he was on the mountain of God and that he was placed in Eden. Satan was formed millions of years ago, practically in parallel with the universe; and if Eden already existed when he was formed, that tells us that the universe was formed millions and millions of years ago.
In the book of Genesis we find, on the fifth day, the creation of monstrous animals, which we know today as dinosaurs; they were created before man and, likewise, millions of years ago. Man, Adam, was created on the sixth day. Now, when the Holy Scriptures, in the book of Genesis, speak of days, they are not referring to days of twenty-four hours, as we know them today, beginning at midnight and ending at midnight of the same day. Why? If we review Genesis, chapters 2 and 3, we see that man was formed on the sixth day; the creation of the woman, the fall of man, and his expulsion from Eden all took place on that same sixth day. The Word says clearly that man did not enter into God’s rest. This means that the day mentioned in Genesis 2 is not twenty-four hours but a gigantic extension of time: how could the creation of man, the creation of woman, the fall, and the expulsion from the garden happen in a matter of hours? This shows us that time was not being measured.
A question was raised: How old was Adam when he was formed? He was not formed as a child who grew up, but already as an adult. The answer is that Adam had no age, because time is measured from the moment of the expulsion from the garden of Eden. In the garden time was not measured; since there was no time, there was no age. Time was formed starting from the expulsion. So humanity is approximately six thousand years old; compared with the millions of years of creation, there is a substantial and notable difference. Furthermore, the time that Adam lived inside the garden was much longer than the time he lived outside it; the age of Adam recorded in the Scriptures corresponds to the time after his expulsion.
Extraterrestrials and Injected Scientific Knowledge
There are many men and women of God who believe in extraterrestrials. Genesis 2 and 3 explain to us that extraterrestrials do not exist. All the manifestations that have been seen or that we may see in the future are not beings from other galaxies coming to ours; they are demons. And yet there are men and women of God who still believe these things. That is why it is so important that we learn to walk by revelation and not by scientific knowledge. Each one of us must discard all the scientific knowledge that has been injected into us, because it is lies, and many of us keep walking in deception precisely because of those lies.
The subject of lies and deception has a spiritual foundation, but we cannot view it only in terms of the soul or of spiritual matters; we must see it in daily life: how it has affected us and how we keep walking by that deception which, in many cases, has been established by science or by the scientific knowledge that we have embraced.
Revelation, Not Imposition
To walk in revelation, the basis, when reading the Bible, is not to do it out of imposition. If someone feels forced to read the Bible, he has already started wrong: the Bible should not be read out of habit or out of tradition. In each one of us the desire to draw near to the presence of the Lord must be born. The same is true of prayer: there are many men and women of God who do not pray, and prayer is important. In the book of Acts, in chapters 1 and 2, we see that the believers persevered in prayer, in sharing things, and in the apostles’ doctrine. But it cannot be by imposition. Saying, “I am going to force myself to pray at least five minutes,” is not the way; if the desire is not born, something is definitely not working right. Imposition leads us into greater confusion, into seeking self-justification, and therefore into walking in a lie and being led into deception.
Nor should we impose it on anyone. In the family, a religion cannot and must not be imposed on children: sitting them down to read the Bible and saying, “Now you have to read it.” If the child does not want to, he can be taught to do it, but it cannot be imposed. Our children learn by modeling, by what we do and by the results they see from what we do; we teach them through the questions they ask us. If we impose Bible reading on them, we will create religious people with a God who does not deliver, and they will realize that everything we taught them was a lie. I was taught that going to the beach on Good Friday was a sin and that God would punish me; I discovered that I went to the beach and God did not punish me, and I said to myself, “This is not true; something is failing.”
In Puerto Rico there was a man named Genito who said that the television was the devil’s box and that one could not watch television; he was very radical. I heard him when I was seven, eight, or nine years old, and it made me laugh. I never understood it until the Lord began to sanctify me and lead me to levels of revelation. Then, when I turned on the television, I could feel everything that came out of it, and I would say, “That man was right.” I was already forty years old. I believe that many in the churches laugh at all of that from the past; the Pentecostal pastors drew a line against him, as if to say, “This one is crazy, he is too radical,” and many churches laughed at his preaching. But he did not know how to explain it, and he wanted to impose it on everyone, on people who had no revelation, who did not understand, and he cast pearls where he should not have. That is why I never tell anyone, “You cannot have a television.” That is not my business. If a person does not have the revelation and does not understand, he will always have in the house a door through which darkness comes and goes without control; some of it stays because it can stay, and some leaves.
Many times there is turmoil in homes, and it can be due to two reasons, which are the most common: television, radio, and digital media of whatever kind; and pets. Transfers happen through every digital medium. A person who calls us for deliverance receives it through the digital medium: we pray here and the person receives it. In the same way, a person receives contamination by watching television, the computer, or the phone. And when I ask those I minister to, “Do you watch soap operas? Are you watching this or that which is being projected?” I find that they picked up a transfer. The people have not yet grown into that understanding.
As for pets: God established the animals, and even insects such as flies, to be in man’s surroundings, a free environment: the yard, not the bedroom or the living room. But society has created a lifestyle that does not allow having a little hen in the yard; where I live, I cannot have hens or a little goat; I can have a little dog, but it must not bother the neighbor, and if it is small, you are not going to leave it outside, so it has to be inside the house. Thus there are lifestyles that lead us to change things with respect to their principles. God created the animals, and there are domestic animals to be around man, but not to be in his bed or inside his house, because God gave permission to darkness to dwell in certain animals. When the demon-possessed Gadarene was delivered, the demons asked to enter the swine, and Jesus told them that they could enter.
But this is not a law that I can impose. Each person has to ask the Lord whether he is permitted to have a pet. When I was converted, the Lord told me that I had to get rid of pets; I had to move out all the little animals I had in the house, and the Lord allowed me to discern what each one carried: it was not in my mind, it was real. That was God with me, because He called me to a ministry of deliverance; in the first phases of the calling, the Lord moved me to people’s homes to work on the deliverance of places, houses, and rooms where spirits dwelled, in addition to people. Even so, I do not preach to people, “Do not have a pet.” Once a neighbor brought me a cat and said, “I cannot cope with this cat, I do not know what is wrong with her; I brought her so that you would pray for her.” I remember that I wept for the cat as she writhed. I asked the pastor, and he told me that one cannot pray for the deliverance of an animal, that Jesus gave His life for man. I did what I did, and the spirit ended up leaving the cat as well; but there are things that have a limit, which cannot be imposed on people, because not everyone is called to that, nor are all chosen. I cannot make a religious law out of televisions or pets; it is something very individual between God and the person. If I did, I would be making a religion, like Genito, who shouted that it was the devil’s box and no one understood him, until God revealed it to me.
The First Case: Denial of a Fact
Not being able to face the things of the world produces, in the life of the man and woman of faith, hiding. That is why I want to present several cases of what a lie is. Let us go to Genesis 3:11-12:
“And He said, ‘Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?’ Then the man said, ‘The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate.’” (Genesis 3:11-12, NKJV)
This first case is called denial of a fact. It has three forms, but today we will study the first, the simplest, the one in which all of us have fallen at some time: “You went there.” “No, not me.” “You did that.” “No, not me.” And along with that “not me” comes “it was the woman You gave me,” as in Adam’s case. This happens because of pressure, because of not knowing how to face a reality. When a man or a woman of God has not learned to face a reality—it may even be a scientific reality, like the one we looked at today—he will seek to deny it and slip out of that situation. We must not and cannot: everything must be faced. If there is one thing we have learned in the teachings and in personal interaction, it is to confront. We do not like it and we are not used to it, but we have to learn. The man and woman who have not learned to confront deny, hide, escape, flee. We cannot keep acting this way, because that is the beginning of the lie. Someone might say, “I am not a liar”; but we are discovering that we do walk in a lie from the moment we do not face the situation, deny the fact to ourselves, and withdraw.
Someone asked how this fits with the teaching about escaping the snare of the fowler, and with the Scripture that says the prudent see danger and hide. The answer is that we are not talking about denying a condition that needs to be worked on. It is one thing to free oneself from evil when one sees it, and another to deny a condition one has and say, “I am going to face it alone; I handle it with God.” Nor are we referring to unnecessary exposure. Paul says it: all things are lawful, but not all things are profitable; I will not be brought under the power of just anything simply because all things are lawful. That is a lack of wisdom. One does not have to submit to shouting, or to violent actions, or to passive actions.
Consider what has happened in many congregations. A woman is mistreated by her husband; she arrives at church, they ask her how she is, and she answers, “In victory, in victory.” She is denying a fact. How many women walk with a lie told to them from childhood: “You have to stay in your home, whatever happens; you cannot divorce”? Many, in the congregations, walk embracing a lie that was imposed on them, even within the home itself, and have walked in deception for many years, sometimes waiting for a reconciliation or for the conversion of the person who mistreats them. This situation is called denial of a fact.
Another example: a person—man, woman, or even a child—loses a loved one, a father or a mother, and denies the fact. He weeps, groans, laments, but says that everything is fine. That is a lie and it is deception, because he has embraced a lie and walks in it. How many adults still keep the lie of denial from when they were children? How many men and women lost a father when they were children and at that moment denied the fact, and that denial is still maintained even in adulthood? We will find many men and women of God—genuine, sincere ones—who still walk in a deception and who cannot enter other dimensions of faith precisely because the deception in which they have walked for years does not allow it. This is not psychology or a matter of the soul: it is a spiritual reality. Every time a man or woman of God denies a fact, he is confirming that he has lived in deception, and who knows for how long.
Many times we say, “In church they told me that I have to confess that I am in victory.” We have misunderstood the Word. The apostle Paul says that he knows how to be content in abundance, but also in need. It is not denying reality or the situation we are going through; it is knowing what we are going through, where I am positioned, and what the Lord is doing with me, and realizing that it is not exactly the same as what we were used to living.
As long as a situation is not faced, it is not resolved. As long as the truth we do not want to see is not faced, even if we are told it, there is no solution. Many times we say, “The person is telling me this, and I sort of believe him.” But it is not that you believe him; it is that you want to believe him: it hurts you not to believe him, and you prefer to believe him so as not to hurt yourself rather than know the truth. The conflict is not resolved until it is faced and called by its name. There are children who mistreat their parents, and the mother does not see that it is mistreatment and denies it. There are fathers and mothers who mistreat their children and deny it. The abandonment of children to the wind, to do whatever they want, is mistreatment, because there is an immaturity in the brains of those little ones, who do not have the maturity of an adult and cannot walk like adults because they are not; not having an adult beside them to guide them is mistreatment. We must understand how far the levels of mistreatment go that are not faced and not called by their name.
The denial of a fact can lead us to situations in which we cannot see the work of God in our lives. We say, “As a child I suffered, as a child I was mistreated,” and as adults we say, “I understand that all of that was a dealing of God.” But then we are not seeing the work of God: we only see God when He is related to adverse situations. God is teaching you all the time. Why is it hard for many of us to see God in silence, when absolutely nothing is moving? Because we are accustomed to interpreting our crises or our failures only as part of a dealing of God, and that is still walking in deception. We have to rid ourselves of every lie. Let us remember: the one who is in deception is the one who embraced a lie. With what lie have we walked for so long? “Nobody loves me,” “nobody understands me.” Why do we have that thought? Where is the lie?
One of those lies is that of the perfect parent. Our brothers, our children, our parents, and we ourselves have not walked perfectly; what they did, they did, and that is that, but it is not for us to add to it. It is knowing what it is and calling it by its name: she is my mother, but she did this, and she did it wrong; yet it is not a matter of harming ourselves or putting a label on her. It is not a matter of crossing that limit, but neither of denying. Nor do we deny because it is “my child”: what mother does not think she has the best child, the smartest, the most beautiful? There is a reality, and realities must be dealt with, calling each thing by its name, without denial, but also without adding weight to it. When a weight of anger, of frustration, of hatred, or of revenge comes out of us, we are adding where we have no need to add; that we recognize something does not give us the right or the authority to add weight to it.
Peter and the Pressures That Lead to Deception
Let us read in Matthew 26, from verse 69 through verse 75. It is a well-known case, but we bring it here to see where not learning to face situations can lead us:
“Now Peter sat outside in the courtyard. And a servant girl came to him, saying, ‘You also were with Jesus of Galilee.’ But he denied it before them all, saying, ‘I do not know what you are saying.’ And when he had gone out to the gateway, another girl saw him and said to those who were there, ‘This fellow also was with Jesus of Nazareth.’ But again he denied with an oath, ‘I do not know the Man!’ And a little later those who stood by came to him and said to Peter, ‘Surely you also are one of them, for your speech betrays you.’ Then he began to curse and swear, saying, ‘I do not know the Man!’ Immediately a rooster crowed. And Peter remembered the word of Jesus who had said to him, ‘Before the rooster crows, you will deny Me three times.’ So he went out and wept bitterly.” (Matthew 26:69-75, NKJV)
Pressures, brothers and sisters—not knowing how to face things—lead us into deception. Financial pressures can lead us into a life of deception; so can social pressures, family pressures, work pressures, and those due to health conditions. Therefore, it is not lawful for us to deny the facts; we have to learn to confront. Someone asked what the difference is between saying pressures and saying crisis. They are alternate terms: crises are pressures that reached their maximum expression and became crises. Many of them can lead a person, as has happened in other cases, to suicide, precisely because he did not learn to handle them; he preferred to live in deception rather than face them.
Recognizing the Limit: Humility, Witnesses, and Protocols
There are times when, even while one is facing the situation, no immediate solution can be seen; then the alternative is to expose it, to delegate it, to make it public. It has happened to me: I have had a case that I worked on for years, and a moment comes when it has gone from a crisis to a point of pressure, and I tell the pastor, “The line is being crossed here.” Think of Moses: God told him to speak to the rock, and Moses, so fed up by then, struck the rock. Sometimes the enemy uses that strategy with men and women of God: you become fed up to the point that you strike the rock. That is why one must have working protocols. Immediately I summon the person and raise up witnesses, to relieve the pressure I am already feeling. And here it is necessary to reach the point of maximum humility, which is not upward but downward: to meet with the people I summon as witnesses and tell them, “This is as far as I go; I need you to be present as witnesses in order to present this case.”
When one does not have humility, because one thinks he can do everything, he is occupying God’s place. We must understand that there is a limit. If a person has brought me to the limit, I am not going to strike the rock, because I know Satan, who sometimes raises up people to bring you to a point where you strike the rock and lose. Moses did not lose the ministry, but the Lord told him that he would not enter. One must have the humility to recognize when one is at the limit and not try to resolve things beyond it, because the solution will not be good; it will contaminate us and we will make a wrong decision. When a matter is already at the limit, the best thing is to withdraw. The Bible provides mechanisms, even administrative ones, for the body; I use the mechanisms that are already in the Word and the examples of the great men of God. If a great man of God reached this point, I am not exempt from the same thing happening to me. And I have no excuse, because I have the example: Nineveh will rise in judgment against this generation. It is not that I have more self-control than Moses; it is that I have him as a father and as a guide, I see his path, and he taught me what I must not do.
When God calls us, positions us, and gives us authority, He makes us stewards of His grace; He fills our hands with His grace, His mercy, and His goodness, and puts in them a rod of iron with which to rule. One does not rule in any other way, but the foundation of everything is in love: love for God, love for His work, and hatred of evil. When a person shows up loaded with evil, the Holy Spirit gives us the revelation of what he carries, and yet he keeps insisting on the same thing, there comes a moment when one cannot strike the rock. One must go to the humility that God gave us, set up a table of witnesses, and work the case, not be alone. Because I would be crossing a line that I cannot cross: I cannot take up what God entrusted, nor resort to the flesh to make a decision, since by my own judgment I would possibly send him to hell on the spot, and that is not what God entrusted to me. I have to subject myself to the Spirit and raise a flag: go to the pastor or go to the Lord and say, “Lord, I raise a flag; give me the strategy.” If I do not raise a flag, I will fall into arrogance and depart from God’s line, and that cannot be.
In my personal matters—everything that has to do with me, whatever can touch my flesh—I do not work alone. Even the chosen can be deceived; I cannot believe that, because God has given me wisdom and knowledge, I am going to work my matters alone. That is the first deception, and that is the first trap: “my matters, alone.” Why? Because the heart is deceitful above all things. Everything that has to do with my children and with my immediate family I weigh with others, not by myself. “Weigh” does not mean that it is a burden, but that I bring it to see whether it is so: because I can be mistaken. If someone touches the beautiful child you have, and of the three it is precisely that one who is touched, what are you going to do? One justifies, tries to accommodate things; but it cannot be done, because one loses the ministry.
Deception Multiplies in the Family and the Home
Deception is often multiplied within the very house, because parents do not warn their children about things they know and that only they are handling. The father says to the child, “Not that little friend.” The child asks, “And why not?” And the father or mother answers, “Because I said so.” That is multiplying deception. If the father knows something about that little companion—that this boy has a homosexual tendency, or that that girl has a lesbian tendency—and does not warn his child, he is making his child walk in deception as well. It is a denial of a fact. It is not a matter of saying “no” and “no” and “no”: that is multiplying deception. A lie is everything that one wants to deny, everything that one wants to hide, without exception: whatever one does not want to bring out or make manifest is deception.
In Matthew 18, from verse 15 through verse 17, we find the protocol established by Jesus for working through a situation:
“Moreover if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he hears you, you have gained your brother. But if he will not hear, take with you one or two more, that ‘by the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.’ And if he refuses to hear them, tell it to the church. But if he refuses even to hear the church, let him be to you like a heathen and a tax collector.” (Matthew 18:15-17, NKJV)
There comes a time when it must be made known, and if even so the person does not walk in repentance, he is left completely outside the community.
When a son or daughter has a particular friendship and incorrect behavior, whatever it may be, we must not accuse the other person: “He ruined him,” “she ruined her.” We must go to the reality of what we have: it is not that he ruined yours or she ruined yours; it is that what yours was carrying liked that. We cannot blind ourselves and always accuse the other for the sake of that friendship; we have to take responsibility, and we cannot blind ourselves out of love for our own children, our relatives, or ourselves. I have seen it typically in marriages: “He told me this,” “no, it was as she told me.” No one wants to take responsibility. “I did as she told me”; “I told him, but he did it anyway.” That is grave before God; it is a form of deception and lying. When someone tells you, “Do this,” and you do not want to, you do not do it; but you did it because you were seduced into doing it, because it was in you: otherwise you would not have done it. We must be responsible for our own matters and face them. Facing them is horrible; one says, “Oh, my God.” But it must be done, and once you face it, you are free and God brings blessing upon you. Whoever faces things and works through them receives the blessing of God; whoever hides them and accuses another receives bondage.
Conclusion
This subject of lies and deception is quite complicated, as we warned from the beginning. We have seen that many times, regrettably, we may be forming hypotheses and walking by them when in reality we are embracing a lie and establishing deception not only for our own life but also for our family. The theories of men, however brilliant their authors may be, are beneath what God says; and whoever does not walk by revelation ends up walking by theory. Revelation is brought by the Holy Spirit; it is not imposed, not fabricated, and not inherited by habit. We have also seen the first form of the lie: the denial of a fact, that “not me” with which we hide from the realities we do not know how to face. The way out is to confront, to call each thing by its name, to take responsibility, to recognize the limit with humility, and not to walk alone, so that we stop multiplying deception and receive the blessing of God.
Review Questions
- What difference does this chapter establish between a theory and revelation, and why does the believer not need a superior intellectual capacity to stand on the truth of God?
- What does it mean that a lie is a hypothesis that, when maintained, becomes a theory and leads to deception? What lie have you embraced that you need to confront?
- In what ways do we practice the denial of a fact (“not me,” “it was the woman You gave me”) in our personal and family life, and what concrete steps does the chapter teach for facing it with humility and without adding the weight of anger, frustration, or hatred?
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