Deception

My son and I recently were in Washington D.C. for some meetings. While there we visited the home of George Washington at Mt. Vernon. I did not realize that George was so tall, standing over six feet two inches.
Somehow I had always pictured him as short like Napoleon Bonaparte. My son and I stood out like a sore thumb. Tourists were everywhere dressed in Bermuda shorts and ugly Tee -shirts, imitation Hawaiian shirts and the like. We on the other hand looked like we had just come out of the Whitehouse. We had on white long-sleeved shirts, tie and conservative suit pants complete with Italian shoes. As we were having a hot dog, I mentioned to my son how much we looked like FBI or CIA agents. We both were wearing aviator style sunglasses, which added to our secret service man look. I noticed that many of the tourists were looking at us in an odd manner and I told my son that I bet they thought we were actually government agents sent to guard against terrorism at the national landmark. He concurred, noting that he had noticed it as well. At that point I pretended that I was talking into a microphone in my sleeve as I have seen countless actors imitating G-men on T.V. do. I told my imaginary counterpart to check out the South lawn and we would be there momentarily.

I went to throw away my trash and when I left, a young teenage boy came up and asked my son, “Are you guys FBI?” My son said, “Yes”. The boy’s eyes lit up and he excitedly said, “I knew it, I knew you guys were FBI.” My son looked at him and smiled and said, “Yeah well don’t tell anybody or I’ll have to kill you.” He then broke into hysterical laughter and told the boy that he was just kidding. We had a good time during the entire tour of Mt. Vernon play-acting whenever we detected someone “eyeing” us.

This made me think about how easily we are deceived. Satan is the ultimate deceiver. We must be careful about appearances because what he has to offer is not what it appears to be on the surface. The Bible teaches us what we need to do in order to achieve happiness. Satan wants us to believe that we can have happiness by disobeying God’s counsel. On the surface it appears that drugs, alcohol, immorality, cheating on your income tax, lying etc. will make you happy, however it is deception. Everlasting punishment is what he will receive one day.
Don’t let him drag you down with him.

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Revelation 20: 10

And the devil that deceived
them was cast into the lake of fire
and brimstone, where the beast and
the false prophet are, and shall be
tormented day and night for ever
and ever.

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