DISCERN

These are all too eerily familiar: 

Political leaders promising to unify their people or bring order amid chaos, yet turning around to exterminate populations or jobs or hopes without regard for people's—even the unborn's—right to live or prosper. 

image credit: history.com

Businessmen hailed as philanthropists yet siphoning wealth into their own pockets through elaborate schemes.

History is full of them. Nations are full of them. Industries are full of them. 

They just take on new forms and names and titles. Like plastic bottles thrown into the ocean, they get washed back to shore. Filthy as ever. 

Marxism or communism is renamed "the new global order". Power vested on people morphs into totalitarianism. The free marketplace becomes a haunt for greed-motivated schemers, scammers and money-launderers. 

Look closely and you'll discover the same self-serving, sinister tactics: expert and rather cool and flawless manipulation, control, lying and truth-twisting, saying one thing to the right and another to the left of them.

So believable even so-called intellectuals, university students, especially gullible young people, are lured by them. Remember Hitler's youth volunteers?

You shall know them by their fruit, says the Bible, no matter how highfalutin and self-righteous they sound. 

Jude verses 12b&13 describes them as "... shepherds who feed only themselves. They are clouds without rain, blown along by the wind; autumn trees, without fruit and uprooted—twice dead. They are wild waves of the sea, foaming up their shame; wandering stars, for whom blackest darkness has been reserved forever."

1 Samuel 24:13—" Wickedness proceeds from the wicked."

Yet why do they prosper? We ought to remember: 

"For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms," Ephesians 6:12. 

There's more to their praise release or what we hear them say. 

Spiritual forces have set shop in the high places—in prime ministers' residences and kings' palaces, in towering corner and penthouse offices. Where power resides, darker powers encamp too.  

Thirst for power is quenched only with the begetting of more power. 

So we need to rightly discern those we give our allegiance to or elect in public office. 

We are in the last of the last days. Jesus talks about these times when men, offering themselves as the solution will deceive many, leading people as lambs to the slaughter. 

Our only anchor? The Truth! The Word of God. 

Hebrew 4:12—For the Word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. 

Examine everything you hear or see through your scriptural lense and hear what the Spirit of God says. 

Your next question of course may be this, "Why does God allow schemers, murderers and megalomanics rise to power?"

And Sherlock's answer to that is, "A very good question, Dr. Watson. But that's for another blog."

Prayer: Lord, forgive me for my wrong decisions. Help me to pray, listen to You and discern between veiled manipulative words and the truth. Apart from you I can do nothing. So Jesus, be my anchor. Holy Spirit, teach me, guide me into all truth. Amen.