HAVING had a brief look at the 'wood', that is looked at chapters 24 and 25 of Matthew as a whole, we can now come down to looking at the 'trees', that is the parts of this discourse of Jesus.

The first thing that Jesus warns us of is the danger of being deceived – verses 4 & 5. Jesus answers the desire of the disciples to know the future by warning them about this danger. The whole purpose and work of Satan is to deceive. If he can deceive us, he can ruin our Christian lives, even if he is unable to sever us from Christ and his salvation. Satan is busy in this work all the time, for his purpose is to ruin the church of Christ, and make it ineffective in its witness.

The deception Jesus speaks about is of people coming to us in Christ's name. This means they come speaking with the claim that they are coming from Jesus, and have the words of Jesus. This form of deception is very clever, because Satan is coming as an angel of light pretending to be what he isn't, and doing it so well that he looks like the real thing.

Peter speaks of the devil prowling around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. (1 Peter 5:8). The apostle Paul speaks of men who are “false apostles, deceitful workmen, masquerading as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness. (2 Corinthians 11:13-14).

Jesus goes on also to describe the fact that Satan will be very successful in this art of deception. Jesus warns that many will be deceived. Such deception will cause many to follow false religion and so lose their souls. Such deception will mislead God's people so they are side-tracked into beliefs which will lead them astray, and so make them ineffective Christians, and troubled Christians.

The deception is described by Jesus as firstly 'coming in Jesus name', and secondly in saying 'I am the Christ'. What are we to understand by this? What is Jesus referring to when he speaks of people coming in his name, and claiming to be the Christ?

I have no doubt that Satan will seek to deceive by raising people who claim to be Christ. When the Jewish authorities were enraged against the apostles they wanted to put them to death, but were advised by Gamaliel, a teacher of the law, to leave the apostles alone. In this advice Gamaliel mentions a man called Theudas, and another called Judas the Galilean, both of which claimed to be somebody and deceived many into following them, but were later proved to be false. (Acts 5:33ff). Here we see Satan working in such a way. The early church lived in the expectancy of an early return of Christ, even while they were still alive, so such a deception would be powerful.

However there is a much more common way in which to understand the words of Jesus. All down history the devil has raised up teachers and leaders in the church, who have claimed to speak in the name of Christ, but have come with erroneous teaching in order to mislead people from the truth as it is in Jesus, which saves the soul.

We have Paul writing his letters in the light of such Satanic action. Paul's letter to the Galatians was written to correct false teaching which was gaining ground in the church, and turning people from the pure Gospel of Jesus Christ, and he speaks in very strong terms showing that to accept this teaching, that is be deceived by it, endangers the soul, and leads people to believe in what is not the truth which saves.

The church has always been troubled by false teaching. From the very earliest time, error has crept into the church. Such teaching was propagated as the truth of Christ, and many people espoused such teaching to the ruin of their souls. The church struggled against this heresy, and from them we have been given things like the creeds, and the confession of faith, which have grown out of the struggle to maintain the truth of God's word.

Satan is still at work in this deception even in the present. The church is full of teaching which, if it isn't direct error, by what it leaves out, and what it changes in a clever way, is destroying the witness of the church, and making the church false in its wisdom, and claiming to be proclaiming Christ truly when it is not.

Old errors which have thought to have been eradicated, raise their ugly head in slightly different form, and Satan, by this means, destroys the witness of the church, and many people who believe themselves to be Christians, will find after death that they have been deceived to their soul's eternal loss.