Recent mail in our box brought us a letter with no marking on it to let us know its origin. The address and the name of the receiver were there and a generic postmark but nothing else. Normally it would have been put in the trash can but this time we got curious. The name of the receiver was the name of my father who has been deceased for nearly 20 years, so it was an unusual curious piece of mail. We decided to see what the message for him was. We discovered the letter appeared to be from a lawyer and his group that was trying to reach my father since he had the same last name and nationality as their recently deceased client. By now you might guess that we were rightly suspicious of this piece of mail and yet----we were still curious. Further reading let us know that this "sort of” relative had died about 3 years ago and no one had come forward to claim his estate valued at $11,550,300 so we could !!!!!
Now, that got our attention! Immediately we began to imagine what that kind of money could mean for us. Did we have the chance at unbelievably good fortune? The letter promised that it was 100% risk free. All we had to do was contact the lawyer for more information. Fool proof—or was it? Common sense reminded us that too good to be true was probably not true! So being curious, we put google to work and soon discovered that this was a common scam, a bogus letter, a Counterfeit inheritance—a Lie! We really did know better, it was just nice to think about an inheritance that would have been unexpected and a wonderful gift. After all, most of us think that we could enjoy having a bit more financial stability and we are the same, too!
This counterfeit promise of millions of dollars led me to think about other counterfeits. One of my peeves is the abundance of pictures on the internet of beautiful flowers and animals/birds and very beautiful scenic places. While these seem beautiful at first and wonders of God's Creation, they are in fact counterfeits. Artificial Intelligence has been used to create beauty and interesting things to see in pictures that you may never be able to see in real life! You might have been fooled—I have been and apparently many others are fooled too. Now I am a smarter viewer. It is very easy to spot a flower that cannot possibly be one of the beautiful works of God. Birds with plumage I have never seen in identifying books are counterfeit birds. I have done enough travel to realize that many scenic pictures that profess to be wonderful views of places I have traveled to are so often counterfeits of the original beautiful place. It makes me angry to see the counterfeit being passed as real, yet the AI picture is beautiful—if only it wasn't a counterfeit lie!
I have worked where we had to be careful to not accept counterfeit money—it can look so real and yet is so worthless! Have you seen normally expensive items for sale at remarkably low prices and fallen for these Luxury goods that are really Counterfeit designer handbags, watches, and other high-end items that are often made with lower-quality materials? Sometimes there are foods that can contain harmful ingredients, such as rat poison or melamine. Even counterfeit medications can be missing active ingredients or contain dangerous substances like fentanyl. No one wants to buy counterfeit automotive parts like brake pads and airbags. They can be dangerous for us as drivers and passengers and for other motorists. There can be counterfeit clothing and shoes that can contain high levels of lead, arsenic, and phthalates. And who wants to use counterfeit electronics can be low quality and create safety hazards. Even counterfeit toys can be low quality and be safety hazards for the loved little ones in our families. The more valuable something is, the more likely it is to be counterfeited. This explains why there are so many fake Rolex watches, fake Gucci handbags, and fake Jordan sneakers, along with counterfeit currency. I have seen counterfeit Eagle nests made by man, but they will never look like what God has given the Eagle a talent to do. And everyone can tell the fake from a real one. There are ads for meat that is not meat at all. It is fake meat and often a vegetarian food made from plants. And there are beautiful flowers and plants that look so real but aren't. They are man-made from silk, plastic, or something else and fool the eye. I have actually touched the plant to see whether what I was seeing was real or not. Either way, the plant seemed almost too perfect to be real but really was real. The internet is prolific with health cures that aren't true. They are fake cures and lead to unsolved health problems.
God creates—Satan counterfeits. This simple clue helps unlock a lot of the Bible. Satan is the counterfeit of God. Demons are the counterfeit of angels. The world is the counterfeit of the Kingdom. Lies are the counterfeit of the Truth. Demon-possession is the counterfeit of being Spirit-filled. One of the best examples of Satan’s Counterfeit is
His counterfeit Sabbath, trying to turn Sunday into a sabbath! The power in a counterfeit is that it deceives someone into wrongly believing that what they have is real, true, and valuable when in fact it is fake, false, and worthless. For this reason, it is so very important that God’s people learn to distinguish what is created by God versus that which is counterfeited by Satan.
I have thought about counterfeit dollar bills. How long was it in circulation and how many people it had fooled over the years. If I had not been paying attention, I might have been fooled as others had been. Only by comparing it against the real thing and focusing on the differences instead of the similarities, could you then tell it was counterfeit.
We need to beware of spiritual counterfeiters, who followed Satan’s methods of lying and deceiving others for their own gain. By studying their tricks and tactics, we can begin to notice their mistakes and errors in the same way a trained eye begins to notice the difference between genuine and counterfeit currency. The more we train our eyes and minds to identify the differences between counterfeits and the real thing, the better prepared we will be to expose the counterfeiters of today and resist their lies.
Bible scholars have studied and think it is interesting to compare what happened at the time of Jesus' trial and crucifixion. First, there is a counterfeit high priest who was seeking to condemn Jesus the real High Priest for being guilty of sin (John 18:19-24). Second, there is a counterfeit judge who wrongly participates in the arrest, trial, and execution of Jesus who is the real Judge (John 18:28-32). Third, there is a counterfeit "want a be" king who demands allegiance over Jesus the real King (John 18:33-38). Behind all the religious, legal, and political evil was Satan and his demonic forces. After failing to destroy and overthrow Jesus in heaven, they repeat their efforts on the earth. At the Passover meal, Satan had already entered Judas, the counterfeit disciple: “after he had taken the morsel, Satan entered into him.” Satan also sought to turn Peter into a counterfeit disciple, and nearly succeeded: “Satan demanded to have you.....but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers” (Luke 22:31-32).
I wonder, have I been fooled by a spiritual counterfeit? Is there anything that might be a spiritual counterfeit that I need to get rid of?
Joe Crews from Amazing Facts once wrote—"Suppose you had to summarize the entire Bible in just two words. What words would you choose? I have thought about this, and I believe sin and salvation might be the most accurate answer. After all, Satan entered the picture very early to cause man to sin and to steal away his salvation. Incidentally, that was also the turning point for the human family. You see, God had based everything upon obedience. He had provided all those wonderful gifts—life, righteous character, dominion over the earth, and a beautiful home in the Garden. Then He promised that those blessings would continue without interruption on one condition alone: Obey and live, disobey and die. But Satan had devised a counterfeit. And Adam and Eve yielded to the tempter's counterfeit and sin entered this beautiful planet earth for the first time. And from that very moment the great controversy became a raging reality, between Christ and Satan, truth and error/counterfeit, obedience and disobedience. “Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life and may enter in through the gates into the city” (Revelation 22:14). “
There is a counterfeit Tree of Life in the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. One tree gives life, the other takes away eternal life and gives death. Genesis 3:6--Eve accepted Satan's suggestion that he could give more to her life than God could, that God was withholding things from her. Satan’s whole strategy is based on making people sin by accepting his counterfeits. He knows that nothing which defiles will enter God’s kingdom, and sin is the only thing that defiles in God’s sight. You become a servant of whoever you obey. If you obey God, you are a servant of God; and if you cease obeying God, you cease being a servant of God. The enemy’s plan is to cause you to obey him and become his servant.
The devil doesn’t care why you disobey God as long as you do it. You can even do it in the name of religion, and some of the most religious people have done it down through history. In fact, they can think up the most religious and counterfeit reasons for disobedience. Jesus often spoke of those who would be guilty of this paradoxical behavior. He declared, “Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity” (Matthew 7:22, 23).
Satan is the great counterfeiter of Jesus and has done this in several ways. Bible study gives us these things to think about:
1. Unique Son—And, Son Of Destruction. The Lord Jesus is the unique Son of God.
No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father's side, He has made Him known (John 1:18).
2. Trinity—God is a Trinity, made up of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Satan has his own unholy trinity—himself, the beast, and the false prophet.
And the Devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and sulfur, where are also the beast and the false prophet; and they shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever (Revelation 20:10).
3. Children—God has His own children. Those who have put their trust in Him.
But as many as received Him, to them gave he the right to become children of God, even to them that believe on His name (John 1:12).
Satan has his own brand of children—those that practice evil.
The field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one (Matthew 13:38).
4. Apostles—Jesus chose twelve apostles to be do His will. And He called unto Himself His twelve disciples, and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all manner of disease and all manner of sickness. (Matthew 10:1,2).
Satan has his own apostles. “For such men are false apostles, deceitful workers, fashioning themselves into apostles of Christ” (2 Corinthians 11:13).
5. Marks His Own—God will demonstrate His seal of ownership on His servants with a mark on their forehead. The Bible records an angel saying. “Do not harm the land or the sea or the trees until we put a seal on the foreheads of the servants of our God.”(Revelation 7:3). In the same manner, Satan will have a mark of ownership placed upon his followers. “And he causes all, the small and the great, and the rich and the poor, and the free and the bond, that there be given them a mark on their right hand, or upon their forehead” (Revelation 13:16).
Satan, the great counterfeiter, has attempted to imitate Christ. He has done so by counterfeiting the Trinity, and the unique Father-Son relationship that God has. His followers, like God's, are called children. Satan has his own false apostles, and he marks his own with a symbol of ownership as the Lord has done. In so many ways, he has attempted to counterfeit the true character and works of God.
The number of ways Satan counterfeits the Holy Spirit is seemingly endless because the way the Holy Spirit works in our lives is endless. What Satan cannot do, however, is offer us anything truthful, anything fulfilling, anything to live for because He himself has none of those things. How can He offer what he does not have. Jesus on the other hand has all of those things and more but if we don’t truly know Him and have a relationship with Him, Satan can lead us to a place where we begin to have mixed motivations and compromise our values.
Satan’s goal is to counterfeit Truth so it can be watered down and twisted. The more often this is done, the less we notice and our whole foundation in Jesus erodes. We will sing worship songs that have no worship and quote scripture that’s not actual scripture but only what we think or want scripture to say in ignorance because Truth is absent. I need to constantly ask myself am I a counterfeit me or am I a true me before God? How does God see me?
I want to be true before God so that I can receive the Best Inheritance that God has prepared for me! It will be the Inheritance He has Promised each one of us to be able to receive, not just a fake promise of a false inheritance! We might get a huge, unexpected inheritance! But—
I look forward to my Promised True Inheritance!