Counterfeits to Christ

Scriptures: 2 Thessalonians 2:9-10, Genesis 6:1-6

Settling For What Is Fake

In the earliest days of our ministry, the city we lived in was reported as a place of common coven activity and witchcraft. We saw many young people coming to Christ from backgrounds of witchcraft, deep drug use, and the occult. They shared about horrifying night terrors they were having and supernatural experiences they could not explain.

Among the most vivid was a young new mother. She literally grew up in a witchcraft store where covens met and spells were cast. She had been a practicing black witch from a young age but had gotten saved. She told us that her husband had looked in on her rocking their baby, and he found the rocking chair reportedly floating a few feet off the ground while she and the baby slept in it.

These kinds of things were fairly common in our first two decades of ministry—numerous demonstrations of spiritual power that were counterfeits to Christ. We’ve not seen nearly as much supernatural activity in our second church plant, likely because of a much higher concentration of mature saints who are devoted to praying for protection over our church.

God creates. Satan counterfeits. That simple truth is significant. Anything valuable is counterfeited—from Air Jordan shoes to women’s handbags to financial currency. Since the kingdom of God is invaluable, it is not surprising that the devil and his demons counterfeit the works of God. The goal, like that of all counterfeiting, is to fool people into settling for what is fake rather than finding what is genuine. God creates angels; Satan’s counterfeits are demons.

God creates truth; Satan’s counterfeit is lies. God creates the kingdom; Satan’s counterfeit is the world. God makes people Spirit-filled; Satan’s counterfeit is making people demon-possessed. God makes covenants; Satan’s counterfeits are inner vows. God creates blessings; Satan’s counterfeits are curses.

Scriptures: 2 Corinthians 11:14, 1 John 4:1-4

Demons Love Religion and Spirituality 

Demonic spirits lead multitudes to follow them to hell forever through false religion and spirituality. In our modern, pluralistic culture it seems unkind to say that someone’s religious beliefs or spiritual behaviors are wrong and dangerous.

But because the God of the Bible loves people and knows that their eternity is at stake, He has a great deal to say about the demonic deception at work through counterfeits of Christ. Throughout history religious sacrifices have been performed to counterfeit the Lord Jesus’ one sacrifice for the sins of all. Sometimes these demonic sacrifices are things such as money, food, or other gifts left at shrines in homes to bring a blessing, or in a field to invite a great harvest, or near a worker’s tools to invite a blessing on the business. In the Western world these include good luck charms and superstition, which is practiced by everyone from athletes to agnostics.

In various religions and spiritual groups demons fulfill dreams, heal sickness, lift torment, and answer prayers. Sometimes people are so desperate that they do not much care who or where their answer comes from. This leaves people vulnerable to making deals with the devil, largely unaware. Unfortunately these are all counterfeits from the kingdom of darkness to invite the demonic into your life.

Anytime something spiritual happens, even if it seems good (like a healing, miracle, angel, or answer to prayer), we cannot overlook the possibility of demonic deception. To deal with the demonic requires discernment.

Scriptures: Deuteronomy 32:16-18, John 3:31-36, 2 Chronicles 11:14-15

Blending Beliefs

Sadly it is quite common for Christians keep parts of their Christian faith and marry it with non-Christian practice. Some younger Western Christians do this in the name of love, tolerance, and reconciliation. Academics call blending beliefs syncretism. God calls it adultery.

Syncretism is what happens when we receive or seek to redeem things that we must reject. In second Chronicles, the children of religious leaders were promoting syncretism when “Jeroboam and his sons cast them out from serving as priests of the Lord, and he appointed his own priests for the high places and for the goat idols and for the calves that he had made.”

What You Can Do

1. Receive. Because people are made in God’s image, some aspects of the culture they create can be received by Christianity. For example, some cultures place a high value on family, which can be received by biblical Christianity as a shared value.
2. Reject. We must reject some things because they are against God. Examples include drunkenness, stealing, and all sex outside of heterosexual marriage—even if a culture widely approves of these things.
3. Redeem. We can use some things for God or Satan, and therefore Christians can redeem them for God’s purposes. One example is Christmas, which was a pagan holiday that the early Christians chose to celebrate as the birth of Jesus because we don’t know when He was born and we already had the day off.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is pristine, pure, and clean. The gospel of Jesus Christ was created by God. Satan counterfeits this gospel with unclean, impure, deadly false gospels that seek to do to the gospel what the algae is doing to the lake. This explains why Satan is always trying to contaminate what God created clean with his corrupting counterfeit. Thankfully, the kingdom of God will one day come and put an end to all counterfeits.