Spiritual Decoys
We are all familiar with the term “ decoys. ” Merriam-Webster defines a “ decoy ” in part as: “…someone or something used to lure or lead another into a trap; especially: an artificial bird used to attract live birds within shot.”
Are you being fooled by Decoys?
Go into almost any outdoor or sporting goods store that caters to hunters and fishermen and you will find them – decoys of almost any imaginable sort, shape, and size. Everything from duck, to deer, to pheasant, to turkey, and oh so much more. In fact, many countless thousands upon thousands of artificial fishing lures would also fit into this category as well. This mesmerizing myriad of mostly plastic, truly life-like and look-alike creations of men, designed to deceive and draw the living within range of the death-dealing forces of their own destruction, can all be classified as “ decoys. ”
It is quite interesting to note how this is all-too-true and applies in the spiritual realm as well. In the first chapter of the Apostle Peter’s second epistle, he tells everyone exactly how to make sure that they are never spiritually deceived and drawn in by artificial decoys and false doctrines to their own destruction; this, by loving, learning and living God’s word, without exception, exemption, addition, subtraction, substitution or interpretation (2 Peter 1:16-21)!
And then he says this: But there were also false prophets among the people, even as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them, and bring on themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their destructive ways, because of whom the way of truth will be blasphemed. By covetousness they will exploit you with deceptive words; for a long time their judgment has not been idle, and their destruction does not slumber (2 Peter 2:1-3).
The phrase in verse three, which reads “By covetousness they will exploit you with deceptive words,” actually translates an incredibly telling Greek word for “deceptive,” which occurs only once in the entire New Testament. It is the Greek word “plastos,” the very word from which we derive the English word, “plastic.” And what exactly is “plastic?” It is an artificial, man-made substance God never spoke into existence, and which therefore never naturally occurs in God’s creation like wood or stone. It can be shaped and molded into all sorts of things, including the aforementioned artificial lures and deadly decoys, all designed to look like the real thing in order to attract and kill those deceived by them! And those deceptive (plastos) man-made doctrines never, ever found in Scripture, are every inch as spiritually and eternally deadly as well, and more!
Jesus Himself warned about the many false teachers and false Christs that would arise and mislead many to their deaths in the days leading up to the siege and destruction of Jerusalem (Matthew 24:1-14). The apostles Peter, Paul, and John also took up and echoed the very same warning cries in the decades to come (2 Peter 2 and 3; 2 Corinthians 11:15; 1 John 2:18-27, 4:1-6).
The fact is that there are many deadly and deceptive (“plastos”), fatal and false doctrines that are being put out in the spiritual field (Matthew 13:36-40) by Satan and his Scripture-denying servants, to deceive and call people in to their doom. These tantalizing and ear-tickling teachings are nothing more or less than empty decoys designed to deceive (1 Timothy 4:1-5; 2 Timothy 4:3-4). Like the Pharisees, these doctrines of demons may look and sound religiously pious and convincing on the surface, but are empty and more full of death and destruction than a “Trojan Horse” on the inside (Matthew 23:25-28). Examples of these deadly decoys would include saying the so-called “sinner’s prayer” for salvation; “attending the church of your choice” instead of the one God died to provide; and/or any and every other biblically foreign or contrary teaching known to man, designed to confuse and contradict the clear-cut commandments of God (Mark 7:5-13).
Don’t be deceived! Don’t be blindsided! Test the spirits! It may look like a duck and sound like a duck, but be nothing more than a deceptively deadly false doctrine, made out of spiritually-pliable and poison plastic, designed to draw seekers of the one true God in, while completely “ducking” His commandments in the process!
