The Sender of Strong Delusion

The American Supreme Court’s decision some years ago to legalize same-sex “marriage” did not surprise me. I was grieved and disappointed, but not surprised. I expected it to happen. I would have been pleasantly surprised if they had not done it.

Though I am not surprised, I am deeply disappointed and grieved. But the thing that grieves and disappoints me even more deeply than the Supreme Court decision is the apathetic attitude that so many professing Christians have, and the great number of so-called “Christians” who now insist that homosexual acts are not sinful. Even Tony Campolo, for crying out loud!

According to the news, Tony Campolo’s son is a practicing homosexual, and Mr. Campolo refuses to call his son’s behavior a sin. Apparently Tony Campolo loves his son more than he loves the Lord, and he therefore disqualifies himself from being a disciple of Jesus, as it is written, “he that loveth son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me” (Matt. 10:37).

If I could talk to Tony Campolo in person, I would like to ask him:  “Mr. Campolo, are you not disturbed by the thought of your son voluntarily stripping off all his clothes and eagerly engaging in homosexual acts with another naked man, and deriving pleasure from performing those acts?”

Actually, I would ask the question in much more graphic detail if I were speaking to Tony Campolo, but I cannot print it that way here.

What happened? Did the Devil deceive Tony Campolo? No. God is the one who deceived Tony Campolo, and all the countless other clueless “Christians” who now condone homosexuality. Let me explain.

In Deuteronomy 28, Moses lists the curses which will come upon a nation that disobeys God. (I know, this chapter is primarily about the nation of Israel, not America. But it is not exclusively about Israel only, because the general principle of obeying and being blessed or disobeying and being cursed is a universal Bible truth.)  Moses lists various forms that the curses will take. After listing around twenty ways that God will curse the disobedient nation, he writes:  “The LORD shall smite thee with madness, and blindness, and astonishment of heart” (Deut. 28:28).

In Deuteronomy 28, God promises to smite the disobedient nation with madness and blindness. In Romans 1, Paul tells us what form this God-sent insanity and spiritual blindness finally takes. It takes the form of homosexuality. If a nation continues to defy and disobey the Creator and His laws long enough, eventually God lets their foolish hearts be darkened, and He lets their morals descend to depravity, as it is written:

“Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves, who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature. And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one towards another; men working with men that which is unseemly [indecent], and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet [appropriate]. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient [proper]” (Rom. 1:24-28).

Notice in the above passage that the full fruition of rejecting God and His law is homosexuality, which the Bible calls uncleanness, vile affections, and an idea that is spawned from reprobate minds. There is nothing more unclean, vile, and reprobate than homosexual behavior. It is the apex of perversion, the grand climax of a nation’s descent into immorality.

“But Daniel, isn’t beastiality more perverse than homosexual acts?” Maybe, but I’d say no, for two reasons. One, because Romans 1 portrays homosexuality as the epitome of perversion. Secondly, because beastiality involves only one person made in the image of God defiling himself. Homosexuality involves two people made in the image of God defiling themselves with each other, so it is twice as depraved.

Also notice in Romans 1 that it is God, not the Devil, who gives these people over to this depravity.

I am convinced that the widespread acceptance and celebration of homosexuality in this nation is a madness and spiritual blindness sent by God because of this nation’s continued disobedience. If you do not believe this, consider the following:

The percentage of Americans who are homosexuals is actually quite low, somewhere between 1% and 2% according to polls I have read. And many, perhaps most, of that small percentage are not political activists pushing for the acceptance and celebration of homosexuality; they are just people who want to do their depraved deeds, and they have no desire to harass the heterosexuals. So the actual number of homosexuals who are political activists pushing for the acceptance and celebration of their perversion is a very small number, percentage-wise.

Some people wonder how such a tiny minority is able to impose its will on the majority so easily. Yes, the homos have Hollywood and the mainstream media behind them, but even that does not explain how such a small number of people can impose their will on the majority. The only explanation that makes sense is a spiritual one. And that spiritual explanation can be found in the Scriptures.

In 2 Thessalonians 2, Paul tells us that if people do not love the knowledge of the truth, then God Himself will send them strong delusion so that they will believe a lie and be damned, as it is written:

“And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie, that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness” (2 Thes. 2:11f).

The cause of this God-sent delusion is stated in the previous verse: “because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.”

If someone resists the truth and refuses the truth long enough, at some point God gives them over to a reprobate mind. God Himself sends them a delusion strong enough to convince them that a lie is true, so that they will be damned.

We see examples of this happening in the Bible. In the story of the Prophet Micaiah, the Bible says that the LORD sent a lying spirit into the mouths of Ahab’s prophets, so that Ahab would be deceived into going to war and then fall in battle and die. (See 1 Kings 22 and 2 Chronicles 18.)

God also sent an evil spirit to trouble King Saul after his disobedience. (See 1 Samuel 16.)

In Ezekiel we learn that if a false prophet is deceived, it is the LORD, not the Devil, who has deceived that prophet:

“And if the prophet be deceived when he hath spoken a thing, I the LORD have deceived that prophet, and I will stretch out My hand upon him, and will destroy him from the midst of My people Israel” (Ezk. 14:9).

Think about the implications of these truths about God-ordained deception. If God Himself is the one who has deceived the people by sending them strong delusion, and if God’s purpose in sending them this strong delusion is so that they will believe a lie and be damned for their refusal of the truth, what can be done for such people?

God warned that disobedience will eventually bring the curse of madness and blindness upon a nation. “The LORD shall smite thee with madness, and blindness, and astonishment of heart” (Deut. 28:28).

Our nation has been smitten with a God-sent insanity. This madness is driving even heterosexuals to celebrate homosexuality. If someone is insane, you cannot use logic and common sense to try to reason with the insane person. You cannot reason with a madman in the same way that you can reason with a sane man. This explains why the homosexual debate cannot be won by reasoning from the Scriptures.

Even some clueless “Christians” who claim to believe the Scriptures have been smitten with this madness and spiritual blindness. Someone recently made me aware of a series of YouTube videos of various heterosexual people who claim to be Bible-believing Christians explaining why the Bible does not really condemn homosexual acts. These counterfeit Christians say that Christians who condemn homosexuality “are being very hypocritical.” Why? Because the anti-gay Christians eat pork, and get tattoos, and the women don’t wear head coverings, the pro-gay “Christians” say.

“Paul wrote that women should always keep their heads covered in church,” the pro-gay counterfeit Christians correctly point out. “Yet Christian women don’t feel morally obligated to follow that edict.”

And Jesus broke the law when he healed the man at the pool of Bethesda, they claim. “He broke the law,” they say. “And He didn’t break just any obscure ordinance. He broke one of the hallowed Ten Commandments, ‘Remember the Sabbath day. On it you shall do no work.’  Jesus broke one of the biggest laws in the whole Bible.”

(Of course Jesus did not break the Sabbath; He only broke the Pharisees’ man-made rules, their flawed interpretation of the Sabbath.)

These counterfeit Christians say that the Old Testament laws that prohibit same-sex relations do not matter now.

“Christians aren’t supposed to follow Levitical laws,” they say. “In the New Testament, Paul repeatedly and explicitly says that following Christ means no longer following the Hebrew laws of the Old Testament. Christians are under no obligation - none - to follow the laws of the Jewish Bible.”

As someone who believes that Christians are supposed to obey the commandments of God in both the Old Testament and New Testament (including keeping the Sabbath and dietary laws, not getting tattoos, and women wearing head coverings), I find it very ironic that these counterfeit Christians use the typical Christian’s twisted view of the Torah to justify homosexual acts.

God warned that He would send strong delusion to people who do not love the knowledge of the truth. The seed for this God-sent deception is the antinomianism that was embraced by the Church after the death of the Apostles. Antinomianism has saturated the Church since the second century. Now the seed of antinomianism is finally bearing its bitter fruit of strong delusion.

So, what can be done for those people whom God Himself has deceived? To my knowledge, not very much.

That might sound cold and cruel and pessimistic. But if God Himself “gave them up to uncleanness” and “gave them up unto vile affections” and “gave them over to a reprobate mind” (Romans 1), what can I possibly do for them? If God Himself sent them strong delusion as a judgment for refusing the truth, so that they will be damned, then what can I possibly do to un-deceive these God-damned people?

As long as deceived people remain in an unrepentant state with their hearts hardened and their consciences seared, they will remain deceived. God obviously wants these truth-rejecters to be deceived, because He sent them strong delusion so that they would believe a lie and be damned.

The only hope for these damned, deceived people is to repent, to turn to God with a sincere desire for the knowledge of the truth. God is the one who sent them the strong delusion as judgment for their rejection of truth, and He is the only one who can remove the strong delusion from their darkened hearts and un-deceive them. And He will only remove the strong delusion if they repent and express a sincere desire to know the truth and are willing to walk in that truth with God’s help.

I cannot un-deceive those whom God has deceived. The only thing I know that can be done for people whom God has deceived is to warn them of the wrath to come, and to then leave the results in God's hands, as it is written:

“When I say unto the wicked, Thou shalt surely die, and thou givest him not warning, nor speakest to warn the wicked from his wicked way, to save his life; the same wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand. Yet if thou warn the wicked, and he turn not from his wickedness, nor from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity; but thou hast delivered thy soul” (Ezk. 3:18f).

I don’t want any blood on my hands. If you do not want any blood on your hands, you must condemn homosexuality, not condone it. You must abominate it, not celebrate it.

No, I do not hate homosexuals, just as I do not hate heterosexual adulterers. God sent His Son to suffer and die to pay the penalty for their sins and mine. I do not want Yeshua’s suffering on their behalf to be for nought, so I want to see them repent and be reconciled to their Maker. Some of them have done that, and they are now my brothers. Every sodomite is a potential saint. But without repentance, without turning away from sin, there is no reconciliation. The sacrifice of the Son of God takes away a sinner’s sins only if the sinner repents and believes the good news. Without repentance and faith, there is only God’s wrath to look forward to, as it is written:

“For if we sin willfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful looking for judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries” (Heb. 10:26f).

| DB