Beware of the Counterfeit Miracles

I was recently talking with a friend who ministered at another church. He told me about a woman who started attending the adult fellowship he taught. Her husband, a successful businessman, wasn’t interested in spiritual matters, so he never came with her. Her two college-age children were away at school, so she attended alone. 

One day, she called my friend in a panic. Her son had been found dead in his fraternity house. He and his fraternity brothers had a pledge party, and he passed out drunk on a couch. When the party was over, the rest of the fraternity members went to bed. The next morning, his fraternity brothers found him on the floor unresponsive, cold, and blue. The toxicology report said he died of alcohol poisoning.

She called my friend because she didn’t know who else to call at the church. He notified the ministerial staff to help the family during their time of grief. My friend met with the family, as did the senior pastor, to offer comfort and assist with funeral arrangements. The boy’s mother told my friend and the senior pastor that her son was a Christian. They assured her that if that was the case, then he was in the presence of the Lord, just as 2 Corinthians 5:8 promises. 

Yet she believed the notion that while her son’s physical body had ceased to function, his spirit hadn’t gone to heaven but was present with her. She said others had told her that the spirits of dearly loved ones don’t depart at death but instead linger to comfort the grieving and stay until the grieving are ready to let them go. She said these counselors advised her to look for manifestations of her son’s presence because he would visit her to mend her broken heart. 

They assured her that he would appear as an apparition of light. She became convinced this was true and held on to it like a lifeline, no matter what Scripture teaches about the spirits of deceased believers being in the presence of Christ. 

She told my friend and the senior pastor that she believed her son appeared to her every morning in the breakfast nook of the family home, where she drank her coffee. She claimed that he materialized in the morning rays of light as they passed through the limbs of the trees—his face reflected against the wall and hovered above the chair where he used to sit eating his breakfast and drinking his own coffee.

Nothing my friend or the senior pastor said from God’s Word could convince her that what she saw in the morning light was only her imagination. So, she listened to charlatans who tickled her ears with lies.

When my friend told me this story, I thought of the apostle Paul’s warning in 2 Corinthians 11:14–15: “Satan . . . masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants also masquerade themselves as servants of righteousness” (NIV). To deceive others, Satan, who is full of darkness and death, must put on a mask of light and life, but it’s a lie “because there is no truth in him,” Jesus said. “Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44). 

Those who tell grieving parents that the spirit of their dead loved one will visit them as an apparition of light are also lying, deceiving others behind a disguise of truth. Don’t listen to such people. And don’t be taken in by faux phenomena such as apparitions being passed off as genuine works of God.

I understand this is easier said than done, but the following warnings, if heeded, will keep you from being duped into believing lies from the evil one.

1. Beware of Counterfeit Miracles 

The Bible is clear that “our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places” where Satan rules (Ephesians 6:12). To avoid falling for deceptive signs and false wonders (2 Thessalonians 2:9), we must first understand how the father of lies operates.

Satan is portrayed in Scripture as extremely powerful and influential. He’s called “the ruler of this world” (John 12:31), “the god of this world” (2 Corinthians 4:4), and the “prince of the power of the air” (Ephesians 2:2). He exerts power over humans, governments, angels, and religion.

Though the devil’s power is great, it’s not as great as God’s power. For example, Satan can only be in one place at a time, while God is omnipresent—present in all places at all times. Satan can only know so much, while God is omniscient—all-knowing. Satan can exercise only so much power, while God is omnipotent—all-powerful. So, although Satan is described as a roaring lion prowling around looking for his next meal (1 Peter 5:8), He’s a lion on a leash—and God holds the other end of that leash and determines its length.

There’s an old proverb that uses another creature to describe Satan. It says, “the Devil is the ape of God,” referring to the act of mimicking God. How does Satan “ape” God? 

• Satan has established his own throne to inspire his own worshipers (Revelation 13:2, 4), church—the “synagogue of Satan” (Revelation 2:9), and theological system—called “doctrines of demons” (1 Timothy 4:1; Revelation 2:24). 
• Satan supports his own ministers—priests of darkness who preach false messages (2 Corinthians 11:4–5). These consist of false teachers who bring “destructive heresies” (2 Peter 2:1) and false prophets and false apostles who pass themselves off as true prophets and apostles (Matthew 24:11; 2 Corinthians 11:13). 
• Satan’s false teachers preach a false gospel—one contrary to the “gospel . . . [the true apostles] have preached” (Galatians 1:7–8).

2. The Gold Standard for Truth (Acts 17:10-11)

The gold standard for all truth is not our experiences, feelings, or the beliefs of a favorite relative. The standard by which we should judge every experience and every teacher is God’s Word.

In Acts 17, we find the story of a group of believers who utilized this gold standard for evaluating someone’s message. During Paul’s second missionary journey, he and Silas traveled to the port town of Thessalonica. However, when the Jews there became outraged at Paul’s teaching about Christ, he and Silas fled the city under the cover of darkness and went to the country village of Berea, about 45 miles southwest of Thessalonica.

Their welcome in Berea was as different from their welcome in Thessalonica as a bowl of ice cream is to a bowl of Brussels sprouts. The Bereans were “more noble-minded” and received the message of the gospel with grace and “great eagerness.” The Bereans were more open-minded than the Thessalonians, but they weren’t so open-minded that their brains spilled out of their heads.

They examined “the Scriptures daily to see whether [the things Paul and Silas were teaching] were so.” The Bereans listened carefully to the evidence presented and then tested those claims against Scripture.

If you’re of a certain age and grew up attending Sunday school or Vacation Bible School, you know about Bible drills, where the leader calls out an obscure book of the Bible—Zephaniah, let’s say—and a chapter and verse. The first contestant to find the correct verse and read it aloud is the winner. I’ve heard of kids gluing the corners of pages together, like gluing the last page of Habakkuk to the first page of Zephaniah and the last page of Zephaniah to the first page of Haggai, to game the system. Even if you had done that with a Berean, it wouldn’t have mattered.

They were champions when it came to Bible drills. But the Bereans didn’t just know where to find things in their Bible. They knew their Bible. Remember, they examined the Scripture daily. They were students of God’s Word, giving it daily attention. They worked hard to understand what God had communicated in His Word and sought to apply it to their everyday lives.

They hadn’t heard that the long-awaited Messiah had come, that He had died and rose from the dead. So, when Paul and Silas laid out the Old Testament case for Jesus as Messiah, the Bereans, with their knowledge of and desire to obey God’s Word, eagerly listened and checked out the claim for themselves.

You must do the same. Don’t just accept everything you hear from a preacher as gospel truth just because you like their preaching or because he or she performs what appears to be miracles. No. You must be more discerning than that. As someone said, “Discernment is knowing the difference between a cow patty and a cow patty cookie. They’re not the same thing.” Theologically speaking, you must be a Berean to know the difference. So, study and apply the Word of God—and use it as the measuring stick against the messages and motives of so-called miracle-workers.

3. The Miracle Worker’s Message: The Theological Test

Applying this gold standard for truth to the theological test, you need to keep in mind that Satan and his servants rarely, if ever, engage in a frontal assault against your Christian beliefs. They’re not likely to tell you to become idolaters and worship other gods (Deuteronomy 13:1–3) or convince you to try divination (18:10) or contact the dead (vv. 11–12) or become involved in the occult (v. 14). 

They’re too clever for that. As masters of disguise—demons masquerading as angels of light—they’re going to attack stealthily with a smile on their faces, to cause you to believe things that just aren’t so. The result is the same: you “exchange the truth of God for a lie” (Romans 1:25). Like the persuasions of an adulteress, the words of false teachers “drip [like] honey” and their speech is “smoother than oil” (Proverbs 5:3). Or as Warren Wiersbe puts it, “False teachers use our vocabulary, but they do not use our dictionary.”

False teachers typically concentrate their attacks by using three counterfeit messages. 

• False Teachers Don’t Confess Jesus as Christ the Anointed One. (1 John 4:1-3)
• False Teachers Don’t Confess Jesus as Coming in the Flesh.
• False Teachers Don’t Confess Jesus as Lord the Sovereign God.

It’s not the miracle that sets the false teacher apart from the true teacher; it’s the message. So beware counterfeit messages that water down the gospel of Jesus Christ and fail to confess the humanity and the deity of Jesus Christ.

4. The Miracle Worker’s Motive: The Lifestyle Test

Godly teachers glorify Christ by communicating an undefiled message and serving you. That’s what motivates them. Ungodly teachers, on the other hand, are motivated by two other considerations, broadly speaking.

• Ungodly Teachers Seek to Satisfy Their Flesh (Jude 4; 2 Peter 2:2)
• Ungodly Teachers Seek to Satisfy Their Greed (2 Peter 2:3)

When evaluating those who claim to be miracle workers or miracle recipients, be a Berean and beware of counterfeit messages and counterfeit motives.