HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, August 31, 2025 – I wrote a few days ago about how children are easily deceived, especially by people older than them. I remember as an eight-year-old thinking that my 13-year-old babysitter was a trustworthy adult because she was allowed to make Kraft Dinner all by herself. Whenever she’d babysit, I’d do whatever she’d tell me to do (including dutifully eat her rock-hard macaroni with lumpy cheese sauce) because I unquestioningly accepted her full authority over me.

I saw the same unquestioning obedience in the three- and seven-year-old sons of a former boyfriend of mine. Whenever they’d come over for the weekend, I’d take them to the corner store for treats, just the three of us. The littler one would hold on tight to my hand, fully trusting me though he hardly knew me. Whatever candies I’d buy for them, they’d solemnly eat. It was strange for me, not being a mother myself, to see how willingly they complied with my every word.

It’s easier to deceive children than adults because children haven’t yet developed the healthy skepticism that comes with age and experience. Still, many people allow themselves to be deceived even into adulthood, perhaps out of a misplaced desire to recreate the safe haven they felt as children. But we born-again believers don’t have the luxury of willful naivete or of suspending our disbelief and holding on tight to the hands of worldly authorities. We also can’t afford to accept at face value the revelations of self-proclaimed prophets in the worldly church. We need to stand firm in God’s truth at all times, no matter how uncomfortable that might be for us or how alone we stand. God is our Truth, not rumor, innuendo, peer pressure, frenzied mobs, or false prophecies.

Which brings me to the topic of today’s article – deception. A tool of the devil, deception is also used on occasion as a testing strategy permitted by God. When the devil wields deception as a reward (that is, as something that’s been earned), he delivers it as a spiritual stronghold, so that those under its thrall are under his direct authority. Prior to my rebirth, I was constantly under the devil’s spiritual strongholds of one kind or another, especially in relationships, and so I know how nearly impossible it is to see clearly when you’re in them, let alone to break free of them. On the other hand, when God permits deception for testing purposes, he also provides a clear way for us to discern the lie and so to avoid falling for it.

You can’t “logic” a person out of a spiritual stronghold. You also can’t pray them out. Even if you think you’re making headway with someone who’s under a stronghold, they’ll willingly tighten their own chains as soon as you’ve gone home for the night. When the devil uses deception as a reward, he has God-given authority over everyone under the appointed stronghold: Even God won’t intervene in those cases, other than in rare exceptions that lead to spiritual rebirth.

But deception when allowed by God for testing purposes is vastly different. It’s still administered by the devil, but it’s not a spiritual stronghold; it’s not a due reward for choices made: It’s a test that comes in the form of a temptation to believe something that isn’t true. Jesus says that sometimes these deceptions are so extreme, even the “elect” (that’s us!) can be deceived. So how are we to know who or what to believe during these tests?

Paul advises us always to test the spirits, so even when we’re being tested, we need to test the spirits. (Especially when we’re being tested, we need to test the spirits.) However, when we’re being tested, we can’t just go to God in prayer and ask him for answers like we normally do, any more than when we were in school we could ask our teacher for answers when we were writing exams. During testing, we’re pretty much on our own as far as the answers go. That means we need to rely on what we’ve previously learned, and we need to use our discernment.

The best and most recent example of a God-sanctioned spiritual stronghold under the devil is the alleged September 23-24 rapture of the church. Suffice to say it’s just another version of the same-old same-old that’s been making the rounds for nearly 2000 years. The Jesus-is-coming-back-soon hysteria tends to be cyclical, but people still willingly embrace it so the devil keeps trotting it out, confident in its positive results for him. “Jesus is coming back soon!” is one of the devil’s favorite lies, as he harvests a bumper crop of disillusioned souls each time the prophecy fails.

Ironically, when Jesus does actually come back, the devil won’t be plying us beforehand with this particular deception. He won’t be allowed to. Like the virgins who fall asleep just before the bridegroom appears, we won’t know exactly when Jesus is coming until he’s suddenly here. The knowledge will be supernaturally withheld from us by God, who’s also, according to scripture, the only one who knows exactly when Jesus is coming back. Even Jesus himself still doesn’t know when he’s coming back and won’t know until he gets the signal that it’s time to ride.

As for us, our only heads-up will be our ongoing standing order to keep doing our jobs so that when Jesus does appear, he finds us doing what we should be doing during our time on Earth – namely, the specific work that God has given each of us to do. The last thing we want Jesus to find us doing is laboring under the latest lie of the devil.

We aren’t children anymore, to naively entrust ourselves to worldly authority figures or to believe lies because we don’t know any better. We also shouldn’t be easily deceived when we have God’s Spirit of discernment to guide us. Yes, tests on deception can be difficult (they’re meant to be), but God will only test us according to our ability: He doesn’t test us on what we don’t know; he tests us on what we do know, to see how we apply our learning in real-life situations.

As born-again believers, we don’t have to worry about being under demonic strongholds anymore, not as long as we’re under God’s grace. If we genuinely have God’s Spirit with us, we can’t come directly under the devil’s authority. It’s a spiritual impossibility. We can, however, be subjected to tests on deception delivered by the devil. God will permit that. Which means we always need to be on our spiritual toes, because those tests don’t come announced, and when they do come, they come hard and fast, often before we even realize we’re being tested.

This September’s rapture prophecy will play out like the countless other rapture prophecies before it, and the devil will take his payment in souls, like he always does. When the stronghold spell is broken on September 25, the majority of the people now under its thrall will quietly delete their “I had a dream” videos and move onto the next craze, having learned nothing from the experience. Some will even walk away from God altogether, feeling betrayed.

I pray you’re not among them.