It is very tragic that many earnest believers and Bible believers in the Charismatic Movement have unwittingly and unconsciously been sold by their leaders the very technique of the godless: trickery. Nineveh sold her pagan gods to the people by trickery, by magicians, and today sadly there are even people of God who think the methods we should use should be all these imagined healings and wonders and signs, to trick the people into thinking that there's something there. We don't need that. We have the word and we have the Spirit of God. We do not need phenomenon and tricks and things of that sort, most of which are purely in the mind and in the imagination.
We read a few years ago about those Martian rocks that were supposed to prove that there was life on Mars. What was the outcome of all this? There are now only a handful of scientists who still think that this is the case, and the majority say no. The only people who still think it's the case are the people who first wrote about it, who are still hanging on to the idea. You see a theory comes across the nations. The people sell the theory; they haven't really got the evidence, but they still try to promote a completely atheistic, materialistic view of the universe and life. ‘If there is life on Mars’ they say, ‘of a very simple primitive type, it proves that life can emerge on its own in the right circumstances. We don't need a Creator.’ This is just trickery.
The 1960s we had the permissive society. How did they manage to sell this idea? What was the method used to get the people to give house room, mind, attention to their ideas? It was fiction. They commandeered the soap operas, they commandeered the word of literature, and by fiction they sold the notion that society that could be happy and fulfilled while just looking for its own ends and its own interests, and the people believed it. It just like the Assyrians who sold their pagan gods by magician's trickery. So too today atheists sell their idea of what society can achieve purely by fiction. And God will bring his judgment upon people for their making sensuality their god and selling godless ideas by fiction.
Assyria also brought down regional rulers. This was the method of the ancients, conquest and coercion. How did they rule these vast regions? By seducing and subverting local rulers who would represent them, and, in exchange for riches and power, would control their regions. It was seduction, and it is the same with false religion. Promises made by liberalism, for example, theological liberalism. They tell you, ‘You can have blessings from God without commitment. You can have God's blessing without being concerned about his holiness and the need for repentance and renewal of your life. All that is primitive religion’, says the liberal theologian. ‘In your own righteousness, you can have standing before God. You need not believe half the detail of the Bible.’ So you are seduced. You are persuaded that you can have God and the world. You can have God together with whatever you want. With the exception of a handful of evangelical Bible-believing congregations, that is what the Church of England stands for today. The great compromise. You can consider yourself a Christian and have God, and you can remain a homosexual, even in their clergy. The great compromise is seduction. The ancient enemies, Assyria – and after them, the Chaldeans – are seen not only for their massacres but for their seduction of people, their great promises.