The grand illusion

All eyes were fixed on the magician who stood sharply dressed in a sleek black silk suit and top hat. His hands moved with practiced precision, slowly drawing all eyes to view an empty hat box that sat upright on a small round nightstand that was placed on stage. As he raised his hands towards the ceiling, a string of brilliantly colored silk scarves were pulled from a secret storage in his jacket lining. One after another beautiful scarves of all shapes and sizes filled the area in front of the nightstand and gently floated to the floor. From the audience’s perspective, the scarves seemed to materialize from thin air and began to pile up on the stage floor. Many minutes passed as scarves continued to form a large mountain of silk directly in front of the hat box that sat on the table. The pile grew so high that it eventually hid the hat box from everyone’s view. 

Meanwhile, beneath the elevated floor, stage hands were silently exchanging the table and hat box with an identical looking set through a trap door located under the stage rigging. Just as the trap door shut the magician ran out of silk scarves and playfully began kicking the pile of colored silk out into the audience. After receiving a few chuckles and laughs, the magician purposefully stepped back to the table and with a flourish of his wand made seven white doves fly out into the audience from the once empty hat box.

Our minds are so easily fooled by perceived information. What we think we know or see many times is just an illusion that our mind has pieced together from incomplete information it receives. Because the audience didn’t see the box and table switch, their minds were fooled into thinking that the doves somehow materialized out of the same empty hat box that they had previously been shown. This simple trick has been used for millennium to capitalize on an unsuspecting audience.

It’s interesting to me how easy our minds can be fooled. If we are not careful to thoroughly inquire, completely inspect and collect the whole truth from all angles, then many times our minds will piece together the wrong conclusion and we end up making some very bad decisions. 

 “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man-and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things.”

Many people today are being fooled by Satan, the master magician, who has clouded the waters of truth by sowing seeds of illusion, falsehood and lies. He has switched an empty hat box with one which fills the minds of his audience with an incomplete theory of evolution. Our enemy has also corrupted the institution of marriage and the natural love between men and women behind dark curtains of homosexuality. He has also cleverly deceived the nations into thinking that “we the people” can solve the global problems that cling and grow like cancers on the earth.

For our magician’s final trick the curtain raises as he tells the world that all roads lead to God and everyone will arrive in heaven. To some, the great lie states that if we just live good lives, we will reach God while to others he whispers that if we just clear our minds and meditate on endless droning, heartbeat or mantra we will reach universal bliss. Basically, his message to the entire world is that we will eventually get better and don’t need God’s cure for sin.

However, if you search the bible you will discover the truth. Not just part of the truth or an illusion propagated by sleight of hand or lies but the whole truth of how humanity ended up in the condition that it is and where it is ultimately going.

“For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek.  For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, "The just shall live by faith." Romans 16-23.