Why do I write what I write to you here? Ellen read this passage to me just this morning. And Holy Spirit within me laid this out before me. It is to us a message of the importance of obedience to God’s word in this our day, and the importance of not being or listening to the voice of deception that goes against what we know to be God’s word plainly stated.

Today, there is much argued for, that which goes against the plainly stated word of God. We can even be tempted to be a voice of deception. There is the twisting of God’s plainly spoken words to us. This passage in 1 Kings reveals that that deception comes from even a prophet of God. Jesus said: many will come in my name saying I am the Christ and they will deceive many. Notice I left out punctuation. There was none in the original. Here is the translated text:

Matthew 24:5 “For many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and they will mislead many people. (NASB2020)

Are they coming to say that Jesus ( the I am) is the Christ? Or are they coming to us to say that “they themselves (i am)” the Christ? Are we as believers deceived by men who say that they are the Christ, or by men who are preachers of God such as this prophet in 1 Kings 13, who deceived the man of God?

The man of God in 1 Kings 13 did as God had instructed by His Word, and when the King attempted to have him taken down for so doing, God Himself intervened. God made Himself known and the man of God went his way victorious even under the threat of the king. But what follows is for us to understand that even the man of God, whose every word spoken as God had instructed, would come to pass, and still he can be deceived by listening to deception from a prophet of God rather than to God’s Word. Was the prophet of God allowed as a test? If so the man of God failed the test. Or was this allowed for our understanding.

Disobedience to the simplest truth as stated to him by God’s own words took down the man of God.

We are living in the days of deception. We have God’s Word. He warns of this deception. We want to be far from it as men of God, who are not confused, but walking in obedience to His word. Disobedience has extreme consequences in evil days even for the man of God.