When Satan Speaks the Truth: A Lesson on Deception from Acts 16
In Philippi, a young woman possessed by an evil spirit started following Paul and his men around, loudly telling everyone, “These men are the servants of the most high God, which shew unto us the way of salvation.” And she kept it up for days.
Paul’s reaction to the woman in Acts 16:16-18 is worth slowing down over. Verse 18 says he was grieved. It makes you wonder what was so offensive to him about that. I mean, she spoke the truth! She acted as a one-woman fan club.
The problem was the vessel carrying the truth. This woman was possessed with “a spirit of divination” (Acts 16:16). An evil spirit had taken true words into its mouth and was publicly attaching itself to Paul’s ministry. To the people of Philippi, who already knew this woman as a soothsayer, her repeated endorsement could easily blur the distinction between her supernatural power and the power behind Paul. Here we have a scheme of the devil that repeats throughout the Bible. Satan didn’t have to denounce Paul to interfere with his work and message. He stood beside him, mimicking the true message with a false heart and intentions.
Jesus encountered the same thing—twice. In Mark 1:24, an unclean spirit cried out, “I know thee who thou art, the Holy One of God.” That was perfectly true, yet Jesus immediately rebuked him: “Hold thy peace, and come out of him.” (vs. 25) Luke records the same pattern when devils cried out, “Thou art Christ the Son of God.” Jesus “rebuking them suffered them not to speak: for they knew that he was Christ.” (Luke 4:41) They knew the truth. Jesus still refused their testimony.
That should make us think. We naturally assume that if someone says something true about God, Christ, salvation or Scripture, the truth itself validates the speaker. Jesus and Paul did not reason that way. They cared about the corrupt source and the motive. It made darkness appear to stand beside light as a legitimate witness.
In Acts 16, Paul saw more than a bothersome woman following him around. He saw an evil spirit inserting itself into the testimony of the gospel. Eventually, he turned—not to the woman, but “to the spirit”—and commanded it in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her. His grief was directed at something spiritually corrupt that, on the surface, sounded completely true. Our take-home lesson is that Satan doesn’t always oppose truth by denying it. Sometimes he gets close enough to truth to borrow its credibility.
Blurring Truth With Error
Once error stands beside truth, people may begin to trust the source simply because some of what it says is true. That borrowed credibility makes deception harder to recognize. Falsehood enters under the cover of truth.
Eve’s encounter with the devil in Genesis 3 gives the earliest example. Satan began with God’s own words: “Yea, hath God said…” (Genesis 3:1), then subtly distorted what God had commanded before finally contradicting Him outright with, “Ye shall not surely die.” (Genesis 3:4) His method was to get close to the truth first, then use that proximity to create doubt and introduce error.
Similarly, with the temptation of Christ in Matthew 4, the devil showed impressive knowledge of Scripture—even quoting Psalm 91 with enough precision to sound authoritative—yet he used God’s words to entice Jesus outside the Father’s will. It was right Scripture in the mouth of the wrong vessel, applied for the wrong purpose—which is exactly why truth alone does not authenticate the source.
That brings the issue uncomfortably close to home. If a Bible version contains much truth, yet also removes, alters or weakens words and doctrines found in the preserved text, should the truth it retains automatically validate the vessel carrying it? All of the above examples give us reason to ask a harder question: If God gave us pure words and promised to preserve them (Psalm 12:6-7 KJV), why should we trust a vessel that repeatedly changes those words simply because much of what remains is still true? I mean, just for an exercise in what I’m talking about, compare Psalm 12:6-7 in the KJV with any other version. And be prepared. When you DO compare the verses, it will make you skeptically ask, “What exactly is being preserved in these verses?” And that’s exactly Satan’s point.
Jody