In John’s day, the Greco-Roman world held to a hodgepodge of religious beliefs. With travel and communication being what they are today, the spiritual gumbo is thicker and gooier than ever.
It didn’t take long for the effects of sin on the human race to hit rock bottom. Adam and Eve ate a fruit – a seemingly simple act. Yet in the next generation they saw what that seemingly trivial deed actually meant when Cain killed Abel his brother.
One of the deepest human longings is the longing to belong. We have a need to be needed, a desire to be desired. We want to be part of a group where we feel accepted, where we fit in.
We don’t have to look very hard in the Bible to find warnings about spiritual deception. Several of them come out of the mouth of Jesus. For example, Matthew 24:11, “Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many.”
Central Reflections 