I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your
minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that
is in Christ. (2 Corinthians 11:3)
Deception is not something out there that is put upon us
willy-nilly, or in spite of ourselves. All deception has its own ground in man.
What is that ground? It is the fact that man is now a psychical being. Now if
you can get to the bottom of that, if you can apprehend that, you will
understand the whole thing. The ground of all this is in the
fact that man is a psychical being, and when Satan interfered
with man at the beginning and man consented along the line of his
own soul-life, Satan made man suitable to his own government. It
was not that he came and set himself up as mans ruler and
subjected man by sheer force to his own government. How did he do
it? By breaking into that realm in mans being where man was
linked with God, and that was in the realm of mans spirit.
He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit, and man
was in fellowship and communion with God by means of his spirit,
not his soul, not his body. These two were under the government
of his spirit. The enemy, the Deceiver came to mans soul,
and instead of man reacting by his spirit-fellowship with, and
knowledge of, God, he dropped down on to his soul, came out of
his spirit and reacted in his soul.
What is soul? It is reason, emotion, feeling, desire, and
then, of course, choice, will. And the enemy reasoned through the desires and
captured the will by deception. You see what happened when man violated the very
organ of his union with God, his spirit.... So the enemy governs man, and the whole of the
race now through the nature of the soul-life. What is the basis
of deception? It is just that! How do you get a counterfeit Holy
Ghost operating? By reason of your psychical nature. You can
become mediumistic in your very psychical nature and open all the
avenues of your being to supernatural guidance and come under the
power, the sway, dominion, of deceiving spirits operating in a
multitude of ways. You can so suspend your soul and come into a
state of utter passivity that you are open to everything to play
upon you. You can have your quiet hour in your soul, which is the
most perilous hour of your life. That happens by suspending all
spiritual activity and becoming utterly passive and opening your
psychical being, which is a most dangerous thing. God never asks you to become
spiritually passive. Waiting upon God is not being spiritually passive. God
wants us active in spirit even when waiting on Him in silence.