Landing in that city comes with a sense of marvel. You’re seeing new things coming in new dimensions altogether enlarging your horizons; and like a fish accustomed with the simplicity and smallness of a brook, you need help to adjust yourself and dive into a new realm of depth and immensity.

But unless you have a faithful and trustworthy guide, being new gets you exposed; especially in metropolitan areas known to be filled with greedy and malicious people. But as time goes by, you know better not to be gullible. Time makes you less susceptible to fall for some of the most obvious tricks.

However, we’ve all realized that deception is not exclusive to “fresh meats”. It happens to everyone; even to local and smart people who are supposed to know everything. It just depends on how good the bluffer is—and of course what’s at stake. You, as a first time comer, stand no chance to some of the best swindlers.

Great liars are able to bypass your suspicions and doubts and precautions by creating a friendly environment for you to let down your guards. In some of these great movies that we love, they’re even able to breach the most sophisticated security systems. They can trick anyone without them ever noticing it; that’s how good they can be. They are masters. Deception is their field of expertise.

When it comes to dealing with them, wisdom is, in this case, to be as good as deaf (or dead) to them.

This is interesting and important to us because we’ve come to visit the domain of the “father of lies”. He is the founder of the business of deception which basically means that all the skills of these great thieves put together do not come nowhere close to his. Moreover, he holds the title of “the prince of this world”.

Does it imply that he might be injecting confusion and vicious lies in what looks harmless in our clichés and beliefs systems, and many of our ways of thinking and living our lives? Does it imply that we live in a culture so imbued with those lies that we ended up believing them? Does it mean that you and I might be under his delusions without even knowing it?

“But what could he possibly want from me?” You might ask. You’re his prey. The great deceiver is “prowling around like a lion seeking someone to devour”. So there’s a lot at stake here. Your life and destiny is at stake.

For us to fully understand the matter at hand, a stark picture is drawn in Revelation 20; a picture of a dragon, ‘that ancient serpent’, that must be bound and thrown into a pit. It reads: “shut it and seal it over him, so that he might not deceive the nations any longer…” The imagery here is full of meaning. There’s a beast (representing filth and evil) that must be bound to keep him from deceiving us.

Do we grasp the magnitude of the implications thereof? Do we understand that the only solution for our world against his lies is to isolate him?

It is said that we truly appreciate the value of something when it is taken away. Life is appreciated in the face of death. Light is appreciated in darkness. Truth is priceless when surrounded by lies. But where is truth and reliable guidance to be found in this foggy and hazy world?

There’s one whose ‘sum of his word is truth’. He is the voice ‘full of grace and truth’. It isn’t like man’s voice: It has proven to be true from eternity past for it has never lied nor mislead anyone under any circumstances. ‘Behold, he delights in truth in the inward being’ and for those who will listen, they will ‘know the truth and the truth will set them free’ from the alluring voice of the great deceiver that leads to perdition.

Come and let us heed this voice…