The Great Delusion
In 1917, famed American journalist H. L. Mencken concocted a story that has never completely come undone. The fact that everyone so easily believed his hoax amazed even him.
A writer at the time for the New York Evening Mail, Mencken wrote a bogus history about the bathtub. Eight and a half years later, he confessed it was all a lie. But by then his “facts” had made it around the globe, and nothing he did or said could retract them, leading Mencken to conclude, “No normal human being wants to hear the truth. It is the passion of a small and aberrant minority. . . . They are hated for telling it while they live, and when they die they are swiftly forgotten. What remains in the world . . . is a series of long-tested and solidly agreeable lies.”1
Today billions of people around the world believe all sorts of solidly agreeable lies. Lies about God. Lies about Jesus. Lies about creation, morality, Israel, salvation, heaven, hell, judgment, and much more.
For example, millions believe Israelis are “occupiers” of Islamic land, even though the Jewish people (whose very name comes from the word Judah) have lived there for 3,400 years, including 2,000 years before Islam even existed.
They believe the Holocaust of World War II never happened, even though the Nazis themselves documented everything meticulously.
They believe the Jewish people are “aggressors,” even though they have been the most victimized, persecuted people on Earth for millennia. They believe Jews are cheap, even though they’re among the most generous and philanthropic. And hugely popular, influential celebrities believe (among other things) that the Jewish people are powerful manipulators who run the world, even though the planet houses 8 billion people—2 billion of whom are Muslim—with a paltry 15 million Jews.
Sadly, as Mencken observed, most people prefer lies to truth. Consequently, during the coming Great Tribulation, God will send a “strong delusion” (2 Th. 2:11) so that such people will believe the biggest lie of all: that the Antichrist is God. The apostle Paul described these individuals as those who “did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved” (v. 10).
With so many being deluded today, it’s sometimes difficult to think things could get worse. But Scripture says the masses will embrace the Antichrist as a savior who can bring peace and security. And because they reject the truth, they will believe a lie that will send them to the Lake of Fire for eternity (Rev. 20:11–15).
The prophet Jeremiah said, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked” (Jer. 17:9). The writer of the book of Hebrews warned his readers against being “hardened through the deceitfulness of sin” (Heb. 3:13).
The apostle John wrote that people are condemned because “the light [Jesus] has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil” (Jn. 3:19).
The ultimate source of truth is and always will be God’s Word. The psalmist wrote, “The entirety of Your word is truth” (Ps. 119:160). The apostle John wrote, “Your word is truth” (Jn. 17:17). And more than 2,500 years ago, the prophet Isaiah declared, “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever” (Isa. 40:8).
Lies may be “long-tested and solidly agreeable,” but they are still lies. Only the God of the Bible can save us, and only His Word can lead us into all truth. If we reject them, delusion awaits.
ENDNOTE
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- H. L. Mencken, cited in Country Home magazine (April 1994), 101.
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