Satanic Mimicry) Sermon Preached at Calvary Baptist Church, Los Angeles, by the pastor DR. FREDERICK W. FARR
Augustine called Satan, simius Dei, the ape of God. A Counterfeit can be made in several ways. A counterfeit coin is not*made entirely of base metal. It is a cunning mixture of genuine metal and a base alloy. Satan’s counterfeits are never wholly false. There is a modicum of truth in each to give it credibility. The more truth it has, the more dangerous it is. The other Jesus of whom Paul speaks will not seem like a devil but an angel of light, as much like the real Jesus as possible. A silver coin may be gilded so that it looks like gold. The gilding does not affect the real value of the silver. It is worth as much as ever but the gilding of the counterfeit is to make it pass for more than it is really worth. The earthly life of Jesus may be held up as a moral model and so preached as if salvation could be secured by a successful imitation of it. The earthly life of Christ is of absorbing interest and has an undeniable value but it can not save from sin because it is only by his atoning death that sin is put away and God is reconciled. It is a master device of the devil to take some subordinate phase or minor feature of Christianity and pass it off for more than it is worth and so pro duce a perverted picture of the Gospel. The sufferings of Christ may be so , distorted. The traditional conception of Christ which is reflected in ecclesias tical art is that of a monkish ascetic and a passive pitiable sufferer. A recent critic of Christianity has accused its
II Cor. 11:4. “ Another Jesus . . . another spirit . . . another Gospel.” The Satanic method that seems most successful is that of simulation and substitution. Every good thing has its imitation. Each truth has its counterfeit. A coun terfeit has a certain value as a testi mony to the true. A counterfeit bank note implies the existence of a genuine bank-note. There is no imitation of that which has no value. Men do not counterfeit common brown paper and put it into circulation. There are many counterfeits of Christianity. Who ever heard of a counterfeit infidelity? There is one true Divine Christ. There always have been and always will be many false Christs. The word ‘anti- Christ” may mean one who is instead of Christ as well as one who is against Christ. This is the only sense in which the Pope of Rome can be called anti- Christ. He has never professed „to be against Christ, but he claims to be in the place of Christ and therefore styles himself the vicar of Christ. The multiplicity of false Christs does not preclude a personal anti-Christ at the end of the age who will be the anti type of all previous ones, as well as the incarnation of Satan and who will come with all power and signs and lying wonders. II Thess. 2:9. The true Christ is plainly forefold in the Old Testament and clearly por trayed in the New Testament. Paul fore saw that this divine portrait would be caricatured and he warns the Corin thians^ concerning “ another Jesus,” and the Galatians about “ another Gospel.”
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