When I was growing up, 100 years ago (lol), life appeared to be a lot more simple.  We were in the pre-computer age when the newspapers ruled and missing the nightly news would put you way behind on current events. If there was any manipulation of what we read or heard, we didn’t know it.  And plagerism and false reporting were scandals, followed by immediate, grave consequences.  The only other truth twisting…gossip…was frowned on, but generally tolerated. It was a time when you could pretty much trust what you saw and heard.

Fast forward to today, and an open world.  Every kind of media, including social media, makes the world a small, small place where you can find out what’s going on in Japan or South Africa as easily as what’s going on in your own neighborhood.  Have a disease?  100 sites with info at your fingertips.  Something wrong with your car?  Same thing.  Sports scores from around the world, and many rebroadcasts of events at your disposal.  Want to learn to cook or sew?  Again, classes right online.  These have also all made the workd a great place to live in right now!

Unfortunately, there is also a dark side to the internet, and we all know about the things you csn find there.  The one thing, however, that very few people anticipated was the power of what was on the internet.  Many people never realized that viewers would take so much of what they read and believe it like it was absolute truth.  No one envisioned people dying because they trusted medical internet advice and stayed away from doctors because they thought they had the answer.  No one envisioned that hundreds if people would have their lives destroyed because of untruths posted about them.  And certainly NO ONE thought that teenagers would commit suicide over posts about them implying all kinds of untrue things!  And now we currently have a crisis of “fake news” that is catching people of all ages believing outright lies simply because it was on a site that “seemed” reliable!

What a mess!  But here’s the point of this blog…the first fake news ever happened over thousands of years ago.  Yep!  And it went like this:  “Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.  And he said to the woman, has God indeed said ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden?’  Satan is reading the Garden Daily Times, he’s checking to see if Eve has too.

And Eve answers: “…but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.’  And here’s what satan wants Eve to believe is the 2 inch headline for that day:  You will surely not die!  For God knows that in the day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”  And we know the rest of the story.

Amazing, isn’t it?  There is nothing man can dream up that is more false or dangerous than that first fake news..because that is the news that Eve believed, and all of humanity since then has suffered for it by being eternally separated from God, without the saving power of Jesus Christ!  There is nothing new about “fake news”!

Today’s alarms about fake news ARE important.  Believing even half of what you read or hear in media today can land you in all sorts of enbarrassment, trouble, strife, and even lead to fatalities…but eventually the perpetrators of that news are caught.  With satan, however, his fake news is way more deadly, and yet way less recognized by most people…and yet its consequences are far more destructive..they are ETERNAL if not realized by those who accept his message as real.

So next time you hear the topic of fake news in any of your conversations with friends, coworkers, etc, use it as an opportunity to evangelize!  Share with them about the Author of the Good News…Jesus Christ..and help them find their way to Him!