"This 'lie' is at the very heart of all that is awry in the cosmos... It is the root of falsehood in every form and was brought into being by Satan, as is evidenced by the fact that Jesus told the Pharisees that the devil was the 'father of the lie' (Jon 8:44). This original 'lie' has three essential components which have great significance for our study into religious corruption. ...
The first part of Satan's threefold lie involved the promise that our first parents would 'be like God [or gods]' if they partook in the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 3:5). This could be referred to as the cardinal sin in the cosmos. It was the beginning of an endemic sinful process in which human beings 'strive against their Maker', imagining themselves to be unbegotten (cf. Isa. 45:9-10), in the belief that there is no Transcendent Creator God and that it is human beings alone who determine their own destiny.
The significance of this aspect of the Satanic Lie for the subsequent religious development of the world is cataclysmic; for it has led to the idea that Man can become God. This has been manifested, firstly, in the practice of spiritual techniques and systems which will lead to a personal experience of the divine and even to actual 'deification' —which, as we shall discover, is an integral component in the world's religions. Secondly, it has materialized in the substitution of the creature for the Creator as the object of worship and the focus of religious power (cf. Rom. 1:25), so that people worship anything but the true God, whether it is an image of an animal or a human being, or even themselves. ...
A primary object of Satan's enduring question ["has God indeed said...?"] was to persuade our first parents that in following him they would 'certainly not die' (Gen. 3:4), as the Lord had originally said they would if they disobeyed Him (Gen. 2:16-17). In effect, Satan was promising them unconditional eternal life. This forms the second component in his threefold lie. However, the complete reverse of what he promised actually came to pass. Because our first parents were beguiled by Satan's questioning of God's statement that they would die if they disobeyed His commandment, death then came into the world, just as the Lord has spoken (Rom. 5:12). This is why Jesus said that Satan 'was a murderer from the beginning' as well as the father of the lie (Jn 8:44). Satan promised life and instead brought death to humanity. ...
The third part of Satan's threefold lie was to persuade our first parents that they could acquire a level of wisdom over and above that with which they had been endowed by their Creator: 'And when she saw that it was a tree desirable to make one wise...' (Gen. 3:6). The clear implication in Satan's strategy here was that there was some special, esoteric knowledge which God was concealing from His human creation, the acquisition of which would enhance their lives. In fact, Satan's suggestion was that God was ... denying our first parents the possibility of having their eyes opened and being like Him (see Gen. 3:5). In other words, the fallen angel was suggesting that God was wrongfully making an exclusive claim to the attribute of divine wisdom which could, in reality, be acquired by anyone. The outworking of this strategy, in terms of subsequent religious corruption, has been centered on the fascination with esoteric teachings as found in occult-mystical belief systems and the mystery religions. In common with the majority of the world's religions, they hold to the idea that one can be initiated into a body of 'higher-wisdom-teachings' which will bring about supernatural change and even deification." [16]
This three-fold lie of
Satan is manifested in the religious system of ancient Paganism and in the
underground occult tradition that has existed since the birth of
Christianity:
1. You can be like God.
2. You can achieve eternal life.
3. You will gain wisdom equal with God.
In Hebrew the name of Jesus (which is an English form of the Greek "Iesous") is Yeshua. In the Old Testament the English translation of Yeshua appears as Joshua, which is a named derived from the Hebrew root word yasha, which means "salvation." Yeshua is therefore a very fitting name for the Savior of the World.
