Have you checked to see if the money in your wallet is genuine? Have you learned the look and feel of genuine currency so that you can spot a counterfeit? Those in the know estimate that, of the 1.1 trillion United States dollars in circulation, less than 1 percent is fake, but that still amounts to $250 million of funny money that isn’t worth anything. It used to be that small-time counterfeiters created most counterfeit currency. Now rogue governments intent on creating chaos produce most counterfeit money. How is one to know the difference?
Genuine currency is printed on a proprietary blend of cotton and linen, and the thousands of pounds of pressure used to print each bill makes the thin paper even thinner. The special paper has tiny red and blue threads embedded in it. If you handle a lot of money, your fingers will instantly tell you when you have a fake bill. Besides the paper, genuine currency has several additional security features: a special watermark, a vertical plastic security strip embedded in the paper, micro-printing, light backgrounds with very tiny patterns, exquisitely detailed etchings, various color inks, and color shifting inks that change from metallic copper to metallic green under bright light. Ongoing research seeking ways to make counterfeiting difficult for the bad guys continues. But they continue to study very care fully how to get something for nothing.
The archenemy of God is the ultimate bad guy, and he has introduced numerous counterfeits for good and decent things that God has done for us. Without a thorough knowledge of the genuine article, the forgery looks and feels convincing, good enough to deceive, if possible, the very elect (Mark 13:22). Satan fakes signs and wonders, substitutes Sunday for Sabbath, replaces creation with evolution, originates numerous counterfeit religions that pretend to love and obey God or claim that Jesus was a good man but certainly not God. He teaches moral relativism instead of absolute truth. The question I keep asking myself: Am I deeply studying God’s Word, becoming thoroughly familiar with the look and feel of the genuine article?
Creator of all that is genuine, teach me to spot the phony and to accept only Your death on the cross as the payment for my ransom.