Deception warfare.Satan tries to throw us off our game. He’s a master at deceptive maneuvers. For instance: take the paradummy device, first used in World War II. The British “Rupert” and the American “Oscar” were decoy paratroopers. They were dropped from the sky to trick the enemy into thinking there were more troops than there were, hoping to either scare off the enemy or lure them into traps.
This four-foot tall rubber paradummy, called the "PD Pack" - code for "Paratrooper Dummy Pack" - was inflated via a CO2 bottle that was triggered automatically after the folded PD Pack was pitched from the plane and yanked open by static line. It was usually rigged with a sound device that simulated small arms fire; and was also rigged with a block of TNT which blew up the dummy upon landing, and/or served as a booby trap for any Germans who found the dummy.
Isn’t that what Satan does, too? He makes a lot of noise over trivial things to lure our focus to the wrong spots. Then when we’re sufficiently distracted, he slams us from the rear with the actual ammunition. I remember Gideon: God pared down his army to 300 men, then for artillery, he had them blow trumpets and smash jars with torches inside. It worked.
For good measure on D-Day 1944, the British also dropped six real men along with their Ruperts. The humans were to make a lot of noise on the ground to further deceive the German soldiers about where the actual airborne drops would take place.
Satan knows that trick, too. He often slips in some of his own folks to make some human noise and make the attack site look genuine.
Our counterattack?
For starters, we need to be able to recognize the difference between the real deal and the dummy. The more we know the Lord, the more we recognize his voice. And the more we recognize his voice, the more we distinguish his will for us versus Satan’s wiles. Federal agents are trained to spot counterfeit money by knowing the genuine bills, not studying counterfeit ones.
I don’t want to waste my time fighting faux fires when there’s a blazing furnace going unchecked in my backyard...all because I’ve diverted my attention to meaningless matters. Lord, help me see the difference between straw-filled problems and those that are the serious real deals. It’s a battle out there, and I want to fight smart.
