1. In our text this morning, the apostle Paul likens the New Testament church to “a chaste virgin” (11:2).
2. The Bible refers to the church as “the bride” of Christ (cf. Ephesians 5 and Revelation 19).
3. The devil has his counterfeit church, described in Revelation 17 as “the great whore” (17:1).
4. And there has always been great conflict between the two.
5. The devil has been tireless in his efforts to promote the false church and to corrupt the true church.
6. The devil is very subtle.  He appeared in the Garden of Eden as a serpent.  Genesis 3:1 says, “Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?”
7. The word “subtle” means crafty (cf. II Cor. 11:3).
8. The apostle Paul refers to Satan’s subtilty in II Corinthians 11:3.  Behind the hiss of the serpent is sin, lurking and waiting to attack.
9. In Genesis 3:13, Eve said to the LORD, “The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat” (cf. II Cor. 11:3).

I. THE SUBTILTY OF SATAN (11:3).

1. Satan is a master deceiver.  Revelation 12:9 says that during the coming tribulation he will deceive “the whole world.”
2. If you study carefully the book of Revelation, you will see that this deception refers to worldly people, i.e., those who reject the Gospel and take the mark of the antichrist.
3. By the way, we are getting very close to the fulfillment of the prophecies of the book of Revelation.
4. Revelation 13 says the antichrist will cause “all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name (666).”
5. I read a startling report the other day, and you can read it for yourself on our government’s website.  The Food and Drug Administration is mandating that everyone in the USA will have to receive a microchip. 
6. Now that Congress has passed its health care bill, the government is going to insist that anyone getting government health care will have to receive an “implantable radio frequency transponder for patient identification and health information.”
7. The Secretary of Health and Human Services wants everyone to be registered (“chipped”) within three years.
8. Many of you remember Congressman Ron Paul.  He tried to get the Republican nomination for president but lost to Senator John McCain. This is what Congressman Paul put on his website: “This new law, when fully implemented, provides the framework for making the United States the first Nation in the World to require each and every one of its citizens to have implanted in them a radio-frequency identification (RFID) microchip for the purpose of controlling who is, or isn’t, allowed medical care in their country.” (http://www.dailypaul.com/node/105079).
9. The devil “beguiles” and he “corrupts” (II Cor. 11:3). Satan corrupted Eve’s mind, and he has been busy corrupting the minds of men and women ever since.

II. THE SIMPLICITY THAT IS IN CHRIST (11:3).

1. Have you ever tried reading the Koran?  How about the Book of Mormon?  How about Scientology or the writings of Rev. Moon, etc.?
2. Compare these strange writings with the beauty and the simplicity of the Bible!
3. “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Gen. 1:1).
4. “The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want” (Psalm 23:1).
5. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).
6. “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.  He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned” (Mark 16:15, 16).
7. Let us not be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ (11:3).
8. The devil tries to obscure the simplicity of the Gospel with subtle additions and subtractions – extra-biblical revelations and rituals, good works, sacraments, purgatory, etc.
9. Sometimes even Baptists can be guilty of obscuring the simplicity of the Gospel with complicated schemes about election and predestination, etc.
10. The great evangelist DL Moody strived to make the Gospel message plain and simple.  He said, “The elect are the whosoever wills, and the non-elect are the whosoever won’ts.”
11. “Sing it o’er and over again;
     Christ receiveth sinful men;
     Make the message clear and plain:
     Christ receiveth sinful men” — Erdmann Neumeister.
12. Some preachers get too intellectual. They read books with big words like “supralapsarianism and infralapsarianism,” etc.  I am all for reading and studying, but let us be careful not to obscure “the simplicity that is in Christ” (II Cor. 11:3).
13. The Gospel is simple (I Cor. 15:1-4).
14. Conversion is simple (cf. Acts 16:25-34).
15. Our Lord said in Matthew 18:3, “Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.”
16. That is very simple!
17. Our Lord said in John 3:14 and 15, “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.”
18. Charles Haddon Spurgeon was converted when he was 16-years old.  This is his testimony:

I sometimes think I might have been in darkness and despair until now, had it not been for the goodness of God in sending a snowstorm one Sunday morning, while I was going to a certain place of worship. I turned down a side street, and came to a little Primitive Methodist Church. In that chapel there may have been a dozen or fifteen people. I had heard of the Primitive Methodists, how they sang so loudly that they made people’s heads ache; but that did not matter to me. I wanted to know how I might be saved....
 
The minister did not come that morning; he was snowed up, I suppose. At last a very thin-looking man, a shoemaker, or tailor, or something of that sort, went up into the pulpit to preach. Now it is well that preachers be instructed, but this man was really stupid. He was obliged to stick to his text, for the simple reason that he had little else to say. The text was—“Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth” (Isaiah 45:22).  He did not even pronounce the words rightly, but that did not matter. There was, I thought, a glimmer of hope for me in that text.

19. After the man was preaching for about ten minutes or so, he looked straight at young Mr. Spurgeon and said, “Young man, you look very miserable.”
20. Well, Spurgeon though, he did indeed feel miserable. Spurgeon had not been accustomed to having remarks made from the pulpit on his personal appearance before; however, he admitted, “it was a good blow,” and it “struck right home.”
21. The preacher continued, “And you will always be miserable—miserable in life and miserable in death—if you don’t obey my text; but if you obey now, this moment, you will be saved.”
22. Then Spurgeon said, the man lifted up his hands and shouted, “Young man, look to Jesus Christ. Look! Look! Look! You have nothing to do but look and live!”
23. Throughout the following years, Spurgeon would tell of his conversion many times.  He said, “I saw at once the way of salvation. I know not what else he said—I did not take much notice of it—I was so possessed with that one thought…I had been waiting to do fifty things, but when I heard that word, ‘Look!’ what a charming word it seemed to me. Oh! I looked until I could almost have looked my eyes away. There and then the cloud was gone, the darkness had rolled away, and that moment I saw the sun; and I could have risen that instant, and sung with the most enthusiastic of them, of the precious blood of Christ, and the simple faith which looks alone to Him. Oh, that somebody had told me this before, ‘Trust Christ, and you shall be saved.’ Yet it was, no doubt, all wisely ordered, and now I can say—
          ‘E’er since by faith I saw the stream
          Thy flowing wounds supply,
          Redeeming love has been my theme,
          And shall be till I die…’
    Between half-past ten o’clock, when I entered that chapel, and half-past twelve o’clock, when I was back again at home, what a change had taken place in me! I had passed from darkness into marvelous light, from death to life. Simply by looking to Jesus, I had been delivered from despair, and I was brought into such a joyous state of mind that, when they saw me at home, they said to me, "Something wonderful has happened to you;" and I was eager to tell them all about it. Oh! there was joy in the household that day, when all heard that the eldest son had found the Saviour, and knew himself to be forgiven, — bliss compared with which all earth’s joys are less than nothing and vanity. Yes, I had looked to Jesus as I was, and found in Him my Saviour.”
24. Spurgeon was soon baptized and called to preach, and though he was a brilliant and well read man, he never got away from “the simplicity that is in Christ” (II Cor. 11:3).

III. THE COUNTERFEITS OF SATAN.

1. According to Scripture, Christ has His bride (11:2), and the devil has his harlot (Rev. 17 & 18).
2. There is the true Lord Jesus Christ, and there is “another Jesus” (II Cor. 11:4).  The Jesus of the cults is “another Jesus.”
3. There is the blessed Holy Spirit, and there is “another spirit” (11:4).  The “spirit” of the cults is a demonic spirit.
4. There is the true Gospel, and there is “another gospel” (11:4; cf. Gal. 1:6-9).   Any Gospel, which adds in works, is a false gospel.
5. There are true ministers of Christ, and there are Satan’s ministers (cf. II Cor. 11:13-15).
6. The way we can tell the true from the false is to compare their teachings with the Word of God (cf. Acts 17:10, 11).

CONCLUSION:

1. The US Secret Service has an article on their website, entitled, “How To Detect Counterfeit Money.”
2. The article shows various photographs of real money, with things to look out for.
3. The same holds true in the spiritual realm.  In order to recognize a counterfeit, we must know the Word of God – the real Word of God, not some shabby, inferior, unreliable translation like the NIV or the ESV, etc.