ve active, that which is
simply permitted. Thus, when the devils begged permission to enter into
the herd of swine, Jesus said, "_Go_"--Mat. 8: 31.

And so we are to understand, John 13: 27, where Jesus says to Judas
Iscariot, "What thou dost, _do quickly_." No man is thoroughly posted as a
Bible scholar who is honest in making the above charge. It is either
ignorance or dishonesty that causes men to thus oppose the record. As we
are not justifiable in saying that Jesus commanded his own betrayal, so we
are not justifiable in saying God commanded lying. Correct principles of
interpretation do not justify the unbeliever in any such blasphemy. When
an evil spirit offered himself to be a lying spirit in the mouth of a
wicked prophet--false prophet--God said, "Go forth and do so," which only
signifies permission, not command. In Jeremiah 4: 10, where the prophet
complains that God had deceived them, saying, "They should have peace,
when the sword reached to the soul," we are to understand that God
permitted the false prophets to deceive him, prophesying peace to the
people, as appears from the history (Ezekiel 14: 9). _I_, the _Lord_, have
deceived that prophet, that is, permitted him to be deceived, and
permitted him to deceive the people, as the legitimate result of their own
wickedness, and a just judgment upon them for their rejection of the
testimony of his true prophets. There is nothing strange about all this;
for as sure as there is a God, so sure it is that he permits wicked lying
men to be deceived in our own day. He has done this in all ages of the
world. In fact, it belongs to his ordained plan to permit, or suffer, men,
individually or collectively, to fall in their own deceptions and
wickedness. This he threatened in the above case, as you may see in the
fifth verse of Ezekiel 14, in these words, "I will take the house of
Israel in their own heart, because they are all estranged from me through
their idols; because they have chosen to themselves false Gods, I will
_suffer them to be deceived_ with _false prophets_; and I will stretch out
my hand _upon him_, and I will _destroy him_ from the midst of my people."
_Destroy whom?_ Ans.--_The false prophet._

When the prophet of God mistook the promise of God, who told him, when he
commissioned him, that he would be with him, by which he understood that
he would be saved from all evils, he said, "Thou hast deceived me, and I
was deceived." This prophet was now a de