The world, and when I say world, I mean the whole world, throws around the term “god” so much that you don’t know what anyone is talking about unless you’re given more information about this “god” or the one talking. If you’re in the south in the United States, you’ll hear “God bless their heart” or “bless their heart” – god inferred. In other places you’ll hear “god save the queen,” “god bless this or that” or the term god used as a slang or curse word. But in all of these things, we don’t know what or who “god” is referring to.

There’s a good reason for that. The world (again, referring to the entire world – not the world as opposed to the church) has lost the concept and meaning of god. Well, they haven’t lost it. It’s just that they were given a different concept of Him and accepted it.

The world, and many in the church, have an idea of a counterfeit god.

In fact, the majority of people have an idea of a counterfeit god, and that idea fits into one of two categories.

Here’s the truth: There’s only one God that has ever existed. And He has existed before time began. He is the creator of everything we see. His name is Jehovah. He’s El Shaddai, Elohim. That’s it. There’s no other God.

There’s not this god and that god. There’s not a god of the Israelites and a god of the Amorites. There’s not a god of the Jews, a god of the Christians, a god of the Muslims, and a god of the Buddhists, a bunch for the Hindus, etc, etc, etc.

We may think that, or have this concept in the back of our mind that comes close to a belief because we’re told these things so much, but it’s not true. It’s a lie. It’s a big, fat, evil lie.

There’s the one and only God. And then there’s every other demon, devil, and spirit that is pretending to be a god. That’s the truth. That’s one of the counterfeit gods. You have all these devils and demons masquerading as God to various people groups, nations, cultures, and anyone who will give them attention and pay them honor and worship. They thrive on that and gain authority in people’s life and regions based on that worship and honor. But none of them is God. None of them is worthy of any honor, worship, or praise.

The only one worthy of any human’s worship, praise, devotion, and life is Jehovah because it’s Jehovah that created everything we see, including every human that has or will ever exist. Don’t fall into the trap of believing that any other entity that masquerades as a god is equal, or even close, to Him. They all bow at His feet.

But that’s not the only counterfeit god. The next counterfeit isn’t a god that tries to stand side-by-side with the real Creator of everything. This is the god that mankind makes up and gives the name Jehovah to. This is taking God and saying He is something He is not. Millions do this and have done this for centuries. Every religious person and even many believers do this constantly and continually.

God kills babies today. Doesn’t happen. A counterfeit god.

God doesn’t heal today or only heals those He chooses or who are worthy. Doesn’t happen. A counterfeit god.

God is waiting to punish anyone that doesn’t do exactly what He says. Doesn’t happen. A counterfeit god.

Sometimes we like to take one scripture and apply it to God and say this is the character of God. That’s not how it works.

We can’t recognize the character of God based on a single scripture – no more than we can take a sentence spoken by a person and identify the character of that person. If I met you for 3.5 seconds, heard a few words from your mouth, there is no way that I could tell everyone around me what kind of person you are. It’s impossible. And to try and do so is just wrong. It’s a lie.

Doing this creates a counterfeit god.

But we try to do this all the time with God. We take one scripture, or maybe even two, and then make a decision that God is like this or that based only on that one or two scriptures. Or worse, we have an experience and because of that experience in life, we decide that God has to be like whatever crazy thing we think – based solely on that one experience.

If I came up to you, said hello, and you were to say something completely off-the-wall, I would not subscribe the characteristic of being crazy to you. Maybe you had a bad day, maybe there’s something else about you I don’t know. Maybe something tragic just happened. I can’t take a single experience and build a belief or identify your character based on that. Yet we do that. We do it with humans all the time. And we do that with God.

Let’s continue down this line. If you invited me into your house for dinner and you pull out of the oven some burnt food, I could infer that you’re a terrible cook. If you say it happens all the time, I might think you like to eat burnt food. I storm out because I get offended at your food and so now my mind is racing with all these thoughts: you hate me, you like to poison people with burnt food, you like eating only burnt food. Maybe you even run after me and try to explain, but I’m too busy telling all my friends on social media that not only are you a burnt food extremist, but also that you raise mice to eat them later, because I think I possibly might have seen a mouse in the corner behind the fridge…maybe.

And the truth is the oven has been messed up for the past two months, but the landlord won’t fix it. And I saw a piece of dirt on my glasses that looked like a mouse. But I was to busy running out and making up my mind before getting the facts.

And we do that all the time with God.

We go to church and a Christian acts like an unbeliever and we base the character of God on that person, not on God’s Word. Or the most faithful woman in church, who prays all the time, and if anyone would get healed, it’d be her – and since she didn’t, God must not be a healer. But we don’t look at what the Word says. We base God’s blessings on our goodness, not our faith. We don’t look at what the Word says.

Or we look around the world and see things going on and determine that God is evil. Maybe we look at the pandemic going on and determine that God is either not all powerful or maybe He’s evil. Why would He let things like this happen. We don’t even consider the fact that mankind has a part to play in what happens on earth because if God is real, then He wouldn’t let anything bad happen. And on the other hand, the thought of God controlling every decision and choice that we could possibly make down to the letter would make us think that He is an evil monarch. So no matter what decision we come to using either of those lines of thought, God is wrong.

But we don’t consider His Word – the only place to gather the truth of recognizing the real character of God. We instead create a counterfeit god.

This could go on and on and on. But in the end, the conclusion would be the same. If you want to learn the character of a person, you have to go to the source – actually talking to that person. You can’t make a decision on who someone is without talking to them, getting to know them, being around them. But we like to do that with God. We make up ideas of what God must be like, based on our own opinions and thoughts, that have no basis in fact or truth. We could never do that with anyone else. Politicians and the media may try to. Scientists, historians, any rational, logical person however, would say that you ignorant, stupid, or crazy for doing that.

To get to know God, you have to be around Him. And the first place you start is His Word. He’s given it to the entire world so they can see the kind of being that He is, so they can see His character. And the closer you get to Him, the more time you spend with Him, the more He reveals Himself. But if you don’t know Him, become acquainted with Him, He won’t show up and spend time with you – just like any other person on the planet. The Bible says that the children of Israel knew the acts of God. They were eyewitnesses to the things He did. They could look back and say that God did this, this, and this. But it says that Moses knew the ways of God. Moses didn’t even need to be around, someone could have said this or that happened, and He could stand right there and say, “Yep, that sounds like my God.” He had become acquainted with Him.

He didn’t let someone else tell Him about God every Sunday and Wednesday. He got to know Him daily – morning, noon, and night. He wanted to know God Himself. And he also knew that the person telling him might be well-meaning and well-intended, but they might be wrong about their opinion of God. They might have created their own counterfeit god and were trying to pass it on to others, with the best intentions. He wanted to know God for Himself.

For Christians that know God, and know the truth, they can hear people say this and that about God and immediately recognize that this person doesn’t know a thing about God. Or maybe they don’t know Him like they think. It might even be coming from a pulpit. They either made up or bought into a lie about a counterfeit god.

That’s why you stay with the Word of God and the Spirit of God. Don’t follow after any counterfeits, especially a counterfeit god.