So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. - Revelation 12:9.

You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it. - John 8:44.

When I was a teenager, movies and television would often show stunt men driving cars incredibly fast jumping over rivers and various other hazards. When the cars landed, they almost always made it without any damage, and then they zoomed off to do more fantastic stunts. A friend and I were playing chase in our cars one night on the football field of the little high school I attended. We saw some car lights coming and naturally wanted to escape being caught driving on the grass of the football field. My friend somehow escaped in his car, but I was cornered. The only way to escape was to jump a six-foot wide ditch at the end of the field.

Having watched so many cars jump much wider and bigger obstacles on TV, I thought for sure I could jump a little six-foot ditch. Actually, I did successfully jump the ditch but when the car landed, the impact slammed the fan through the radiator and bent the frame of the car. It was a hard landing! The car died about a hundred feet from the ditch. It was not one of the better moments of my life, and it went downhill from there. Can you imagine having to explain to your parents why you were even driving around on the football field much less why you tried to jump a ditch? Not a pleasant experience!

I learned one very important lesson from my ditch jumping experience. I learned that you cannot believe everything you see on television or movies. Television and movies rarely portray the reality of alcohol and drug abuse. Instead, alcohol and illegal substances are glamorized when the reality of abusing those things is much more brutal than when my car came in for a hard landing. Sex outside of marriage is presented as the normal thing for people to be a part of by the film industry. However, they rarely present the broken lives that result from living apart from God’s plan. And they almost never present the dangers of HIV and STDs, which often severely damage the health of those participating for a lifetime.

The devil is a liar and a murderer who seeks to destroy as many as he can, including you. The film industry to a large part is a willing tool of deception in the devil’s hands presenting a distorted enticing view of life. The devil is a master at presenting evil as being good. “…sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it (Genesis 4:7b)." Don’t buy into the devil’s lies because if you do it will be a very hard landing!