By Thomas Paine, Presented by Lewis Loflin
The Church tells us that the books of the Old and New Testament are divine revelation, and without this revelation we could not have true ideas of God.
The Deist, on the contrary, says that those books are not divine revelation; and that were it not for the light of reason and the religion of Deism, those books, instead of teaching us true ideas of God, would teach us not only false but blasphemous ideas of Him.
Deism teaches us that God is a God of truth and justice. Does the Bible teach the same doctrine? It does not.
The Bible says (Jeremiah 20:7) that God is a deceiver. "O Lord," says Jeremiah, "thou hast deceived me, and I was deceived. Thou art stronger than I, and hast prevailed."
Jeremiah not only upbraids God with deceiving him, but in Jeremiah 4:10, he accuses God of deceiving Jerusalem’s people: "Ah! Lord God, surely thou hast greatly deceived this people and Jerusalem, saying, ye shall have peace, whereas the sword reacheth unto the soul."
In Jeremiah 15:18, the Bible grows bolder, calling God a liar outright: "Wilt thou be altogether unto me as a liar and as waters that fail?"
Ezekiel 14:9 has God admit, "If the prophet be deceived when he hath spoken a thing, I the Lord have deceived that prophet." All this is downright blasphemy.
The prophet Micaiah (2 Chronicles 18:18-21) tells a shocking story: "I saw the Lord sitting on His throne, and all the hosts of Heaven standing on His right hand and on His left. And the Lord said, who shall entice Ahab, King of Israel, to go up and fall at Ramoth Gilead? And one spoke after this manner, and another after that manner.
"Then there came out a spirit and stood before the Lord and said, I will entice him. And the Lord said unto him, wherewith? And he said, I will go out and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. And the Lord said, Thou shalt entice him, and thou shalt also prevail; go out, and do even so."
We recoil at thieves plotting to rob and murder, luring their victim into a trap. What then of a book portraying the Almighty scheming in Heaven to entrap and ruin mankind? Our sense of His justice and goodness rejects such tales. We must conclude a lying spirit has tainted the Bible’s writers.
—Thomas Paine
Acknowledgment: Thanks to Grok, an AI by xAI, for formatting assistance. The content is Paine’s, presented with my edits. —Lewis Loflin
Section updated, added 4/05/2025