I’ve spent many of my working/career years in a banking environment. Most of that time was spent in the operations and bookkeeping departments, but I’ve done my share of teller work. Which means you handle money. Lots of it. One of the things I did was to help count the vault. (I use to kid my co-workers that I got to be ‘Queen’ – you know, ‘the Queen was in her counting house, counting out her money’…Okay, I guess you had to be there to appreciate my sense of humor).

Where was I going with all this? Oh, yes. Money. They tell you the best way to spot a counterfeit bill is by handling the real thing. It makes sense. In our training classes we saw and held a number of counterfeit bills. It’s amazing how close to the real thing people can make fake money! But there are ways to tell if a bill is real or not.

The first thing, as I mentioned, is the feel of the bill. Our money is made from special paper – part linen and part cotton. It also has special ink and a printing process called ‘intaglio’ so the ink sits on top of the paper. It has a unique feel. I’m not sure I could describe its texture, but counting all those bills everyday I became accustomed to the touch of it so when we were blindfolded and asked to find the fake bill I could actually pick it out from the real ones! Being familiar with the genuine article helped to figure out when a phony bill came along. A second way to check if a bill is good is to watch for the shifting ink colors in the corner (on denominations larger than $5).

So knowing the real thing and being observant will serve you well in determining what kind of money you are dealing with. So it is in the spiritual realm. Satan is the original counterfeiter. He is very good at making something look like truth when it is mixed with lies. ‘Somewhat’ true is not truth at all. It’s like being handed a glass of water and told to go ahead and drink it – it only has a little arsenic mixed in with it. God’s Word is the original. Are you familiar enough with it and its principals to recognize Satan’s counterfeit?

There are other ways to examine currency to see if it is the genuine article, but they involve holding money up to a light source to check for watermarks and security threads. What a great spiritual illustration! The Holy Spirit illuminates God’s Word. 1 John 5:7 tells us that the Holy Spirit confirms the truth, Eph 3:5 that He reveals the mysteries of God, 1 Co 2:13 that He teaches us and explains spiritual truth, and John 14:26 that He will remind us of what He has taught us. Do you want to know if something is true? We have a helper in the Holy Spirit to guide us to the Real Thing.

One final thought on sorting out the authentic from the forged. There is microprinting around the portraits on our bills. Sometimes it takes a magnifying glass to see it. It certainly takes close examination and scrutiny. You have to search for it.

Are you willing to make that kind of effort with the Word of God?

All for Him,

Missy