THE POWER OF PERSUASION –
Much has been written about the power of persuasion. There are many ideas about how a person’s character enters into their ability to persuade another person.
Unfortunately, it is not just the people of good character that have the determination to persuade. Neither is it only bad people who make it their goal to persuade others to their way of thinking. The challenge is to determine the validity of the person and the strength of his character before buying into what he/she wants you to do or believe.
We see the art of persuasion at work in all areas of life. We see it most obviously in the area of politics. We see it in politicians but also in the news media. Truth often becomes secondary to convincing people to follow a certain way of thinking.
This is certainly not new in our society, and we see it clearly in the pages of scripture. Being persuaded to do good or evil can be found in both the Old and New Testaments, and the persuasion results both in good and bad outcomes.
When Jesus had been crucified and buried, Roman soldiers were placed at the opening of the tomb to guard against the body being stolen by the disciples. On the third day, just as Jesus had predicted, He arose from the dead.
The soldiers lay in front of the empty tomb, having been frightened by the great earthquake and the descending of an angel from heaven. Matthew 28:4 says that the guards became like dead men.
So here are the guards, lying in front of the empty tomb, knowing that they have to report this incident to authorities. They had lost the one person they were to guard, and now they will lose their lives.
The chief priests and elders come together to discuss the incident, and they decide to pay the soldiers off. They give them money and instruct them to tell everyone that Jesus’ disciples somehow managed to steal His body.
Then they are told, “And if this come to the governor’s ears, we will persuade him, and secure you” (Matthew 28:14 KJV).
Here the authorities are going to lie in order to persuade the governor to ignore that the guards lost the prisoner. Their defense is that the prisoner, though having been crucified and declared dead, has been stolen from a sealed tomb in the middle of the night.
Money was the power of persuasion in this case. It gives merit to the old saying, “Money talks!”
We see a different kind of persuasion in Genesis 3. The serpent approached God’s precious creation, woman, with tricks and lies that eventually caused the destruction of mankind.
Listen to the conversation between the serpent and the woman.
“Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’? And the woman said to the serpent
but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die. But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
Who or what was this serpent? The book of John in the New Testament describes him. John says, “You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” Revelation 12:9 refers to the devil as “the old serpent.”
The devil was persuasive. He wanted to capture Eve for his own, and he did it by appealing to her with her desire to be wise and the desire to eat food that looked good.
So, how does the devil appear to us today? How does he persuade us? He does it in the ways where we are weak. Let’s look at how he managed to get Eve to do wrong:
- Genesis 3:1—He questioned whether or not it was sinful.
- Genesis 3:4—He denied it was dangerous.
- Genesis 3:5—He said Eve would have an advantage over God.
What the devil did was to lie in a sneaky way to Eve. He persuaded her that God just wanted to keep her from being smart.
The devil does the same thing to us today. He tricks us by persuading us that certain things are not really wrong. He uses our friends, TV, magazines, our desire to be popular, our need to be accepted.
We must evaluate the validity of everything that comes into our lives. The standard by which we do this must be God’s Word.
The only way to resist the persuasive voice of the devil is found in James 4:7. James says, “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”
Sandra Oliver