I finally got to see Spider-Man: Far From Home.

It was amazing to return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) after Avengers: Endgame. The special effects and easter eggs were amazing, but above all, it was exciting to see major developments in the MCU.

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!

While watching the trailers for Far From Home, I had a nagging feeling that Mysterio would really be a villain instead of a supporting superhero. It was anyone’s guess how this reveal would occur. Did Mysterio really have superpowers? Was he the one who created the Elementals – was he somehow controlling them?

Well, the movie eventually revealed that Mysterio was indeed a villain. He was concocting a brilliant lie, one in which he was the superhero who saves the day. He pretended he was willing to put himself in harm’s way for the sake of others. Even with his dying breath – if he actually died – he insisted that “people will believe anything”.

This lie carried all the way to the bonus scene after the credits when Mysterio twisted Spider-Man’s words to portray Spider-Man as the villain. Mysterio had succeeded in fooling others into believing in his illusion.

Just as Spider-Man was far from home while on his overseas science trip, the Israelites too were far from Jerusalem more than 600 years before Jesus’ birth. At the time, they had been taken captive in Babylon. 

Now, here’s where the prophet Jeremiah is like Spider-Man. Jeremiah too faced a struggle against lies. He sought to tell Israel the truth about their exile to Babylon, that they would be in exile for a significant period of time and should “serve the king of Babylon and live” (Jeremiah 27:16).

But Jeremiah faced competition, a false prophet named Hananiah who told the people something else.

“Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: I have broken the yoke of the king of Babylon. Within two years I will bring back to this place all the vessels of the Lord’s house, which Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon took away from this place and carried to Babylon. I will also bring back to this place Jeconiah the son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, and all the exiles from Judah who went to Babylon, declares the Lord, for I will break the yoke of the king of Babylon.” (Jeremiah 28:2-4)

Hananiah’s words were tempting: exile was a terrible state to be in, and the hope that Israel could be delivered within two years from their captivity in Babylon was a far more palatable alternative to the reality that they would have to spend seventy years in that place (Jeremiah 29:10). Ultimately, Hananiah was punished for his false prophecy, and died as a result of his rebellion against the Lord (Jeremiah 28:16-17).

The deliverance of God doesn’t always come in the way we hope. Sometimes it takes a different form or arrives at a different time from what we might expect.

In the exile, a time of great suffering for Israel, Hananiah’s words would have been so alluring. They would have made so much sense to Israel. After all, wasn’t God a mighty warrior who had delivered Israel on countless occasions before? Was He not a loving and forgiving God? Surely He would intervene and deliver Israel quickly. Surely He would punish Babylon for their wicked ways and bring Israel home.

Weren’t two years a sufficiently long time?

These questions are even more striking when we realise that the exchange between Jeremiah and Hananiah provides the context to the well-known verse of Jeremiah 29:11-14.

“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.”

Many believers today seek comfort in this promise of God to Israel, and rightly so because God does love us and have great plans for us.

But when we understand the context of this promise, we see that the deliverance of God doesn’t always come in the way we hope. Sometimes it takes a different form or arrives at a different time from what we might expect. At such times, the temptation to believe in lies will be very great, for false prophecy did not die with the death of Hananiah, nor are false doctrines a thing of the past.

How then do we guard ourselves against the devil’s lies?

Well, just as Spider-Man relied on his “Peter tingle” (spider-sense) to vanquish the deceptive illusions, believers today can stand against false doctrines by holding firmly to God’s truth.

The Apostle Paul, in writing to Titus, told him about one of the qualifications for eldership: “He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it” (Titus 1:9).

Whether or not we desire to be elders, we would do well to hold firm to the trustworthy word. As Christians, we can be lulled into a false sense of complacency, thinking that we already knew the truth from the time we first believed, and that we are already learning enough from being in church on Sunday mornings to guard against deception.

The lies of the devil can have deadly consequences on our lives if we fail to stay alert and hold firmly to the truth.

But given the insidious allures of false doctrine, it is so easy for us to fall prey to the “empty talkers and deceivers” (Titus 1:10) of the world. But if we hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, and shake off the comforts of complacency; if we diligently seek to know God through the sum of His Word and are discontent with a piecemeal knowledge of our favourite promises – then we will be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and rebuke those who contradict it.

Without his spider-sense, Spider-Man would have been deceived by Mysterio and killed. In the same way, the lies of the devil can have deadly consequences on our lives if we fail to stay alert and hold firmly to the truth.

May all of us, as children of God, hold firmly to the Bible and study it diligently every day, that we may wage war against the deceptive illusions of the Mysterios of this world.