Wednesday, October 17, 2012
The Man Who Never Was
In his book The
Man Who Never Was Ewen Montagu recounts the true story of an ingenious ruse
concocted by British Intelligence during World War II. Operation 'Mincemeat' was a scheme employed
by British Intelligence in 1943, in an effort to fool the Axis powers into
thinking Operation 'Husky' (the invasion of Sicily by the Allied forces) would
take place somewhere else.
Operation 'Mincemeat' acquired a human cadaver,
dressed it as a 'Major William Martin, R.M.' and dumped it into the ocean near
Huelva, Spain. Chained to the dead body
was a brief-case that contained fabricated top secret letters which suggested
that the Allies were about to attack Sardinia and Greece. When the body drifted
ashore, pro-German Spaniards discovered the letters and took them to German
Intelligence. The ploy was a smashing
success, causing the Germans to think that Sardinia and Greece were the
intended destination of the Allies, when the Allied forces were actually
landing in Sicily.
The real name of the person whose body was used
remains a secret, although in 1997 someone claimed to have information that it
was Glyndwr Michael, a homeless Welsh alcoholic who had committed suicide. Major William Martin, R.M. never existed.
War stories such as this abound. While it may seem mystical to some, there is
a real war between good and evil. The Bible warns us that the enemy of our
souls, the Devil, uses many tactics similar to the one above. Your enemy and mine is the master of lies and
often resorts to deceit and heckling, only he does it through our thought-life. He attempts to create an imaginary world:
·
He instigates worry and mistrust, causing us
to manufacture problems that don’t exist.
·
By damaging our self esteem, he can easily get
us thinking that people don’t like us.
·
Our memories can become tainted, causing us
to misremember.
·
By demoralizing cultures he causes us to
believe love is a feeling, or marriage is undesirable, or that happiness can be
attained using chemicals.
·
In an effort to protect ourselves from being
disappointed, we can become so skeptical that when good things happen we can’t
accept and enjoy them.
·
Because of the abuse or hurt in our lives we
can come to believe things about ourselves that are not true.
If we are not wise to these devices we can allow
inadvertently believe stories that are not even true. If we believe his lies, we imagine we are
somebody we are not -- the man who never was.
But believers have a solution. God has given us His Word on so many issues. When we calibrate our thinking according to
truth, we are protected from Satan’s ruses.
St Paul said it this way, “For the weapons of our
warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of
strong holds; Casting down imaginations, and
every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and
bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ; (2 Corinthians 10:4-5)
Capture your thoughts. Pull down the strongholds of thinking that
makes you feel inadequate or beyond hope.
Don’t believe everything you hear or feel. Believe the truth of Scripture. Believe that God loves you and that anything
that is out of order in life can be set in order if you will allow Him to be
captain of your ship. The truth shall make you deception-free!
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