Thirty or so years ago, I spent a few summer months in eastern Europe. I went with a group of college students who offered free English lessons, and we used Luke’s gospel as our textbook. Our weekdays were filled with teaching teenaged and adult students of varying levels of English competency, but on Saturdays we were allowed to do a little shopping.

I remember walking through a department store with a friend, looking for gifts for family back home. As we tried to compute the exchange rate of the price tags versus US dollars, we saw a row of brightly-colored t-shirts with the brand name “Lee” printed in the center. Only it was really Lee. The “e” letters were flipped upside and backwards so that it looked a bit like “LGG.” After we noticed this, we started seeing lots of American brands that were just a little inaccurate, and we realized they were knock-offs, counterfeit merchandise.

With the widespread use of AI bots and ChatGPT, more than ever I’m looking for something real, something face to face, something personal. Jesus had words of warning about those with a counterfeit message about the coming of the Son of Man. In Matthew 24, He said, “If anyone tries to flag you down, calling out, ‘Here’s the Messiah!’ or points, ‘There he is!’ don’t fall for it. Fake Messiahs and lying preachers are going to pop up everywhere. Their impressive credentials and bewitching performances will pull the wool over the eyes of even those who ought to know better.” (The Message) We didn’t invent deceit and phony propaganda in this century. We just keep creating new ways to trick people.

Fake Messiahs reminds me of the seventh book in C.S. Lewis’ masterful series, The Chronicles of Narnia. In the final book, which is aptly titled The Last Battle, the reader is introduced to Puzzle the Donkey and Shift the Ape. It’s the final days of Narnia and these animals have discovered a lion skin that made its way down a waterfall and into the pool where they hauled it out. Shift tricks Puzzle into wearing the lion skin which the ape sews up into a costume. The plan is for Puzzle to pretend to be Aslan, the Great Lion of Narnia, and Shift will speak for this counterfeit king. As the story moves forward, you see that Shift is using Aslan’s name to get the power he craves. Confusion and chaos reigns as good people follow a fake leader down a dangerous path. Shift even convinces some that Aslan is the same as Tash, the false god worshipped by the Calormenes.

Before the real identity of Puzzle is eventually revealed (please read this series if you haven’t, or do it again if you have), the human king of Narnia is a prisoner along with his trusty steed, Jewel the Unicorn. The king is considering his looming death and says, “Do you think I care if Aslan dooms me to death? That would be nothing, nothing at all. Would it not be better to be dead than to have this horrible fear that Aslan has come and is not like the Aslan we have believed in and longed for? It is as if the sun rose one day and were a black sun.”

Not to give everything away (did I mention that you should read this??), but Aslan does return triumphantly and the ending of the book is the most beautiful glimpse into heaven and eternal life. They experience a realness that’s unlike anything they’ve known before. The colors are inexplicably brilliant. It’s as if the world they knew before—even on its best days—was just a distorted reflection in a mirror. This is what I’m holding out for, a life so real and so rewarding that all else pales in comparison. No knock-offs and cheap imitations. I want what I can only get from living under the rule of the true King.