Ever since that day in the garden when the serpent tempted Eve, he has relentlessly attacked the truth with lies, using the same strategies over and over to sow doubt and disbelief in the human mind. . . . The form of his evil dialect rarely changes. He questions the truth God has revealed “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?” (Genesis 3:1). Then he contradicts what God has said “You will not surely die” (Genesis 3:4). Finally, he concocts an alternative version of the “truth” “God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5). The devil’s alternative credo often has a few carefully chosen elements of truth in the mix—but always diluted and thoroughly blended with falsehoods, contradictions, misrepresentations, distortions, and every other imaginable perversion of reality. Add it all up and the bottom line is a big lie.

– John MacArthur