00:00I thought to look today at some aspects of what the Bible says is going to happen in
00:05the last days, and particularly in the area of false Christs and false prophets.
00:11So you'll read from Matthew 24, start at verse 3.
00:24Now as he sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, saying, tell
00:28us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign of your coming, and of the end
00:32of the age?
00:33And Jesus answered and said to them, take heed that no one deceives you, for many will
00:38come in my name, saying, I am the Christ, and will deceive many.
00:42You hear of wars, and rumors of wars, see that you are not troubled, for all these things
00:45must come to pass, but the end is not yet.
00:48For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.
00:51There will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places.
00:56All these are the beginning of sorrows.
00:58Then they will deliver you up to tribulation, and kill you, and you'll be hated by all nations
01:02for my name's sake.
01:03The many will be offended, and will betray one another, and will hate one another, and
01:07many false prophets will rise up and deceive many.
01:12And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold, but he who endures
01:16to the end will be saved, and the gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world
01:23as a witness to all nations, and then the end will come.
01:28Very briefly, you can see in that passage, Jesus speaks about a series of events that
01:31are going to take place at the end of days.
01:34And he begins with a message speaking about the reason why you should take heed, because
01:41people are going to deceive you.
01:42Take heed that no one deceives you.
01:44Many will come in my name, saying, I am the Christ, and will deceive many.
01:48Otherwise, one of the primary features which Jesus says is going to happen in this last
01:52day's age is a process of deception, deception concerning the person of Jesus Christ.
02:02I don't think it means necessarily that all these people are going to come and say, I
02:04am the Messiah.
02:05They're going to be saying, I'm representing some kind of a spiritual way in which you
02:09can come to God, and it'll be a false way.
02:12So Jesus is warning you that one of the features which you're going to see in the last days
02:15is going to be a spirit of deception.
02:18And that's what I want to major on today, because that spirit of deception is going
02:22to lead to all the other things which are going to come in the world.
02:25The wars, the famines, the earthquakes, well, perhaps not the earthquakes, but certainly
02:28things which are going to take place, which will happen as a result of humans disobeying
02:32God and leading up to persecution, and also infiltration and apostasy within the body
02:38of Christ, the people who believe in Jesus.
02:43And in verse 11, he goes on to say, many false prophets will rise up and will deceive many.
02:48So we have many false prophets rising up, they're going to deceive many.
02:52So they're going to be getting this emphasis on deception.
02:55And he says it's going to lead to lawlessness, which will abound.
02:59Love of many will grow cold.
03:01If you look up the original Greek, the word for lawlessness, which is used there is anomia,
03:08which means against the nomos, or against the law, or against the Torah.
03:11So there's going to be a strong spirit at this time in which people are going to say
03:16they're going to break God's commandments, and that should be what you should do.
03:20Now, one of the things you find happening in our time is that very spirit taking place.
03:25You find people saying that you can break God's commandments on all kinds of level,
03:29particularly in the areas of sexual morality, and God doesn't mind you can get away with
03:33it.
03:34One of the things happening in the Church of England at the present time is because
03:37they want to bring in a blessing on homosexuality, it's causing actually a split in the church.
03:43And the ones who are on the right side, if you like, who believe the Bible are saying,
03:47no, you're going against the doctrine of the church, you're going against the teaching
03:50of Jesus Christ by saying you can do this because you're blessing sin, you're blessing
03:55lawlessness.
03:56And so you have a division in the church.
03:59And this is, again, one of the signs of the last days.
04:01You see, people are saying that you can break God's commandments and still be blessed.
04:05Oh, the Bible says you can't.
04:07God will bless obedience and God blesses righteousness, but he doesn't bless sin and
04:12disobedience.
04:14So this is another sign of the second coming, the end times.
Comments