A few months ago, when we studied Paul’s first letter to Timothy, we read in chapter 4, “The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron.”
He also says at the beginning of 2 Timothy 3, But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. 2 People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, 4 treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— 5 having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.
I’m sure you’ve noticed that these things have been increasing in our society. But how, where, and why is this happening? Well, I see it stemming from two areas.
The first is in the lack of child discipline, which results in a lack of self-discipline later on in life when those children become adults. You remember when spanking was controversial–well, now, any form of discipline is controversial. And so, over the course of a couple of generations, undisciplined children who also receive participation trophies rather than earning them become undisciplined adults who feel entitled to be enabled to live however they want with a pat on their back. And now, I think we’re stuck with it.
If you pay attention to YouTube or TikTok, you’ll see young adults having child-like meltdowns over not getting their way, and it’s unfortunately becoming more common.
Speaking of young adults, the second area where our culture’s current behavior is stemming from is the result of lack of church attendance. I had breakfast with OC yesterday, and we talked about some churches we’ve been to and some absolutely unChristian ways in which Christians behave. I had dinner two nights before that with a friend of mine who was a pastor of a Baptist church many years ago. And thankfully, it wasn’t an American Baptist Church, but still, one of those Baptist churches that puts Baptist churches to shame.
He’s no longer a pastor because the church chewed him up and spat him out.
This is the number one reason why fewer people are going to church. If you ask anyone you know why they don’t go to church anymore, a lot of them will say it’s because of us. That’s a whole other sermon unto itself. However, dwindling church attendance across the board affects the spiritual guidance of a whole society. Couple that with secular humanism being taught in educational institutions, and children are growing up not only ignorant of Christianity, but when they’re in college, the universities pose a fairly negative view of Christianity; and as we know, ignorance breeds hatred. And so what we’re seeing is a growing distaste for Christianity because they say God is a moral monster, and so are we.
Oh, by the way, the “good Christians” in today’s society are the progressive ones who encourage loving one another, but their only repentance is in regard to our society’s so-called phobias.
Let me remind you of the verse I read in 2 Timothy where Paul describes the people of the last days as “5 having a form of godliness but denying its power.”
From gotquestions.org:
Progressive theology broadly rejects historic views of the Bible. That usually means discarding concepts such as biblical inspiration, inerrancy, and preservation. Progressive-minded readers may attempt to insert their ideas into passages where such ideas were never meant to be found.
Christianity, as historically understood, and modern “progressive Christianity” are diverging enough that some consider them separate religions. What once implied “tolerance and openness within a biblical framework” has now shifted. In practice, modern “progressive” faith means “religion conforming to left-leaning political and social trends.” What’s celebrated as “progressive Christianity” today is mostly an earthly, secular, humanist political framework covered by a thin religious veneer.
So now we have a growing secular and religious progressive worldview meeting a shrinking world, and what do you get? A collective worldwide worldview that calls itself Christian but is anti-Biblical. Do you get where I’m going with this? An antiBiblical worldview in a shrinking world becomes an anti-Christ system, which in a shrinking world will usher in an antichrist world leader. The people will embrace this leader willingly and happily because he’s the embodiment of their worldview.
A dictator will eventually find his way into deceiving the hearts of the people with his charm, and once he has all of his chess pieces in place, there will be no one to oppose him since he will have the reins of the whole world.
Sounds like a dystopian novel, but when you think about it, it’s just common sense. History is bound to repeat itself, but in just another, more sophisticated form. We’re repeating the tower of Babel all over again, where the known world at that time wanted to unite and build a temple to themselves and reach heaven as a monument to humanity, not God.
The World Economic Forum and The Great Reset are perfect examples of a worldwide system today. They want to make policies and procedures with a lot of hand-shaking and back-slapping from world leaders and global corporate elites to unify under their new world system. Although they sugarcoat their intentions, it’s really just a form of control. It sounds like something out of a James Bond movie; even their leader, Klaus Schwab, looks and sounds like a Bond villain, but it’s all real.
Then we add in RFID chips, I’m sure many of you have heard about them. They’re computer chips that can be implanted in our skin, and in those chips is our entire identity–so that identity theft can be eliminated. But we know how our identity is already digitized, as is our banking. So now imagine it all on one chip. We can go to the convenient self-checkout at Walmart and buy anything with just the swipe of our hand. We can be ambulanced to an emergency room while we’re unconscious, and not worry about our medical records because they can be scanned from the chip; and the doctor can not only check our health records, but also our blood pressure, temperature and whatnot from those chips in real time–farmers already do this with cows. They can monitor everything they need to know about the cow as they’re milking it.
They use them for tracking pets if the pet gets lost, tracking their health, and all kinds of stuff. Why wouldn’t a generation or two from now want the same benefits for their kids?
But imagine this in the hands of an all-powerful world government. All of a sudden, with a single decree, you could turn from happily living your life to having no food, no clothing, no shelter, and no medical treatment overnight. Reminds me of those who lost their jobs because they wouldn’t comply with COVID mandates. It’s like The Twilight Zone episode “The Obsolete Man.”
But I believe we’ll be gone by then. Why?
If you have your Bibles, please turn with me to Matthew 24. And as you’re turning there, let me read to you out of Daniel.
Daniel 12:1-4 says this:
1 “At that time Michael, the great prince who protects your people, will arise. There will be a time of distress such as has not happened from the beginning of nations until then. But at that time your people—everyone whose name is found written in the book—will be delivered. 2 Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt. 3 Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever. 4 But you, Daniel, roll up and seal the words of the scroll until the time of the end. Many will go here and there to increase knowledge.”
Did you hear that last part? “Many will go here and there to increase knowledge.”
The meaning can be twofold:
The first is that if this is talking about general knowledge and a general increase in traveling, then it’s pretty obvious. The past 100 years has seen travel and knowledge increase at an alarming rate, far greater than all of history combined. But others say that this verse is referring strictly to the scriptures. Well, we don’t have to go far to realize that knowledge of the scriptures has been rising as well through evangelism and world missions.
If you have your Bibles open, now we’re going to go to Matthew 24, starting with verse 4 and going through verse 14. You can see that Jesus isn’t talking about quite the same subjects that I talked about, but you can see how some of these things that he did talk about have been on the news.
4 Jesus answered: “Watch out that no one deceives you. 5 For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Messiah,’ and will deceive many. 6 You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. 7 Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places.
Before I go any further, there have been some false messiahs throughout history, we just haven’t really heard of them because most of them have been in other countries. But we have heard of cult leaders and those who have deceived many people. I just mentioned Progressive Christianity, but there’s also the New Apostolic Reformation that’s deceiving a lot of people, the Word of Faith movement which ties that in with The Prosperity Gospel.
Like I said, wars and rumors of war. We’ve had some tornadoes in weird places lately. There are no tornadoes in the Middle East, by the way, which is why Jesus didn’t mention them to his audience–they would have had no idea what he was talking about, so I don’t think it would be sacrilegious to insert that into this list. But little by little, we’ve been having earthquakes, hurricanes, and weird weather all around.
8 All these are the beginning of birth pains.
9 “Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. 10 At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, 11 and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. 12 Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, 13 but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.
And then he says this:
14 And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.
On November 23, 2018, an op-ed entitled, “Knowledge doubles almost every day, and it’s set to increase,” was published online by the Digital Journal. In that article, Feras A. Batarseh of the London School of Economics points out:
Until year 1900, human knowledge approximately doubled every century. However, by 1950 human knowledge doubled every 25 years. In 2000, human knowledge would double every year. Now, our knowledge is almost doubling every day. (3)
The Digital Journal even referred to the “knowledge tsunami” we are all so familiar with. If the early American hero Daniel Boone (1734–1820) could somehow be transported into our hi-tech times, he would probably be so shocked that his rifle might go off and shoot himself in the foot! Mega-cities, towering skyscrapers, superfast flying machines, international satellites and space stations, hands-free electric cars, underground transportation systems, fiber optics, facial recognition security devices, iPhones, and instant messaging—these are just a few current wonders.
What will come tomorrow?
No one knows.
If you still have your Bibles open to Matthew 24, I’m going to go down further and read verses 36-44. I’m not going to follow this reading with any comments, just let the word speak for themselves, but I am going to preface this by saying at the beginning of this sermon, I said that if I were to put it all into one sentence, it would be Jesus’ words in verse 4: “Let no one deceive you.” Let’s consider that in light of these verses, starting with 36.
36 “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 37 As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 38 For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; 39 and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 40 Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. 41 Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left.
42 “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. 43 But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. 44 So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.
If you have your bookmarks to 2 Peter 3. We’re going to read verses 11-17. Again, I’m not going to have any concluding words after this, but just let this passage speak for itself as we close.
2 Peter 3:11-17
11 Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives 12 as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. 13 But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells.
14 So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him. 15 Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote to you with the wisdom that God gave him. 16 He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.
17 Therefore, dear friends, since you have been forewarned, be on your guard so that you may not be carried away by the error of the lawless and fall from your secure position. 18 But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever! Amen.
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