We are getting closer to the end times and many will be deceived for a lack of knowledge because they do not know God's Word. In those last few decades, I have heard more false prophecies from people in the church than accurate ones. This is extremely dangerous, what these people are doing. Satan and his fallen angels will use supernatural things like miracles to deceive many. Even the most mature Christians can fall for this.
You might say that you love God, but deep down you still want to live for the world. You put your earthly pleasures in front of God.
There are supernatural things that happens at times, but not as much as people think. In Islam, Muhammad claimed that the angel Gabriel appeared to him and gave him revelations from Allah. How can you live for God, according to His Word, if you don't know God's Word?
We are in a very interesting generation because when we look at what's going on in the world and has been going on in the last few decades and we compare that to Bible prophecy, we see very clearly that we are approaching the end times, the birth pains. But Scripture also warns us that there will be great deception in the last days. What deception? That is what I'm going to talk about because how will you know how to avoid it if you don't know what they are? So I want to talk about three of them.
Let's start with the first one. A false gospel. Over the years many churches have already fallen away from sound biblical doctrine. You know, when we move away from Scripture or add to it, then what are we doing? We are creating a religion in our own heads and in churches that does not exist, that is man-made, that is not built on the Word of God alone.
And we can only trust His word to be absolute truth.
Galatians 1:6: "I'm astonished that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel. Not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ." This happened back then and now it is far worse. These are people within the church.
They might even be in your church. Then it says, "But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preach to you, let him be accursed." You know, today the biggest false gospel movement is actually fueled by people who call themselves prophets that they hear directly from God or from angels and have truth that you need to listen to over what the Bible says.
And often that it contradicts what the Bible says as well. The truth is, in those last few decades I have heard more false prophecies from people in the church than accurate ones.
False prophecies is a sign of a false prophet, a false teacher. Deuteronomy 18:20 says: "But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die." This is so serious to God. You see, a lot of people play around with this today. There's even schools teaching people how to prophesize and they they train them and they test then and they just go, "Well, I feel like God is saying this now or I feel like God is saying this now.
" And yes, we can be led through the Holy Spirit, but the Holy Spirit will never contradict Scripture. And you cannot tap into God as if He's an energy.
God speaks to you when He wants to speak to you when it is the right time. Sometimes He's silent, so you cannot force Him to move when you want Him to move. This is extremely dangerous what these people are doing.
So serious that God says that when you speak something in God's name and He did not say it, then you will die. But today people take this very lightly. They make their whole ministry about this. But how do you know if someone speaks from God or not? First of all, you need to look out for people who are extremely vague.
You'll speak to an audience and they're extremely vague. God is not vague in Scripture. He is precise. Further it says, "And if you say in your heart, how may we know the word that the Lord has not spoken? When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the Lord has not spoken.
The prophet has spoken presumptuously. You need to be afraid of him." Now again, God does speak to us today in His Word, through other people, through the Holy Spirit, in different ways. Yes. And you will know that it is Him and you can ask Him, "Father, thank you for this word, but please confirm it again.
" I usually ask for three times that I'm sure, for example, I get a verse and now my friend takes me to the same verse or now I go and drive in the car and the exact same verse is there, but then also the Holy Spirit gives me confirmation that I know because He works with peace and discernment that I know this is from God.
At times we need to wait longer for God because He's waiting for the right moment to tell us certain things. Our whole life is a life of living in obedience to Jesus Christ under Him. He is God, not us. We wait for Him.
So what has been happening in the church in a lot of churches is they make prophecies up. They're very vague. I'm not say it happens in all the churches. I say they are in certain churches. But you need to understand that evil spirits can also counterfeit the gifts of the Holy Spirit within a church to distract the church from the Word of God.
It has been happening and is still happening today. You always need to remember this. If the Holy Spirit or an angel, God Himself says something to you and makes you feel special that He's speaking to you, but it contradicts Scripture, you need to understand that it is not God. It's probably a demon or even your own mind playing tricks on you with your emotions.
For example, in Islam, Muhammad claimed that the angel Gabriel appeared to him and gave him revelations from Allah.
This became the Quran which denies the divinity of Jesus, denies His crucifixion, and teaches salvation through works. In Mormonism, Joseph Smith said the angel Moroni gave him golden plates to translate into the Book of Mormon. It teaches that God was once a human man who progressed to become God and that we too can become gods of our own worlds. And then it also teaches that salvation comes through works which most of the other religions also teach which is of course against Scripture. Christian Science - Mary Baker Eddy claimed to receive divine revelation and wrote science and health with key to the Scriptures calling it God's final revelation.
She denied the reality of sin, sickness, and death and rejected the atonement, the resurrection, the biblical miracles as literal events. The Unification Church, Sun Myung Moon, claimed that Jesus appeared to him and told him to finish what Jesus did not complete. That alone should tell you it's false. Jesus said on the cross, "It is finished." John 19:30.
You see, there's a big danger in the church today where a lot of people are so desperate to have a special supernatural relationship with God that when something supernatural does happen, they just assume that it is from God. Where does the Bible say that? Demons are powerful. The devil is powerful. There are a lot of occultic things in this world and they will use it and they have been using it in the church as well to distract people to deceive people and sometimes at the heart of it you will see that these people who say well I've had this amazing experience with an angel that told me this or Jesus Himself.
You'll see that they feel special and I like it when other people think that they are special because now they have divine revelation.
Be very very very careful. With God there's no partiality right? He loves all of us the same. So that's the first thing we need to realize.
So even if Jesus Himself comes to you and says to you something, and says John, Susan, you are special and you are going to have my final word which I did not give to the apostles, for example, and you read Scripture and you compare it and you understand - oh, this is very different - then you need to know that that is a false spirit that is probably a demon, that is a different Jesus teaching a different gospel. Jehovah's Witnesses for example. Charles Taze Russell claimed to receive divine insight into the Bible. He taught that Jesus is not God but Michael the Archangel and that salvation comes through works and organizational loyalty. The New Age movement, New Age teachers often claim messages from ascended masters or spirit guides.
They teach that man is divine, promote reincarnation and reject sin, reject judgment and the exclusivity of Jesus. This is spiritual deception in disguise. You know, we started a new Christian gaming company called Ruach Entertainment and one of the developers, when we started way back, he shared his testimony with me. Before he was a Christian, he was into occultic practices. And how it started was he met friends of course, but then there was this something spiritual being that appeared to him.
This being told him that he is the Holy Spirit and they continued this relationship and they talked quite a bit and this holy spirit also asked him to ask that he would come inside of him and he will give him power and he started to do that and he got occultic powers and then it started to influence his life negatively. Bad things started to happen and then he realized when he met other friends who are Christian that this is not the Holy Spirit.
This is evil and everything they've been doing, we're starting to increase this in accultic practices. I'm not going to talk too much here because I don't know how much he wants me to share. But let me give you another example.
New Thought movement, hypercharismatic teachings. This movement claims believers can speak things into existence using the faith force commanding health, wealth, and prosperity, as if we are little gods. Now this movement, especially the Word of Faith movement, within this, it's grown so big especially in America where people don't realize it's basically just an accultic movement that uses all these terms and tries to use them in biblical terms. But it's the same thing, the same thing packaged in a different package. So they basically use God as a genie in a bottle.
You can speak and name things into existence. You have the power because you are a little god and you can claim health, wealth, and prosperity. What your fleshly nature wants as a human, it's about you. It's more about the you faith actually, right? This, the selfish faith.
I want this.
I want that. I want this. And I'm going to use God to give me what I want. But Jesus says in Luke 9:23, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.
" Now, there's nothing wrong with it that if God does give you the desire to work hard for money and to be healthy and all those things as well, but it doesn't mean that that is God's will for everyone. For certain people, His will might be to be as a missionary.
Look at the way the apostles lived. They suffered. If you live in this world and you're not persecuted for your faith, then you have to ask yourself, are you hiding your faith?
Are you doing actually what God wants you to do? And if you are rich, what are you doing with that money? God will never bless you to use that money to just spend it on your fleshly nature's desires, to be selfish and what you want in this temporary world because this world is not our home. We'll take none of that with us. God's command is it is more blessed to give than to receive.
But the problem is even when God's will is for someone to just be okay, that he's not content because he has a fleshly desire and he's greedy - envy - and he wants so if that goes against God's will then yes of course it is wrong.
God wants us to be content with whatever He gives us. His ultimate will. For example, if you pray pray pray pray, and God says, "Well, it is not my will for you to be rich, but more for you to be a missionary or for you to work at this place and you might not make a lot of money, but you will help a lot of kids." Then you need to be content with whatever God gives you.
Even if you start an NPO and you struggle and you need to live day by day just asking God, "God, help me. Give me enough for today." Remember 1 Timothy 6:8 says: But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. Now, let me say this again. Yes, God can and does bless certain people at certain times.
He can bless you. And there's different ways of blessing people. We don't have to just look at money, but in different ways. Some people cannot have children. Some people can.
There are there are different ways. But the true Christian lifestyle will always include refining, persecution, suffering, and discipline while we are in this temporary world.
Nowhere does God's Word say that this world will be perfect and your whole life will be perfect. In fact, it is fallen. It is dark so that people can see what is wrong with the world because it is so dark and they will start to seek the light.
They will start to seek a cure and then they will understand it is Jesus Christ. We are not here like the rest of the world to try and live here in luxury. We are here to live holy according to God's Word according to the plan that He has for you specifically. And your path is not the same as everyone in your church or across the world, other Christians. You have your own race to run.
You need to pray to God to make sure what that race is.
And He will give you what you need, equip you to accomplish His plan for your life. Now, if you go back to Galatians 1:8, it says: "But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preach to you, let him be accursed." That is extremely strong language. Let him be accursed.
Why? Because the Bible is God's Word. It is holy. It is pure. It is perfect.
It is not something that you change to try and fit in with your lifestyle or a church change. And false teachers do this a lot, using certain verses out of context and trying to twist them to mean something that He does not mean. And especially today, there are so many different versions of Scripture. For example, you've heard just be a good person. God loves everyone.
So don't worry about your sin. Live your best life now. We see so many churches just preach motivational messages teaching on health, wealth, prosperity while ignoring repentance, living in obedience, living according to God's Word, growing truly spiritually by studying the Word of God and ignoring a lot of sin.
Some even say that it is okay to live in sin because God loves you as you are, but as long as you have faith, it is okay. Some churches do not understand what true faith in Jesus Christ really is.
For example, many apostolic and progressive churches now say that someone can live in a homosexual lifestyle and still be a Christian.
It will shock you what many of them say. These false teachers are extremely evil. God is gay.
God is a lesbian. God is you. And you are God. They want to change Scripture to fit it in with their lifestyles. Jesus did not come to affirm us.
He came to transform us, to change us. And people need to understand this. When you look at the culture of today and what they are teaching, compare that always with Scripture. Yes, Jesus does, he welcomes all sinners. That's why He came - for sinners.
And that's what the true church is. We are there not because we think we're perfect. We're there because we know we are sinners. And we need Jesus Christ. And Jesus knows - He knows we're not perfect.
He sees the sin. But He loves us. He hates our sin, but He loves us. That is the true message. He warns us in Matthew 7:21: "Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven.
Then I will declare to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness." And that is why in the church we must guard sound doctrine and not change it. But alright, I've gone on with number one a little bit too long, but let's move to number two. Deception Number 2: False signs and wonders.
Now, in the previous number, I just touched on this, but let's dig into this a little bit more. Satan and his fallen angels will use supernatural things like miracles to deceive many, even the most mature Christians in the church. And I've seen it happen. Church, you need to understand that not all spiritual experiences in the church just are always from God. Don't make that assumption.
Jesus says in Matthew 24:24: "For false Christ and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect." Today there are certain movements that are obsessed - and I mean obsessed - with the supernatural in the church.
They want always special revelations from God and not read Scripture. The Word of God is already there. It is the Word of God, that He chose to reveal to us as humans while we live in this temporary world.
It's already there. And yes, there are supernatural things that happen at times, but not as much as people think, because God has already given us His Word. The Old Testament and the New Testament. Many of these false churches, so-called miracles, are made up and they work on emotional hype or worse, demonic counterfeit.
2 Corinthians 11:14 says: "Even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.
So, it's no surprise if his servants do the same." So, let me say this. When there's a church that starts to chase supernatural experiences and not chase Jesus Christ, there's a problem. Ask yourself, am I chasing supernatural things from God and what He can give me? Or am I chasing Jesus Christ Himself?
They want God to improve their lifestyle, heal their body, or bless their business. But they don't want to deny themselves, pick up their cross, and follow Jesus. Again, test yourself. Ask yourself, am I following Jesus Christ because I'm a sinner? Because I love Him?
Because I know what He did for me on the cross and I just want to know Him better and more. And even if I have no supernatural experiences, if I just can know Him and walk with Him, have His Spirit inside of me.
That is enough. Because this world is so short. It's like a vapor compared to eternal life with Jesus Christ.
Or are you following Jesus because you're trying religion or you want the supernatural things that He can give you or bless you of your short vapor of a life here on earth? Do you even follow and obey God's Word that says in 1 John 4 that you have to test the spirits because not every spirit is of God? Don't chase experiences. Don't just blindly follow your emotions because it's fickle, it changes. So you can't always trust it.
You can only trust the Word of God. That is what why 1 John 4 says that you have to test the spirits. It is something that we have to do.
Let's move on to Number 3. Deception three: Love for the world.
This deception is subtle but it is deadly because it is this temptation to change the truth for acceptance, health, wealth, popularity, comfort, money, all of these worldly things. Even the most mature Christians can fall for this. You might say that you love God, but deep down you still want to live for the world. You put your earthly pleasures in front of God and your sinful mind comes up with the best excuses to justify them.
And sadly, many churches today feed this desire, especially in America.
I'll use one example, just one. When you go to a church in America, look at how many people are obese. What does God's Word say about gluttony? But we don't talk about it, do we? We still want to live the way we want to live and eat how we want to eat.
While God says that you have to give a knife to your throat if you're given to gluttony, to appetite, right? Your body is a temple of God. Right? Do you live that way? 1 John 2:15 says: Do not love the world or the things in the world.
If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eye, and the pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires. But whoever does the will of God abides forever.
You see, we're supposed to be different, set apart compared to the world.
But today, many churches look just like the world. And they're trying to preach things that fits in with the world. But we're not. People normally don't want to hear about sin, about repentance, about living a godly life in holiness. And some of you might have even felt a little bit offended even when I mentioned gluttony.
Maybe it's because you want a version of Christianity that does not cost you anything. Think about that. Truly living for Jesus Christ, it comes at a cost. That cost is to deny yourself, your own will, and follow God's will and not your own. "For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching.
But having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths." You see, what God wants is a true relationship of love and obedience with Him. That you abide in Him, He in you as you walk in life to live holy. Everything is about Him, right? Test yourself.
If that is true in your case, do you have a love for His Word, to read it and study it? Look at those last few years. How long have you been a Christian? How many times have you read the whole Bible from cover to cover? Many Christians have not.
And that should be shocking. If you've been a Christian for at least one or two years, you should have been able to read the whole Bible at least once. How can you live for God according to His Word if you don't know God's Word? The Bible has around 1,200 pages depending on the translation and formatting.
So, to read the entire Bible in one year, you only need to read three to five pages a day.
We are getting closer to the end times. And many will be deceived for a lack of knowledge because they do not know God's Word. So maybe God sent you to this message today to wake you up so that you can start to read His word and build a really strong foundation and relationship with Jesus Christ as He wants you to. And if it's the first time that you're here, watch our o the blogs and podcasts here where I talk about sound doctrine so that you will be educated and know and that will help you to discern between truth and lies. Before you go, remember that God loves you. Your true truth and protector is the Word of God alone and not man but God. Be alert at all times. Blessings.