Discerning Deceptions

In the Olivet Prophecy, Jesus Christ said that at the end time, let me quote this, false Christs and false prophets will arise and show great signs and wonders as to deceive, if possible, even the elect. He warns us that there's going to come a time in the future where if we aren't close to God, it would be possible to be deceived. What's interesting is when you go through the New Testament, there was sort of a shock in the church because when the church first started, everything was great.

They were all following Jesus Christ and the apostles that He had ordained. And then it didn't take long. Within a few years, the church was becoming fragmented. And there were people coming along and deceiving people with false teachings, so much so that even when Paul tried to show that there were certain teachings in the Old Testament that were to be modified in the New Testament, which the Old Testament says they would be, there were prophecies about that, he was attacked as being a heretic because there were so many changes people couldn't tell which change was right, which wasn't, and it was a very difficult time.

Deception is an interesting thing because the person doing the deceiving is either a person who is just lying because they want something from you. You know, a used car salesman may deceive you into buying something that's actually a terrible thing. So they're deceiving you on purpose. Many times, people who are doing deception are doing it because they themselves are deceived. They're not doing it because they're trying to hurt you. It's because and that's what makes it difficult. You say, well, that person's motivation is good.

They're sincere. So maybe they're right. That's where deception actually becomes more difficult. It's where the deception is because they seem so right. What I want to do today is I want to go through some of the deceptions we see mentioned in the New Testament that people would have to deal with. And then for the Bible study, I want to go through prophetically what will be the deceptions that we will have to face at the end time that Christ warns us about.

What will be those things that we will have to face when the man of sin comes along and deceives the whole world, it says. So here we have an individual who's going to deceive the whole world. But what did they face then? And there's a lot of things they faced. And I'm not going to go into specific doctrines they faced because they faced all kinds of deceptive doctrines that came into the church in the early first century. Let's deal with four major areas that they had to deal with. Common areas of deceit.

That is easy to get deceived over. It's easy to have discussions with and start to wonder, wait a minute, how do I know they're not right? And we should be able to prove what we believe. If you can't prove what you believe, then you have to go reprove it. So being challenged for what you believe is not wrong in itself. But how can we become deceived? The first area of deception, and it's something I've even talked about a little bit in sermons in the past, it's the deception of conventional wisdom. Now what I mean by conventional wisdom is that all societies have a conventional wisdom.

Conventional wisdom is what is commonly accepted in a society as norms for right and wrong, norms for how things are done, norms for how problems are solved, norms for how language is used, and it's conventional wisdom. And so to go against conventional wisdom means that when you're unconventional, it means you're either wrong or maybe you're strange. We live in a society of conventional wisdom.

Now at the time of the New Testament, they had to face the conventional wisdom of their day. If you happen to live in Rome, at the time when Paul wrote the book of Romans, the conventional wisdom was that there are lots of gods and that truly people who have common sense would accept everybody else's wisdom. That's what made the Jews so weird. We accept their god, why don't they accept our god? The Romans openly said that the god of the Jews existed. They believed in YHWH. He was as powerful as Zeus, but they believed in YHWH.

So the conventional wisdom said that it's just ridiculous to only believe in one god. It's just ridiculous to only believe in one god. Everybody knows. It's just it's provable. Everybody knows.

It was totally accepted for people to commit abortion. Everybody knows that's not alive yet. That thing in there is not alive yet. To kill it or to take it is not like killing. It's not like murdering somebody. It's a conventional wisdom. So abortion was rampant in Rome in the first century. All the science. The science was absolutely true. I mean, there were modern miracles that people prove. Look how the conventional wisdom of Rome, like lead pipes that allowed running water to go into people's houses. And you could get rid of the sewage. And people could actually have drinking water in their house. They know now that there was a lot of diseases, including mental illnesses in parts of Rome, because all the lead. But science said this is good. Everybody can see the benefits. The conventional wisdom said it's good to have running water in your house through lead pipes. It all made sense. Anybody said that you shouldn't do that. But you must be a barbarian who wants to go drink out of the stream. You know, well, civilized people have running water in your house. It all made sense. To not believe in that conventional wisdom, there was something wrong with you. Gladiatorial games was good for people. Gladiatorial violence was good for the common man. That's why they built the Colosseum. That's why they built all over the Roman Empire, where people could go watch these facilities and they could go watch gladiatorial games. It was good. Let's go to 1 Corinthians 2. Paul talks about this. Because then I want to talk about this in terms of our society. And then we're in the Bible study, we're going to talk about it in terms of what the prophecies are about the future society that will form and why it will form. To understand the beast of Revelation, the two beasts of Revelation 13, you have to understand the events that lead up to it. Why are they able to deceive the world? Why are they able to do the things they do? And it will be because of what happens in the world before that, and they will come out of a conventional wisdom, a new conventional wisdom. 1 Corinthians 2, verse 6, Paul says, however, we speak wisdom among those who are mature, yet not the wisdom of this age, nor the rulers of this age who are coming to nothing.

It's interesting all through 1 Corinthians 1 and 2 and 3. Paul's talking about the wisdom of the age and how if you believe in the wisdom of God, you will be considered foolish. To live by the wisdom of God in any time, and including our time now, you will be seen by many people as foolish.

Because just look around you. Nobody else believes that.

Nobody else believes that. And we have proof. We can show you that that's not real. We'll talk a minute how conventional wisdom forms.

He says, but we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory, which none of the rulers of this age knew, for if they had known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. To believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God is to become less and less of conventional wisdom. There was a time in this country when the majority of people believed that in one form or another. Surveys show that less and less people believe it. Less and less people actually believe that. Less and less people believe that the Bible is inspired by God. To believe that the Bible is inspired by God is seen by many people as, you know, this is nothing more... Do you believe the Odyssey? You know, where Homer's writings are inspired by God? Well, no. Well, this is no different. It's just a bunch of ancient people writing down, you know, some shepherds wandering through the desert, writing down what they believed. So whether it's the Bible or the Quran or the Odyssey, they're all equal and that they have value in telling us about how ancient, sort of uneducated people believed. But no person today could believe this. Or you're barbaric.

And that is becoming the conventional wisdom, and it's only going to get worse. It's only going to get worse. So if you believe in this book, then you believe in a wisdom that will make you out of step with society. But it's what every Christian has faced since they followed Jesus. They killed Him because He was so out of step with Judaism, the religion that God informed. And they had twisted it up so much, they killed Him.

Think about that. So think of how out of step we will be. And the point about the prophecies are, we have to be very careful because there's going to come a time, and quite possibly in our lifetimes, in which we will have to face a conventional wisdom that will possibly be, well, will be violently opposed to us. And I use the word violently because this is what the Bible says. This isn't to make us all scared. This is to make us all serious.

To make us all serious, to know what we know and what we believe and why we believe it, and to have a relationship with God so that you're secure in that relationship. Because our world is headed in a place, this country's headed in a place where conventional wisdom is not going to be anything even like it is now. And it's nothing now like it used to be. Look what He says in verse 10. He says, God has revealed them to us this wisdom through His Spirit, for the Spirit searches all things, just the deep things of God.

He talks about the rest of this chapter how this wisdom isn't going to make sense to other people. Look to chapter 3, verse 18. Let no one deceive himself, and here's what's really, really important. We can deceive ourselves, and the self-deception comes from, well, I don't want to be unliked, or I don't want to not get this job, or I don't want to have this benefit, or I want to date this guy, and he may not believe this way, or whatever. And what happens is we can deceive ourselves and say, you know, it's all really the same. Because part of conventional wisdom today is, it doesn't matter what you believe as long as you love. That's part of the conventional wisdom. It doesn't matter what you believe or do as long as you love, and now we have to define love. The definition of love isn't what the Bible's definition of love is. So that's part of the conventional wisdom you and I face all the time. And so, for even to say what we believe, and as I've mentioned before, there are certain programs we do on Beyond Today that cannot be shown in Australia, or cannot be shown in Canada, or they will shut our churches down. Because it's considered hate speech. That's the conventional wisdom.

He goes on, he says, let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you seems to be wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. Of course, it's the opposite. The wisdom of God is foolishness to human beings. Now, conventional wisdom becomes... it now defines your culture and it defines your values. I mean, in the past, there were people killed because they believed the world was round. Because conventional wisdom was, it's flat. And it was supported by science and religion that is flat.

So the conventional wisdom determines then your values and it determines your culture. No country, no society is stagnant. It's always changing. Now, inside the church, what we hope is we're growing spiritually. We're changing by growth, not moving back into the world. We're becoming more and more like the kingdom of God. Let's look at something and look at something that's changed in our society. When my mother was a registered nurse, she had to spend some time in a mental institution. I've mentioned this before, where she had to work there as part of her internship. And she would tell me that there was a man in there who was one of those kind of guys. I didn't know what she meant.

Finally, years would go by and I said, Mom, what do you mean? You know, one of those men who liked men. Oh, wow. Why was he there? Because he liked men. In the 1950s, homosexuality, transvestitism, was a mental illness.

What we call transgenderism was a mental illness. To walk down the street as a man, dressed up like a woman, you know, with makeup on, long hair in a dress, was a crime. You have to understand now, that seems weird today, doesn't it? People who had walked down the street, a man walked down the street, pretending to be a woman, going into a bar, pretending to be a woman, it was a crime. He could either go to jail or be put in a mental institution. Because science said—just not religion—science said that was against human nature. Science said it. In fact, by the way, the American psychiatric—the psychiatry today is still considered a mental illness. They haven't changed it yet. It will be. It will be changed. Now the mental illness will be homophobia. Phobia is an irrational fear. To be against that at some point, if our society keeps going the way it is, homophobia will be a mental illness. Understand that. To say that you are against transgenderism, operations that change people's sexuality, if you're against homosexual marriage, then you are mentally ill. They say that could never happen. It's already happening. It's already happening. How did that happen in this period of time? 50, 60, 70 years? Well, it didn't begin with a political movement. It began with, during the 50s and 60s in the United States, people became skeptical about the Bible. Actually, that started in the 1890s. In the churches. Certain seminaries, major seminaries, were questioning the validity of the Bible in the 1890s. It just took a couple generations until it started to seep into society. So the validity of the Bible is being doubted by more and more and more Americans. I'm just talking about our country because, you know, this is our experience. You can apply this to what you can study the changing, the evolution of societies at any place. Usually, it doesn't evolve into something better. Very seldom. Once in a while.

And so what you have is a deterioration of understanding of the Bible. Not that the Bible was well understood, but at least there were certain principles that everybody agreed to live by, to a certain extent. And so this lack of or deterioration of biblical values led to the acceptance of evolution. What's that have to do with anything? If we're evolving, our behaviors in certain ways don't need anything. Right? If we're evolving, it doesn't matter. Your life has value to you, and you live your life the way you want to as long as it doesn't hurt somebody else. So if you find someone of like mind, this is good. So the deterioration of spiritual values, biblical values, and now you have evolution. If I'm a product of evolution, blind time and chance, what I wish to do with my life and my body is my decision. So evolution had a huge impact on it. That you have a technological explosion. In the 1930s, when they first started to make movies, it wasn't long before they started showing nude people, naked people, and sexual acts in movies. It just... people making movies said, wow, we'll just go that way. The government stepped in. The reason the government stepped in is because it was against the conventional wisdom. The people were appalled. And so they stopped it. And so through the 30s and the 40s, the people stopped it. And so through the 30s and the 40s, the 50s, it's probably the 20s that they started in, in the early 30s. But usually, you know, it all got sort of cleaned up. So there were innuendos, but they didn't show anything. And then the 1960s came along, and it was okay as long as you gave it a rating. So you could show certain things that are rated, and you could show anything you wanted in an x-rated. What happened was that with this technological explosion, people went and saw things they'd never seen before.

And then of course, as soon as the internet came along, you could see anything. Anything. Anytime. Anyplace. The technology now made people, where they were no longer appalled at this behavior, they watched the behavior. Even if they didn't agree with the behavior, they watched it. And now they started to become calloused. So now you begin to have different definitions of good and evil. And then what happens is you meet somebody like that.

Right? I mean, first time you met someone you knew was cheating on your wife, you were probably appalled. And then, you know, the guy says that and tells you what a lousy person his wife is, and pretty soon you're having sympathy for him. Or sympathy for her, you know, she's cheating on him. People begin to meet people and say, well, they're really good people. They're really... and they're so sincere.

I've sat down with people that were practicing homosexuals and talking with them, and they were a nice person. A really nice person. So it's like, well, okay, they're nice people, so they can't be all evil. They can't be all bad. They just have a little bit that's bad about them. The rest of them is good. So now you begin to not only accept, but you are willing to promote. It's okay. And so we live in a world today, because eventually this is where it goes, in which conventional wisdom will get to the place that if you don't accept transgenderism, if you don't accept that that's okay... Has anyone seen the couple months ago or was it January edition of National Geographic?

The entire edition of National Geographic, which is what? I used to love National Geographic. You can see about cultures and people all over the world and the beautiful pictures. The entire edition was about transgenderism. Front cover was, I guess, a boy who now decided he was a girl and he didn't look like a 10-year-old boy. He looked like a 17-year-old prostitute. There was a time that picture would be considered pornography, and it was on the front cover of National Geographic.

We haven't changed. We haven't changed. The MA says that's a mental illness. And the National Geographic magazine is promoting it. I mean, if you read it, it's not like it's... they're not ford or against it. It's just 75 or 80 pages of this is the way people are. Of course, if you believe in evolution, as their editors do, there's no problem.

This is conventional wisdom. And what happens is we're born in it and it changes slowly, so we change with it until we're no longer appalled. We're no longer upset by it.

Someone asked me the other day about abortion, and my response was, I believe abortion clinics are America's concentration camps like the Nazis had. The children who have no voice, you kill them. I probably should be put in jail. I'm mentally ill.

I'm mentally ill. I should be put in jail.

But that's what I believe, because how can we do this?

This is what conventional wisdom does. We get so callous to it until we start to believe it. We get deceived by it. So we can get to the place where all religions are really equal. You can't really judge anybody else's actions because you're a hate monger, or that all crime is simply an issue of poverty. There'd be no crime if there was no poverty. I mean, that's so ridiculous. Look how many middle class and rich people steal all the time.

But there's an idea that if we could just give everybody enough money, there won't be any poverty. So there's a town in California that actually pays the local gangs, pays them money not to commit crimes. And they're so proud because their crime rate has gone down.

They're so proud. They're not educated. They didn't educate them. They didn't help them. They didn't get them jobs. They just pay them money.

They didn't help the people. But now they go in every week and get their paycheck to not rob a convenience store this week.

This is conventional wisdom. What the Bible says is the foolishness of this age. A second way is the deceit of sin. So we have the deceit of conventional wisdom. It just seems wise. I mean, it's what everybody else thinks.

How can sin deceive us, right? I mean, we know that stealing is wrong. We know that committing adultery is wrong. So I mean, come on, how can it be deceived by that? When you do sin, usually you recognize it and you go and you repent. But how many times do we slowly compromise and don't even think about it?

It's okay to take the stapler home from—I mean, come on, my company makes lots of money. I need a stapler. I'm not stealing it. I use it. It's on my desk every day. I'm just taking it home because it's now mine. Why is it yours? I can cheat on my taxes today. Because why? Because why? Well, the government's only going to use it to buy tanks, and that's wrong. So I'm not going to have my government buy tanks anymore. But Jesus said, they pay your taxes. See, we compromise and don't even realize we're doing it. And this is why sin deceives us, because it's natural for us to sin, and we forget that. Our natural state is that we sin because we're a mixture of good and evil. So we may not be out, you know, we say, well, I'm not out worshiping idols. I come to church with a Sabbath. But how do we spend the Sabbath? What do we do with the time of the Sabbath? Well, I'm not out worshiping idols or doing this or doing that. I'm not using God's name in vain. But are we slandering people? Yeah, the Bible says that's a sin. In fact, it's a scary study to do a study on slander or gossip. They are considered serious sins by God. Yet I would guess, and I am the Lord, I gossip. Don't think much about it. It's a sin. So we get deceived, and we sort of, it just, we decay on the edges. At the center, it seems like we're still okay. But we decay on the edges, and we get deceived by sin. And so what we do is we sort of categorize sin. Oh, this sin is worse than this sin. And I mean, there's true. Sins have different consequences. But then what we do is we love to say, well, I might be doing this, but I'm not doing this.

And so we zero in on certain sins, but ignore the ones that maybe we're doing. Maybe it's our hatred or we're filled with resentment. You know, that's actually a sin. Maybe it's our bitterness. Maybe it's our envy. Maybe it's our greed. I mean, our society is so run by greed, we don't even know if we have it. So do we ever think, oh, do I have greed? Am I propelled by greed? Look at James 1.

James 1. James 1.

I am going to go back to the fruits of the Spirit, by the way. I just decided to give this because it's actually sort of two parts I want to give so I could do that today with the Bible study. We'll get back to the fruits of the Spirit next time I speak here. James 1.21.

He says, Wow, we're back to self-deception. It is possible for us to hear the Word, receive the Word, do part of it, and deceive ourselves not to do the rest of it. So it's easy then to say, well, look at this person over there. That person got drunk the other day.

So somehow, that's bad. So you can condemn them, but you then justify your envy, that you're filled with envy. Envy is a sin too. I'm not saying you ignore the one. I'm saying we have to know all of them. This isn't picking and choosing our sins. We get deceived by our sins so that we accept our sins. And one of the ways you know you're really accepting some sins is when you find yourself always condemning other people. And they may be wrong. I'm not justifying somebody else's sin. I'm saying, but our own sin, our own issues. He says, For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror. For he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. But when he who looks into the perfect law of God and law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.

We're blessed by applying it to ourselves. Ephesians 5. Look at what Paul says about this subject.

Ephesians 5, verse 3.

One of his what are called Paul's sin lists. He lists sins. But what's important here is the look at what he says about it because he's talking to this to the church. He's talking to us. Affordication and all uncleanness are covetousness. Let it not even be named among you as this fitting for saints. Neither filthiness, or just acting terribly, nor foolish talking, nor coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks. For this you know that no fornicator, unclean person, or covetous man, who is an idolater, as they have any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. So he's pretty hard here. I mean, this is a hard thing to read. It's hard to get up and say it in a sermon. It's like, oh, I don't want to discourage everybody. But we look at that. We know that. We're all trying to come out of that. But it's the next statement that is really powerful here. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience, therefore do not be partakers with them. Let no one deceive you with empty words. In other words, what he's saying here is people are going to come along and say, these sins aren't that bad. Because what is the context? The context is, here's a list of sins, and you don't become partakers of this. And in the middle, there's a statement that says, but don't let anyone deceive you about this. There's always going to be this deception, or attempted deception to say, sin isn't that important to God.

God loves you, so sin isn't important. God does love you, and sin is important.

God does love us, or He would have destroyed us all a long time ago. But sin is important. So the point He's making here is, don't let people deceive you about sin. We're always fighting the battle that people believe would like to teach that God's law has been done away with. We're always fighting that battle. I read a very honest article. I love honesty. I read an article a while back. The man was honest, so I'm going to give him that credit. And he was homosexual, and he was writing, and he said, you know, he's been studying the Bible. And he said he wants to believe in God. And he says he's afraid. Because if the God of the Bible is God, then homosexuality is a sin. He did how to deal with it. It was an honest, I thought, wow, an honest man. An honest man. I don't know how to deal with this. What if he is God? What am I supposed to do? Well, what I have to do is what I don't want to do here. I don't know what conclusion he ever came to, but the article made an impact on me because I understood his struggle. Because all of us have struggled with sin, am I? We all struggle with sin. I'm going to sin. And it's the same thing. You think God will forgive me of this? And you know, if it is sin, I have to change. I really have to change the way I am. Deceive you about sin. So we can be deceived by sin. And there are people who want to deceive us about sin. The third point is that there can be false teachers come along and try to teach. They twist the Bible into false doctrines. And the problem with this is, once again, if they're not sincere, sometimes you can figure that out. They're just trying to deceive you. And what we have to do is, when we look at false teachers, is look at their motivation.

If there's a lot of anger and there's a lot of hatred, you've got to step back and say, ooh, is that of God? Is that of God? But sometimes the person's sincere because they're deceived themselves. That's when it gets difficult again, because sincerity is important. But sincerity doesn't make something right. Right? Sincerity is important. We all need to be sincere. And when someone is wrong but they're sincere, we usually cut them a little slack, and that's okay. Right? We treat someone who's being sincere a little different than someone who's just being obnoxious, even though they're both maybe wrong. But it doesn't make them right.

The men who killed Jesus Christ, the Jewish leaders that turned Him into the Romans, were sincere. They believed He was a threat to God.

They were sincere men, and they were desperately wrong. So we have to understand that sincerity of itself doesn't prove somebody right. It may make them likable. It may be something we admire in them. It may even allow us to have a relationship with them, because if they're sincere, a lot of times they won't be too harsh. But it doesn't make them right. Colossians 2.

Colossians 2.

Now, Colossians is a very complicated book. It's a fascinating book. In fact, someday I want to go through the churches of Revelation 2 and 3, and you think, well, why? And I want to go through Colossians as part of that. You think, well, why? Well, because the letter to Colossae was also written to Laodicea. If you understand what happens in Laodicea, you have to read Colossians, because it is the same issues that they were dealing with. And part of the problem they're dealing with in Colossians is a great belief that they were spiritually better. They had figured all this out. They had all the answers, and they were spiritually better. And he says, verse 8, Beware lest anyone cheat you to philosophy and empty deceit according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ. So he tells the people of Colossians, be careful. The Colossians' church had a lot of things going for it, but it also had some very negative things in that church. Now, what if it was the traditions of men? Their traditions at times were so strong in defining who they were that it allowed them to actually disobey God. Remember how the Pharisees did that? Remember how the Pharisees, their traditions were so strong that they, their traditions, Christ said, your traditions are making you disobey God. Their argument was, no, our traditions keep us in line. Now, traditions are good. I like traditions. I'm sort of a traditional person, but we can never let a tradition deceive us. I mean, we didn't have a sermonette today. Our tradition is we do. No one's upset over that, because that's fine. But you know what I mean? You can have a tradition was you have to have a sermonette every Sabbath, or that proves you're not obeying God. I'm trying to make up something so ridiculous that no one would say that, but you see what I mean about tradition. You have to have everything exactly by tradition, and we can get deceived by that.

And so false teachers will use tradition as a way to lead us from God, away from God. One thing about false teachers, too, one trait, is that they talk about God, but seldom do they point people to God or to Christ. They usually point people to themselves.

We all have to defend ourselves at some time. We all talk about ourselves at some time. That's what I'm talking about. I'm talking about a whole mindset that points people to God or to yourself.

And false teachers, they're not always pointing people to God or to Christ, so we have to be aware of that. The fourth and last thing we're going to talk about is in 1 Timothy 6. 1 Timothy 6.

This is something that can happen to us very easily because of the society we live in. This issue isn't going to be maybe as major a problem in other societies, but it is in ours.

1 Timothy 6. Let's start in verse 6. Now godliness with contentment is great gain, for we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we shall carry nothing out. And having food and clothing with these we shall be content. But those who desire to be rich, now you and I are all rich.

Compared to most people in the world, we're all rich here. So we're all rich. We desire to be rich, fall into temptation and a snare, and into any foolish and harmful lust which drown men in destruction and perdition. Wow! That's a frightening statement. This is one of the greatest detriments we have, and our Christianity is being rich.

Because we get so caught up in those things, and our comforts, and what we have, that we're not following God, or we're not centered on God. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the path in their greediness and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. We have to stay focused in our riches, to stay focused on what is spiritually right so we don't compromise. You know, wealth can do two things to us. Since we're all wealthy here, this is all of us. Some of us here, by the standards of this society, aren't necessarily wealthy, but by the standards of the world, we're wealthy.

When we zero in on wealth, we use it as a proof that God is with us. I mean, every time I get something new, you know, about a car, a little over a year ago, used car, and I walk around telling everybody, God blessed me. I believe that. God gave me a car, which I needed. Is that the proof that I'm a righteous person? No, because people get new cars all the time, and they're not used. I mean, and they're worth a whole lot more than my car. Right? I guess I've got to go... it's going to prove my righteousness. I better go spend a quarter of a million dollars on a car than I'm the most righteous person around. So, even though it's a blessing from God, it doesn't prove my righteousness. It proves that God gave me a blessing, because it just fell into my lap the way it did, and I believe it was a blessing from God. It proves God's righteousness. It's bringing blessings from God, but we can't measure. So, look at somebody and say, ah, they're out of a job. They're having financial difficulties. God's not blessing them. They must be sitting. It's a total misunderstanding of wealth.

It was true sometimes we can suffer physically because we're sitting, but you and I have to be real careful about judging that. You know, I always think of that statement that says, be careful what you judge because you'll receive the same judgment. Oh, look at that person. They're out of a job. They're having financial difficulties. Their car broke down. Probably they're just not right with God. I'm afraid I'll wake up the next day. My house will be burnt down. My car will be wrecked. You know, I'll be covered with sores sitting in a garbage dump. And my wife will be saying, why don't you just die? Remember, we went through Job a couple weeks ago. Remember? You know, it's like, no, no, I don't want to go there. We don't want to go there. Or we go to the other extreme, which my poverty proves that God is with me. Because God's so against wealthy people. No, He's not against wealthy people. He's not against poor people. He's against the misuse of wealth. That's what He's against.

He's against wrong priorities, wrong spiritual priorities. That's what He's against. So, there's two extremes we can go to there. So, everybody take a vow of poverty, and that makes them more righteous. No, it doesn't. It means just you don't take a bath, you live in a commune, you eat bread and water, and you stink. And you lay in a bed that's hard. Okay, we're great. It doesn't mean you're more righteous. So, we can be deceived by riches, deceived by wealth in a lot of different ways. So, the early church had to fight all these issues. And if you go through, you'll see other things. I mean, I didn't get into specifics. Like, there were specific doctrines they had to deal with, with docetism and Gnostic ideas and very strict Jewish ideas. I mean, pagan ideas. They had to go through all kinds of doctrinal problems they had to wrestle with in the first century. But I'm just talking about these general ideas. Now, I'm going to read one more scripture, and then we'll take a break. Because I wanted to do about 45 minutes here, 45 minutes for the Bible study. So, we'll probably end a little early today, but... That leads into the Bible study. So, we have these four areas in which we can be deceived. We have to be careful about the saint. Now, let's go to 2 Thessalonians 2. 2 Thessalonians 2. I'm going to read it, then we'll go in more detail in the Bible study. It's one of the longest prophecies here by Paul. 2 Now, brethren, concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and our gathering together to Him, we ask you not to soon be shaken in mind or troubled, either by spirit or by word or by letter, as if it came from us as though the day of Christ had come. So, he's dealing with a problem that's come into the church that's hit Thessalonica and probably hit other churches, too. 3 They had teachers come into the church, and they had letters that were being sent out, including ones in which Paul was a forgery, that it was from Paul. 4 So people were believing Paul was teaching that the day of the Lord had come. You think, well, that's a weird thing. Well, it's no different than during most of the Middle Ages, most Christians believe that in a millennialism, they believe the millennium had started. They believe the millennium had started when Jesus died.

And at the end of the millennium, he came back. And that was the most common belief for hundreds and hundreds of years in the Christian world out there. In fact, people who believed in the millennium that Christ came and set up the millennium were considered heretics.

So, this is probably the beginning of something like that. And here he is fighting this heresy in the church. It's going to change your whole viewpoint of the Scripture. I mean, there's little things we disagree on. There's little things about the Bible nobody understands yet. We're all still growing. But you know, now we're talking about major issues that a disagreement on actually changes the way you see the Bible. And so he says, let me tell you some things that have to happen before the day of the Lord. Okay? And he had already told them this, so they knew where he was coming from. Let no one deceive you by any means, for that day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed the son of perdition. He says, the whole world's falling away. The whole place, the church part of the church is going to fall away. The whole thing just moves away from God. So it has to do with the church, but it also has to do with the world, as we'll see. I mean, He's zaring in on the church to be falling away in the church. In other words, there's going to be a great deception in the church at the end time, but it's going to be in the whole world, as we'll see.

There are some people who believe this falling away took place a number of years ago. It did not, because this prophecy is about a very specific set of events and very specific people. Let no one deceive you by any means, that the day of the Lord come, unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God, or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God. So this person is going to deceive because he's going to establish himself as a divine person. Now understand, through much of history, that was been accepted.

In the ancient world, most rulers declared that they were divine. All the pharaohs were gods. The Roman emperors became gods. That they had divinity in them. And that's why the pyramids and so forth is because, you know, when the pharaohs died, they had been prepared to return to their divine state with the other gods. So the idea, I mean, we believe that Jesus Christ was divine, right?

So the deception is going to be that this man has some divinity, and he has to be looked upon and worshiped as if he is God in some form.

He says, do not remember, do you not remember that when I was with you, I told you these things. Paul says, I taught you this. I wish he would have written more about it. He taught them that. Now we get the bits and pieces as he tells them. Well, Paul, tell us all the details. You told them. Well, no, this is what we get. This is what God chose to keep for us.

Now you and I can say we could never fall for that. My neighbors, even though my neighbors aren't religious, they're not going to fall for this. Well, during the Bible study, we'll show how it works, why they will fall for it, why we have to be aware of it. Verse 6 says, and now you know what is restraining, that he may be revealed in his own time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work, only he who now restrains will do so until he comes, takes it out of the way. Now, he says, look, this is already started. You're already seeing the teachings of Christ being perverted in their own time. They were watching emperors being declared as divine, which, you know, at first they weren't. They're watching all this happen in their world. And he says, look, what you see happening in our world is just the beginning of it. It is going to be absolutely lawless against God. Now, the Roman Empire was lawless against God, but he said, what we're going to see happen at the end time is so deceptive. It's God's holding it back. It's being held back, and it will come at a time. It's being held back right now, and there's going to come a time where God doesn't hold us back. And this is going to happen. He says, for the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Verse 8, and when the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will consume with the breath of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming. And that's the reason we know this hasn't happened yet. This man is killed by Jesus Christ as His coming. He's destroyed by Christ as His coming. The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan. His power comes from Satan. With all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception, so this is the greatest deception that's yet to come among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth that they might be saved. They did not receive the love of the truth of God. And for this reason, God will send them strong delusion that they should believe the lie. In other words, God's going to let it happen. The whole world is going to turn so much against God that God is not going to stop this. God is not going to change people's minds. And this delusion, this deception, is coming on the world. The world's deceived now because Satan's the God of this world, but it is nothing like what's going to happen.

And he was warning them, be careful. Now those people died. They won't see this, but they saw it coming. You and I are watching it happen. It's been coming now for thousands of years, slowly developing. The world's slowly developing into what's going to happen. And we're not going to stop this. It's prophesied to happen. It's not going to stop it.

There's no political leader that's going to stop this. No political party, no religious movement. The churches are going to stop this. It's going to happen. Because God said it would happen. So we have to make sure that we're prepared not to be deceived by it, because our world will be deceived. Our society will be deceived.

They shall be condemned who did not believe the truth, but had pleasure and righteousness. Now we read through that and we say, okay, I'm not being deceived by the world in this way and that way and another way. How in the world can my neighbors be able to tell this isn't right? You know, my neighbor over here is a conservative Baptist. They believe that Jesus Christ is returning. They believe in the tribulation. They believe that there's going to be a man of sin. They were just talking about it the other day. There's going to be a man of sin. Oh, they wouldn't believe that. Maybe. But the great majority will. Great majority of people are going to believe this. How do we make sure we don't? Or how in the world would that even come about? That's what we're going to cover in the Bible study. We're going to go through Revelation and show how this works, how this happens. And it's very apparent when you see what happens, why people will follow, why it will be so easily for them to be deceived. But we also have to be very aware so we're not deceived.