Four Dangerous End-Time Deceptions

"For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears" ~2 Timothy 4: 3

We’re living in an age when people fill themselves up with junk food, and that includes spiritual junk.

The Bible predicted that in the Last Days people will turn their backs on solid truth and chase mirages and myths. A lot of deceptive and foolish nonsense is being disguised as religion.

In this article, I hope to expose four major End-time errors that we should guard ourselves against.

1. The first error I want to mention is the belief that you can be a Christian without being a disciple of Jesus. He warned his disciples very solemnly to guard against deception.

In Luke 6:40, Jesus said very plainly that a disciple is not above his teacher but will become like his teacher. In order to make disciples as the Lord has commanded us to do in the Great Commission, we must first become his disciples.

Yet there are so many seeker-friendly churches that only aim to fill pews and create a big audience for TV, and so for the most part, they don’t emphasize making disciples.

I don’t attend church for its entertainment value. Church is where my soul is fed, a place where my body is strengthened and where I receive instruction as well as the peace that passes all understanding— the depths of peace that the world can't offer.

Most of all, church should be a place to worship God with our highest ideals of music, praise and prayer. That’s something woefully missing from so many churches. It’s a tragic mistake to offer worship with the world's entertainment. Churches can’t compete with Hollywood, Broadway and rock concerts. When God the Holy Spirit shows up, it's a zillion times more awesome than a shabby imitation of the world’s entertainment!

Holiness has been swallowed up by shallowness. Having lulled congregations into a stupor, the seeker-friendly churches are caught off guard by the invasion of a militant religion that seeks to enslave us . . . as well as a barrage of immorality that seems to be going unchecked.

However, evil spirits can still be driven back if the Church will wake up on our watch! “For,” Paul said in the New Testament, “we don’t wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, and powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, we’re waging a spiritual warfare against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” Therefore we’re to take up the whole armor of God, that we may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. The key is “praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit.”

Now concerning this End-time error of casual church going and seeker-friendly diluted Christianity, I want to say very solemnly that discipleship is not optional. Jesus said unless we’re willing to pick up our individual crosses and follow him (that means obeying him and doing everything he says on a daily basis) we cannot be his disciples. Casual church-goers tend to think of discipleship as something that a special super saint does, something that only a minister or a missionary pursues. However, the fact is-- if we claim to be followers of Jesus, we should all be his disciples, and we should also be making disciples.

2. A second End-time danger is the proliferation of an inordinate lust for revelations, sensational prophecies and outlandish unbiblical supernatural manifestations. People are finding solid truth to be intolerable and unpalatable, because the plain truth contradicts "their own lusts" for theories and bizarre teachings. And so they’ll find plenty of weird teachers to accommodate what they want to hear.

Now please don’t misunderstand me. I do believe very much in the Holy Spirit gift of prophecy! The Holy Spirit gift of prophecy (1 Corinthians 14:4) is a needful gift in the Body of Messiah—it’s biblical and it’s been powerfully used in my life to confirm many new doors along my path. I also prophesy words to others from time to time as I’m led by the Holy Spirit. But Paul told his protégé Timothy that the time would come when people would no be able to endure the plain diet of the Gospel; instead they’ll lust for more and more revelations and teachers with exciting visions.

Strange revelations and doctrines that excite have swamped our Facebook pages and email accounts.

J. Lee Grady wrote that “so much prophetic verbiage sounds like warm and fuzzy fortunetelling.” A prophetic e-mail list sent out a silly unbiblical word claiming that
dormant angels were being awakened out of the walls of our churches. Another predicted that God would begin to speak to people through the names of candy
bars and blue jeans. How pathetic.

YouTube prophets are a minefield of potential deception. And as Derek Prince often taught, manipulating people through prophetic gifts can amount to charismatic witchcraft.

The King James Bible that I grew up with renders 2 Timothy 4: 3 like this:

“For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts they’ll heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears.” The phrase “after their own lusts” means a craving for teachings not according to the Bible — cravings or wishes for angels, and so-called heavenly tourism through visions, and so forth. The implication is that people will always want a new revelation. They can’t endure biblically revealed doctrine.

The meaning of the original Greek is that people in the last days won’t be able to put up with "healthful, healthy, doctrine;" that is, foundational teachings from the Bible that explain salvation. These biblical teachings expose and denounce sin and heal mind, soul and body.

Paul’s prediction is that people will seek instruction that’s more conformable to their whims, to their wishes and fickle feelings. I’ve surely noticed that many professing believers have an insatiable appetite for the newest and latest revelation, when in fact, most good preaching is merely reinforcement of truths in the Bible that we should know.

Some seek to be electrified rather than edified. As much as I appreciate the recovery process of the Hebrew roots movement, we have to be careful that we’re not just chasing a remez or a revelation for the sake of revelations. We have to be careful not to crave the garnishing of the dish more than the food.

Jesus plainly warned us that in the Last Days there will be many false teachers and false prophets. Good sound ministers will be very rare, one in a thousand (Job 33: 23).

Internet rumor is especially tricky. Many scammers take delight in counterfeiting news with fake reports. People send me the most outlandish links wanting to know if they are true or false. Why don’t they have their own discernment?

I like the way the New Living Translation renders 2 Timothy 4:3—

“For a time is coming when people will no longer listen to sound and wholesome teaching. They will follow their own desires and will look for teachers who will tell them whatever their itching ears want to hear.”

Tragically it’s happening all around us. . . .People turn away from the truth, they grow weary of the glorious gospel of Messiah, they’re greedy for outlandish prophecies, and take pleasure in them.

The International Standard Version renders my text, “For the time will come when people will not tolerate healthy doctrine. . . .”

The NET Bible renders it, “they will have an insatiable curiosity to hear new things.”

And the Aramaic Bible in Plain English is a translation that I appreciate a lot. . . It says, “For there will be a time when they will not obey sound teaching, but they will MULTIPLY [emphasis mine] teachers to themselves, according to their desires, and with an itching of their sense of hearing.” The word multiply describes the phenomenon.

Furthermore, 2 Thessalonians 2:11 states, God sends them “a strong delusion so that they will believe the lie.”

May God grant us greater discernment.

3. A third End-time deception that is unfortunately gaining ground is the lie that God is finished with Israel and that Israel as a nation is not a fulfillment of Bible prophecy. What an end-time heresy! Nothing could be further from the truth!

I was listening with my husband to a radio news program. The host had so much going for him and his ministry, but then suddenly he lashed out in an anti-Semitic tirade against Israel that truly shocked me. He also denigrated a Christian Zionist pastor. As a Bible teacher, this radio host surely should have known better! God will hold him accountable for not knowing the prophetic Word concerning God’s regathering of the Jewish people back into their homeland.

The Bible states in many places that God favors the return of the Jewish people to the Promised Land, and the Almighty is fulfilling his covenant with the Jewish patriarchs and with King David, preparing for Jesus to return to sit on the throne of his father David and to rule this world for a 1,000 years --from this very nation of Israel with Jerusalem as its eternal capital! Replacement theology—the notion that God has rejected the Jewish people and replaced Israel with the Church—is an insidious teaching. It is particularly rebellious and dangerous in light of the plain fulfillment before our eyes of so many End-time Bible prophecies concerning Israel.

Ezekiel 37 foresaw the Jewish people crawling out of the communal graves of the Nazi death camps, looking like skeletons, wearing rags, yet returning to the Land of Israel to become an exceedingly great army.

Let’s take a selah moment and ask God to convict any Bible teacher or Bible commentator who is not understanding the times and who is erroneously leading the people of God astray into anti-Semitic dangerous error!

With the rising Middle East tension with Israel some of the specific prophecies we should be watching include the little Book of Obadiah containing prophecies that occurred in 1948 but then it also talks about sometime thereafter that the Israelis would take over the coastline all the way up to Zarephath in Lebanon —that’s the old town where Elijah raised the widow's son— when Israel eliminates the menace of Hezbollah.

Please get my latest book available at Amazon.com to understand prophetic history.

4. A fourth End-time deception that we must fight is a craving for revival signs and wonders without genuine repentance. Yes, we want big revivals, but revivals must be biblically sound and not just soulish shows with a lot of hype but no fruit that remains.

Hardly a week goes by that I don’t receive yet another prediction about a coming move of God that’s supposed to eclipse all other previous revivals. Well, first of all I have to say that there IS coming a revival that will eclipse all other revivals but the revival I’m talking about will take place ultimately in the land of Israel. That’s what Romans 11 is all about and you must read it for yourself!

While hopefully there’s still time for great revivals in the nations, by God’s love and mercy, nevertheless these potential revivals will not be able to rival the great End-time revival that the Lord is planning and preparing in these Last Days in Israel! The move of God in the land of Israel is prophesied in the Bible to be so great and Israel’s salvation from her enemies so tremendous and earth-shattering that the nations will know beyond any shadow of doubt that God is God (and not the moon god)! When the Holy Spirit is outpoured on the inhabitants of Jerusalem as described in Zechariah chapters 12 and 13, it’s going to be resurrection life from the dead compared to all other previous revivals. Anybody who’s spiritually smart will grab ahold of this.

The frequent discussions about Revival tend to revolve around the manifestation of the glory and presence of God moving across the land. I have to ask: Have we paid the price in fasting, prayer and repentance for such a revival? Or are we willing to accept weak substitutes? The dictionary defines the state of being revived as a return to life or consciousness. When a person is resuscitated from near death it’s said he’s been "revived." After being born again in my childhood, I’ve been through a number of spiritual revivals in my lifetime. Revival means returning to our first love, the Lord.

Revival is something that happens to individual believers when a living faith and our first love of the Lord is restored by the power and working of the Holy Spirit. By "revival" today most people are thinking of a large move of the Holy Spirit that will impact the Church and nations. I’m a student of the history of revivals, and in a true revival, the Holy Spirit is active in power to convict people of sin, of true righteousness and of impending judgment.

There are many wonderful consequences of real revival: believers begin to pray, they weep, they repent, sometimes they tremble under the power of the Holy Spirit with a holy reverential fear of the Lord and his holiness and judgment. If a revival is genuine, believers receive new power to live clean lives and to obey God from the heart. Therefore marriages and relationships are beautifully restored; drunkards and drug addicts are delivered form addictions; believers become productive members of society ….entire communities are transformed by the power of holy, godly living.

The one basic ingredient that’s lacking, and seldom spoken of, in current calls for revival is true repentance. I’ve talked about this a number of times in my television programs. It’s our great desire to do the exploits of God as never before but our Western nations are so weighed down by sins and so near to catastrophic judgments that I believe God is waiting for national repentance services. Instead, what most Christians seem to be seeking are mainly blessings for themselves in meetings.

If you listen to prayers in services, the prayers often revolve around individual needs and not God's agenda. People may enjoy a therapeutic time in lively praise and worship, yet nevertheless when the services are over and the lights are turned off, many are sadly still living for the most part unyielded, unsurrendered lives. In their heart of hearts, many believers know they still have outstanding unresolved issues between them and God, but they’re simply unwilling to change. Many believers are living in open sin. They take God’s mercy for granted. There seems to be no healthy respect for God’s moral law and no wise fear of the consequences.

Yet despite the lack of repentance and real change, there’s plenty of ministry going on. People line up for ministry and even want hands laid on them even though many continue to live in sin. And you know what’s scary about that? Jesus warned that many who have an anointing will be branded by him as workers of iniquity! How many are there like that in our churches today? But we have to face this dangerous fact and examine ourselves to see that we’re truly demonstrating the faith and contending for the true faith once delivered to the saints. This is because of the sobering warning Jesus gave in Matthew 7:22-23, "Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, didn’t we prophesy in your name, and by your name didn’t we cast out demons, and do many mighty works in our name?” But then Jesus said, “I will profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, all of you who work iniquity." God, please don’t let that be me.

Repentance seems to be an old-fashioned word that we want to sweep under the carpets in our church theaters of entertainment. Yet the essence of the Gospel is Luke 24:47 that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name unto all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.

In a sermon not far from Jerusalem's walls, the Apostle Peter’s cried out to his generation in Acts Chapter 3, “Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord!”

Both Jesus and John the Baptist preached repentance. Repentance means a change of heart, a change of attitude and actions, literally a turning around and returning to God. But a false Messiah is tragically is being preached in many of the churches, and the world loves this false Jesus.

Some of the attributes of this false Jesus is that he will let everyone into heaven; we’re told about this false Jesus that he came to bring peace and not division. He doesn’t require obedience or holiness; he doesn’t require repentance; he only requires love. He never says anything offensive, and he certainly won’t tell anyone they’re wicked. According to the narrative of this false Jesus, it’s impossible for him to send someone to Hell; his commands are only suggestions. But if you know the Gospels, you know all these lies portray a false Christ. Jesus does require obedience. He spoke many times of the horrors of Hell that we must try to escape. He called a spade a spade and rebuked religious hypocrites. So if you are following a false Jesus, wake up from that.

"Yet even now, says the Lord, turn unto me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning: turn unto The Lord your God; for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness..."

Now to sum up these four end-time deceptions:

THE REASON for the shocking apostasy that we’re seeing all around us is that the predicted time has come when people will not be able to endure sound doctrine.

Professing church-goers don’t want to discard the ministry altogether but they’re exchanging godly ministers for another category of flatterers because of human pride and indulgent teachers. Morality accompanies sound doctrine and immorality accompanies unhealthy unsound teachings.

The itch for novelty and for more and more revelations will result in a multiplication of false teachers who will share new things or smooth things. It’s a Bible fact that when men don’t return to the knowledge of the truth, God gives them up to a reprobate mind, which means a depraved mind, so that they lose all taste for sound ideas and all ability to think clearly.

In conclusion, after describing the battle that we’re living in, nevertheless we’re believing God in his mercy, (because he’s not willing for souls to perish), to win at least a million souls to the Lord in the time remaining before the Second Coming of Jesus. We covet your prayers. Daniel 11:32 promises “those who know God will be strong and do exploits.”

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