Global Apostasy: Ancient Heresies
Matthew 24:24
Before the celestial “shock and awe” judgments of the Tribulation are unleashed, God’s Word describes a time characterized by false teaching and teachers SO strong, that it would even sweep away even true believers (Mark 13:22) if they were not sealed by the Spirit of God.
In Matthew 24, Jesus describes the world before He returns in His Second Coming as a world where the love of most has grown cold because of false teachers (Matthew 24:11-12); and where “the Faith” will be nearly extinct (Luke 18:8).
Revelation 3 shows the end of the church age to be like the church at Laodicea, where truth is light and self-centeredness is heavy; materialism and personal agendas run deep, and true Biblical spirituality is shallow.
As we have already seen, Paul foretold that the days would be a time of great “falling away,” Peter, Jude, and John all described this final time as pervasive false doctrine across the world. As we open to the tiny letter of Christ’s other earthly brother, Jude, look at verse 3.
Today, we see such a sweeping array of deceptive false teachers as just the foretaste of this birth pang, which Jesus warned about and described–forming before our very eyes.
Never before have wrong teachings and beliefs about God been more widely proclaimed than in our day. A continuous, 24/7 river of erroneous teaching about God flows around the world: on radio, TV, cable, webcasts, podcasts, simulcasts, books, magazines, and everywhere in between—our world is increasingly filled with lies about God. And to this growing cauldron of darkness and lies comes the triumphant truth that—
Jesus Christ is
The Key
The storm of lies raining down upon us today is a constant reminder of why Christ’s Church is to be filled with well-grounded, grace-energized men and women who guard the truth that Jesus Christ gave us. We should be constantly declaring the truths we hold from John 14:6 to the confusing world around us:
Jesus Christ is the Way—there is NO other road to God than the Lord Jesus Christ. Any belief system that is hostile to Him, denying His deity, or claiming His insufficiency is FALSE.
Jesus Christ is the Truth—at the center of all truth that leads to God is the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul says that general revelation has two means: conscience and creation. Jesus Christ is right in the middle of the human conscience as the Creator who breathed life into the dirt used to form Adam, and He is squarely in the center of the created Universe as He is also the Creator of everything in the heavens and on the Earth. Any philosophy, religion, or science that is hostile to Him, denying of His deity, or claiming His insufficiency is FALSE.
Jesus Christ is the Life—the only way to live a life that is guilt-free, fear-free, full, and overflowing is in the Lord Jesus Christ. Those who come to Him find His complete forgiveness of every sin, and His complete transformation of their lives. Any religion, church, denomination, or Bible teacher that is hostile to Jesus Christ as God in human flesh who died a substitutionary death for sin, or that denies His deity in any other way, or claims His insufficiency is FALSE.
But that absolute assertion of Christ in John 14:6 is not widely held by modern Christians. George Barna recently reported that in America,
“Christians have increasingly been adopting spiritual views that come from Islam, Wicca, secular humanism, the Eastern religions, and other sources. Because we remain a largely Bible-illiterate society, few are alarmed or even aware of the slide toward syncretism. This belief system blindly combines beliefs from many different faith perspectives with God’s Word."
That leads us to consider the—
Ancient Heresies in
The Church of the 21st Century
WNS-43 – Global Apostasy – Ancient Heresies (090111PM)
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