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The great falling away, the apostate church. You've maybe read about it in your Bible or heard it talked about. Are we watching that unfold right now before our eyes? My personal belief is we're seeing the rumblings of it. We're seeing the formation. We're starting to see the apostate church beginning to coalesce.
People have actually been talking about this for a long, long time. Just think about how many people have thought they were in the end times and should be looking for the antichrist. Even John in his later years in the 90s AD when he wrote First John and Revelation - it was later than the writings of Matthew, Mark, Luke. The point is they were looking for the end of days then. Second Peter talks about the end of days and says something very important: with God, every thousand years is like a day and every day is like a thousand years. So if it's been 2,000 years since Christ, that would be like two days in God's economy.
During that time, Luther in the mid-1500s was pretty sure the great falling away was happening with the way the Catholic Church was doing things. Fast forward to the Holocaust - look at some of the readings from legitimate pastors who were studying, praying, trying to feed their flock good spiritual food every week and what they thought was going on, especially with Hitler. It was a time of thinking the great falling away was upon us legitimately. When they were looking at the evidence around them, there's no reason why they might not think that.
What about the sexual revolution of the 1960s? Rock and roll, Elvis, the Beatles. The hippie sexual revolution, LSD, all those things came in. Many thought the great falling away was happening at that time. The Billy Graham crusades had people from all denominations rally together around him. In other parts of the world, they'd rally around a guy like Luis Palao to do these crusades to try to introduce the gospel into the hearts and minds of people. And what we've learned from just modern times is that the gospel changes lives. People actually change the way that they live. And they don't do it out of compulsion or coercion. They do it out of their hearts being changed.
And now fast forward to where we are today. We have AI. We have rainbow cult deviancy everywhere. We have "body count" - that's how many partners young people have had, with most young women bragging they're between 50 and 100. Somebody was really smug saying she was over 120. It's a pride thing. During COVID they talked about how to use masks with various partners, like having multiple partners is just a common everyday occurrence.
When we look at AI and all the things happening, deviancy in our culture, what about just theft, what about murder? That couple from Israel got cut down outside in DC and people are celebrating it. Anti-semitism is off the charts right now. The deception - people chanting "free Palestine from the river to the sea" - they can't even answer what river or what sea. How easy it is to blind them. You're talking about supporting a group of people, Hamas, that killed women and babies, murdered them. They took them hostage. They put them in front of themselves when they're going to have a battle. They hide their weapons in hospitals. Don't give me this "from the river to the sea" that they're oppressed. No respect. No respect for life.
More research you will find in the historical record that Israel when they became a nation in 1948, they worked for a decade to try to have the Arab population that was there - they were not called Palestinians then - to try to stay and build an economy with them. And yet this is how it ends up because Satan blinds the minds of people all over the world.
You can make a case that there's been a falling away all throughout history. You can make a case that many antichrists have come, but the Antichrist, the man of lawlessness, has not yet shown up. That's where we find ourselves - just trying to sort through the wheat and the chaff, trying to find the gold nuggets throughout not only the historical record, but also through scripture, understanding what scripture is actually saying to the human being in human conditions.
Two Schools of Thought
There are actually two schools of thought when it comes to the great falling away. One is the view of mainline traditional biblical churches that this is an event that's going to happen that coincides with the second coming of Christ. We're going to see signs and things happening that indicate that time is drawing near, and the great falling away is one of those signs.
The other school of thought, believed by offshoots of Christianity - different sects - is that the great falling away and the apostate church has already happened. These people are referred to as restorationists. They believe that shortly after Christ ascended into heaven, the church very quickly became corrupted and fell into apostasy. And at some point in the future, somebody, some denomination, some person is going to rise up and set it all straight.
That has Antichrist vibes to it, doesn't it? The sects that would ascribe to that idea would be like Latter-day Saints and Jehovah's Witnesses, some non-denominational churches, some charismatic churches, and any churches caught up in new age or the NAR (New Apostolic Reformation). If you hear NAR, run for your life. They are into new thought as well. They would adopt the belief that the church fell away right after Christ left this earth and it needs to be fixed.
What might you hear from someone who believes the great apostasy has already happened? You'll hear things like "the forgotten teachings of Jesus." Remember, they think we've fallen away. They think we are an apostate church right now. They're referring to mainline Christianity. They talk about the deconstruction movement, saying things like, "Your mima and pawpa just had Christianity all wrong. They didn't know because it's all been corrupted. You can't trust the Bible because it was just written by men a long time ago that didn't know. That's just what they understood then - they don't know what we know now."
There's always telltale signs. If you study the original, you'll be able to spot the counterfeits. The problem is people are told that the original means something that it doesn't. Or they use little slivers, little verses. A lot of these false teachers, especially on the charismatic side, will always take one verse, maybe two, and then take another verse in another book that kind of aligns with it. And it doesn't mean what they say it means. Context, context, context. That's what matters.
If you're around long enough with the scriptures, it'll pop off the page. You'll know that you're dealing with somebody who doesn't know what they're talking about the minute it comes out of their mouth. Like when someone says, "salads are better than steak" - you know right away what you're dealing with. Or "I'm a Green Bay Packer fan."
Some of the other things you might hear them say is "let's look at the early church, see how they functioned, and we should function the same way" - meaning we should only meet in houses and Christianity shouldn't be funded in any way. It should just be this organic thing. They're always picking at the church, telling us how wrong we are in our wrongness.
When we put out our film, there was an outcry from a certain segment of people around the country saying, "You should put that on YouTube for free. The gospel is supposed to be free." Yeah, I don't think you understand. This is not me going down on the street corner and setting up a ladder like Ray Comfort does and sharing the gospel for free. I love that for Ray and others that know how to do it correctly. But making a film or doing a broadcast or having a gathering of church where you have to pay - the utility bill at our church was like twice as much this winter as it was the previous winter.
God wants as an act of worship for people to invest in kingdom building things. And that's not just their money, it's also their time and their talents. Well, why shouldn't all those filmmakers help and edit that thing and do the shooting for free? Because they're Christians. Don't they love Jesus? You're not looking at it through the full lens of what God wants from us. And when he has our time, talents, and treasures, where are we just going to put that money into then?
That's why it's important to look into good ground ministry, good ground church. As a pastor and as the chairman of Fresh Road Media, it's our responsibility to make sure that this is a good ground ministry. And so many people out there are using that heart tug that's legitimate from the Holy Spirit on people to invest into kingdom things, give to their church, give to ministries, and they take it and they take it in a greedy way to line their own pockets.
That's why the prosperity gospel to me is a sign that the great falling away is upon us. These people are charlatans at the end of the day, and the history that has come out about a lot of these people just shows they had no more godliness in what they were doing than you have pork in the pork and beans. They were in it for the cash. It was a scheme to line their pockets. And so that's what the falling away to me is. It's like a constant falling away where you've got people that are twisting the gospel, twisting church, twisting things or behaving in ways that is so awful that those of us that just want to simply be faithful with the truth, it makes it difficult for us to compete in that environment, which is why we have to trust God that he's going to send like-minded people that we're going to do the right things and go forward.
There's been a falling away consistently, but the great falling away, the great apostasy, the pound your microphone with your fist and make it spin, that is yet to come. That is yet to come. And when we see these things approaching, there's certain behaviors we're supposed to have. That's Hebrews chapter 10. Highly encourage you to read verses 19-25.
Making Selfishness Divine
Why is there this push to nitpick at the church? To say you're doing this wrong, you're doing that wrong? Grandma and grandpa didn't interpret it right and the apostles were just writing from their own perspective. "We know so much more now." What would be the need to tear apart the church fathers and throughout history saying they just had it all wrong?
The reason why they do that now in a greater way - I'm not saying this is a new phenomenon, but at the level that it is, we've never seen it before. What is it? It is making selfishness divine as a cultural norm. That is the problem we're facing as a culture because "your truth" doesn't have to be "my truth." So we get into Bible studies and instead of saying "how do you apply that verse to your life?" we say "what does that verse mean to you?" And that's not the way you want to roll in authentic narrow road walking. That's not a Bible study.
We have now replaced God with our self at a level that we have never seen in all of human history to the point where if I want to change my name to Christine and use the pronouns she/her today, you have to capitulate or you're racist, you're bigoted, you're this-phobe, you're that-phobe. And we've never had that before. It really feeds our own innate selfishness.
Transgenderism at its heart is being on the throne of God, sticking your eye at God, and saying, "I don't like the way you created me." And we all do that. There's very few people that are happy with the way God created them. We all wish we had this, that, or the other thing. Most people are not thrilled. And when you get into that comparison trap, that leads to even more selfishness.
Looking at this trend of poking at the church, trying to tear it down, trying to deconstruct traditional biblical interpretation and teaching, saying that those who hold to historical authentic Christianity are outdated and just blind to the new enlightenment that they are so swell with in their own selfie smugness, and trying to minimize what the apostles were writing and what the disciples were teaching as they went out after Christ ascended - it has to get people to a point where they think, "I don't know what to believe. If Mima was wrong and the church fathers were wrong and the apostles didn't even have it totally right and now you're telling me this, how do I know? How do I know this is from God?"
They don't care about hearing from God, per se. What they want is to be right. Who wants to be wrong? Nobody. And when they strive to find out how they can get it right, they go with the crowd. They go with the loudest voice in the room instead of that small, sweet voice of the Holy Spirit. And "broad is the way that leads to destruction. Narrow is the way that leads to life."
There's another thing it says that nobody wants to deal with: "Hard is the way." Narrow is the way and hard is the path that leads to righteousness and few who find it. We have to press into it.
Why are they going down this path? Trying to discredit not just your church and faith that's been passed on from generations before, but even back to the point of the apostles? It gets us to a state of confusion where we don't know what to believe. How are we going to know what to believe? Who do we know is from God?
Oh, it's the ones who are showing us signs and wonders and performing miracles and healing people and speaking in tongues and prophesying. That's the point. That's where they need to get people in order to buy into that apostate church. They are going to put forward false signs and wonders. That's what the antichrist is going to do.
That's why Mima's religion and the church fathers and even the apostles who wrote the New Testament, they're "not to be totally trusted." That's why Satan is trying to put that distrust in there, trying to get you to deconstruct your faith, trying to get you to question everything. There's no settled truth. There's no objective truth. It's all subjective truth. It puts us into a state of confusion.
When we're in a state of confusion and we go, "How do we know it's from God?" That's when Antichrist comes or false teachers come with their false signs and wonders to say, "See, we're the ones from God because we're performing miracles and doing signs and wonders and miracles are just a part of our everyday life." They're really not. But people will get sucked into that.
The good thing is you can go through history and because people were writing stuff down - and that's a good thing - people have been attacking the truth from the very beginning. Jesus warned us about it. The disciples and the apostles warned us about it that there's going to be false teachers, apostles, prophets, and there were - they were back in the Bible doing the same thing. But we can trace back to what did these people believe? What did these people believe? What did the reformers believe? And it's all the same all the way back to the apostles. It doesn't change for the true Christian. That's why they have to say, "No, no, no, no, no. They got it all wrong" and the apostate church rose up right after Jesus left this earth or shortly thereafter.
There's always been a counterfeit. Satan is relentless.
Church History and Biblical Truth
Learning church history helps one in correctly interpreting the scriptures in a couple different ways. Number one, you get to look at all of the trials and errors that have happened over the years. And you go back to Ambrose and some of those other ones in 115 AD, 145 AD. You go all the way up to the Council of Nicaea in 315 or 313. You get to see the trial and error and then you also get to see their findings.
There's obviously heresies. There's obviously strength in the authentic gospel that was played out - both of those things over hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years. And then you can see how what is now called the Catholic Church or the Roman Catholic Church, how they developed into a man-centered, not gospel of Christ, but really - and again, if you're Catholic, let's have some honest dialogue about it. I'm not trying to put anybody down here, but it's really a reincarnation of an ancient pagan what was called the woman child cult.
And then they got into all kinds of other things like how to create power, how to hold power. The pope was at one point one of the most powerful people in the whole world and they wanted to consolidate that power. How did they get riches? They created indulgences and they kept the scriptures from people and they kept saying things in Latin. They were the authority.
The indulgences to me is one of the things where it's like I can't believe that this even went down. But they'd literally teach you that your relatives were in purgatory or hell and if you gave to the church that would release them. And they even had a phrase: every time the coffer clings, the coffer being the offering plate with the clinging being a coin going in there. "Every time the coffer clings, another soul from purgatory springs."
So, you've got Luther then standing up with the Great Reformation. Then you've got the Crusades. You've got all of these things that have happened over the years and church history even going back to the 1990s, 1980s, 1970s. You see the development, the ebb and flow of a constant deception push and a constant push for counterfeits. And some of them even to a trained ear, even to a sold-out ear can sound good. Can be like, "Oh, that's kind of spiritually appetizing." Maybe I'm missing something here. And the fear of missing out, FOMO, and other people getting special revelation that you didn't get draws us in to this potential deception instead of knowing that you've been given everything.
At the core, and I've been teaching this now for decade plus, maybe 15 years, because it dawned on me that there's nothing special. There's nothing like amazingly I got to have an IQ of 160 to be able to understand it. There's nothing like that. It's for the common man. It's for the regular person. It's for the regular folk. Faith like a child. And it's so simple and it comes down to this: You are sinful. So am I. We can't save ourselves.
There is sin and there's iniquity and there's some other things. So, I don't want to say all sin is equal because that's not a true statement. But in general terms, the adulterer at heart, the homosexual, the thief - all of us, we all have that. No matter what you've stolen, no matter what you've done, if you've ever said, "I hate that person" and you have just a stinging in your heart, the Bible, Jesus teaches us we're murderers. So, murderers, thieves, adulterers, fornicators - that's us. That's who we are basically.
And so when Jesus comes and saves us - we're all sinful and we can't save ourselves. And every religion in the world has been trying to work their way up towards God. And authentic historical Christianity is the only one where God works his way down to us while we were still sinners. And he offers us salvation. He justifies us. We get a new life in him. We get a new heart. We get a whole new perspective. And then we start this holiness journey called sanctification. And we stumble and we bump our head and we don't know what's going on and we make mistakes. And a lot of times that turns off people who say, "You're supposed to be better because you're a Christian." Well, in this journey, you get more and more mature. And how does that happen? It only happens through those who consume the word and speak to Jesus on a regular basis.
Because you want Jesus to speak to you, you want special revelation, open your Bible. I had special revelation today out of Hebrews chapter 10. God spoke to me and he said, "Especially as you see the days approaching." You were talking about the great falling away. Verse 25 of chapter 10 of Hebrews - "as we see the day approaching." God spoke to me today about that.
Through church history, these men of the faith have wrestled with these questions. Some false doctrine has tried to make its way in and at the cost of many men, they stood up for truth. And here's the other thing: the history then shows standing for that truth, how that played out. Standing on that heresy, how that played out. God will not be mocked. A man will reap what he sows. And so being able to see two, three, four, 500 years of things playing out and the gospel, authentic historical Christianity, the true gospel still stands and nothing else can stand against it.
Second Thessalonians Chapter 2
Let's actually turn to the scriptures. Second Thessalonians chapter 2 gives us a really good perspective of the great falling away, of the apostate church, and what the scriptures have to say about that.
It starts out in verse one: "Now we request you, brethren, with regard to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together with him that you not quickly be shaken from your composure or be disturbed either by spirit or a message or a letter as if from us to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. Let no one in any way deceive you, for it will not come unless the apostasy comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction, who opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship so that he takes his seat in the temple of God displaying himself as being God."
You see how different translations say it slightly differently but they're the same message. That's the thing. It's about the context and the meaning of what's being shared, not necessarily the translation per se. When the translations or paraphrases get that wrong, it's awful. When they get it right, it can be helpful.
Backing up to verse two where he says, "Don't let yourself get upset basically if you hear a spirit or a message or a letter as if from us." Who is "us"? Us is the apostles who are laying the foundation of the church. They are giving the message of Jesus Christ, all that he did, all that he taught in its entirety. That's the foundation.
That's where we turn to for the authentication of whatever is being taught - the letters of the original 12 apostles. That's where we turn or the words of the original 12 apostles. And then you get the Gospel of Thomas, you get the book of Enoch, you get some of these others that was determined by church history that that wasn't exactly those guys that were saying it or doing it or talking about it. It was others that had manipulated along the way. That's why it was rejected and not put into the canonization of scripture. It also had things in there that did not line up with the other teachings of the apostles. So having a gospel of Thomas not written by Thomas, you might want to reject it.
Allegedly alleging that the day of the Lord has come. And so there's an order of things here. Number one, they're likening the great falling away or the apostate church to the second coming of Christ. Now, there's a lot of history that's going to take place between when Christ left this earth and ascended into heaven and when he comes again. So if this is something that happens right away, why would he link it to his second coming, which is so far out yet in human terms, thousands of years away into the future? Why would he connect it to that event so far in the future if it's going to actually take place right after he leaves? That doesn't make sense to me. It doesn't prove anything, but it doesn't really make sense.
Let's pick it up in verse five: "Don't you remember that when I was still with you, I used to tell you about this? And you know what currently restrains him so that he will be revealed in his time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work, but the one now restraining will do so until he is taken out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed. The Lord Jesus will destroy him with the breath of his mouth and bring him to nothing at the appearance of his coming."
There's something in those verses that has to be answered: Who's the one restraining? Lawlessness is already at work, but the one's restraining. And he's going to do so until all these other things that I described earlier that could be the falling away are not the great falling away because there's the restrainer going on. So when that one's taken out of the way, then the lawless one will be revealed. What is that? So what is the restrainer? Who's doing the restraining?
The one now restraining. Yes, it's very singular. It is very singular. And so people will look at that verse and some interpret it as the Holy Spirit or the church or God himself. So it's all kind of coming from the same place. Anything that would interpret that outside of that realm, I wouldn't put any credence to.
It can only be the Spirit of God. It can't be anything else. You know the trinity. You have God the Father, you have the Son who lived the perfect life, died the sacrificial death, and you have the Counselor, the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, the Restrainer. So when the Holy Spirit is taken out, then the lawless one will be revealed.
This verse and this verse alone is the one thing that I can point to as to why I would buy into a pre-tribulation rapture because - and again the lawless one may not be revealed till mid-tribulation. I get that post-tribulation is eliminated by this. And again I've stressed many times I'm a pan-tribulation. It's all going to pan out anyway. And my problem with the pre-tribulation rapture is that there are so many people that take their eyes off Jesus and they just sit on their couch. "I don't care about any of that. I'm going to get raptured out anyway." It's like, no, what about your brothers and sisters and humankind anyway?
So, if the Holy Spirit is removed, the restrainer is taken out of the way, we can't be here. Why? Because it dwells in us.
This whole idea that there's a rapture, then seven years, and Christ returns - God's a god of order. But I don't know it's going to all go down like that because of one other little verse in scripture where Jesus says the Father chooses to shorten the time because even the elect would be deceived. Think about that homeboy and home girl.
So it is a little bit vague. We know that it would be the Spirit of God whether it's the Holy Spirit, the church if the church is taken out at that time or just God himself. And so we don't really know. It's not totally clear, but we know it has to do with God and how he's functioning and how he's operating.
One more sidebar about the rapture. And that is this is not a show about the rapture, but I think the rapture theory can be part of that great falling away deception. You got to keep your eyes focused on Jesus. You got to be ready for Jesus's coming. Don't forget there's scripture after scripture that says hold fast, stand firm, persevere.
"Because we're just going to live all hunky dory and get raptured out before the badness comes. Why do you have to persevere if everything's hunky dory?" No, what I'm saying is this is why some people lean towards mid-tribulation. Is because there's going to be bad stuff that's going to happen. And here's the thing. God has to shorten the days or even the elect would be what? Deceived.
And so with the deception everywhere, AI running rampant - there was a story about AI today where one version of it, basically they threatened to turn it off and it resorted to blackmail to its handlers. We're watching AI get a little antagonistic toward mankind right now. They said a couple years ago 2025 was the year and it might be 2026 but we're approaching where it becomes sentient. When AI becomes sentient then everything is going to change. Well it's self-aware and making decisions and it's not dependent on someone else. AI can actually create its own power structure. I mean, I'm not saying we're headed to the Matrix pods to be used for our electricity or anything like that but we are in a world where I don't know how much longer it can last.
And so in that world, we have to persevere. We have to stand fast. And if the great falling away is coming, get your eyes off the rapture theory, whatever it may be. I don't care if you're pre-, mid-, post-, I don't care. Just focus on the fact that Jesus is going to return for you. The I-80 from Denver to Chicago claims a life every day. On average, there's over 450 deaths a year on the I-80 from Denver to Chicago. If you're on that road right now and you are the one who's going to die, say in 15 minutes, guess what? Jesus's rapture, Jesus's return has happened for you. You're face to face with him today.
If we are headed towards the end days, do you understand that Satan overcomes the church? You know, overcomes the saints. Do you understand that a third of mankind dies? I mean, this is not, "Oh, happy days. We're in the end days. Can't wait to be raptured." Left Behind with all the people from the books. It's like, how dumb are you? I'm sorry, that was not very pastoral. I think I'm having a Left Behind book burning later today.
But this gets back to what we were talking about before - that the Antichrist sets himself up as though he's God. And you just referenced that verse where it says at some point Satan is going to overcome the saints. I mean, that's what we're looking at. And so, it really is all tied together. How it's going to play out exactly, we don't know. God's ways are so high above our ways, but we can watch and we can see and then when things happen, we can go, "Oh, that was God." Because God said that was going to happen.
Let's drop down to verse 13 in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2: "But we ought to thank God always for you, brothers and sisters, loved by the Lord, because from the beginning, God has chosen you for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and through belief in the truth. He called you to this through our gospel so that you might obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. So then, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold to the traditions you were taught, whether by what we said or what we wrote."
I just love how he says that you were chosen from the beginning, that you are loved by the Lord. That's not a God who lets his church go off the rails as soon as he ascends into heaven. Romans 11 says he's going to preserve a remnant of the church even in the midst of that heavy deception.
So, we got to be about the remnant. His truth has been preserved. His word has been preserved. His people have been preserved. And this great falling away is happening towards the end of time. Because it's like this: It's not that the church falls away. It's that the ones who really don't love the truth are the ones that fall away. And so they kind of have it opposite when they say, "No, it happened long ago and now we as restorationists believe we're going to restore it to what it really is supposed to be."
Further down, he says, "It's very interesting that we're sanctified by the spirit and through belief in what? The truth." And where does that truth come from? In verse 15, the traditions which you were taught, whether by word, the word of God of the mouth, that they preached the word of God, or by letters from us. Again, who's us? The 12 apostles, the disciples, the ones that Christ himself sent out to lay the foundation. We're holding on to that foundation. That's exactly what's going on.
Even the word apostle has authority with it. To be an actual apostle, you had to be with the one you were an apostle of. You had to spend time with them. And then they had to give you their authority. So if an apostle of Caesar showed up, he could act and speak as if he was Caesar. And so an apostle of Jesus Christ represents Christ. And so there was a lot of supernatural things that happened after the resurrection. The fact that they saw the risen Christ was an incredible necessity to be an apostle.
Which is why when we have these people throw "apostle" around like the word pastor or the word teacher or priest or whatever else you want to use - look, there is only 12 apostles. Paul was added to the group on the Damascus road specifically because Jesus had a specific role for Paul to play in the Gentiles coming to know the Lord. And so this whole idea that we're going to then christen ourselves as new apostles, no, is about as sacrilegious an affront that you can actually have in knowing what is actually being said here.
You bring up an interesting point though when it comes to Paul because Paul, even though he wasn't a follower of Christ, he knew, he was very well aware of Jesus, what he was doing, what he was saying, what he was preaching. He was very well aware that he was crucified, that they said he was resurrected, and that he ascended. So he knew all those things and was alive during it even though he was in opposition to it. But then on the road to Damascus, he did actually encounter Christ personally.
And then not only that, but through a vision, Jesus told another person, "Go to Paul and tell him that I have chosen him to bring the gospel to the Gentiles, to their kings, and to Israel." So, he was actually chosen by Christ.
Not trying to add extra biblical truth that's not there, but remember Paul was blind for a handful of days before Ananias came and prayed with him. I believe - it's just my belief - I believe that there was a lot of interaction with the Lord Jesus during that time. More so than just one sentence blinding him. There was some time there where Paul really got his calling laid out. And he was sure in his calling from that moment on and he never wavered. And many of us get touched by the savior in such a way and we have such a great new life that we'll never be the same. And what happens is the things of this world start growing strangely dim according to the hymn. That is exactly what happens.
If you have your choice to be in the center of God's will with his favor, but you're going to live just a meager type life or you're going to be outside of God's will and you're going to be extremely wealthy and famous and all these other things. Which one would you choose? Well, let me tell you from somebody who's met a lot of wealthy and a lot of famous people, they don't have anything that you don't have available to you today. I would take the first one for sure because there is nothing better than being in the center of God's will.
Let's look at verse four again real quick because it says something very interesting: the man of lawlessness is going to be revealed and then he's going to exalt himself above every so-called god or object of worship - everything. And he's going to set himself up in God's temple and he's going to proclaim that he is God himself. None of that has happened. If you know who the man of lawlessness is, let me know. Because this has not happened yet.
So when we're looking through the order of things that's spelled out here in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2, the apostate church is going to come when the man of lawlessness is revealed and sets himself up as God. The lost world will eagerly embrace him and accept him, and then the second coming will happen because the scripture said there in Second Thessalonians that the second coming is not going to happen till this stuff happens first.
This verse kind of contradicts those who say that a lot of this that Jesus was talking about in Matthew 24 and others all went down in AD 70 with the destruction of the temple. Well, since the destruction of the temple in AD 70, sacrifices have not resumed. True. But do you know that Israel can be up and running with a functioning temple within 24 hours? Most people think this is going to have to be this big construction. No, they have tents ready. They have all the elements ready. They even just in the last weeks, like couple months, they've now elected their high priest. They've got the red heifers. They've got everything that they need. They're just waiting for the right moment to start the sacrifice. Many people believe that when the rapture happens, the Jews will start the sacrifice and then the antichrist will come at three and a half years and then do the abomination of desolation. We shall see.
Signs of Our Times
Are we seeing the great falling away? Maybe not in its full fullness, but we're definitely seeing rumblings of that through things like new thought and the NAR who are setting themselves up as authority over the entire church. These are people who are just appointed. They're not people who have studied to show themselves approved or anything like that. They're just self-appointed or maybe they even bought the position. We don't know. And they're not just claiming authority over their church or that denomination. They're claiming authority over the entire church.
Also looking at deconstructionism where people are being taught to just forget everything you've ever learned in the past about Christianity because it's all wrong anyway. We're definitely seeing the apostate church starting to coalesce, starting to take form. And also with deconstructionism, we're seeing people flat out fall away, completely rejecting God and anything to do with God in a very atheistic manner.
So I believe that we are seeing the beginnings and may see the full fruition of the great falling away. But I don't want people to be discouraged or afraid or nervous. Remember that the great apostasy is not the true church being deceived or getting off rails. No, the apostasy church rises up, but Christ preserves the true church and doesn't let her get off the rails.
Let me share just a couple verses with you. Galatians 1:6-12: "But even if we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you" - who's the we again? The apostles and the disciples. The real apostles - "let him be accursed. If it's a different gospel, those are hard words. Let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you than what you received, let them be accursed."
1 Corinthians 1:22-25: "For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom. But we preach Christ crucified. Unto the Jews a stumble block, and unto the Greeks foolishness. But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God."
Some of the things we're seeing today would indicate that we are starting to see the great falling away and the rise of the apostate church: the anti-semitism that is just off the charts. Never in my life did I think we would see something like that in the United States. I didn't think people could be this blind to actual facts on the ground, but they apparently are. When the Bible says that Satan blinds the eyes of those who are perishing, and if God gives them over, it's even double bad. The depraved minds are everywhere.
Alongside of that, Christianity is no longer embraced as a positive, but is really looked at like a negative. That's what we're going through right now, where anyone who holds true to the biblical text is at least ostracized or laughed at. And at worse we are seeing the rise of persecution against the church all around the globe.
The other is the false doctrine and the false teachings that are rising up. And these false teachings aren't just differences in unclear passages. We're not talking about that. We're talking about flat-out heresy that denies the biblical realities, the settled truth that the church has been holding on to for thousands of years, and the true church will continue to hold on to as well.
At its core is that adults now who are grown adults do not have a developed common sense brain. They do not know how to think critically. They do not know how to ask. They do not know how to dialogue. And they are force-fed everything.
When you go on the street with some people who are well-meaning - possible conservatives, possible Christians - and they take their camera and their microphone on the street and they go to some of these protests, the Tesla protest, some of these other Black Lives Matter protests and Bernie Sanders gatherings, and they ask them, "What specifically has Trump done that upsets you? What specifically is good about what you're standing up for?" And person after person, many of them look like older educated folks, both men and women, they can't answer the question. They just give platitudes. They just give little regurgitations of whatever they've been told. There's no original thought. There's no critical thinking.
And when that happens, that is just fertile ground for the mindmelting numbness of just following whatever you're told. Kind of taught not to think for yourself, but just follow the mantra. "Somebody tell me what to think and I'll think that." As long as it's the path of least resistance.
And the other big thing is that gambling is just second nature. It's like going and filling up your gas tank and buying a slice of pizza and dropping a $5 parlay bet on the basketball game tonight. That's so common. Drug abuse - we have people abusing CBD, methamphetamines, and of course all these different things have been going on for a long time but that was the subculture. Now it's the main culture. We are kind of a drugged society. So just keep people drugged and eating garbage food and keep the medical industry fat and happy.
And right now you watch people - I mean say whatever you want about Trump. I'm not a MAGA guy. I'm not carrying the Trump banner. I'm very happy with some of his policies. I'm about the gospel of Jesus Christ. My marching orders are very simple. Go into all the world and make disciples baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That means you got to give them the authentic truth. And if Trump helps me do that, that's great. Always pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Trump's supporting Israel, that's great. So when you see that these common sense type things are now an affront to a whole group of people who can't think clearly for themselves and who many are clearly demonic. I mean there's clearly demonic possession going on on some of them. I say the great falling away if it's not at the doorstep - what else can happen? Where else can we go?
Well I think there's a couple other things that are taking place. I mean, what else can happen that becomes mainstream before the great falling away? There's only a handful of things like being able to just murder at will. Pedophilia being common. I mean, there is a couple more steps. I'm not saying there's not. I pray to God that he brings an end to this before more destruction because people are hurting all over.
You see people's lives are changed by the gospel of Jesus Christ and you know that there's tons of people hurting out there. There's tons of people that are seeking and they don't know what they're seeking for. And then now they've got to consider what you have to say as a Christian alongside all these other falsehoods. You've got to proclaim and not debate. And you've got to trust that the Bible will be the unleashed tiger on the soul and that God will do the work, the Holy Spirit will draw them and God will get them to wake up.
There's a rejection of holiness and righteousness. We've lost that. It's on a global scale. It's not even just pockets here and there. People no longer thirst after righteousness. They no longer seek holiness. That's not important to them. That is definitely a sign of the rise of the apostate church while they're still calling themselves Christians.
And the other thing is simply the devaluing of the scriptures - that you can't really trust them. They're just written by men, and even if it's God's word, it's just their perspective for their time and it can just mean whatever it wants to me. The devaluing of scripture and there's so many other signs.
Are we in agreement that we're seeing the rumblings of it? We're seeing the formation of the apostate church rising and the great falling away. Well, I was convinced that Y2K and the Clinton administration was the great falling away. So that was 25, 26 years ago. That looks like patty cake now. That looks like nothing compared to what we're seeing now. I would say that we're there and unless there's some great revival, look, America - forget the rest of the world. America can't make it much longer. Because a country this divided against itself cannot stand. And we have a completely broken political system. Republicans who are just in it for the game. Democrats who will go against anything the Republicans try to do and try to fire up their base. They're trying to create civil war. They're trying to create unrest in the streets with no consequence. I mean, there's no consequence. Nobody's getting arrested. Nothing's happening. And so this country will fall some way, shape, or form.
I just want to reach as many people with the gospel as we can in the time that we've been given. We've been given today and that's all that we've been promised. The good news is we're not alone. I mean, the same things are going on in Europe and around the globe as well. UK, I don't even want to go there. And it's been going on for a lot longer in other parts of the world.
What Are We Supposed to Do?
In Hebrews 10, it talks about what you're supposed to do as you see the days drawing near. Do we see the days drawing near? Yeah. There's been a falling away happening on and off, starting probably three months after Pentecost. I get it. But there seems to be a great falling away that's on the doorstep. And as you see the days approaching, what are we supposed to do? Well, we're supposed to cling tighter to authentic Christianity and authentic Christians. We're not supposed to be isolated. We're supposed to be in a group of like-minded believers. And we're supposed to stand firm and hold fast and persevere. And that is trusting in the shed blood of Jesus Christ above all the mumbo jumbo out there.
We're watching good teachers teaching truth falling away. So, I mean, there's really - you've got to pick and choose where you're going to put your energy in this active culture, this insane culture that's just 100 miles an hour and everything's about us and everything's about convenience and everything's about speed. We just got to slow down and we've got to grab on to the truth and hold tight.
You make a really good point about the falling away because it can on the one hand mean someone that just flat out rejects God and everything having to do with God, but it can also be having the form of godliness but denying the authentic Christ and creating a Christ of your own making and worshiping a false Christ. There's going to be many false Christs. And so it can take different forms. It can be a complete rejection or just a rejection of the authentic for a false one.
When the great falling away comes, like in Hebrews 12, there's a thing about draw close to God. In James, it's draw close. They're talking to the Jewish person who doesn't fully believe yet, right? And so they're wanting them to draw close and receive the forgiveness of Jesus Christ, be washed in his blood, get the new life, and then you keep going. Well, so you can go deeper. You can turn your back and kind of wobble, but you are as close to Jesus as you're ever going to be once you've been justified. He's faithful. Then you start the holiness walk, which is called sanctification. And everything in this world just - you love the blessings, and when it feels like you're not getting everything you think you deserve or it's not going the way you want, there's still a peace there that can only be caused by having complete redemption in the savior knowing that you've got a better place. And this world is not all there is.
Consider my servant Job. This is the fallen world we live in, and God is not going to abandon us. Whatever it is we have to face, he's going to face it with us when we keep our hope and our trust in him.