Jesus had told His followers He would be going away from them, but would return. He answered His disciples’ questions about when things He was prophesying would come to pass. They wanted to know when the end of the age would be, and when He would return.
He began His lengthy and in-depth answer with the words: “Take heed that no man deceive you. For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many” (Matthew 24:4–5).
So began what has become known as the Olivet Discourse. This section of Scripture is considered perhaps the most important of all prophecies in the Bible because it is from the mouth of God in the flesh. And, the very first thing Jesus told those disciples—and by way of His recorded words to them that day told us—was that deceivers would mark the very end of the age. Great deception would characterize the time just before He comes back. Jesus forewarned that His disciples must be on high alert for this particular societal condition.
The invasion by the mind snatchers is here. No matter which way we who observe the prophetic picture look, we see the delusion settling upon the thinking processes of men, women, and children. It has completely changed the character of our nation.
In America, it is relatively easy to look back and see that the entertainment industry has been a tool used by the master deceiver to pollute the common sensibility of the people. Hollywood has caused the suspension of disbelief to such an extent that the lines between fiction and fact have been catastrophically blurred. Morality guided by biblical principles has gone by the wayside in our society and culture.
The film industry, for example, has propagandized us to accept that it is okay to sleep around with other than one’s legally sanctioned spouse. As a matter of fact, the very term “sleeping with” is an entertainment industry-spawned term invented to help avoid the stigma attached to the sinful activity of having sex outside the God-ordained union of wedlock.
Deception is the progenitor of delusion—a mental illness that robs one of the ability to discern what is moral and what is not. Values clarification and situational ethics, through incessant inculcation, especially by the political, judicial, and educational progressives (liberals) since the 1960s, have declared that there are no moral absolutes (the Bible is irrelevant). The supreme evidence of how this has deleteriously affected life in the United States is seen in our political process and the results the lack of discernment has produced.
Socioeconomically, geopolitically, and every other way, deception has invaded and taken the minds of humanity farther and farther from God, thus from sanity. No element of this deceptive assault has been more deadly than has the false teachers and preachers of this Laodicean age. Strange winds of doctrine have joined forces with the humanist agenda to blow away every semblance of true spiritual discernment. These satanic psycho-babble concepts have constituted the ingredients for deception that has brought much of society to the point that it is now ready for suffering the great delusion of Bible prophecy yet future.
That prophesied delusion is outlined, of course, in 2 Thessalonians, as the apostle Paul writes:
For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way. And then shall that wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming: Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness. (2 Thessalonians 2:7–11)
Like disease that causes dementia to progress within the human brain, the deceptive tendrils of willful godlessness are pushing this generation toward the strong delusion prophesied for the Tribulation hour.
Terry