Matthew 24:3-8, 23-25

“Now as He sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying, ‘Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?’ And Jesus answered and said to them: “Take heed that no one deceives you. For many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and will deceive many. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of sorrows….

“Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘There!’ do not believe it. For false christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. See, I have told you beforehand.”

Just last Saturday, I was walking into one of my manager’s offices, and all three managers on site asked me what the signs of the apocalypse were. I had to think for a minute, and it would have been able to get to the sensational things like wars and pestilence and the like, but over and over again in this passage, in fact, three times, we are warned not to be ‘deceived,’ and in another verse not to ‘believe’ what you are hearing about Jesus being here and there.

As children of God, we should be ready to answer these questions. People, even lost people, know that something crazy is happening. There is something going on beneath the surface, and they can’t put their fingers on it. There is a great division in households with those who are ‘woke’ and their partners or kids who are ‘awake.’ There are those who can see the deception and those who have swallowed the deception hook, line and sinker. There is real division, as Jesus said there would be; a man’s enemies will be the very persons in his household.

Sadly, this deception has crept into churches; too many want to look to the world system and embrace the lies. The idea of ‘inclusion’ has crept in to pervert the Gospel, and now our true living God is the bad boogeyman because He has strict rules about entering Heaven. Jesus is the only way is now a statement of hate, and all of a sudden, churches can’t say that because it is not about love. This is heresy.

I just saw a situation at a church where the speaker, I will not call him a pastor, stated in relation to a teaching that Jesus did, that Jesus needed to be re-educated about the subject and that, had Jesus lived in the modern times, He would not have said what He said. This is blasphemy.

To openly state that Jesus needed to learn something is crazy. Yet there are hundreds of ‘churches’ that speak this same drivel every week, and they are filled with people who amen and agree with this heresy. The deception is real.

There are other deceptions like someone telling his congregation that most people are good people. This is a direct contradiction of Romans 3:10-18. In this passage, we are all evil and unable to help ourselves; we are in need of a Savior.

There are old deceptions that still run rampant today like we need to work to be saved or stay saved, and there is a select group that is going to Heaven, and no one else gets to go. I had a family member make a statement about my FIL, saying that even if he did call on Jesus, maybe Jesus was not listening because he was not one of the called. Heresy. The Bible tells us that ‘all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved,’ yet this idea that they are in some specially selected group is so very popular.

There are many other deceptions; we can go on and on about them. Girls can be boys and vice-versa, and if you say differently, it is because you are hateful. The truth has become hateful. The truth about salvation has become hateful. There is a hatred for the Gospel, for the word of God in its basic purity and simplicity that is so real and dangerous. There is a hatred from the ones who are deceived that is pointed at the ones who have seen the ‘light’ and come to understand that there is good and evil, right and wrong, light and dark, and one has to choose.

There is a deception in our schools masked as education that is indoctrinating our kids against their own parents and teaching them to hate them. There is a deception in our government that tells parents that their children belong to the collective society and not to the parents. There is a deception that has people truly believing that the Government is their friend. Government is the new ‘god.’ The ‘god’ who determines what is true, what is right, and the one who makes sure that the ‘poor’ have their fair share of someone else’s goods.

There is a deception amongst us that tells many of our people that we can solve the world’s problems without God. All we need is more laws, more government intervention, more oversight, less freedom, and if we can all just get along. But that is not the case; our overlords are simply getting richer, taking more of our freedoms, and, in many cases, trying to kill us in the guise of health care.

There is a deception that tells us from the pulpits of the world systems that only if there were fewer of us, we could save the planet. They tell the masses not to have babies, but they do. They tell the masses not to own homes, but they own multiple homes. They tell the masses not to get married, but the elites’ kids are still marrying. They tell the masses that there is no need for privacy, but they have tons of secrets. They tell the masses not to buy cars, but they own planes and travel all over the world. They are liars, and they have told the lies so much that the truth is no longer even wanted, furthermore needed.

Jesus warned us that this deception would be so ‘good’ that it may even deceive the saved person. Yes, some of the children of God may swallow the lies, drink the Kool-Aid as they say. Too many Christians do not spend enough time on the word of God, in prayer, and in study. They have not filled their hearts and minds with the truth and, as such, are susceptible to the lies. It is a sad state of affairs.

Jesus is the Way, Jesus is the Truth, and Jesus is the Life; no one can come to the Father except through Him. This has not changed, and there are no other options for eternal life. God does not need to learn, grow, or change; we do!

The ONLY antidote to the lies is the Word of God. Get in it, read it, know it, live it, obey it, and make it your own. Never let it go; pass everything you hear through it and check to see what God says about what you hear before you accept what the masses or what the government says. As a child of God, the lies won’t take you to Hell, but it will destroy your home, your testimony, your church family, and thwart the Gospel if you let them in.

Jesus is coming soon; that is the Truth. There is no deception here.

God bless you,

Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Bethany Baptist Church
70 Victoria Street, Elora, Ontario

“The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?” (Jeremiah 17:9).

“For from within, out of a person’s heart, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, wickedness, deceit, lustful desires, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness. All these vile things come from within; they are what defile you” (Mark 7:21-23).

One of the hardest things to come to grips with is how evil we truly are. I often say to young Christians and try to remind myself that we really do not know how sinful we are until we get saved, and then the Holy Spirit begins to shine His light into the crevices of our souls and into the secrets in our lives. Truthfully, it can be quite defeating having to come to grips with how evil I am and how unlike Christ I can be. We now live in a world that has abandoned any pretense of being good. Evil is now promoted and even celebrated. Evil is loved and being pushed as the norm.

Jesus warned us that people love darkness because their deeds are evil, but now we are seeing that people have brought their deeds well out into the light. It has become evil to call out evil. It has become hated to call out perverseness and sickening sins.

Mankind has always been sinful. I am reading in the book of 1 Kings right now, and one of the kings had to get rid of the sodomites when he came to power. It seems that sexual perversion and effeminate men go hand in hand with evil. It is almost the most important fruit of evil. We are beginning to learn, sadly, that behind the scenes, evil has been rampant in our entertainment industries, the government, and maybe even in some ‘churches.’

I recall being warned by my Dad, that old fuddy-duddy, about the free sexual tendencies of the rock and roll world that I was immersed in as a kid. I listened to KISS, AC/DC, and a host of other rock and roll bands that promoted free sex and drug use.

Now, when adults engage in sexuality between men and women, that is one thing. But when there is the abuse of children, we can begin to see what happened to people like Michael Jackson and many others that had the innocence of their childhood stolen by grown men and some women as they sexually and emotionally abused these kids.

I saw an interview with a very famous young actress (Shirley Temple) where she talked about meeting with a producer in a hotel where they separated her from her mom, and the man, an adult, met her basically naked in a bathrobe. She, being about 12 or 13, had never seen a naked man, and embarrassment led her to begin giggling. She eventually left the room and met up with her mom; later on, she found out that her mom had also encountered a naked man in another room in the hotel. This attack on kids has been going on for decades; it is nothing new.

We are beginning to see that there is rampant homosexuality in the music industry, and it has been there forever. I recall my dad talking about Johnny Matthis, and it seemed like he was an anomaly. Rock Hudson on the Hollywood side also seemed to be an anomaly, but we are beginning to see that this was much more prevalent; these were just two that rose above the secrets. Fame has a hefty price. I am not sure that I would want any of my kids to be involved in either the music or Hollywood industries.

This kind of evil, this sexual perversion, may not be as prominent in churches, but sadly, it is there. There is perversion of the Gospel that has permeated too many churches. There are all kinds of things going on in churches each Sunday that are simply blasphemy. They entertain and excite but never disciple the people. Most of the ones in attendance are lost; they have no relationship with Jesus. They experience an emotional high, are often affirmed as being ‘good,’ and never have to come face to face with their own evil. No evil, no conviction of the Holy Spirit, no salvation, and no hope. This is evil as well.

People used to be able to trust their government; we cannot. Many of our current leaders are evil to the core. They hate God, defy His precepts, and see nothing wrong with promoting evil and punishing good. They, in fact, hate good. Good is abhorrent to them. As such, we have a generation of young men and women who cannot discern between good and evil. They, too, have come to accept evil as good.

I recall just recently seeing a young lady talking about why she ended a relationship with her boyfriend. According to her, he got ‘red-pilled.’ He came to see that men were men, women were women, and just maybe children should not be lied to about and forced into transitioning to the opposite sex. This turned her off of the young man. Imagine that.

I am also amazed at how many ‘church’ people feel the need to affirm sin, affirm abortion, affirm homosexuality, and the like. I see conservative preachers out on the road, out at colleges, often get attacked by ‘religious’ people who call them hateful for simply stating what God clearly says in the Bible. I just saw a ‘preacher’ apologizing for something Jesus taught about women and said that Jesus needed to learn a few things. This is evil.

Sadly, things will not get better. The current US administration may slow the tide of rot in the US, but eventually, they will elect an evil leader who will take them back to the path of darkness. Jesus is coming; more and more, I feel the urgency in my heart. But it may get a bit hairy for us before He gets here. I keep praying, Lord, please help me not to deny you like Peter if I get afraid or hurt; please help me to humbly stand for you if I get arrested or tortured for the name of Jesus.

We need to be praying, meditating and looking. Be wise and be prepared. It looks like there is a whole lot of evil about to be uncovered, and once it hits the light, we do not know how it will react and who it will target. Look up, pray up, and stay in the Word.

God bless you,

Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Bethany Baptist Church
70 Victoria Street, Elora, Ontario