4 End-Times Deceptions

It has truly been shocking how many in the younger generations have never heard one single message on the return of Jesus Christ.

I was recently preaching on the Second Coming at a meeting in North Carolina and many youth came forward under great weeping and travail. As I ministered to them and prayed for them, they said their heart was burning and had never heard a message on eternity. As I travel around the country, older saints approach me with tears in their eyes testifying that they grew up hearing messages on heaven and hell and the return of Jesus Christ but it has been decades since that occurred. Despite the message of Jesus’s Second Coming being brand new to many young people these days or a long forgotten subject to older saints, we must turn to the Word of God to find our foundation. What we find should sober us up quickly.

The truth is that Jesus Christ was the preoccupation of the first-century Church. Reflection on His beauty, zeal for His name, and an eager expectation of His return consume page after page of the New Testament. In fact, Jesus Christ is the crucial end-time subject matter. Without the correct knowledge and understanding of who He is, the pressures upon the earth prior to His return will be unbearable for many (see Isa. 33:6).

The Bridegroom King in the New Testament

Paul called the Second Coming of Jesus Christ the Church’s blessed hope. He directly connected the call to holy living to the return of Jesus Christ. What will happen if the emphasis on holiness and repentance in the Church gets connected to the preparation of the Bride for our glorious Wedding Day when Jesus Christ returns? Second Timothy 4:8 says:

Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give to me on that Day, and not to me only but also to all who have loved His appearing.

Paul, at the close of his life, declared that a crown of righteousness awaits all who long for and love the return of Jesus Christ. There is a present-day move in the global Church to set aside the importance of the Lord’s return and focus on only the kingdom coming now through us. This emphasis on the “now” of the kingdom has done much good to remove passivity from the Church.

However, emphasizing the “nowness” of the kingdom at the exclusion of Christ’s return was not a practice of the apostles and early Church. Their writings were clear. We are to long for His coming and live now in such a way that hastens His return. Second Corinthians 5:1-5 says:

For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven, if indeed, having been clothed, we shall not be found naked. For we who are in this tent groan, being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed, that mortality may be swallowed up by life. Now He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who also has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.

The Holy Spirit yearns inside of us for the return of Jesus Christ. There is actually a greater cry than the cry for present revival. There is a deep ache on the inside of us that longs for our resurrected bodies! What if the focus in many of our revival circles on present-day moves of God is actually disconnect “The Holy Spirit yearns bridal revival in the last days!

Revelation 22:17 speaks of a time when the Holy Spirit and the Bride will be in unity in their desire for the return of Jesus Christ and His rule and reign in the earth.

The Spirit and the Bride say, “Come.” And let the one who hears say, “Come.” And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price (ESV).

The eternal cry of our hearts as believers is, “Come, Lord Jesus!”

Asking the Hard Questions

With many Scriptures in the Old and New Testament concerning Jesus Christ as our Bridegroom King and His Second Coming, then we have to ask ourselves this: “If longing for the appearing of Christ was normative in the first-century Church, then what keeps believers in the 21st century from longing for His return and studying Scriptures concerning it?” My friend Allen Hood has some excellent insight here.

1. Misconception: Studying the end times will distract us from fulfilling the Great Commission.

The truth is that sound doctrine always promotes biblical action. A correct view of the end times will always lead us to a passion for the harvest! If Jesus Christ is returning, then we must have an urgency in our hearts for all our lost loved ones and those who will perish in the world.

2. Deception: Jesus told us not be overly concerned with the end times.

Matthew 24:36-37,42 says:

But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only. But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. …Watch therefore, for you do not know what hour your Lord is coming.

In its proper context, Jesus is actually pointing to the fact that because we do not know the hour of His return, it should produce a watchful spirit and an active posture of discerning the times and seasons. In deception, people use these verses to empower the very thing that Jesus is speaking against! We must continually ask the Holy Spirit to lead and guide us into all truth.

3. Accusation: This worldly spirit mocks the return of Jesus Christ.

Second Peter 3:1-4 says:

Beloved, I now write to you…that you may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us, the apostles of the Lord and Savior, knowing this first: that scoffers will come in the last days, walking according to their own lusts, and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming?”

Again, Peter goes on in verses 10-12 and says:

But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness, Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat? (KJV)

4. Humanism: An obsession with the temporary devalues eternity.

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; and they shall turn away their ears from the truth (2 Timothy 4:3-4 KJV).

So many have a distorted view of the Second Coming of Christ because they crave the temporary pleasures of this life and do not understand how glorious the appearing of Jesus really is. In dangerous cases, they have bought into full preterism, which is heresy. This false doctrine says that Jesus Christ has already returned.

The Eternal Cry

I believe God wants to mark those reading this right now with a supernatural lovesickness. He wants to awaken an eternal cry in our hearts that far surpasses ordinary Christianity or even a temporary longing for revival. He wants to break the power of any deception, misconception, and spirits of accusation. He wants to raise up friends of the Bridegroom, end-time messengers who will herald His return. He is preparing a Wedding Altar in the earth and bidding His Bride to come say “I do.” Are you ready?