<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Pennsylvania Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

The Rise of Spiritualism and the Occult

Eric Walsh

Age of Deception

The Dark Side of Hollywood

Dragon Song

Social Justice, Politics and Spiritualism

So, Father God, now as we study your Word, I pray for your Holy Spirit and I pray, Lord, that you lead us in this, Lord.

And I pray, Lord, as we dig deep again into the end-time events and spiritualism, that, Father God, we see that you win this war and that if we stand with Jesus Christ, we are already on the winning side.

Help us to understand this now, Lord, so that we can share the hope of the gospel more effectively with others.

All right, Ephesians chapter 5, the verses we just read, says this, Let no man deceive you with vain words, for because of these things come at the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience.

For you were sometimes darkness, but now are you light in the Lord.

Walk as children of the light." The title of this message is the Age of Deception, and I'm going to show you that we truly live in a time of great deception, where it's very easy to fool people.

In Ephesians, Paul tells the church at Ephesus to let no man deceive you with vain words.

Ephesians 5 9 says, for the fruit of the Spirit and all goodness and righteousness and truth, proving, what are we supposed to do?

Then Paul says this in Ephesians 5.11, and have no fellowship, How much fellowship?

No fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather do what?

And there are too many of us as Christians who play with the works of darkness.

I mean I know Christians of all denominations who will literally watch horror movies in their house.

That is playing with the works of darkness in a very tangible and obvious way.

Verse 12, For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret.

First John 4 says this, Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits, whether they are of God, because many false prophets are going out into the world.

We're not supposed to just believe, we are to try the spirits.

2 Peter 119, we have also a more sure word of what?

Where unto ye do well that ye take heed as unto a light that shines in a dark place until the day dawn and the day star arise in your hearts.

We have, church, especially at Seventh-day Adventist, we have a more sure word of prophecy.

If you read 2 Peter chapter 1 and you read the verses just before this, Peter tells the story of the transfiguration on the mount.

He says that he was an eyewitness to this and yet he says prophecy is a more sure word and isn't it sad that you'll go to many a church and they don't even preach or talk about prophecy anymore so let's go to the great the greatest of all prophets Matthew chapter 24 and verse 1 and Jesus went out and departed from the temple and his disciples came to him to show him the buildings of the temple.

And the reason they did this is because in Matthew 23, Jesus leaves the temple and he says, I leave your house unto you desolate.

Verse 2, and Jesus said unto them, see not all these things, verily I say unto you, there shall not be left here 1 stone upon another that shall not be what?

So they say, look, Jesus, look at how beautiful the temple is.

Jesus, as he walks, casually says, listen, not 1 of these stones is going to be left standing on another.

Now they thought of Jesus as the next king.

They saw that he would sit in the in the seat of David.

That's what the role of Jesus was to them.

How could he fulfill that role if he first he said he leaves the house unto the desolate, the temple, and secondly now says the temple's gonna be destroyed.

Their whole worldview begins to collapse in these verses.

Verse 3, and as he sat upon the Mount of Olives the disciples came unto him privately saying, tell us when shall these things be And what shall be the sign of your coming and of the end of the world?

This is the question people are asking now.

When the war broke out in Israel and Gaza, my realtor, great guy, atheist, He was once an Orthodox Jew, he's Jewish.

He called me and said, I need to ask you what's going on?

He knows we're Christians, so he's saying, wait a minute, what's going on?

Maybe biblically, religiously, you can figure out why such a thing is happening in the world.

We are supposed to be able to give that answer.

And Jesus answered and said unto them, take heed that no man do what?

So before Jesus begins any prophecy he gives this warning.

It's a warning you have to heed well because we are living in an age of deception.

Now deception existed immediately and even during the ministry and life of Christ, but it exploded after he died and went to heaven.

It says, for many shall come in my name saying I am Christ and shall do what deceive many has this happened you remember a guy named Jim Jones Jim Jones had a socialist church in San Francisco brought all those people to Guyana and what happened?

Some of it was mass murder because they had guns pointed to them to drink the Kool-Aid.

And so when some of you younger people, that's where we get that phrase, you know, you have to drink, you know, you got you got to drink the Kool-Aid.

It means you have to believe even if you don't want to believe.

This world has been wrought with false Christs.

Then Jesus says, see that you be not troubled, for all these things must come to pass, but the end is what?

This is 1 of the words that I would tell people.

Matthew 24 and verse 6 is a word of encouragement to the believer that the world does not end by warfare.

It is not nuclear war, atomic war, it will not be a nuclear holocaust that ends the world.

When war breaks out in Ukraine and Russia, when a war breaks out in Israel and Gaza, when wars break out in places like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a war that has been a deadly war yet most of the world has not even paid attention to it.

The street wars we see in Haiti now, the gang wars on our own streets here in America, all of these wars will happen, but war is not how the world ends.

Jesus says don't listen, all of that's going to happen, that's not the end.

Because nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there shall be famines and pestilences and earthquakes in diverse places.

There's gonna be a lot more that happens.

Then he gives this verse I mentioned earlier in the week, Matthew 24, 8.

This is 1 of the most important verses Jesus speaks.

When I read this, and I really look at verse 7 and 6, I quake when I think that I believe, and I'm gonna show you in a second, I believe verse 6 prophesies of the great world wars.

I believe verse 7, as I'm going to show you, prophesize of some of the great natural disasters that have happened.

If we could go back, this is 2024, if we were to go back 110 years to the beginning of World War I, It was called the Great War, the war to end all wars, and it didn't end all wars, did it?

You fast forward from 1914 to the late 1930s and into the 1940s, you go into World War II, and again you thought, okay, we can win this war, we defeat evil, and there's no more war.

If you were an adult during the Second World War, and you're a man in America, you're probably off fighting in the war.

If you're a woman, you're back here driving the war machine at home.

It must have, think about the pandemic, how long it seemed like that few years lasted.

And that was a simple thing like a pandemic.

As terrible as it is, it, in my opinion, it pales in comparison to a global war.

And yet they sat through this war for years and when you think about what that psychologically did to live through such a terrible time imagine that all of that prophecy has been fulfilled and Jesus says all of that is just the beginning now let's check the prophecies now 1 of my favorite things to preach out of these prophecies and of course Jesus' prophecy comes true first in AD 70, the fall of Jerusalem.

The Roman emperor Titus comes first in I think it was AD 66 they came and they came again.

Series

The Rise of Spiritualism and the Occult

Age of Deception

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Understanding Difficult Topics

5. The United States in Bible Prophecy

1h 14m

The Tides of Change Part 1

53m

Plenary

The Storm Is Here

1h 22m

Endurance of the Saints

28m

Back to the Mission

The Battle Cry of the Remnant

1h 1m

The Fatal Flaw of Herd Mentality

50m

GYC SE 2012 Seminar: Leadership

Cultivating the Active Virtues

58m

Unlock Revelation

16. US in Bible Prophecy

1h 14m

The Test of Liberty

1h 4m

Plenary

The One Thing Jesus Can’t Give You

55m

Living the Word

The Urgency of the Word

58m

Morning Devotionals

3. Battle Ready

1h 13m

Sound Doctrine