"Thus saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.
But they said, We will not walk therein.
Also I set watchmen over you, saying, Hearken to the sound of the trumpet.
But they said, We will not hearken.
Therefore hear, ye nations, and know, O congregation, what is among them.
Hear, O earth: behold, I will bring evil upon this people,
even the fruit of their thoughts, because they have not hearkened unto my words,
nor to my law, but rejected it."
(Jeremiah 6:16-19)
As the wise old saying goes, those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Just as it was in Jeremiah's day, so it will be in ours also. Just as unfaithful Judah was given over into Babylonian captivity, so will today's unfaithful Church be abandoned to its apostasy and taken captive to "Mystery, Babylon the Great" (Revelation 17:5), the one world religious system of the Antichrist.
The old paths. The good way. God's way. The narrow way that leads to life eternal. The one road which alone promises rest for our souls. The road that Judah refused to walk. The road that today's professing Church similarly refuses to walk.
Watchmen. Those who keep vigil on the walls. Those with a sober responsibility to warn of danger by sounding the shofar. The trumpet that Judah refused to heed. The trumpet that today's professing Church similarly refuses to heed.
"Talk to the hand!" was the response of the people then. "Talk to the hand!" is the response of the people now. But there are consequences of such determined disobedience, and those consequences will be dreadful indeed. As in Jeremiah's time, evil will come upon such a people as this, from which there will be no escape. And note, and note well my friends, that it is the Almighty Himself who sends it in judgment.
Those who now say, "Talk to the hand!" will one day find the hand of God raised against them, and barring entrance to His grace. I don't pretend to know when that day will come, I only know that it will. One day the danger will be greater than it has ever been in all history, disaster will be at the very doors, but the shofar will have stopped sounding. And that will be God's divine decision; by His edict the last chance to hear and to act will have been given to those who claim to be His people but have loudly and proudly paraded down new paths, the bad way. As it is ominously written:
"The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved."
(Jeremiah 8:20)
The leaves on the trees are rapidly turning brown, my friends. Summer is over, the days are growing shorter, and there is a distinct chill in the air. But toasting herself with tongues of strange fire, the Church has hedonistically heaped to herself teachers who take delight in tickling her itching ears with wondrous words she wants to hear, rather than righteously upheld those who faithfully proclaim the words she needs to hear. And so we see fable-weavers and fantasy-mongers without number, gift-of-the-gab goatherds galore. Hirelings too many to head-count! But shepherds who feed the sheep rather than their own bellies? As hard to find as a hen's tooth or a hatching dinosaur egg.
Congregations everywhere are spellbound by celebrity status leechers pretending to be preachers, with "another Jesus... another spirit... another gospel!" (2 Corinthians 11:4). The only thing that gets a favourable REception is DEception. The Church just can't get enough of it! She simply far prefers fabrication to fact, illusion to reality. But be it known without a shadow of doubt that there will be a lead-heavy price to be paid for such full-on folly.
Let me here present a vitally important truth. The word of God is never given in vain, but with a very definite purpose and certainty of outcome; as it is indelibly written:
"So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth:
it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please,
and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it."
(Isaiah 55:11)
With this very firmly in mind, let's turn to another Scripture, another promise which will inevitably and frighteningly be fulfilled:
"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 2:11-12)
Who, we must ask, is the "them" referred to here? Who are the recipients of this "strong delusion" that God Himself sends? The context of 2 Thessalonians 2 is Paul reassuring those believers that they couldn't have missed the Rapture, because neither the Falling Away nor the coming of Antichrist - which follows hard on its heels - had yet occurred. As we are told:
"Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition."
(2 Thessalonians 2:3)
What is the Falling Away? It is so translated from the Greek "apostasia" - meaning defection, departure, revolt, forsaking, apostasy. Note well that Antichrist follows in the wake of the Falling Away; the inherent implication is that it is of significant assistance to him in his coming to power when he does! The Falling Away/Apostasy is the outworking of what is called in this chapter "the mystery of iniquity" and elsewhere referenced as "the spirit of antichrist," and can only pertain to those people who would claim to follow the Way but have markedly departed from it to follow a very different path, one paved with deceit, mapped out by men, and signposted with Satanic signs and lying wonders. It is these religious renegades to whom the "strong delusion" is sent by God.
Many are the infinite attributes of our Creator. But we need to mark well that patience is not one of them. It is emphatically NOT infinite! Yes, He is long-suffering. Yes, He tries time and time again to bring people to their senses. But it IS a FINITE number of attempts. As He warned way back in Genesis:
"And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man."
(Genesis 6:3)
The sands of His patient striving are fast streaming through the glass. At some point, and maybe much sooner than we might think, the final grain will drop through and be gone. The last chance to heed will have passed into history, and the "strong delusion" will descend in its stead. Then...
those who refused to return to the old paths from their new ones,
those who re-wrote the Word of God into the text of men,
those who deserted sobriety for spiritual drunkenness,
those who held light to be darkness and darkness to be light,
those who exchanged exhortation for entertainment,
those who applauded profitless prophets and self-appointed apostles,
those who boasted that flesh would set up the Kingdom while Jesus just looked on,
those who used and abused the glorious Gospel to feed their greed,
those who fashioned Almighty God into the image of mortal man,
those who stole His glory for their own ego's gratification,
those who swindled the unsaved by giving them fiction in place of fact,
those who in countless ways contorted Christianity and twisted the Truth,
those who laughed and not wept as the world around them crashed and burned,
those who claimed apostasy to be anointing and revelry to be revival,
those who devoured the doctrines of demons and thought them so sweet,
those who said "Talk to the hand!" and refused to repent...
... will be given over by God to the lies and the deceptions that they lusted for. He will effectively lock them into the dark strongroom of delusion, and throw away the key. There will be no way out. No parole. No release. The "strong delusion" will have descended, and will not depart. God will have granted them the increase of that which they would not desist from planting and watering. They rejected the Light, and now the Light will have rejected them.
"And they have turned unto me the back, and not the face:
though I taught them, rising up early and teaching them,
yet they have not hearkened to receive instruction.
But they set their abominations in the house,
which is called by my name, to defile it."
(Jeremiah 32:33-34)
"Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name?
and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?
And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you:
depart from me, ye that work iniquity."
(Matthew 7:22-23)
"Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name?
and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?
And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you:
depart from me, ye that work iniquity."
(Matthew 7:22-23)
