You don’t have to be proficient at math to understand the formula presented by the title of this article “Distraction + Deception = Delusion” but you might have to be a computer nerd who understands binary math to agree that the formula 1+1=10.  Or course you could be someone caught up in the distractions and deception of relative truth and be in total agreement that 1+1=10 is true for some people.  You could even have become delusional from living in denial of the truth to the extent that you are suing the school math teacher for marking your answers wrong on a test!

We have an abundant supply of distractions in the world and an abundant supply of deceptions in the world and when you combine them together they produce a result of delusion in the mind and in the hearts of people.  What unfortunately is in rare supply is “the truth”.   The truth is the person of Jesus Christ as explained in John 14:6, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.”   Paul warned about the delusion that would come in the last days in 1 Timothy 4:1  “But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons,”   It is he gospel message of salvation from sin by grace through faith in Jesus Christ that is on the endangered ideas list and that is why Jesus asked in Luke 18:8 “However, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?”

Because of the Information age of today, there is an increasing supply of information and news that is constantly flooding the airways and the Internet.  We are being constantly bombarded with news stories, political commentary, sports, game shows, talk shows, advertisements, movies, etc and if you can’t find the information streaming to your TV you can surely find it on the Internet … just search Google.  All this information is coming at us like jets flying overhead, drowning out the sound of the still small voice of God, who is calling people into a relationship with Him and calling His children to serve Him.  One statistic I read said the 90% of all the “publicly available” data that the human race has ever produced has been generated in the past two years.  Everyone is beating his or her drum on the Social media outlets to be seen and heard by everyone else.  The intent of posting all this information is usually good but it can be distracting if you find yourself being constantly drawn to check the flow of information or pulled in by the “rip tide” of crazy YouTube videos or ‘wiped out” by the tsunami effect of porn.  It can even be discouraging and depressing if you start comparing your life to the “grand moments” that are captured on Facebook.  In this Information age, it’s all about attracting people’s “eyeballs” by distracting your attention.  The more clicks that a web site receives, the more money the web site makes from those who advertise on the web site.  It’s a vicious competition amount information peddlers to capture the eyeballs by any means possible.  Even this web site, which is advertisement free and meant to glorify God could be keeping you from attending to something that God want’s you to do.

And if you do manage to break free from the liberal media and information distractions long enough to consider God, don’t count on the church to bring you the truth that you need.  Unfortunately, much of the the lukewarm, Laodicean church of today is preaching a gospel of deception, a tolerance of sin, instead of a repentance from sin.  Many Christian church who once stood on the truth of God’s work, now compromise with the world in order to “win friends and influence people”, as though the word of God needs a face lift from Dale Carnegie or is dependent on success based on the outcome of a popularity poll.  Jesus didn’t come to make bad people good or to make good people better or to make people feel good about themselves but He came to make dead people alive!  You are dead in you sin and the gospel of “nice” is not able to save you from your sin and give you a new born again life in Christ.  It is just going to further sedate you and keep you from recognizing the God who really loves you and wants to change you into the person He created you to be.  Therefore, when you combine the distraction of the world with the deceptions of the church, the result is the inevitable result of “delusion”, where a person thinks he is “good enough” before God, just as he is.

I find it odd that the song Bill Graham played while thousands walked down the isle to be saved and many more revived was “Just as I am”.

Just as I am, and waiting not
to rid my soul of one dark blot,
to thee whose blood can cleanse each spot,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come.

The verse reads, to “rid” my soul of one dark blot and cleanse each spot but today when the song is sung it is more like this:

Just as I am, Lord look at me
I’m good enough to the “33rd” degree
So “have a nice day” and let me be
O Lamb of God, please go, just go

The headlines in the news on May 9th 2015 was “Rick Warren and Elton John hold hands before Congress to ask for more money for AIDS research”.  Rick Warren is the pastor from the Saddleback Church and leader of the apostate Christian movement in America, the church of compromise on the gospel of Jesus Christ, tolerance toward sin and the pointlessness purpose of grace.  Elton John is a gifted musician and a spokesperson to advance the agenda of homosexuality in the world.  Look, it is right and good to have compassion and demonstrate love for one another because this is the call of the great commandment.  But when the hand of the great commission, which is intended to warn people to repent from sin, is missing from your actions then you are displaying a love of “self”, not a love of God and it is worth nothing.  In a similar way, if you are only concerned with spewing self righteous indignation but do not have love and concern for the welfare of those you are spewing it too, then you are exhibiting a Pharisee mentality that is equally worthless.  The love that represents God requires both hands of the gospel … Spirit and Truth.

John explain it this way, John 4:24 “God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”  But in today’s culture there are plenty of people who display a “Spirit” of self motivated kindness to relieve the symptoms of suffering (sickness, disease, violence) but they are not interested in discussing the cause of the symptoms or the cure.  They want to give resources to relieve the suffering of the world but they are not willing to do anything to hold people responsible for their actions of sin which is usually the cause of their suffering.  And there are plenty of people who display a “Truth” of self righteous anger towards the failures\fallacies of human nature and they hold people accountable to address the cause of their suffering but they are not interested in helping relieve the symptoms.  They want to create laws that hold people responsibility for the problems but they don’t have compassion or caring to really want to help people overcome their problems or help clean up the devastation caused by sin.

In a similar way, the two attitudes of Spirit and Truth that are required to worship God are required to govern God’s people.  The Democratic party displays the “Spirit” attitude, in that they are more inclined to give away government resources to people to relieve the symptoms of problems while the Republican party displays the “Truth” attitude, in that they are more inclined to create government laws of commerce to stimulate business and create jobs to relieve the cause of the problems.  Both Spirit and Truth are necessary to promote sound change and lasting progress but in the house of Congress there has been and continues to be an increasing atmosphere of .polarization between the parties, which mirrors the polarization of the America people.  And this polarization mirrors the Spiritual war in heaven between those that say in their heart “God’s will be done” and those who say “My will be done”.  The world to coming apart at the seams, like a worn out garment and I wish I could say I see signs of repentance in the people of America, in the leadership of American and in most churches … but I don’t.  There is no joy in sounding the alarm that people need to come to Jesus when most people can’t even hear the alarm over the noise of the world.

Oddly enough, one of the chief reasons we are drifting from God is because of a numbing of our senses that occurs from receiving the blessings of God.  It is a pattern that is repeated over and over again by societies throughout history in the rise and fall of a nation.  As people pray to God for deliverance from the tyranny of human bondage, God hears their prayers and blesses the establishment of a new nation but over time the people take the blessings for granted and forget the God that delivered them and established them.  When man forsakes or forgets God, he tries to manufacture the blessing on his own reasoning but man does not have the supply or means to do so because only the righteousness of God truly blesses.  The reasoning of man without the reasoning of God leads to a moral collapse of the nation and the nation implodes from within.  It is a similar pattern that occurs in the soul of man, where prosperity and the love of money blind a man to his real need for God.  That is why Jesus challenged people to wake up and consider the welfare of their soul over the welfare of their body.  Mark 8:36 “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul?”.

And this same pattern is repeated in scripture throughout the history of the Jews who where God’s chosen people.  When they were oppressed they would call out to God to be delivered and He would respond with His love and mercy.  Then the Jews would vow to love God and give Him praise, which they would do for a few years and enjoy the blessing from God but then they would forget God and serve idols, their own self indulgent nature (sin) .  As disciple for His children, God would remove his hand of blessing and the Jews would get close to annihilation and again call on God to deliver them.  This cycle of repentance, prosperity, idolatry and tyranny has been repeated over and over again by many nations but the world today is no longer many “nations” but a United Nations.  Today, we are essentially rebuilding the Tower of Babel, a one world government, a New World Order and instead of Nimrod on the throne, Satan himself in the body of the Antichrist will be on the throne.  God has already torn the Tower of Babel down once and the next time He tears it down, it will never rise again!

We are living in the days prior to the grand opening of the new Tower of Babel, an age of stagnant economic prosperity, relative truth and the “feel good church”.  We are living in the final days before Jesus comes to take His bride, the church, to heaven.  From the start the church has been told to watch and be ready because Jesus is coming when He’s not expected and He will be coming quickly.  The idea of “quickly” does not mean in a short amount of time because it has been almost 2,000 years since Jesus walked the earth as a man.  But Christ will return to earth “suddenly” like a thief in the night, to take His bride, the church, to heaven. The world is ripe in sin, like in the days of Noah and most people will be conducting worldly business as usual when the trumpet sounds and Christ raptures born again believers to heaven.  God is getting ready to judge the world but He has not destined His bride, the church, for His wrath.  The seven year tribulation is called the time of Jacob’s trouble, the time to complete the last week of the 70 weeks of discipline that Daniel spoke about in Daniel 9:24-27.  The disciple of the Jews was “cut off” (postponed) at the cross of Christ at the 69th week and the mystery of the “church age” was revealed and  has been running it’s course since that time to bring people to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.  But the church age is drawing to a close and it is almost time for God to reveal His last will and testament for planet earth, as the 7 seals of His judgement are removed from the scroll during the 7 year tribulation period.

There will of course be major chaos and fear when Jesus suddenly takes his true church from the world but the Antichrist will come onto the scene (when the first seal is removed from the scroll – Revelation 6:1-2) and promise to restore order.  He will make a peace treaty with Israel for seven years and he will convince people with signs and wonders that God took the trouble making narrow minded Christians out of the world in judgment so the Kingdom of Earth could be established.  The Antichrist is the Mahdi the Muslims are waiting for and the grand Master the Masons are waiting for.  The Antichrist is probably here on earth today, but not yet possessed by the Satan and empowered by forces of evil to lead the world to final destruction.

Now is the time for the church to “wake up” and finish the work of the great commission, leading people to God, by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.  As the world leans more and more toward Satan, the church must lean more and more toward Jesus.  I love the song “Give Me Jesus” but I have recently started to sing it this way “I pray to Jesus”.

Lord, help me save a soul
Lord, help me save a soul
Lord, help me save a soul
I pray to Jesus

 

I pray to Jesus
I pray to Jesus
Thy Kingdom Come, They will be Done
I pray to Jesus

– Rogersings

Here is some good information from the book “Religious Trojan Horse”  written by Brannon Howse  concerning all the deceptions in the church today.   Read up so you can power up your discernment and be ready and waiting with your lamp lite for Jesus when He comes!

http://www.worldviewweekend.com/products/books/religious-trojan-horse

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