Deceiving Spirits

Let me give you an example. Let me tell you what I believe about Jesus. I believe that Jesus is the Son of God. I believe that He is divine eternally. I believe that He was born of a virgin, that He led a sinless life, that He died an atoning death, that He rose the third day physically from the dead, that He’s ascended into heaven, and that one day He’s coming again in person just as He was seen to go. Now, if you have any problem about any of those statements, you better check your spiritual foundation.

And any kind of teaching that denies any one of those statements is a damnable heresy. And we have been warned, no matter how respectable it may be, the main source of these damnable heresies is the seminaries. They are the actual fountainhead of these heresies. The fact that a man has been trained in a seminary and has three kinds of degrees after his name should be a warning to you to suspect damnable heresy, not to believe what he said.

The First Epistle of John, chapter 2, First John chapter 2, verses 18 through 22. Again, a warning about the last days and deception and error, and a particular spirit of deception, the spirit of Antichrist. Let me say that Antichrist means two things. The word anti means, first of all, against, and secondly, in place of.

The spirit of Antichrist has a double work. First of all, it’s against Jesus Christ to get Him out of the church. Secondly, its design is to replace Him by the false Christ. Somebody told me the other day, who’s acquainted with the person, that the lady in Washington, and I’m not going to mention her name, speaks about the Christ.

But you’d better check because when she speaks about the Christ, she means the false Christ. And this is very prevalent at the moment in most Protestant denominations. The spirit of Antichrist is at work getting Jesus out of the way. I’ve had friends in Methodist churches, and I’m not attacking Methodists, but they just happen to be Methodists. They tell me, “In our church, Jesus is a dirty word.”

You can speak about Socrates, Buddha, Plato, Martin Luther King, it’s perfectly all right, but don’t talk about Jesus. That is the spirit of Antichrist. It’s getting Jesus out of the way. What these people do not realize is that’s only the first step. The next step is to put the false Christ in His place. And the Scripture indicates that millions and millions of people will shortly be deceived by the spirit of Antichrist. You better be sure you aren’t going to be one of them.

Now, let’s read about it. Little children, First John 2:18,

“It is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time. They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would ‘no doubt’ have continued with us: but ‘they went out,’ that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.”

This is typical. Every Antichrist starts in some way in association with the Christian church, then goes out.

And without being in any way controversial or personal, we have had the most remarkable demonstration of this in the person of Bishop Pike, who began in the Christian church, a keen preacher of Jesus, was confronted very closely by one of his closest workers and by Dennis Bennett and others with the truth of the baptism in the Holy Spirit, rejected it, turned away from it, and moved into the only other main spiritual field left, the spiritual field of the occult and satanic power, and ended up with a death very similar to that of Judas Iscariot.

Remember, the only two persons who are called the son of perdition in Scripture are Judas Iscariot and the Antichrist. And each of them begins in the church. Going on reading,

“But ye have an unction,” verse 20, “from the Holy One, and ye know all things.”

By the anointing, the Spirit of truth in you should tell you what’s true and what’s false. It should answer to the truth and reject false, and you better have that alarm clock inside you really well wound up because you’re going to need it.

“I have not written unto you because ye know not the truth.”

He’s not writing to unbelievers,

“but because ye know it, and that no lie is of the truth.”

What’s the truth? The Word of God. Anything that conflicts with the Word of God is a lie. Verse 22,

“Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ?”

The Messiah.

“He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son.”

Notice, he does not deny God, but he denies the relationship within the Godhead, the Father and Son. And basically, he denies that Jesus is the Son of God and has come in the flesh. Turn to First John 4,

“Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.”

A false prophet is a person with a false spirit. See? A no prophet operates in his own spirit. That is not a prophet. A true prophet operates in the spirit of truth, the Holy Spirit. A false prophet operates in a false spirit. Therefore, when you meet a prophet, try the spirits. Is it the spirit of God, or is it a false spirit? And if it was true then that many false prophets are gone out into the world, it’s 10 times truer today in modern America.