Actually, we'll start with verse one. Jesus went out and departed from the temple, and his disciples came to him for to show him the buildings of the temple. And Jesus said unto them, See not all these things? Verily I say unto you, there shall not be left here one stone upon another that shall not be thrown down. And as he sat upon the Mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? What should be the sign of thy coming and of the end of the world? So three different questions that were asked there. Verse number four, and Jesus answered and said unto them, take heed that no man deceive you. For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ, and shall deceive many. And ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that ye be not troubled, for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nations shall rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom. And there shall be famines and pestilences and earthquakes in diverse places. All these are the beginning of sorrows. Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted and shall kill you. And you shall be hated of all nations for my name's sake. And then shall many be offended and shall betray one another and shall hate one another. And many false prophets shall rise and shall deceive many. And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations. And then shall the end come. When therefore ye shall see the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, whoso readeth, let him understand. Then let them which be in Judea flee into the mountains. Let him which is on the housetop not come down to take anything out of his house. You know, let him which is in the field return back to take his clothes. And he continues on through the chapter dealing with the Great Tribulation time, the return of Christ. We'll look at those more in depth, this chapter more in depth on those particular issues later. But these first 14 verses, he's giving us some characteristics of the last days, answering the question of when should these things be? What should be the sign of thy coming and of the end of the world? So here's some characteristics of that. And he starts off in verse number 14 with a very important I'm sorry, verse number four with a very important warning, take heed that no man deceive you. This is not one of your points we're going to look at this morning, but one of the greatest signs of the end times is deception. We see that in many passages, we're warned over and over again not to be deceived in these last days that we're living in. There are a lot of believers, true believers, saved people that are deceived about many different things. And we'll get involved, we'll speak about some of those this morning. So the first one we just kind of touched on last week is moral decay. Moral decay. We see this in 2 Timothy 3. If you want to turn over to there. And before we read that, we'll pray. That's the Lord's blessing on our time. Well, we are grateful for the time we had to be here this morning. We are thankful for the safety you've given and traveling here this morning with the snow and the ice and the roads. And I pray that you would be with those that couldn't make it. You bless their time at home that they'd be able to watch on the live stream and and there won't be any distractions there that would hinder them from hearing your word. I pray you'd be with any of those that may still be traveling in either for the same school hour or the morning worship time that you keep them safe and bless our time together. We pray bless your word to our hearts. Teach us and guide us to ask in Jesus name. Amen. All right. Consider moral decay in 2 Timothy 3 verses 1 through 5. Paul here telling Timothy about the last days and that in the last days perilous times shall come and He says, this know, know this, this know also that in the last days perilous times shall come for men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof from such turn away. That's a description of our entertainment industry. It's a description of YouTube, of Facebook, of Instagram, of the posts that go on those things, many of them. It's a great description of what many of those videos and things are. Moral decay. Jude writes in verses 17 through 19 of his epistle, But beloved, remember ye the words which were spoken before of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, how that they told you there should be mockers in the last time, who should walk after their own ungodly lusts. Be they who separate themselves, sensual, having not the spirit. Consider the moral decay of our day, what all would be included in that phrase moral decay? What different subjects could be discussed under that? Moral decay. Right, so families. Abortion, falls under that. The church, what we see in churches today. What else? Marriages. Marriages. The sodomy. The sodomy. The whole LGBTQ plus movement, the transgender movement today. That's a big one. That's huge. That spirit is sweeping the world, not just parts of it, the whole world is involved in that. in the judicial system? All the entertainment. Right. Right. Education. Education system. A lot falls under this moral decay. We won't hit on all of these things. We'll focus on a couple of them. One is just the LGBTQ movement. If you look over to Luke 17. Luke 17. In verse 28 through 32, and all these verses are, I believe, written in your notes, so you'll be able to jump ahead to the next verse. Luke 17, verse 28, likewise, also as it was in the days of Lot, they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded. But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom, it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of Man is revealed. In that day he which shall be upon the housetop and his stuff in the house, let him not come down to take it away. And he that is in the field, let him likewise not return back. Remember Lot's wife. So as it was in the days of Lot, even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of Man is revealed. And what were the days of Lot like? We see a description here In one aspect, they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built. What does that describe? Normal everyday life. People are just going on with their lives as if everything's normal. This is just normal. But look over to Genesis 9. And if you consider the story of Lot, when the angels went there to retrieve him and his family out of that city, when the angels went to get them, what event took place? What are some things that happened? We're in Genesis 9 right now, verses 4 to 7, which is not the story of Lot. It's before that. What's that? When the angels went to get Lot from Sodom to deliver him, what took place? What happened? He was trying to barter for like, well, what about these many souls and then down and down and in two weeks trying to Okay, what else? Right, so the men break down the house, they get to the angels. Right, he offered his daughter. So what we consider there in Luke, They ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built a normal life, and you have stuff like that going on. That's their mindset. Here are these two strange men in town. Let's go use them for our own purposes. And Genesis 9, verse number four says, but flesh of the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat? And surely your blood of your lives will I require at the hand of every beast, will I require it? After God destroyed the world with the flood and after that giving them a new mandate or a reiterated mandate, sets forth some new laws concerning capital punishment here in our text of reiterating that we're made in God's image, we're under His control, we're under His mandate, we're His creatures. We can't do what we want to do. We are to follow His laws, we're to follow His wisdom, we're to follow His morality. And God is who he is, we consider his character, he's a moral God, he's a truthful God, he's righteous, he's pure, there's nothing wrong in him. So our lives and the life of the whole world, they were to follow that, they were to implement that into their society and follow God as a creator. And that quickly went downhill. Why? Because man's heart's only evil continually. And the quickly, very quickly corrupted themselves and God brought different judgments over and over again. As you read from Genesis 9, Genesis 10, Genesis 11, just more and more judgment comes as men continue down that path. To me, like in Luke, they were doing all this without a care of God. Right. He's not mentioned, and evidently, they didn't know if God had, like you said, reiterated, I want you to worship me. So they had fallen so far away from God. Right. In 2 Peter, Peter says, and turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes, condemned them with no overthrow, making them an example unto those that after should live ungodly." The whole world would get to the point where they're just living a life that's ungodly, contrary to who God is, contrary to his nature, contrary to his morality. And as an example, overthrew them because of their immorality. In Jude, verse number seven, It says, even as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication and going after strange flesh are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. So they gave themselves over to fornication and they went after strange flesh involved in sodomy. In Revelation 11, midpoint of the tribulation period we're speaking of the two prophets that were prophesying. After they were killed it says that their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt where also our Lord was crucified. So what city was that? Jerusalem. Spiritually it's called Sodom and Egypt. One of the largest Gay pride events in the world takes place in Israel every year. It's in June, I believe it's in June, every June. It's usually held in Tel Aviv. But one of the largest pride events in the world takes place there. Israel is a place where spiritually they are, you could say, bottom of the barrel. Their morality, with many of them, not all of them, but even those that would proclaim to be the Orthodox Jews, and they say they follow God, they're following man's traditions, they're not following God's word. But spiritually, it's a horrible place. They're not following God's law. Morally, they are right with the world. That spirit of sodomy is swept across the whole world in the last few decades has just really been ramping up. How many here have heard of the Metropolitan Community Churches? It's a denomination, started back in the 60s, and there's a couple hundred churches now worldwide. This is from their website. It says, we have many straight people who are part of MCC. They are important and cherished members, leaders and clergy of MCC. Most of our members, however, are from the LGBTQ plus community. In fact, we are unique among all Christian denominations because we're the only denomination that is primarily made up of LGBTQ plus people, has a focus on LGBTQ plus and queer understandings. And this has been true of us for over 50 years. The idea that God fully loves and accepts gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, and pansexual, intersexual, asexual, and various queer people is not new to us. We've always welcomed and embraced the LGBTQ plus community. More than that, we are the LGBTQ plus community. And that's one denomination. specifically founded upon that principle, but so many of the mainline denominations today have fallen right in line with that where back in 1968 when they were founded, many of the mainline denominations would not have wholeheartedly lined up with them. Most of them today do. They have churches, many churches within those denominations where the pastor will wear their rainbow colored, whatever it's called, their outfits. And it would seem like most of the messages that they preach is on that subject. And how God is a God of love and true love doesn't reject any kind of expression of that love. And that God is a God of true love and he embraces any kind of love. Well, that's not true. They'll preach that nowhere in the Bible does God have anything to say against homosexuality. It's just as clear. They might as well say nowhere in the Bible does God have anything to say against bestiality because it's just as clear. And that community also is growing just showing the moral decay. So that's one aspect of this moral decay. Another aspect is just the warmongering that's going on around the world. That's a moral issue. In verse number six of Matthew 24, it says, you shall hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that ye be not troubled. And rumors of wars have been around since the beginning. But our whole culture is built on this. And the US, our whole United States culture is built around this, even more recently. But throughout its history, the US has provoked war, has committed acts of, you could say acts of terrorism, it maybe wasn't called that. for the purpose of starting a war, escalating a war, getting things implemented in society to mold how the elites want us to be. Even back in the, I don't remember the code name for this, but there were going to be terrorist acts made against U.S. citizens, blaming it on Cuba so that we could invade Cuba. And Kennedy said, no, we're not going to do that. That wasn't abnormal. That was normal. In September of 2000, the Project for the New American Century, they had their plans of war. It was a conservative think tank. They published a report in September of 2000, stating that the US needed a catastrophic and catalyzing event like a new Pearl Harbor. to galvanize public support for military expansion in the Middle East. So what took place a year after that? We had 9-11 take place. Several members of that PNAC, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, they were part of that committee, that think tank. and played key roles in the Bush administration and what was taking place in the Middle East. He had the whole weapons of mass destruction, much of that built on just false information. Why was that? Well, there's an agenda. The Patriot Act, much of that was written before 9-11. Much of that was even proposed years earlier. Biden, as a senator, proposed a lot of things that were in the Patriot Act, proposed it a decade earlier than that. But what did it take to implement those things? Well, they needed a new Pearl Harbor, something that would bring the nation together. Well, that's not the culture, that's a moral decay, to promote war, to promote death, in order to promote an agenda. We have government corruption, we're seeing that brought out. Why is there such outrage over what's going on with the Department of Government Efficiency? Why such outrage that $100 million is spent on whatever, training dogs in Panama. Why would there be such hatred against looking into things? Why is there the backlash at looking at the expenditures of the USAID group? Why? Because of moral decay. And that's, that's here in the States. It's been like that in many countries for a lot longer than Here, yes. So in the world's view, they're like, oh, it's not that bad. Just accept it. So the next thing is not that bad. And then the flesh, also this thing that wasn't so bad, no longer satisfies it. So then we have to move on to the next thing. So that term of it's not so bad, let's not make a big deal. We have to be careful when we say that for whatever it is. Because I think that has contributed to our Right? Amen. We make light of sin or we gloss over it and we become desensitized to how bad things really are. How many in here, just looking at your own life, whether you've been saved for 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, 50 years, we can look back in your life and see this used to be my standard. Maybe some of you, if you were saved as adults, you didn't have any standards, you know, and things changed after you become a believer. But after you become a believer, how many standards have changed? We look back and think, things I've been doing today, opportunities that we have today to sin. I mean, you know, we've got, we've got tablets that we can or phones, we can open up and, and get involved in anything, where 20 years ago, 30 years ago, you had to go to a special store or a special place, and worry about being seen going to those places in order to involve ourself in those sins. And now we can get it sit in the church pew. and no one's around you, you can pop it up on your screen and watch things, look at things. So we have so much available to us now, how desensitized we've become where things just don't bother us anymore. And just like our parents, before they were saved, they had more values, moral values, than some Christians today. Yeah. Yeah. Over in Europe, When we were in Germany, in 96, 97, 95, 96, I guess, those summers, the public pornography, just in grocery stores, and, you know, the magazines that would be out just normal, families walking by kids walking by what it was just normal, full nudity, not nothing's covered up, just here's magazines. And to see that, but to see we're appalled at but to see those families and there's those kids, it was no different from walking by a bag of chips, because they were used to it. And that corruption that moral decay. However, to a place now that that we are in very bad shape. So moral decay is the first point. The second point is a spiritual declension, spiritual declension. If we turn over to 2 Timothy 4, declension, spiritual declension. 2 Timothy 4 verses 2 through 4, Paul says, So a description of these last days. when people will not endure sound doctrine. We see that today. We think of all the churches that are out there where false doctrine is just so blatant. You sit and you wonder how can people sit and listen to this and the churches are full, they're packed. But they won't endure sound doctrine, they won't sit in a church, a good church and hear God's word preached They want other things. After their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears. And that phrase, having itching ears, isn't describing the teachers. It's describing those that are heaping to themselves, those teachers. They want to hear certain things. They want to hear good things. They make sure that their teachers and preachers are going to preach those things. So they turn away their ears from the truth. They're turned unto fables. In 1st Timothy 4, Verses one and two it says, now the Spirit speaketh expressly that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their conscience seared with a hot iron. Thankfully it doesn't say in the latter times all shall depart from the faith. It's not everyone that's departing from the faith, but there are many that are doing that. They're giving heed to those seducing spirits, to doctrines of devils. How could believers or professed believers ever be tricked into following doctrines of devils? Yet we have churches that are preaching that this morning across our nation, preaching doctrines of devils, preaching deniable heresies. Peter describes in 2 Peter 2, verses 1 through 3, He says, but there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in deniable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction. And many shall follow their pernicious ways, by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of. Is the way of truth evil spoken of today? Greatly. and through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you, whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not. Look at 2 Peter 2, look at verses 17 through 22. 17 through 22. 2 Peter 2, verses 17 through 22. These are wells without water. Clouds that are carried with a tempest to whom the mist of darkness is reserved forever. For when they speak great swelling words of vanity, they allure through the lust of the flesh. Through much wantonness, those that were clean escaped from them who live in error. How important it is to live clean lives, morally, spiritually, to be clean. So it's not fun being clean. Well, it's those that are clean that escape. We can see things clearly, can see things how they should be. We can detect error more readily the more clean we are. Those that were clean escaped. from them who live in error. While they promise some liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption, for of whom a man is overcome of the same as he brought in bondage. For if, after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning. For it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness than, after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them. But it has happened unto them according to the true proverb, the dog is turned to his own vomit again, and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire. Consider the spiritual declension today, the decline among those that would call themselves Christian. You have the whole charismatic movement and those involved in that. In all these groups I'll talk about today, you'll have those that are sincere and maybe are truly saved, but they're deceived. They've fallen into that deception. There's many in the charismatic movement that I believe are truly sincere. and love the Lord, but they are involved in a movement, the Word of Faith movement, the TBN crowd, the deception that's there, the absolute ridiculous things that go on there. I don't know if you've seen the video of Rodney Howard Brown and Kenneth Copeland. And as Kenneth Copeland was, I won't call it preaching, but Rodney Brown was there and he called him up, he said, Lord, I want you to come up here, come up to the front. So he's walking up and he says, you need to come up here to the third step. And he says, not the second step, not the fourth step, come up to the third step, now stay right there. And he started speaking in tongues to him, and then Rodney Herron Brow started speaking in tongues back to him. And then they're like one-upping each other, and pretty soon they're just sitting there telling each other jokes as they're speaking in tongues, and laughing at each other, and speaking in tongues, just going on and on, speaking in tongues to each other. And you have a whole church there that's amening and shouting because of just how spiritual this is going on. What a wonderful thing is happening right now. I saw an old video yesterday of Rod Parsley, who's a big guy in that movement. And one of the men of his church were up front and everyone's kind of going wild. And he's sitting there kind of sucking himself up. And he comes up and he says, now are you ready? Give us a, I can't remember the exact phrase, you know, Holy Ghost word. and he says about three or four words, speaking in tongues, and everyone just goes wild, as if some fabulous thing took place, and people started running around and shouting and jumping up and down, and he was jumping up and down and shouting and running all over the place. The preachers started running back and forth across the stage. How excited, why? Because the Holy Ghost spoke through this man in an unknown tongue. That's spiritual deception. You've got tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of professed believers today that see that and think it's biblical. You have the whole ecumenical movement towards that one world church that's described as the Harlot of Revelation. You have the whole emerging church movement. In 2004, so 21 years ago, January 31st, Peter Lee, who was the Episcopal Bishop of Virginia, he was speaking at the annual meeting of his diocese for the Episcopalian Church. He said this, if you must make a choice between heresy and schism, always choose heresy. You have to make a choice between heresy and schism, always choose heresy. In February 27th of that same year, the Lariat is a school paper for Baylor University, which was a Baptist, maybe they still consider themselves a Baptist college, university. They featured in an editorial defending homosexual marriage. Yeah, the whole charismatic or the contemporary Christian music scene and the sensual music and all that, that really is a spiritual issue. It's a moral issue, but it's a spiritual issue with the music. Independent Baptists aren't free from this. Back in 2016, there was that big revival in, I think it was in South Carolina, North Carolina, the Burlington Revival in Burlington, I think it was South Carolina. Big Independent Baptist Revival started off, and I think it went for 11 weeks, lasted for 11 weeks every night. A lot of times throughout the day on certain days would be this revival going on, hundreds of people just on one service supposedly getting saved. But I know of preachers that have, know of those that said that they were saved at that meeting. a whole church went down there to partake and just the Holy Ghost moved and great things happened. And yet no change took place in those people's lives. Nothing happened. It was just an emotional thing. One of the main preacher of that revival was C.T. Townsend. who preaches at a lot of independent Baptist camp meetings, a lot of youth revivals for independent Baptists. He and his wife sing, and it's a show. It's a contemporary Christian music show. He's a typical camp meeting preacher. You think of different styles of preaching, you think about a cat meeting preacher, like Brother Rex Smith, his style of preaching isn't the same as others. You think about different styles of preaching. When you think about a typical cat meeting preacher, that's C.T. Townsend. don't necessarily not enjoy his preaching. If I was going to listen to him preach, I don't listen to him preach because I don't like him, mainly because of his music that they do. But in one of their services, it was a three hour long service and there was no preaching. It was all hype and singing, singing one song, very shallow song. It was a contemporary music song written by a Christian rock group. up promoting the ladder rain theology of God saying a ladder rain to the Holy Spirit. For 20 minutes, they just sang this short song over and over again. The choir sing it, individuals sing it for 20 minutes. And 2030 people got saved during that song being sung for 30 minutes. It's a doctrinally wrong. There's no gospel in the song. And it's it's doctrinally deceptive. In that search went on for three hours, there was no preaching. The Bible says that by the foolishness of preaching, God uses that for the salvation of souls. Can someone be saved through a song? If there's a gospel in it, the Lord's already been working in their heart through the Word of God, and the Holy Spirit's been convicting them. He can use a song to bring conviction. But a three-hour service with contemporary music going on and just hyping people up, getting them emotional, people are deceived by that. And a lot of independent Baptists from multiple states around there took their churches there because they wanted to be a part of this great spiritual movement. Well, if it's truly a great spiritual movement, where is the fruit from that today? There isn't any. Right. Right. Running around barking like dogs, being drunk in the spirit and acting like you're drunk. Like Hagen, I think it was Kenneth Hagen. Is it Kenneth? Is that his first name? Just acting like a drunk as he's up and saying he was drunk in the spirit. That's mockery of God. And that's what we're told there in those passages that we read about mockers in the last days. So that spiritual deception and declension and that's a mark of the last days. We're going to stop there for today. We'll look at the next the next four points. We'll finish it up next week easily. We'll finish this sheet up. But we're living in those days and it can be discouraging considering the moral decline our nation is at, the spiritual decline that we see. But it also should excite us to know We're living in the last days and Christ could come at any moment. And we ought to encourage one another as we see that day approaching and occupy till he comes. Be faithful till he comes. Yes. All right. We're dismissed.