Returning tonight, if you have your Bibles, to 1 Timothy 4. The fourth chapter of 1 Timothy. We want to begin reading at verse 1. 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 and hypocrisy, having their conscience seared with a hot iron. 2 Timothy chapter 4 and reading at verse 1. I charge thee therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ who shall judge the quick and the dead in his appearing in his kingdom, preach the word, be instant in season out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine. but after their own lusts shall they heap themselves teachers, having itching ears, and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned into fables. Let's bow together as we ask the Lord's blessing on his word. Our Father, we are thankful indeed that we have before us tonight a word that is forever settled in heaven. We are grateful that it is our guide that it is our chart and compass in the midst of the confusing seas that we find around us in this world. We pray that you will help us to be faithful to the things that are written here, to be willing to walk by faith and not by sight when necessary, to be desirous of doing thy will, no matter what the cost might be. We pray that you will help us to stand fast in the faith to be those who desire to be found faithful when the Lord Jesus comes to receive his own. To that end, we pray that you will help us as we study thy word together and as we consider the world around us in the light of thy word. We pray these things in the precious name of the Lord Jesus, and for his sake, amen. Over the next few weeks on Wednesday night, Lord willing, I'm going to bring a series of messages that are generally entitled, Dangers of the Last Days. There are several points that I want to make to you in this beginning message that I think are critically important before we go into some of the issues that we're going to be thinking about the weeks that are ahead. I want to say this for you and for anyone who may later be listening to this series of messages on tape. I'm going to be quoting several hundred sources. It won't do any good to write me or call me to provide documentation for some of these items that might make you personally angry. I don't really have the time or the money or the desire to devote my entire life to this subject, and it's very easy to get into that. I'm preaching it because there is a desperate need in view of what we see happening around us in the world. And I think that it is the work of the Spirit of God to convince people whenever they hear the word of God preached. And some of them might say, well, how do we know that you're telling the truth? The process is very simple. It's very much like going to school. When you go to school, you walk into a classroom And standing before you is someone who claims to have information that you need. You hear that information presented, and you either believe it or you don't. The difference for a Christian is that you have the promise of the Word of God, that the Spirit of God will be your teacher, that he will guide you into all truth, help you discern the difference between that which is right and that which is wrong. Personally, I wouldn't put too much stock in any teacher who is not a Christian. But when we come to the kind of matters that we're talking about here, there is the problem of conflicting views among Christians. People who obviously are saved, but who just as obviously completely disagree regarding the kind of philosophy of the methodology of Christianity that we're going to be talking about. In fact, when you come right down to it, that is the heart of the problem. That is the need for these messages. When Christians disagree, somebody's wrong. When Christians disagree, somebody is deceived on that point of disagreement. So in the courses of these messages, you're going to have to decide who you think is deceived. Either the fundamentalists are deceived about the spiritual methodology that is correct, or the New Evangelicals are deceived. And that brings me to the first of the dangers of the last days that you need to consider. The danger is that believers will be deceived by Satan into missing this point. The question is never who is right. The question is always what is right. It doesn't matter if we're talking about people who are famous or infamous. It doesn't matter if we're talking about things related to your relatives or mine. The question is never who is right, the question is always what is right. And if we're going to be standing for the truth, then we have to recognize that the Bible is the only source of discerning between truth and error. We live in a generation that worships personalities. That's why in the face of moral and financial chaos. People still send money to Jim Baker, Jimmy Swiger, Oral Roberts. Long before the public exposures of these men, I was critical of the trustworthiness of a couple of them and a message. A woman who was a charismatic Presbyterian heard the tape. She wrote me a letter. She said that in my sermon I had committed the sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. She said that I could never go to heaven because I had spoken against the prophets of God. I'm still intending to go to heaven, in spite of her opinion. And time has borne out the fact that there are some questions about the trustworthiness of the people that she felt I was so wrong for criticizing. She noted that they were men with a huge public following, and I was not. So I must be wrong. If that reasoning is correct, then we should all be Muslims because they have the largest religious following in the world. Far greater than Christianity. But that really wasn't the issue. She was concerned with who was right, instead of being concerned with what is right. Somebody says, well those things that happen to those people might happen to you. That's exactly why you need to believe what I'm preaching. Because if such things should happen to me, I hope you'll have the discernment to obey the word of God and get me out of a place of public leadership. Because that's exactly what the Bible says should happen in such cases. 1 Timothy 3, verse 7, is unmistakable. A man is not to be a leader of the if his public testimony is legitimately condemned by a watching world. The Bible is telling us about church leaders, giving us a description of what church leaders should be, and it says that the church leader must have a good report of them which are without. Oral Roberts built a $23 million clinic. For one thing, I mention that in particular because he's now trying to sell it. Richard Roberts has publicly stated to the press that it was a mistake to build that clinic. That's very interesting in the light of the fact that Orwell said that God told him to build it. Now, the decision is that it's a mistake that it must be sold. And what we're talking about here is money from poor Christians all over America wasted. Twenty-three million dollars worth. I suppose that I spent twenty-three million dollars of the ministry of this church to build a monument to my own ego out here on the church property. and we ended up needing to sell it and lost all kinds of money. I hope you have enough discernment that it would never get built. But if it did, how long would it take you to get rid of me under those circumstances? It wouldn't take very long if you understand that the issue is never who is right, the issue is always what is right. Oral Roberts saw a 900-foot Jesus who appeared to him, told him to build a 777-bed hospital. At last count, there were 125 patients in those 777 beds, a number so small that the hospital was about to lose its license to operate. Oral spent another fortune to build and equip a law school That didn't work. He ended up giving that to Pat Robertson, CBN University. And again, he did that claiming direct inspiration from God, saying that God told him to do something, and then it just didn't work out in any way, shape, or form. Oral said that God spoke to him audibly. that he told him that unless he could raise $8 million by a certain period, that the Lord would take him home, that he would die if he failed to raise this $8 million for medical missions. At the time, the announced plan was that if a medical student came to Oral Roberts University, tuition would be paid for, four years of school if they would agree to spend four years in medical missions after they got out of school. Now the eight million dollars is gone. Nobody's exactly sure where all of it went. And the students are being told that they're going to have to find their own sources of income in order to finance the next three years of their training. Some of them, understandably, are very upset about that. If those kinds of practices were carried out in business, he would have been fined or imprisoned a long time ago. The Bible clearly teaches that a man is not to be a leader in the church. if his public testimony is legitimately condemned by a watching world. That doesn't mean that the world is supposed to approve of a man's stand for the faith. But what it clearly means is that prostitutes in hotels and million-dollar-a-year salaries and 23 million dollars misspent, those are the kinds of things that even a lost world recognizes are not supposed to be. And they are the kinds of things that are not to be tolerated in someone who is put in a position of leadership in the Church. Some say that King David didn't lose his job when he committed adultery and murder. If Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Baker were kings of Israel, that might have some bearing on the issue. But they are not asking to be kings of Israel, they are asking to be leaders in the New Testament church. And verse Timothy 3, 7 forbids that. Now listen carefully. Somebody is going to say, how do you know these things about Oral Roberts, Jimmy Swigert, the people you're going to be mentioning in these messages? The answer is research. Reading, listening, talking to people involved in the major ministries of this country. Somebody says, then why won't you provide documentation? Three reasons. One I mentioned a moment ago. because of the time and trouble involved. Reason number two, a man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still. If you won't believe me when I tell you about it, you wouldn't believe me if I handed you a piece of paper that said it. The third reason is that I've been there. Twenty-five years ago, I heard a preacher preach about the involvement of Billy Graham in New Evangelicalism. I was outraged. Billy Graham was one of my heroes. I thought he was the greatest evangelist in the world. So I went to the man who preached that message, and I said, I said, you have no business being critical of such a great preacher. I said, not only are you wrong, I'm going to look into this thing and I'm going to prove that you're wrong. So the course of the next several months, I set out like a maniac in my normal fashion to do something like that. I wrote down every passage in the Bible concerning judging other Christians, correcting error, the dealings of the Lord and the apostles with religious leaders, with one another. I spent hundreds of hours examining the evidence in the publications, the sermons, the interviews of Billy Graham. I've been there. And I'll tell you what I learned. I learned that the best thing that could ever happen to your discernment is to get angry. To get angry about some of the people and the institutions that I'm going to be mentioning in the weeks ahead. Because the madder you get, the harder you work, you'll work to prove me wrong. And the more you look into it, the more you're going to find out for yourself that it's even worse than I've told you. And if you find it out for yourself, you'll never forget it. And if you look into it, if it's as long as quest for truth, you'll end up like I did. I had to go back to that preacher and admit that everything that he said was true, and more. I've been watching this situation develop for 25 years. It's not something that I've thought up over the last few months. I'm not talking about preconceived ideas that somebody has taught me, some indoctrination that I've received from some particular point of view, because as I say, I've been on both sides of the fence. And I don't change sides of the fence very easily. So if you want documentation, go get it. There are tons of it out there. Another key point that I want to mention is raised by these two passages that we read this evening. Look at 1 Timothy 4 and verse 1. 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 and hypocrisy, having their conscience seared with a hot iron. And the question is, are these people saved or lost? These people who give heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of demons, do they depart from the faith temporarily? Are they people just drawn away by a particular situation for a season? Or are they people who depart from the faith permanently because they were never saved in the beginning? We don't know. The passage doesn't say. Same is true of 2 Timothy 4. We begin reading at verse 1. I charge thee therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing in his kingdom. Preach the word, be instant in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but after their own lust, after their own desires, shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears, and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables." Are these people saved or lost? Do they turn to these fables temporarily or permanently? There's no answer given. And I think there's a reason for that. I think the reason is that ultimately that's not really our decision. The Lord said that we are to be food inspectors. A man publishes a book or preaches a sermon, publicizes the fact that he is a denier of the fundamentals of the faith, we know he's lost. not hard to discern in that kind of a case. But a man who does that kind of thing is not going to deceive very many people. If there's going to be deception, it's going to have to be by wolves who are in sheep's clothing. They're going to have to look and talk and act in many ways like a sheep, or nobody's going to be deceived. And I suggest that when they look a great deal and talk a great deal and act a great deal like a sheep, that there really is no basis, no scriptural basis, upon which we can discern whether people like that are saved or lost. And there's really no necessity for that if you always remember that the issue is never who is right, the issue is what is right. And then when anybody turns, no matter why they turn or how they turn, that doesn't phase you. Because you're not looking at human personalities, you're looking at what the Bible says is right. So it really doesn't matter who is in what camp, the only issue is in what camp does the Lord want you to be. There are many people in the charismatic movement who are saved. There are many people in the Southern Baptist Convention who are saved. There are some among the Presbyterians, the Lutherans, the Roman Catholics, the Methodists, the list goes on and on, who are saved. But as I'm going to be showing you in future messages, there are no people in any of those movements who are obedient to the word of God. Because if you believe what the Bible teaches, you can't be a part of one of those movements. That includes Charles Stanley, it includes D. James Kennedy, it includes Billy Graham, W.A. Criswell, Charles Blair, Adrian Rogers. The names are irrelevant. Now some of you like the preaching of some of those men. You don't like Jim Baker and Jimmy Swaggart. So maybe I better remind you again, the issue is never who is right. The issue is what is right. I know what people say about me when I preach on these matters. So let's put it on tape again. It's already on there several times, and let's do it one more. Somebody says, you think you're the only one who's right. And I say that I could take you to churches all over North Carolina. Churches that are not involved in this compromise. Fundamental churches that I believe are right. In a couple of months I'll be meeting again in Washington, D.C. with representatives from virtually every state in the Union who represent large constituencies of fundamentalists. People all over America. People who believe what I'm going to be telling you in this series of messages. Most of them are not famous. Most of them are not on TV or radio, but I've got news for you. If the Lord and the Apostles were on earth today, I don't believe they'd have a TV or radio ministry either. There are a couple of reasons for that. First of all, for every ounce of truth on the airwaves, there's a ton of garbage. For every person who watches a religious broadcast, there are millions of people who feed on the illicit sex, and the violence, and the rock music, and the Hollywood movies, and the worldliness. Not only that, 99% of the religious broadcasting is either charismatic, or New Evangelical, or outright false religion. Much of the remaining 1% of the religious broadcasting is fundraising or music or preaching to people who are already saved. Now again, I'm not saying that it's wrong to try to reach the lost by media. What I'm saying is that almost nobody's doing that. What most of the people involved in religious media these days are doing is promoting their causes and trying to raise the funds to continue to promote their causes. True evangelization on the airwaves is virtually non-existent. And the Lord would never have sanctioned modern media as a forum for Christian entertainment. You have to wade through a mountain of pig slot to get to a crust of bread. And the Lord wouldn't endorse that kind of balance. The second reason that the Lord and his disciples would not have a ministry in media is this. Because the content of the first few sermons would either have gotten them removed from the air or killed. This world hates the truth. It doesn't like gospel music. It doesn't make psychological mush for spiritually neurotic Christians. This world hates the truth. Over and over again, without a satellite broadcast, they wanted to take the Lord and his disciples and kill them because of what they preached. Eventually they did. And I suggest to you that anybody who thinks that this world as more a friend of truth today than it was when the Lord was on earth, is simply mistaken. This world is more antagonistic to truth than it's ever been. So in the next few weeks, I want you to remember some of the things that I've been telling you this evening. The purpose of these messages is not to glory in anybody's That would be absurd because anybody who knows the truth knows that each one of us is just as susceptible to failure as anybody else. The issue is never who is right. The issue is always what is right. I want you to remember that I'm not saying that there are no people in any of these movements who are saved. To the contrary, It is precisely because there are safe people in these movements that these matters need to be examined and people need to understand the truth. I'm not saying that I'm the only one who's right. I'm a fundamentalist with a fundamentalist philosophy. And even though we are a minority, there are fundamentalists in every state and every nation in this country and around the world. There are thousands of fundamental preachers across America who would agree with what I'm going to preach. But make no mistake about it. Most professing Christians in America are not fundamentalists. They are New Evangelicals. New Evangelicalism is a philosophy of Christianity. Fundamentalism is a philosophy of Christianity. Both of them cannot be correct. Somebody is wrong. Somebody is very seriously wrong. And one of the primary reasons that I believe the Lord is coming very soon is the direction that we see in the modern Church. It's a direction away from a militant stand for the truth. is a direction away from the separatist position that's taught by the Bible, is a direction toward a one-world philosophy of religion that the Bible says is going to come, be endorsed and raised up by the Antichrist. You need to understand what's happening today and why. And the Bible says, as ye would that men should do unto Do you even so to them? Where it's printed on rulers and schoolers, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. I'm going to be saying, for example, that Jerry Falwell is wrong for praising the Pope of Rome. I'm not going to be saying that to attack Jerry Falwell personally. I'm saying it because of his great influence on the Church as a whole today. And if I ever praise the Pope, I hope somebody will say that I'm wrong, because I will be. I don't want to say that Billy Graham is wrong to embrace Communist agents as men of God in the face of the suffering Church and the Soviet Union. not as some kind of personal attack on Billy Graham, but because he's wrong, and because he has wide influence. And I hope that if I ever do something like that, somebody will say that I'm wrong. I'm going to say that the people who support the infidelity, the anti-American activities of the World and National Councils of Churches, that those people are wrong. I'm going to say that the people who support the heretical teaching in the Southern Baptist seminaries of this nation are wrong. And if I ever support such activities, I hope somebody will have the courage to stand up and say that I'm wrong. Because the issue is not who is right, the issue is what is right. And we're talking not only about the building of the Church of the Antichrist. We're talking about the souls of men hanging in the balance. The purity of the gospel. Salvation by grace alone through the blood of Christ is not being clearly preached by the charismatic movement. Salvation by grace alone through the blood of Christ is not being clearly preached by the major denominations of this country. And now we are reaching the point that salvation by grace through the blood of Christ is not being clearly preached by many New Evangelicals. To add to the confusion, there are some who preach the gospel clearly, who openly endorse the ministries of those who preach no gospel at all. That's absolute confusion. I don't doubt for a minute that Billy Graham preaches the way of salvation. I thank the Lord for every person who has ever gotten saved through his ministry. He might have sown some of the seed in my heart that got me saved. But you tell me why Billy Graham would get on nationwide television. and say to millions of people, Norman and Ruth Peale are two of the finest Christians I know. You remember what I said a little earlier about our place in deciding who's saved and who's not? There's no doubt about Norman Vincent Peale. If you read his writings, unless the man has written books of lies, he's lost and without Christ. He denies the fundamentals of the faith. He's not even slightly related to what we consider to be a Bible-believing Christian. And the question is, why would a man who has worldwide influence and preaches the gospel clearly as we understand it, why would he get on TV and say that these people are two of the finest Christians he knows? by everything that he preaches, they're not Christians at all. It's very confusing. As I say, there's a great deal of material to be covered. I'm not writing a book. I'm preaching what I hope will be a few sermons over the next few Wednesday nights. I'm going to have to move through this material rather quickly to keep it from being boring, because this is not a college lecture class, this is a Bible study meeting. And if you want to get the continuity of these things, it's necessary that you come to all the messages. Because there is a progression here, to understand how New Evangelicalism developed, how it progressed and where it stands today. And in talking about New Evangelicalism, which is supposedly the Bible-believing brother of Fundamentalism, we will see their relationship to the Charismatic Movement and to the major denominations of this country, and how all those things are blended together into a move toward a unity of thought and philosophy. is headed just as straight toward the Church of Rome as it can go. In the meantime, it's still true, up to this point in time, that fundamentalism is different. Fundamentalism stands outside the camp of organized religion. Fundamentalism not only proclaims the truth, it renounces error. Fundamentalism says you must repent of sin and come by the blood of the risen Christ, or not at all. That message cannot be compromised to gain the world's approval. It cannot be compromised to fill the Church, or meet the budget, or raise the funds necessary to stay on the airwaves. It is a message that each of us must believe. We're going to spend eternity in heaven. And it's a message that must be preached, if the people of this world are going to hear the truth as God intended. Let's bow together as we close in prayer. Our Father, we're thankful that again you've given us the privilege to gather in this place, to enjoy the freedom of this nation. to believe the freedom that comes from knowing the truth that makes men free. We ask that as we go from this place you will help us to reach out to a lost world, to be concerned about those who are in need of the salvation that you have offered. And we pray that if there is someone here tonight who is still outside the Lord Jesus, that they might understand that in the midst of this spiritual conflict that plagues the Church in the closing hours of this age. Their third greatest need, their only need, is to repent of their sin and receive the gift of eternal life from the risen Lord Jesus. We pray these things in his precious name. Amen.