Okay. We're taking part of a study series that we do every year called the May Day Series. It's on prophecy. And it's piecing together the things that we see within the scriptures to the things that we see within the world. It's been a fascination of mine and an interest of mine to attend to for the better part of 20 years. I just found it fascinating. I loved looking at the scriptures and in the scriptures, I then looked at the events that are going on in the world and I found myself having an incredible interest in everything from global economics to geopolitics, to the religious world, to the state of the church, to the social order and the social fabric of our society, to our education system, to our music industry, to our entertainment industry. And I was absolutely astounded of how everything seems to work together in a manner that will bring about these particular events that spoken about in the Bible respecting the last days. And to this day, I'm still astounded of how few people see it. And I can't understand the reasons why either they don't read the Bible or they take the Bible as an allegorical reference book so they're blinded to the truth of what's actually happening within the world. But it's the only thing that actually explains everything with any degree of certainty. And so it always fascinated me. And we'd spoken about so many different issues and this week I've got to admit I was a little bit Knowing the things that are being developed within the world and you sort of, it's okay when it's like some time out there, you know? I never minded speaking about it 20 odd years ago when I knew that it was out there sometime, you know? And it wasn't something that was part of my present. It was gonna be something that may be possibly part of my future or possibly part of my children's future. I sort of, I felt like a little bit like Hezekiah, you know? And it says, ah, good, good. At least there'll be peace in my day. But now, when you're seeing all these things develop in such rapid succession and it's happening in your own day, it's difficult not to become a little bit discouraged or finding yourself a bit, I don't know, a little bit saddened. as you're seeing it, because our present state of life is to change. And the bill that just got passed in an astounding manner within our own Parliament, that it was actually presented first in the Senate without debate and forced through. It doesn't go through the Senate first, it goes through Parliament first. What on earth, how on earth did it go through the Senate first? And that without inquiry, that without debate. I'm still a little bit perplexed on how that was even permitted to occur. And yet it's so opposite how we normally run things. And of course it was going to pass the parliament because they have the numbers there. And the lack of understanding of what that actually means. And I feel that we've just entered into a, we've just, well I thought about actually writing an article called Dystopia Technocritique, which is, we literally entered into the beginning of a dystopian era. And a technocratic era at that, with this entire digital identity. And so it's absolutely amazing to watch it happen. And while I'd love to be spending a lot more time talking about that, I'm limited to this, which is the state of the church in the last days, because this is the topic of conversation. This is the topic of this particular series. And last time we entered into this and we spoke about how Paul writing to Timothy speaking about perilous times that shall come, and then gives a description of men within that, that so closely represents the state of the world. But recognizing that in the world they've always been that way, so this can't be referring to the world, this is referring to the state of the church in the last days. And we could have been speaking about anything. We could be speaking about the charismatic chaos that's out there, the Roman Catholic institution, the move towards the contemporary churches. We could be talking about the ecumenical movements. We could be talking about the Pentecostal signs and wonders movement. We could be talking about the emergent church. We could be talking about all the heretics that are out there. And yet I decided, interestingly enough, I guess because of recent events, no. We're gonna be talking about the church, our church, other churches like our churches. Because you see in this text, it doesn't limit it. It doesn't limit it. Now, next week, and for the next couple of weeks after that, we're gonna be touching on a sermon series that I preached in 2018 on the seven churches of Revelation. And I want to be able to detail and demonstrate to you the nature of how we got to where we are. today, and looking at the history of those churches, that they were actual churches in Asia Minor, that they also seem to represent distinct church periods that, outside of the order, if they were in any other order in the book of Revelation, it wouldn't apply. And yet they seem to be in the perfect order of how they've developed in history. Interestingly enough, they're also in the perfect order geographically. They follow one after the other. If John was to go from the island of Patmos, he would first go to Ephesus, before he goes to Smyrna, before he goes to Thyatira, before he goes to Pergamos, sorry, then Thyatira, and then move his way around to Laodicea. It's actually a clockwise direction. It's incredible and you'll see that because I'll be presenting that with PowerPoint as well that you might be able to see it. So last time we spoke about this, know also. My desire was to demonstrate to you that in 26 of the 27 books of the New Testament, we are told and warned that there will be wolves that will come in, that there will be false teachers, that there will be discord within the churches, and that even Paul warned the churches for three years, night and day, that grievous wolves will come in, not sparing the flock. And I wanted to demonstrate to you how every single book, except for the book of Philemon, warns about this sort of stuff happening within the church. But we sit here thinking that nothing like that can happen, yet we actually find that it does, according to scripture. This message today is descriptive. And it's titled simply, For Men Shall Be. And we'll go through the description. We're gonna be looking at this description only under certain headlines. And you've got that already outlined in your newsletter, in your notes, in the newsletter. So this know also that in the last days perilous times shall come, for men shall be. And we'll go into that. So let's open in prayer and ask the Lord to bless our time. Heavenly Father, time, dear Lord, that we could be spending in great and tremendous detail, respecting the nature of men and even women, dear Lord, of the last days, presenting themselves within the church. And this in every way, dear Lord, is to both warn, but also to encourage, to both warn, but also to encourage us that we may read the word of the living God. that we may be given eyes to see, ears to hear, and hearts able to understand. Please be with us, dear Lord, this morning as I present this incredible passage to your congregation. Bless them, dear Lord. Bless me, dear Father, also as I preach the word of the living God. We thank you in Jesus' name. Lovers of their own selves. You'll see that right off the bat. 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. The specific phrase, the last days, appears no more than seven times in the scriptures. No less, no more, seven times. I like the number seven. It's a good round number. It indicates the number of completion. It's a complete number. We'll talk a little bit more about that next week. But we see the first time a warning that's been given to us using that very phrase in the book of Genesis, all the way back to Genesis. And it was the Patriarch Jacob. The Patriarch Jacob speaking to his sons about what is going to come upon them in the last days. Jacob called unto his sons and said, gather yourselves together, that I may tell you that which shall before you in before you in the last days. That's Genesis chapter 49 verse 1. There has always been a time in history that will culminate with the end of history, a time of the end, a time of the last days. Isaiah wrote about it in Isaiah chapter two, when he's describing the house of the Lord during the millennium. Yes, the millennium is also a period identified as the last days. Micah wrote about the same time in Micah chapter 4. Three occurrences of the phrases in the Old Testament, but there's four in the New. The first is spoken by Peter as he described that which was written by Joel in Joel's second chapter, Joel 2.28, respecting that which would occur after the coming of the Messiah. interesting after the coming of the Messiah. Now you have your bounds, beloved. The last days begins with the coming of the Messiah, the coming of Christ, and ends at the end of the millennial reign of Christ. That is your scope. When it speaks about the last days or the latter days, it's speaking about that as far as its complete reference point is concerned. Got it? We happen to be in the last of the last days, but just before the millennium. How do we know that? Well, we know that because of the convergence of all the events that are going on around the world. We know that because the Bible is descriptive with respect to the state of all things, including the church in the last of the last days. And beloved, that's important. Because unless the church, which is the beacon and the pillar of the truth, unless the church can stand strong, then there is no light to now be shared in the world. Once the church falls and that beacon of light is dimmed to the point that it's barely seen by any, then there is very little hope for the world to look for the truth anyway. And that's why the church is a very, very significant aspect of a description of the last days and how close we are to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. Peter wrote saying, know this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers walking after their own lusts and saying, where is the promise of his coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. No doubt if you'd spent some time sharing the gospel or speaking about the last days with fellow Christians, you might have been accosted in this particular manner. There might be fellow Christians going, what are you talking about? They keep talking about Jesus is coming, Jesus is coming. When's he going to come? Nothing's changed. Everything's gone on the same as it was from the beginning. You got rocks in your head and they're not watching. We are instructed, however, to watch. We're instructed to watch. Now here we have a description of individuals in those last days, and it begins and gives you an understanding of that which comes after, men shall be lovers of their own selves. Then it speaks about covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy. This is a natural consequence of an individual that loves his own self. Now this is interesting. Because this is a kind of self-love that's distinct from the self-love that Jesus speaks about. He says that we ought to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. Okay, so why is this now speaking about a time yet future that men will be lovers of their own selves? There has to be a distinction because men shall be. But Jesus spoke about that we already love ourselves. So what's, there's a distinction here. There's a distinction in this perform of self-love to the self-love that Jesus is speaking about. In Jesus's words, we are to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. Here it's speaking about, We shall be lovers of our own self. Men shall be lovers of their own selves. And then it gives a description. Well, I put to you, beloved, in just considering this, that the self-love that's spoken about in 2 Timothy 3 is exclusive. In other words, it's a self-love to the exclusion of all others. There is no intention, there won't be an intention of loving your neighbor as yourself. This is an exclusive love that loves self more than parents, more than relationships, more than anything else. It goes on speaking about them covetous and boasters and proud. It's all about me. It's all about me. It's a kind of self-love that is certainly distinct from that that Jesus shared and spoke about in Matthew 19, 19. How does such exclusive self-love develop? Okay, this is the lecture portion of the study that we're going to be looking at. In their seminal book, The Coddling of the American Mind, Authors Greg Lukhanoff and Jonathan Haidt, one a constitutional lawyer and the other an American psychologist, discovered that the level of protection, or rather wrapping children in cotton wool, so evident both in many parenting techniques today and almost every school in the Western world, is creating a generation of adults so weak in their ability to handle adversity that they strike back against any person who does not think of them as highly as they like to think of themselves. The Coddling of the American Mind is basically the third book of what you would see as a trilogy. The first was The Closing of the American Mind by Alan Bloom. It's a book that I bought some 20 years ago. It's an absolute classic, a brilliant, brilliant book and very studious. The next one after that, Daniel... Kertullian, I think was his name, was called the snapping of the American mind. It was when Obama came into power in the United States and the snapping of the American mind was then created. Now we've got the coddling of the American mind, which began as an independent study consideration that was given to the Atlantic magazine and then formed into a book. And they state in here that by the standards, quote, by the standards of our great grandparents, nearly all of us are coddled. Each generation tends to see the other one after it as weak, whiny, and lacking in resilience. Those older generations may have a point. Let me ask you a question. Would your great-grandparents see your generation described this way? Weak, whiny, without any resilience, and unable, probably, to be able to attend to adversity. Do you think so? 100% my great grandparents would think of me in this regard. And no doubt we think of these next generations and the millennials as that in that way as well. It just seems to get weaker, more whiny, more complaining, more worried about self. And goodness knows what would happen if we find that we can't switch on a light and light turns on. In 2013, Time Magazine has, as its cover page, an image of an older teenager lying on her front holding her iPhone, far enough from her face to take a self-image. Suddenly, a new word entered into the English language. Interestingly, that new word was created by Australians. We termed the slang word selfie, and it became and won the International Word of the Year in 2013 by the Oxford English Dictionary. It was an Australian word. In the article, the title of the article was, The Me, Me, Me Generation, subtitled, Millennials Are Lazy, Entitled Narcissists Who Still Live With Their Parents. In the article, the author John Stein wrote, here's the cold hard data. The incidence of narcissistic personality disorder is nearly three times as high for people in their 20s as for the generation that's now 65 or older, according to the National Institute of Health. He goes on to say, millennials got so many participation trophies growing up that a recent study showed that 40% believed they should be promoted every two years regardless of performance. They are fame obsessed. Three times as many middle school girls want to grow up to be a personal assistant to a famous person as want to be a senator, according to a 2007 survey. Four times as many would pick the assistant job over the CEO of a major corporation. They're so convinced of their own greatness that the National Study of Youth and Religion found the guiding morality of 60% of millennials in any situation is that they'll just be able to feel what's right. They'll just be able to feel what's right. And when I post this, you'll see the links will be all on the website. You can just check those references out for yourself. You'll note, however, that in 2023, the article is more than 10 years old. Those 20-something millennials are in their mid-30s today. And if they have grown up believing that feeling hurt equates to being hurt, they will soon become the individuals who will justify anything that might come close to proving their feelings justified. You see, when the best judgment an individual can employ to judge something is their emotional response, no relationship will ever survive in the long term. Does that make sense? So if the only way you can determine something to be true is to justify how you feel about it, because your emotions trump reality, no relationships can survive that. No relationships can. There was a time when this was only relegated to one particular sex, but now we're actually finding the opposite sex also justifying what they do based on their emotional response to what's happened to them. Because I feel pained by this, it was wrong to have been inflicted with this particular pain. Let me bring it about another way, okay? All of you know I suffered with depression. I suffered with depression for 10 years. And in the midst of the depression is a very, very similar response. I needed to justify feeling depressed. I didn't understand why I was depressed. but I equated the depression that I was going through as real. And because it was real, I logically naturally assumed that there needed to be a cause for my depression. And I naturally also assumed that that cause was outside of myself. So that cause for my depression had nothing to do with me. It had to do with somebody else or some other circumstance that was afflicting me in a manner with which would give me such tremendous sadness and sorrow. So I blamed everything that I could. Blamed my work situation. Didn't blame my wife very often, but I did, but I did. I rarely ever blamed my kids, but that would certainly come up, no doubt. I would probably blame other relationships. It wasn't until spending time with the Lord and going through a deep assessment of my own self in order to try and understand why I felt so darn miserable. because nothing seemed to really justify the depth of the sorrow and the sadness that I felt because it was so deep seated. It was so, so incredibly difficult to endure. I would go before the Lord and I'd say, could it be my job? I can't really be my job. I felt this way for X amount of time, but my job can't justify this. It provides an income, it provides a home. I don't like what I'm doing. I'd rather be doing something else, but it can't justify our feeling. What about my home life? What about this? What about that? Nothing would justify it. And that was when it suddenly clicked within my mind that this wasn't real. And my feelings can't justify reality. Though I feel miserable, there isn't an external cause that I could pinpoint that would justify feeling the way I felt. And so, it was that point there that I decided to disregard how I felt. I felt that way, I couldn't do anything about it. If I felt that way again, I would shrug my shoulders, shake it off, and just move on. I would take a grip of myself and say, your feelings can't be justified. There's something spiritual going on here. It may be because of you. And indeed it was most likely because of me. You see, I was a relatively new Christian. And I was indulging still the attention of the flesh that I indulged prior to being saved, thinking that it wouldn't have an effect upon me. So in other words, in my case, at least in part, it was due to sin in my own life that I wasn't dealing with properly. And it was the spiritual cause that was making me depressed. When you have individuals that actually believe that feeling hurt equals being hurt, you end up in a world that cannot think logically about anything. A world that's being descriptive here in 2 Timothy 3.2, perfectly being represented by a generation of young people, now in their mid-30s, who love themselves and need trigger warnings. so they can move themselves into a safe space and hear nice things about themselves. That is today's generation of millennials and the upcoming final generation known as Gen Z. I figure there's nothing after Gen Z, so it must be the final generation. I don't know, that's my thoughts. In his book, Anti-Fragile, author Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a Lebanese-born statistician, stock trader, and polymath, and current professor of risk engineering at New York University, wrote of how we are weakening a generation of people by not permitting the trials that strengthen them to endure. He says, quote, just spending a month in bed leads to muscle atrophy. Complex systems are weakened, even killed when deprived of stresses. Much of our modern structured world has been harming us with top-down policies and contraptions which do precisely this. An insult to the infragility of systems, this is the tragedy of modernity. As with neurotologically overprotective parents, those trying to help are often hurting us the most. In other words, when we're so quick to remove boundaries and to wrap our children in cotton wool and not allow them to fall over and get injured, and not allowing certain things to test them and to try them, we are creating snappable, fragile children who are going to grow up into a world that is unfriendly and be worried about every single word that may come against them and make them feel less than what they think of themselves. The peanut allergy craze that's happened of late has been brought on by experts who already know that in order to vaccinate an individual, you have to give them a portion of the disease in order for their body to build up an immune system to it, has removed any form or any trace of nuts that these children can actually develop their own immune system to be able to deal with them. And next thing you know, we've got celiac children. You can't even look at a peanut without all of a sudden getting affected by it. Yet that's exactly what they need. A slow build up against, to develop an immune system. But we're doing this with feelings today. And now we're telling people how good they are. And how wonderful they are. He opens this book, Anti-Fragile, with an interesting opening statement. He says, wind will extinguish a candle, but it energizes a fire. His advice is that we do not turn our children into candles. He says, you want to be the fire and wish for the wind. You want to be the fire and wish for the wind. You see, we're building up a generation of candles and the slightest breeze is going to blow them out. What we need to do is build them up into a fire. and then wish for the wind, because the wind just strengthens them. The things that we've endured over the last couple of months has done the opposite of what Satan had intended. Satan had intended that it would break our ministry in every way, shape and form. Instead, it actually feels like it's done the opposite to me now. I feel more strengthened than I've ever been strengthened before in my life, though I still go through those ups and downs. And yet knowing that I'm here doing the work of the Lord. David, exactly the same thing happened to King David when his own son rebelled against him and would steal the hearts of the people and take away the kingdom from David that he himself would be made king. And he came to kill his own father, even war against his own father. But in the end, that fat head of his got caught in the thicket of a tree. And he himself was overcome by his own devices. David now stood at the kingdom and he says, do I not now know that I am king over Israel? What happened to David? Was he weakened? No, he was strengthened. But David endured so much more than you and I probably would ever have endured. The Psalms are a testament of those things that he endured. What Tlaib had discovered is that hard trials generally make for more resilient adults, but soft touch coddling of feelings almost always leads to neurotic, narcissistic people. Our passage in 2 Timothy 3 demonstrates that this is going to be the general state of the modern church in the last days. And it's not too difficult to see it as true. The modern contemporary feel-good church is bursting at the seams with meaningless emotional drivel designed to please the crowd. And then with their music, dull their senses into an altered state of consciousness so they can leave the church in the same sinful state, but feel so much better about it. For the time will come where they will not endure sound doctrine. But after their own lusts shall heap to themselves teachers having itching ears, and they shall turn away their ears from the truth and shall be turned unto fables. Beloved, the relationships are never proved in the good times. Relationships are never proved in the good times. They're proved through the hard times. Your friends will always be your friends when you always agree with one another. But when one hurts the other, that's when the relationship endures. You see husbands and wives that have made the decision to commit themselves to one another through sickness and in health through better or worse, not better and better, through better and worse, their relationships are tried during the hard times and then strengthened. Because you see, when you know that you love one another and you've made that commitment to remain with one another for the rest of your days, the difficulties that you go through are there to strengthen your relationship, not to pull you apart. But if you allow it to pull apart because only because, you know, I'll only want to stay with this person for as long as he agrees with me. You got a relationship that's gonna, it's not gonna last. It's not gonna last. I've been married for nearly 33 years now. And don't think for a second that it's been because we've always agreed with one another. I'm not necessarily an agreeable person. You may not agree. But neither is Maria. We're both hard-headed in our own ways. And yet we've made that first commitment to love one another, to be with one another for the rest of our days, irrespective. So we sought through the issues that needed to be sought through. Relationships are never tried when times are good. Beloved, this is a church. This is a church of broken brethren. This is a church of individuals who struggle with the flesh. This is a church of people who will say the wrong thing from time to time. And if you don't have grace to be able to overlook the transgressions of others against you, don't expect grace for your transgressions against them. Don't expect it. Don't expect it. We are to have grace. We are to overlook our transgressions. We are to overlook our sins. Because the minute you begin trying to pluck the speck out of your brother or sister's eye, but fail to remove the beam that is in your own eye, that's the beginning of the end of that relationship. And we like to say none of us are perfect. It doesn't necessarily excuse things, okay? But it's important to understand that we're all here fighting the good fight. That the most important thing is not that your feelings are coddled, the most important thing is that you believe the truth. So individuals who are chastised for their sin shouldn't be sitting there thinking, you hurt my feelings. No, what they should be saying is, was that true? Is there a semblance of what was said that was true? There might be a bunch of stuff that wasn't true. Okay, flush it, get rid of it. But you should be going before the Lord and say, was that individual, whatever they said to me, because remember, we're encouraged to exhort one another daily. We are to reprove one another when we are in sin. That's not fluffy stuff. That's not stuff that agrees with you. That's stuff that disagrees with you. When you're being reproved, you're being chastised, you're being corrected. Now you can either choose to be coddled or you can choose to determine whether or not there was something that was said that might be true. It might not be all. True. Might only be something in there that's true. It's the same with your own relationships. Beloved, we are to toughen up. We are to strengthen our resolve. We are to know that we are loved by the Lord Jesus Christ. Because the Bible says, evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. Why? Because men shall be lovers of their own selves. Men shall be lovers of their own selves. The self-esteem movement has destroyed proper self-inquiry. Receiving a participation award just for showing up has created a plethora of self-entitled people whose love for themselves has outweighed their love for the gospel and the love for the lost. Blasphemers is pertinent in this regard. Disobedient to parents naturally occurs when you love yourself to the exclusion of all others. You'll have no regard for the advice or direction of parents. Unthankfulness continues in that regard as well before the Lord. Why do you need to thank the Lord when your love and your focus is only on your own selves? What do you do? What do you do within gratitude? What do you do with ingratitude? It's interesting, isn't it, how we sit here in our minds thinking to ourselves that shouldn't our good outweigh our bad? And yet when it comes to your response to someone who might have chastened you, all their good is just completely washed away. All you focus on is that bad. It doesn't matter what they've done for you in the past. It doesn't matter all the love that they've demonstrated to you in the past. You step slightly out of line as far as they're concerned, and they will throw the book at you. It's interesting, isn't it? And we want to defend ourselves. We want our good to outweigh our bad. Atheists say that with regards to their relationship to God. Shouldn't our good outweigh our bad? God holds us accountable. What do you do within gratitude? Parents, gosh, you want to know what ingratitude feels like to become a parent? You know, it's difficult to endure. It's difficult to endure. Your children will show gratitude at times, but they'll go through a period in their life where, no, no, you're the arch enemy, and it's difficult to endure. Can you discipline ingratitude? No, you can't discipline ingratitude. What do you do? You do what God does. You feel pain. You feel pain. You experience the pain. And this is something that we go through. Unholy. The culmination of self-love is the assessment of oneself according to personal perception and not according to rule. The unholy man has no governing principle in life other than what he wants to attend to for himself. There is no rule, there is no law. Do as thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. Now where did I pull that quote from? Alistair Crowley. Alistair Crowley, we'll talk about this next condition now. Without natural affection is the next point. It's in verse three of the text. Without natural affection, truce breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God. For men shall be without natural affection. The choice of words is a curious choice of words, natural affection. What's natural affection? How are we moving into a world of individuals without natural affection? What does it mean without natural affection? You see, there was a time in our history over the last millennia, even more, where people had natural affection. They had empathy one for another. They saw an individual suffering and they would empathize with them and they would go and nurture them and build them up and help them. The story of the Good Samaritan is a wonderful example of that. Without natural affection is an individual who could care less. about the feelings and the emotional state of other people. They only focus on themselves. It's a natural outflow of men shall be lovers of their own selves. They don't have natural affection towards others. And this is something that's really interesting. It goes on speaking about us being truce breakers and false accusers. Incontinence, we speak about today about the physical lack of control. As we get older, that's not what it's talking about here. It's talking about the emotional lack of control. You're without self-control is what it's referring to here. And that's more of an emotional state. Fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God. We're so naturally seeing such a rise of the population, both in the world and in the church of people being exclusively lovers of their own selves, but we're also seeing a dramatic rise in another personality disorder, technically known as antisocial personality disorder. It's popularly known as sociopathy. Sociopathy, you've heard the phrase sociopath. Sociopaths are rising more and more, and this is a perfect description of individuals without natural affection. Winston Smith, in his Substack article titled, Origins of Sociopathy, subtitled, I like this subtitle, The Etiology of Guiltlessness. This is really important. It describes the nature of the sociopath as distinctly without natural affection. He writes of them this way, saying, quote, there seems to be a general inability to process emotional experiences in the way most people would. The sociopath may marry and have children, but is unable to truly love them. They can appear to display the right emotions, but it is contrived and doesn't come from the heart, but is a practiced skill like a second language, never native, never native. The author goes on to state the difference between the perfect self-love of the narcissist and the sociopath, stating it this way. A narcissist may feel the pain of being alone without relationship because of his narcissism. In other words, his self-love. and will want a relationship but is completely ill-equipped to maintain a relationship. We just touched on that, didn't we? We touched on the characteristics of self-love. It's very difficult if you've got two individuals who exclusively love themselves, very difficult for those relationships to stay together, okay? Because they don't have a love for their neighbour. They can't develop that love for their neighbour because they love themselves exclusively. He's bringing out the reality of this. But he goes on, he says, the sociopath simply does not care about anyone or any relationship in this way. People are only useful as far as they are utility. as far as they are utility. Individuals are only useful as much as you can use them for your own purpose and your own end. This is a description of the sociopath. According to a health line, the characteristic of those the Bible refers to as without natural affection, but the world describes as antisocial personality disorder, also known as sociopathy. It describes it this way, and I'll leave, the link will be on the notes online. People with the condition might seem charming and charismatic at first, at least on the surface, but they generally find it difficult to understand other people's feelings. They often break rules or laws, behave aggressively or impulsively, feel little guilt for harm they cause others, use manipulation, deceit and controlling behaviour. Little to no guilt or remorse is experienced, or a tendency to justify actions that negatively affect others. They seem charming at first, until their self-interest becomes clear. They have a low empathy and emotional intelligence. They're difficult in learning from their mistakes. They lack concern for the safety of others, and they have a tendency to intimidate and threaten in order to maintain control. This is interesting. This is fascinating. And it's important to understand how such conditions might arise. There's another book that I want to bring to your attention. It was in her book titled, The Sociopath Next Door, subtitled, The Ruthless Versus The Rest of Us. was Dr. Martha Stout. She writes of the development of this condition evidently concentrating in the state-run orphanages of the communist Romania under the psychopathic rule of Nicolae Ceaușescu. Some of you are old enough to remember his rule. In the 1990s, it was discovered that these orphanages had situations where they would only have one carer per 40 children. One carer per 40 children. Added to that was only enough food to sustain their lives, not for them to develop very well. These carers were not permitted to have a social interaction with these small children, these small orphans. They were not permitted social interaction. They weren't allowed to pick them up. They weren't allowed to cuddle them. They weren't allowed to hold them. And that's really concerning for us in the West. Anybody know why? What does that equate to that's similar to what we're doing in the West? Anyone take a guess? Anyone heard of childcare centres? Do you know the rules that govern childcare centres today? The rules aren't all that different from this. They vary in degree, for sure. but carers, some aren't allowed at all to pick up any of these children. Babies are in these care facilities from the ages of six months, I'm not even sure if it's younger than that, I do know from six months of age at least. They're dropped off at the very early hours of the morning, they're picked up at the very late hours of the evening, hopefully fed so they can just go straight to bed. You understand the sort of children that we're bringing into the world? Do you know the outcome of this? She wrote about the outcome. She spoke about how Westerners began to adopt these Romanian orphans and discovered that it was a difficult journey. She wrote, quote, a couple in Paris would discover that their beautiful 10-month-old Romanian daughter was inconsolable and only screamed louder when they tried to hold her. Or a couple in Vancouver would walk into their three-year-old son's bedroom to find that he had just hurled the new kitten out the window. or parents in Texas would finally have to admit to themselves that they could not keep their adoptive five-year-old son from spending his day staring into a corner and that he sometimes viciously attacked their other children in the middle of the night as they slept. Western Europe and North America had imported an attachment disorder nightmare created by the sadistic Romanian sociopath who was no longer even alive. "'Having been completely deprived of attachment in infancy, "'many of these rescued children were loveless.'" This is on page 132 of her book. It's interesting that there is a massive rise in sociopathy in the West. A study as early as 1991 found the disorder doubled from the previous 15 years in the West. Dr. Stout cites, North American culture, which holds individualism as a central value, tends to foster the development of antisocial behavior and also to disguise it. In other words, in America, the guiltless manipulation of other people blends with social expectations to a much greater degree than it would in China or other more group-orientated societies. Page 136, 137. It's difficult to imagine how the exponential rise in those childcare centers in the West won't lead to an entire generation of sociopaths, both now and in the future. when, as I mentioned, children from six months old are fostered into these care facilities. We're living in a time where broken households are endemic around the Western world, where children are growing up with either one parent or the other parent, and that are not shown the love and the care that they need in order to be able to foster good relationships and empathetic relationships with other individuals. They learn from that act that happens to them focus only on themselves, almost like a survival instinct. In order for me to stay sane, I cannot have a care for other people. It's something that develops also within the special forces in police. There has to be doctors and nurses. There has to be a point at which they need to be able to endure the difficulties that they see within their day-to-day work environment. That they can sort of remove themselves emotionally from what they're seeing. Because our natural tendency is we want to care for these people. But the job needs to be attended to. We need to do our work. We need to do our work. It's really interesting because I just discovered that there are KPIs for nursing staff with respect to patients. How quickly were you able to deal with them? How quickly? Hang on, that's your KPI? What about how well you cared for them? No, that's not the KPI. It's a business, you've got to turn these things over and these people over as quickly as possible. Interesting, without natural affection, without natural affection. And this is incredible as we're seeing all these things develop even within our own day to day. Dr. Stout wrote about this respecting the value of the emotionless, unsympathetic or unempathetic sociopath might have as a soldier or a law enforcement officer. Imagine an individual who has no concern whatsoever with respect to killing or even ordering a killing, no guilt after the deed is done whatsoever, no concern. You can imagine how effective they would be as a soldier. You can imagine how effective they would be as a law enforcement officer or rather a security guard for the government because they're not law enforcement, they're not enforcing any laws, they're breaking laws as we've seen recently. the state of Victoria and the announcement that was given, I think, about a week or two ago by a particular judge with respect to what the so-called law enforcement officers did here in Victoria. Then all of a sudden Jesus' own words come to mind, Matthew 10.21, and brother shall deliver up the brother to death and the father the child, and the children shall rise up against their parents and cause them to be put to death. All right, so those are the two hard parts. I've got to get out of the way. We'll get into a couple of the ones that are a little bit lighter. Having a form of godliness is the next point. In 2 Timothy 3, verses 5 to 8, having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof, from such turn away. For of this sort are they which creep into houses and leave captive silly women, and it goes on. It speaks about jannies and jamborees. It speaks about ever learning and ever able to come to the knowledge of the truth. These people might be studious, they might be educated, they might be well learned, but they still don't know the truth of a given matter. They will hear the law, but they won't themselves be bound by the law. They will bind others to the law. They'll point out all of your sins without any problem whatsoever, but their sins, no, they won't point out. I've met individuals like this. They're very, very deceptive individuals. They give you a form of godliness, like they know the truth, but they themselves won't be bound by the truth. They'll bind you, but they won't be bound. They won't be bound. Jannes and Jambres, anybody know who they were? Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses. This seems to be the name given by those magicians who stood against Moses. When Moses cast down his rod, they cast down their rod and became the serpent. Gets gobbled up by Aaron's rod, but that didn't stop them. They continued on until in the end, all those particular signs, once it got to the lice, they couldn't do that. And they realized that was the finger of God. But they withstood Moses. And so do these also resist the truth. Men of corrupt minds reprobate concerning their faith. Psalm 5.9 says, for there is no faithfulness in their mouth. Their inward part is very wickedness. Their throat is an open sepulcher. They flatter with their tongue. Flattery is a sin. They'll tell you all the things that you want to hear about yourself. They will scratch you just where you're itching, at just the right moment in time, and tell you the truth. They will flatter you. Why? Because they have a deceit in their heart. Their desire is to grab your attention, to grab your affiliation, your love, and they lie to you. Speak about that in the book of Isaiah as well. Lie to us, preach on, don't tell us the truth. Don't tell us the truth. Tell us smooth things, prophesied deceits. They said in the Old Testament. We've got the same thing happening today. Isaiah 29, verse 13 says, wherefore the Lord saith, for as much as this people draw near me with their mouth and with their lips do honor me, but have removed their heart far from me. And their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men. In other words, they speak these beautiful words towards the Lord. I've heard individuals like this when I've heard them pray. and they have these highfalutin praise, lengthy prayers, because they think they're going to be heard by much speaking, but there's no substance to their prayer. I don't know if you've ever experienced that before. I've experienced that a number of times, even in this church, where the prayer is being made and there's an elevated language, but there's no heart. It's like, who are you talking to? Are you talking to God? Or are you speaking to, you know, it's difficult to nail down in any particular way. You just seem to sense that there's something wrong with how these individuals are praying. Are they actually praying? Or are they putting on a show? Are they putting on a show? These people draw nigh to me with their lips, they honor me, but have removed their heart far from me. Ezekiel 33, 31, and they come unto thee as these people cometh, and they sit before thee as my people, and they hear thy words, but they will not do them, for with their mouth they show much love, but their heart goeth after their covetousness. In other words, they have a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof. Matthew, Jesus spoke about these people in Matthew's accounts. Worth turning there, turn there. I haven't gotten you to turn to much scripture, so you might as well turn to that one. Matthew chapter seven, have a look there with me in verse 15. because Jesus wants to identify them. These are the same and they give to you the impression that they are one of you, but not necessarily, not necessarily one of you. This is their character and Jesus testifies that their fruits will be able to demonstrate the truth of them. Matthew chapter seven, verse 15, Jesus wrote or spoke, beware of false prophets. which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. You shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles? Even so, every good tree bringeth forth good fruit, but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire. Wherefore, by their fruits ye shall know them." How do they come in? How do they appear? They speak good things. They say good things. By good words and fair speeches, they deceive the hearts of the simple. We saw that last time. So their words say one thing, but their actions testify something else. And it's not until you pray and ask the Lord for discernment with regards to their actual true nature, will you see the truth of it and be able to put two and two together very, very well. They speak, but then they do. By their fruits, you shall know them, not by their words. They come to you in sheep's clothing. Anybody remember Wile E. Coyote? At least I love Wile E. Coyote, you know? And he had that zip. It was a sheep suit that he had on, right? He had a sheep suit on. I can't remember, sometimes he had two. I could unzip that one, it was still a sheep. Unzip that one, it was still a sheep. Or was that the dog? It might have been the dog. It didn't matter how many times you unzipped him, he was still a dog. He's the hound, he's the shepherd of the flock, can't change his coating. An individual approached me from another church, and he was a very lovely guy, very lovely guy. He agreed with everything that I was saying. He was nodding his head, saying amen, amen, nodding his head, saying amen. And it was the first time I'd seen him. And he approached me straight after the service. And he was very lovely, an older gentleman, but very lovely, very, he'll flatter and he said a couple of things. One of the things that he said was, you know, I'd like to pass on something to you with regards to, and I'd like to get your critique. Immediately, as soon as he said, I'd like to get your critique, I want you to understand that I've been debating Christians for nearly 30 years, right, on different issues. As soon as he said, I want to get you a critique, a little antenna just popped up straight away saying, you're not interested in a critique. You're going to try and sell me into some theology of yours that you have that is completely opposite to the scriptures. You're not interested in a critique. That was in my mind. I was thinking that really, really quickly, you know, like, oh yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, because he then wanted to talk about the gospel of Jesus Christ and how that's different from the gospel of Paul, according to my gospel. Then he'd twist it and he'd use Hebrews and he'd say, you know, leaving the first principles, which were the oracles of God and moving on to something else. And then he started speaking to me about the eight steps of salvation. Eight steps of salvation, I said to him. Yeah, the eight steps of salvation. There's eight steps of salvation. See, hang on, hang on. When the jailer came in to Paul and Silas, they were singing and the bands were loose and the earthquake and he's gonna kill himself. And then he saw that they were all there and he asked them and he said to them, what must I do to be saved? Did they say, well, step number one is, and then number two, and then number three, number four, number five, number six, and if you survive all that, you've still got number seven, and then number eight. There's no eight steps. Where'd you get eight steps from? Anyway, he sent me his article and his PDF. I tried to be as gentle as I could. And I wrote back to him and said, thank you for sending me that. This is pure unadulterated heresy. He got upset with me. I went on a little bit more descriptively. He got upset with me because he didn't think that that was pastoral. That was not kind, that was not nice. You were not nice, nice to me. That was mean spirited. That's not the pastoral care. That's not a pastoral heart. And I wrote back to him saying to me, brother, I'm a shepherd and I will shepherd the flock and I will care for the flock. But the shepherd has another role. And that is he has a rod and he has a pointy end to that rod. And he's not to be gentle with wolves. You know, I identified that he was a wolf straight away and I was not loving and I was not kind and I was not interested in entertaining him because what he wanted to do was suck all my time dry to try and convince him of something that he was already convinced against. He'd already written a blog, he'd already written, he's got a website dedicated to his eight steps to salvation, right? He quotes other individuals who already know a heretics. So I called him a heretic, I called him what he is. but it wasn't pastoral. You see, there's two parts to my role as a pastor, beloved. One is to care for the flock, but the other is to rebuke, to reprove, to exhort with all long suffering and with all doctrine. But if your desire is only to have your feelings tempered, I can't help in that regard. If your desire is to dissuade and to steal the hearts of the flock, I am not going to be kind and gentle. I'm going to call out the sin. I wrote to him and I said, David said, I hate every false way. I said, and my friend, you are a false way. And your way is a false way. And you're gonna turn the hearts of the simple away from eternal life. And you're gonna be turning them to fables. I'm sorry, there was a bit of a rant. Beloved, please, you know, this is the last. I don't have time for people like that. I'm not interested. I've debated people like that before. Pages and pages and pages of things that I've written to them in the hope and praying for them that they would just see the truth. And all I did was come up with another excuse on top of another excuse and just rationalize away the basic tenets of scripture. And I had no interest in this individual. Wherefore, by their fruits ye shall know them. He's been married three times, this individual. Finally, he thinks now he's got the right one. Anyway, they shall proceed no further. Last one. I'm sorry if this has gone a little bit longer than expected, please forgive me. Let me finish on this last one. Says there in verse nine, but they shall proceed no further for their folly shall be manifest unto all men as theirs also was. Just as Jannes and Jambres had a limitation placed on their sins, so too shall all men of corrupt minds reprobate concerning the faith, not proceed any further than that which God permits. Absalom rebelled against his father, stole the hearts of the people. and for setting up his own kingdom to remove unlawfully the kingdom from David, his father, for his troubles, he ended up getting caught up in his own mischief with his own head, trapped in the tree and then dispatched with by one of David's men. In the book of Esther, we see Haman build a gallows to hang Mordecai on. And yet he himself was hung there on because he decided that he wanted to do evil against Mordecai. Not just against Mordecai, for the sake of his hatred to Mordecai, he wanted to dispatch all the Jews, all the nation of Israel he'd wanted to destroy because of his own personal hatred for Mordecai. What the texts say, not sparing the flock. not sparing the flock. Heretics don't care about the flock, they care about themselves. Sociopaths don't care about the flock, they care about themselves. Lovers of their own selves don't care about anybody else. It's an exclusive love for themselves to the expense of everybody else. This is what the church is going to look like in the last days. In the book of Daniel, we find those who falsely accused Daniel of error cast into the den of lions themselves when he survived that testimony in the end. The Bible teaches often how the wicked dig a pit for others, but they themselves fall into it. They shall, beloved, proceed no further. There's a limitation to what they will be able to accomplish. Proverbs, who so dig of the pit shall fall therein, and he that rolleth a stone, it will return upon him, in Proverbs 26, 27. In chapter 28, verse 10, whoso causeth the righteous to go astray in an evil way, he shall fall himself into his own pit, but the upright shall have good things in possession. King David wrote in Psalm 57 verse 6, They have prepared a net for my steps, my soul is bowed down. They have digged a pit before me, into the midst whereof they are fallen themselves. Selah Jesus spoke about it. He says, the blind lead the blind and both fall into the ditch. We might not see that as fair, yet that's just the reality. That's just the reality. They shall proceed no further. The folly shall proceed no further. Beloved, the perilous times that Paul warned about to Timothy is a testimony of the proximity of the Lord's return for his church. As you see these things come to pass, as you witness so many caught up in sin today, look up and know that the blessed appearing of our Lord and Savior is near. One of the things that take away our personal affection towards others is our own sin. Beloved, you need to deal with your sin. You need to deal with it. One of the things that actually take away the love for others and the natural affection that we have for others is our own sin. I know it because I've experienced it. I've experienced it personally. I know that when I'm in the midst of my own sin, I care less about others. It takes away my personal affection towards them. And so I've had to deal with it and I've had to work it. I've had to beat my body into submission as Paul speaks about himself doing. But at the same time, we are to trust in the Lord Jesus Christ for our salvation and know that it's him that's done it all. He spoke about it and he said, if the world hates you, you know that it hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love his own, but because you are not of the world, but I've chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. Remember the word that I've said unto you, the servant is not greater than his Lord. They have persecuted me, they'll also persecute you. If I have kept my saying, they will keep yours also. You're in wonderful company. Will men speak evil about you? No. Your big warning is if they all speak good about you. Jesus spoke about that. Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you, for so did their fathers to the false prophets. Don't expect everybody to speak well of you. Grow in your relationship with the Lord. Focus on the Lord Jesus Christ. Focus on Him and know that you have hope there. It's not in the world, it's in Him. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I thank you, dear Lord, just for your work and your blessing to us. I pray, dear Lord, and pray, dear Father, earnestly, that there may be some that know Christ, or that desire to know Christ, that have not yet come to you. And I ask you, dear God, that you would open their hearts, that they may be received of you. Eternal life, dear Lord, is there for the taking, dear Lord, if they would only believe the gospel of Christ. be with them and encourage them and work within their hearts, draw them unto you. And for us, dear Lord, that we may be resolved to read the word of God, to grow in our discernment and grow in our wisdom and to glorify your precious name, because your appearing is near and that we have a work to do. Let us be good soldiers for Christ. Let us endure hardness as good soldiers for Christ. And that we might glorify your name. We give you thanks and praise for all these things in Jesus name. Amen. you