We need to watch out for false teachers and false prophets that are going to arise.  One of the things that is going to be a teaching, a doctrine, in this last hour is going to be the doctrine or the gospel of peace and safety, where these false prophets will rise up and prophesy of a great day of victory for the church.  When the Scripture says all that are living godly in Christ Jesus are going to suffer persecution, the false prophets will say, “Not so, we’re going to excel and, through the political system and through success and free enterprise, Christians will then ascend to leadership, and we’ll then bring this world under Christian rule and be able to present this world to Jesus at some time in the future.”  It’s not what the Scripture teaches.  This has been a lie in the church from its inception, that people will cry peace and safety.  Let me encourage you right now:  Start taking heed to what you’re hearing.  The Internet and television are full of false doctrine.  Absolutely inundated with the spirit of antichrist.  Take heed what you’re hearing.  As we begin to see this purification process, one of the things that as we, the bride individually, are being purified and becoming holy, the admonition is come out from among them, be holy and touch not the unclean thing (2 Corinthians 6:17); amen?  And that pertains to our relationship with the world order.  To be a friend of the world is to be the enemy of God.  The Bible does not say to be a friend of the world that, “God just won’t be happy, and some of your blessings will go away.”  You are the enemy of God.  The Scripture says it in another place, “is enmity” (James 4:4).  God is resisting you.  And God does resist the proud, but He gives grace to the humble.

We need to recognize this day and the hour that’s upon us and make these distinctions.  The Bible says that the people in that hour will no longer want to retain sound doctrine, and will heap to themselves teachers having itching ears.  The Old Testament prophets heard, “Prophesy to us smooth things” (Isaiah 30:10).  “Tell us what we want to hear.  Tell me how I, as a Christian because I’m an American twenty-first–century Christian, am going to be free from all opposition and persecution, though for two thousand years, that’s what the church has known, but we’re special.  Somehow God is going to preserve us from any adversity and opposition and harm.”  But the Bible says exactly the opposite.  In 2 Peter 2:1, the Scripture says there will be “false prophets, bringing damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them”.  The “denying the Lord” can understood as denying the Lordship.  They want to see Jesus as Savior but not Lord.  They believe that this gospel now has freed them into a place—these false prophets—of independence once again, that they now are enlightened to a place where they can discern good and evil.  We call it secular humanism; the Scripture calls it the worship of the creature instead of the Creator.  So, we’re told by Jesus to beware of these false prophets who are wolves in sheep’s clothing.  They lie in wait, the Scripture says (Ephesians 4:14).  What a powerful passage—they lie in wait in our midst, looking to take advantage and to bring destruction to the true flock of God.  Why?  Because they hate Jesus.  Your soul doesn’t mean anything to the devil.  It’s all about hating Jesus.  It’s all about destroying what He loves.  So, when we see this spiritual warfare that’s going on, it causes us to get a better understanding of the whole operation of this hour, these last days, as the Bible calls them.  This false doctrine is going to kill a lot of people.