There’s a portion of the church today, unfortunately, that teaches a doctrine that says the church is getting ready, this moment, to enter into great revival, that the church is just on the threshold of emerging in preeminence over the powers of this world, the governments of this world.  There’s many Christians today who are seeing that, believing that, praying for that.  And by coming into this place of preeminence, it would bring about peace and safety for the church.  And it’s really tragic that people are not really believing that in the last days there’s going to be a great falling away from the church.  They don’t believe that false teachers are going to rise up and purposely seduce the church and take them in the wrong direction.  But the Scripture tells us in Matthew, Chapter 10, Verse 17, “Beware of men.”  We’re talking about men who are calling themselves Christians.  We’re talking here in this context about religious men.  We’re talking about people primarily that were manifesting as these Judaizers, these Pharisees that were seeing themselves as defenders of the truth, defenders of the Word of God.  We see Jesus’ constant conflict with the Pharisees and the Sadducees.  As the Gospel begins to be presented, many of the Pharisees and Sadducees were converted, and many of them turned into the Judaizers that wanted to continue to hold on to the different aspects of the law and ceremony that was in Judaism, saying that those were necessary for salvation.  There is a conflict between Jesus, between the truth, and with these that moved in that true spirit of antichrist.  Jesus says, “Beware of men.”  Don’t be naïve. 

There are false teachers and the false prophets, and there are those that are in it absolutely just for gain, just for positions of power.  “Beware of men: for they will deliver you up to the councils, and they will scourge you in their synagogues; and ye shall be brought before governors and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them and the Gentiles.  But when they deliver you up, take no thought how or what ye shall speak: for it shall be given to you in that same hour what ye shall speak.  For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you,” praise God!  That’s a great promise to hold on to.    Believe God that when this hour comes and people are trying to deceive us and trap us in our own words, just like they did Jesus, let the Holy Ghost speak through you.  The Pharisees and the lawyers, they kept trying to trip Jesus up, but He kept putting it back on them, and finally, it said they stopped asking Him questions.  Let the wisdom of the Holy Ghost minister through you.

Verse 21, “And brother shall deliver up the brother up to death, and fathers their child.”  I want you to see the magnitude of this conflict in this last hour between light and darkness, between the church and the false religious system.  The spirit of Antichrist is already here.  That’s what the Bible tells us; that spirit’s right here.  Have you looked around at the news lately and seen the spirit of antichrist?  The boldness of people today to say, “The most dangerous people in America are white, middle-class evangelicals.”  How do you get away with saying that in a society when you’re not supposed to offend anybody or speak evil of any particular life choice that people are making?  Tragic, when in America you can choose to be transgender but you can’t choose to be a Christian.  Tragic, what’s taking place.  And behind the scenes right now, the hatred for the true church of Jesus Christ, the plots that are already being made to war against the truth of God’s Word and the lordship of Jesus Christ.