Jesus’ message to his four disciples on the mount of Olives, telling them what was going to happen in the future was not given to make them smarter about what would happen.
But to help them understand what would happen so they could be the people.
God wanted him to be in the midst of that situation.
That is the whole force behind this series of messages. I don’t want you to be smarter about the future.
Although there’s nothing wrong with that. I want you, I want me, I want to be the person.
God wants me to be so that no matter what happens, I can be his person and be a difference maker in the world in which I live.
Are we living in the world of the end?
If so, what does the Bible tell us about this time these days of war, devastation, unrest, strife, deception and lawlessness.
Jesus has given us a prophecy to prepare us for what’s to come prophecies that should shape our priorities, define our character and help us thrive instead of just survive in these days of uncertainty.
He didn’t give us this information so that we would be afraid of what’s to come or be overwhelmed by the world of the end.
But Jesus gave us this message so we can face it with confidence and hope.
Though the circumstances around us may seem dire and our future dim, they should make us stronger and better equipped to be a light in the world around us.
The world of the end truth matters today more than ever.
So why is it that we feel we can’t trust anyone anymore?

Because our culture has decided that truth doesn’t matter, that it is subjective, even arbitrary that as long as you’re not hurting anyone, it’s okay to tell a white lie here, stretch the truth there and outright deceive others when deemed necessary.
Hello, I’m David Jeremiah and welcome to Turning Point in today’s world, we see the concept of absolute objective truth eroding away.
So how can we separate the truth from the lies and the Godly influences in our lives from the Ungodly in today’s message entitled In a World of Deception.
Be honest. We look to Jesus teaching to encourage and equip us to rightly discern God’s truth and to have the boldness to both proclaim it and live it.
That’s coming up on today’s edition of Turning Point.
Dr David Jeremiah helps you understand and navigate biblical prophecy with the revelation prophecy chart.
Discover what God’s word says about the end times.
Examine a step by step, timeline of key events, signs and symbols and learn what we should do until Christ returns, visit prophecy chart dot org to order yours today.
Thank you for watching, Turning Point.
And now here is Dr Jeremiah with his message in a world of deception.
Be honest, deception is common in our world today.
And it’s also a frequent topic throughout scriptures.
And while the practice of deceit began in Genesis chapter three in the Garden of Eden, it seems to occupy and was especially significant place in the prophetic passages of the New Testament.
When the disciples came to Jesus asking him about the future.
Jesus began his response with this serious warning. Here’s what he said.
Take heed that no one deceives you take heed said Jesus that no one deceives you the status of deception in the world of the end.
According to Jesus, deception will play a major role in the world of the end.
Matthew 24, and 24 reads like this.
Then if anyone says to you, look, here is the Christ or their do not believe it for false Christ and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive.
If possible, even the elect, Jesus specifically instructed his disciples not to follow or fall for these false claims in every century.
Since the first men and women, there have been imposters who have claimed to be the Messiah, but that is not the only deception about which Jesus cautions In his sermon.
He says to his disciples in verse 11.
Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many For everyone imposter who claims to be the messiah.
There are at least 10 false prophets who will rise up to claim knowledge.
They do not have about a future. They cannot know they are false prophets.
Jesus said, be careful that you be not deceived, that danger will increase greatly as we move nearer to the world of the end.
That’s the status of deception. Here’s the source of it.
The spiritual deception that Jesus warns us about isn’t mere happenstance.
There is someone behind these deceptions and that someone is none other than Satan, the evil enemy of our souls.
He is the father of lies.
And since the very beginning of human history, one of his primary weapons against us has been deceit in the book of Revelation, John describes him like this, the great dragon that serpent of old called the devil and Satan who deceives the whole world.
Here’s what Jesus said about Satan in John 844, he said he was a murderer from the beginning.
He does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him.
And when he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources for he is a liar.
And the father of lies. Spiritual exception, maybe Satan’s most insidious weapon against those of us in the church.
Jesus and his apostles speak of it nearly 30 times in the new testament.
Did you know that Satan is a liar? He’s a serpent.
He’s a deceiver, but he masquerades as something else. And so do those who follow in his footsteps.
Here is what Paul wrote to the Corinthians in his second letter.
And the 11th chapter he said, for such are false apostles, deceitful workers transforming themselves into apostles of Christ.
And no wonder for Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light.
Deception has always been the weapon of choice of our enemy.
And when this deception is full blown in the period surrounding the rapture, it will be unlike anything that has ever happened before on this earth.
But the birth pangs of deception will be felt throughout the earth before the rapture.
And many prophetic scholars believe they are being felt already today.
While I don’t consider myself a prophetic scholar, I believe the deception birth pangs have already begun.
Have you experienced the increasing saturation of deception in artist society?
I know the answer has to be yes.
We feel it when politicians regularly fail to follow through on campaign promises, we feel it when media personalities tell us that up is down and dark is light.
We feel that when scientists make outlandish claims about basic biology that do not stand up to common sense, we feel that when governments practice censorship in the name of protection and persecution in the name of peace, someone asked me one time how in the world will be antichrist, ever deceive the whole world.
You know what we’re preparing the way for him. We really are.
If we can be deceived as blatantly as we’re being deceived right now, the end Christ is gonna have a heyday, he, it will be hard for him if he says it will believe it, the status of deception in the world of the end and the source of it and the strategy of deception in the world of the end.
If you have your Bibles with you, I hope you will find your place in the third chapter of Genesis.
I want to take you through Satan’s strategy. This will impact you.
If you listen carefully, someone will say it, convict’s you. Well, you know, conviction always comes before change.
So that’s good. The strategy Satan implemented in the Garden of Eden is the exact same strategy he tried to use on Jesus Christ in the wilderness.
Matthew chapter four. And it’s the same strategy he uses on you and me today and it’s the same strategy he will use in the end times.
Satan’s only got one plan, he’s only got one game plan, one strategy.
He uses it over and over and over again.
And if you want to know what it is, you can find it out and then you can be a little more prepared not to let it happen to you.
So I’m gonna show you how he works.
The first thing Satan did when He tempted Adam and Eve was to dispute God’s word Genesis chapter three verse one.
Now, the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.
And he said to the woman, has God indeed said, you shall not eat of every tree of the garden.
Satan immediately tried to water down what God had said to change it just a little.
He suggested to Eve that she may not have heard God correctly here is how this happens to us today.
We have the clear plain word of God in front of us.
It tells us we shouldn’t do something we would really like to do.
And the next thing we know someone sidles up to us and tries to give us an alternative interpretation of the text that will allow us to do what we know.
God doesn’t want us to do. That is a moment of decision.
We have to choose at that moment either to accept the truth of God’s word as it is written or to allow ourselves to be deceived.
Satan told Eve that God didn’t really mean what he said. Then Satan denies God’s word. Next.
Satan said to Adam and Eve, you shall not surely die.
Wait a minute, The road from doubt to denial is not very long.
And when Satan said, you shall not surely die, he was brazenly contradicting what God had said.
See for yourself, Genesis 2 17. But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
You shall not eat for in the day that you eat of it. What does it say? Class?
You shall surely die. It is important to note the sequence here. Doubt opens the door to denial.
If Adam and Eve had not listened to Satan in the beginning, they would not have been victimized in the end.
And every time you try to find an interpretation of scripture that will permit you to do something you know is wrong in your heart.
Every time you give a little ground up to the enemy, you open the door until Satan can drive a truck through that opening and dump a load of stinking garbage in your life and he will do it every time Satan disputes God’s word and then He denies God’s word and then He displaces God’s word.
He said to them. If you do this, you will be like God. He disputes God’s word.
He denies God’s word. He displaces God’s word. And then He discounts God’s goodness. This is really subtle.
But please notice Genesis 2 16 and 17.
and the Lord God commanded the man saying of every tree of the garden you may freely eat but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
You shall not eat for in that day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.
Notice how generous God is an abundance of goodness was offered freely just one restriction yet?
Look at how Eve reframed God’s original command when she spoke with Satan in Genesis chapter three, and the woman said to the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden.
Do you see what’s missing Eve omitted? God’s gracious provision that she and Adam could freely eat.
Let me ask you a question. Is God good. Has he been good to you?
Have you had a good week?
You probably had some problems like I have, but it’s been a great week and God is good and life is good when you walk with the Lord.
But Satan doesn’t want you to believe that He wants you to believe God is a stingy compromising person.
The Bible tells us that Satan disputes God’s word. He denies God’s word. He displaces God’s word.
Then he discounts God’s goodness and He dramatizes God’s restrictions nowhere.
Do we find that God told the first humans not to touch the forbidden tree?
But Eve said to the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden.
God has said you shall not eat it nor shall you touch it lest you die again.
God never said that He made no mention of touching. What difference does that make you say?
Isn’t that kind of nit picking? Isn’t that kind of silly? No, it’s a good question.
And I think the answer is that when you give Satan an in road into your life, you will soon be thinking less of the grace of God and more of the law of God, you’ll be focused on what you can’t do rather than what you’ve been able to do.
And the next thing you know, you begin to think God doesn’t really care about you and maybe he isn’t interested in your welfare at all.
So what difference does it make?
I should just do whatever I want to do whenever we overemphasize the boundaries in our lives, we allow ourselves to be deceived.
And then This is the last one. Satan diminishes God’s penalty.
Ive said, lest you die now, that’s not what God said.
God didn’t say the lest you die. God said, you will surely die.
Verse 17 says, but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil you shall meet in that day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.
Ive left out the Shirley died part and changed it to a simple lest you die.
And the latter sounds like death is something that might happen. It could happen. It’s a possibility.
The former makes it clear that death is inevitably connected with sin, the soul that sins, it shall die.
The wages of sin is death.
It’s easy for modern Christians to start reading the word of God and see maybe when the text is definitely or to hear consider when the scripture says, obey, when you do that, you leave yourself wide open to the deception of Satan.
Listen to me friends. The devil doesn’t want to help you. He wants to destroy you.
He doesn’t want to build you up. He wants to tear you down. He don’t want to set you free.
He wants to enslave you. And Jesus said this about the devil.
He does not come except to steal and to kill and to destroy.
I have come that they may have life and that they may have it more abundantly.
So there you have the status of deception in our world today.
The source of it and the strategy of it. Here’s the solution to it.
What is the solution to our world being driven deeper and deeper into deception?
What is the answer to Satan’s strategy of deceit? You know what the answer is simply, it’s the truth.
That is the answer we needed. That is the answer Jesus provides.
We know that because he said I am the way the truth and the life.
Jesus doesn’t just tell the truth. He’s just not about the truth. He is the truth.
He is the truth. That means Jesus is utterly dependable and trustworthy. You can take him at his word.
When you meet him, you move from false to true, from deception to reality, from relative confusion to absolute knowledge.
Let’s think practically though what can we do in our everyday life that will help lift up the value of truth to a world drowning in deception.
Three things. First of all, tell the truth. Let’s be frank. Many people feel comfortable with little lies.
They call them white lies, minor miss directions. Yes, the check is in the mail.
No officer, I wasn’t where I was driving that fast. I had no idea.
I wasn’t supposed to use my friend’s account for that streaming service as a culture.
We have convinced ourselves that dishonesty is only dangerous.
If it actively harms another person, we are fooling ourselves because the scripture says lying lips are an abomination to the Lord.
Yet because of who we are because of our identity as Children of God and ambassadors of the king.
Even a little deception can cause massive damage to our lives to our loved ones, to our testimonies.
For that reason, let us speak the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth in the words of Paul, do not lie to one another.
Since you have put off the old man with his deeds and have put on the new man who was renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him, tell the truth.
Ask God this week to help you be totally truthful, the whole truth. Nothing but the truth.
So tell the truth. Then secondly, test the truth.
There’s an interesting moment in the book of Acts that is helpful when we think about truth.
And deception specifically in terms of the danger that false teachers and false prophets present within the church.
Here’s the passage act 17, 10 and 11.
Then the brethren immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Maria.
And when they arrived, they went into the synagogue of the Jews.
These were more fair minded than those in Thessaloniki in that they received the word with all readiness and searched the scriptures daily to find out whether these things were.
So, the Bible tells us that if you go to the scripture and you ask God ahead of time to help you understand it, he will do it.
He will help you understand it and you will know whether it’s true or not.
Have you ever been around somebody who’s espousing some new thing and in your heart as you listen to it, you’re trying to be respectful, but you just feel like in your heart, there’s something wrong with that man that doesn’t sound right.
Well, if it doesn’t sound right, don’t do anything until you can get it to sound right because it’ll get you into trouble.
Oftentimes the Holy Spirit who lives within us, helps us to recognize error that we can’t even explain to ourselves.
We just know in our heart that is not actually, that is not true.
And what you don’t want to do is to let untruth into your life.
So don’t just tell the truth, test the truth and then teach the truth.
One way for us to stand against deception is to tell the truth at every opportunity.
Another is to test what the world and even the church tells us is true.
But finally, we can lift up truth in a world of deception by teaching the truth or to teach the truth in such a way that we lift people up, help them understand.
We have been called by Almighty God to be a part of his forever family.
My challenge to us all is this. We cannot change the world.
I don’t know what it was, but sometime probably in the last 10 years or so, I gave up on that.
I can change the world one soul at a time. You can’t change the world politically.
You can’t change the world by any other means.
The world has changed one person at a time when people receive Christ.
I feel badly for so many people who spend all of their time as Christians trying to change the world.
I dare you to find one passage in the New Testament where the Christians were trying to change the Roman world.
They lived in that world. And so here’s what I want you to understand.
Clearly jesus’ message to his four disciples on the mount of Olives, telling them what was going to happen in the future was not given to make them smarter about what would happen, but to help them understand what would happen.
So they could be the people. God wanted him to be in the midst of that situation.
That is the whole force behind this series of messages. I don’t want you to be smarter about the future.
Although there’s nothing wrong with that. I want you, I want me, I want to be the person.
God wants me to be so that no matter what happens, I can be his person and be a difference maker in the world in which I live to the vast majority of moderns.
There is no such thing as objective truth. We create our own truth. They say you have your truth.
I have my truth and your truth is no truer than mine.
Satan has effectively inserted this false definition of truth into our culture.
It’s in our schools and it’s even in some of our churches, but you cannot be a genuine Christ follower.
If you embrace this idea, listen to me, every true Christian should know and love the truth scripture says one of the key characteristics of those who perish people who do not go to heaven is that they did not receive the love of the truth that they might be saved.
And the clear implication is that a genuine love for the truth is built into saving faith.
It is therefore one of the distinguishing qualities of every true believer in Jesus words, you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.
So what I want to say to all of us today, I say to myself first and before I say it to you, those who are listening on the internet or wherever this is heard, don’t spend your life trying to undo the deception of the world.
You are not strong enough, big enough, influential enough.
But what you can do is you can follow Solomon’s advice.
He said by the truth and do not sell it. Let’s be people of the truth.
This week when we catch ourselves starting to move away from that, let’s catch ourselves up short and say no in this deceptive world, I will be the truth if I never say anything to anybody.
If I never get into conflict with anybody about what’s happening.
When they think about me, they will know I stand for the truth. I am a representative of the truth.
People of the truth hears our marching orders for the week. Be the truth.
You be the truth, Jeremiah, you be the truth.
Let’s go into this world of deception and lies and falsehood and less by the grace of God.
Let’s be the truth. And all God’s people said, amen.
Dr Jeremiah will return in a moment with one more inspirational word to close today’s program right after this, Dr David Jeremiah helps you understand and navigate biblical prophecy with the revelation prophecy chart.
Discover what God’s word says about the end times.
Examine a step by step timeline of key events, signs and symbols and learn what we should do until Christ returns, visit prophecy chart dot org to order yours today.
And now with one last word for today’s program here is Dr Jeremiah.
I’m sure you’re familiar with two words heard often in our cultural conversation, misinformation and disinformation.
While they are slightly different in meaning, they have the same result, deception and confusion in a world where information is spreading, constantly, deception and confusion can be widespread.
So how should we live in such a world? First, we need to be honest ourselves.
Second, we need to measure everything we hear by the truth of the Bible.
And the place to start is by meeting the one who called himself the truth, Jesus Christ and knowing his words, I hope you’ll allow me to send you two free gifts from turning point to encourage you.
What is our booklet called Your Greatest Turning Point. And the other is our monthly devotional magazine called Turning Points.
And we’ll send them both to you absolutely free of charge if you will contact us here at turning point today, next time on turning point and when you don’t know what’s going to happen and when the skies kind of look dark and you’re a little bit frightened.
Just remember God’s promise, I will be with you. I will never ever leave you or forsake you.
Thank you for being with us today. Join Dr Jeremiah.
Next time for his message in a world of war be calm here on turning point.