A Theological Prophecy: The Falling Away (Pt. 1)

Many self-proclaimed Christians are leaving the faith in a movement they call “deconstructing.” Is it just a trend or is it the fulfillment of prophecy? Dr. David Jeremiah looks at this current phenomenon and its possible connection to end times prophecy.

Dear Lord,
Today…….I am asking all my prayer warriors to say a prayer that may help others. So many people are hurting right now. Many are struggling with finances and need jobs. Some are facing foreclosure and don’t even know how they are going to make it from week to week..

Many are lonely. . Many are heartbroken. . Many are facing sickness and health is fading. . Some are dealing with difficult family members. Many have lost HOPE.. Tonight, let us put our prayers and faith together decree and declare breakthrough over our families. Financial miracles WILL take place. Jobs WILL be found. Our Bodies WILL be made whole & sickness WILL flee. Marriages and relationships WILL be restored. Family members WILL find Jesus. Heartbreaks WILL be healed. JOY WILL be restored and HOPE WILL be found. In Jesus Name. Amen!!!!!! Keep God First…….

Many self proclaimed Christians are leaving the faith in a movement they call deconstructing.
Is it just a trend or is it the fulfillment of prophecy? Today?
On turning point, Dr David Jeremiah looks at this current phenomenon and its possible connection to end time prophecy.
From where do we go from here? David introduces today’s message, a theological prophecy, the falling away.
Well, the Bible tells us that there’s going to come a time when people will fall away from the faith and that that particular uh experience as it is multiplied in our culture will be one of the things that will remind us that the Lord is coming back.
There will first of all be a falling away.
Ladies and gentlemen, we’re living in that right now every week.
Practically, we read the story of someone oftentimes a leader who proclaimed the gospel with great authority and apparent spirit filled uh ministry and they, they just walk away from it and say they don’t believe it anymore.
They come up with some new ideas of things, they want to believe it. I’ve never seen anything like it.
It’s called the apostasy. It is called the falling away we’re gonna talk about that in just a few moments here on turning point as we turn in our bibles to the second chapter of Second Thessalonians during the month of May.
When you send a gift to turning point, we want to send you a copy of the book from which all of these lessons have originated.
This 240 page hardback book is our way of saying thank you for your investment and turning point during the month of May, let me encourage you to be as generous as you can be.
Ask God to help you give your best gift.
And then when you do it, be sure to ask for the book, we will send the book to you if you ask for it and it will come to you uh in as quick a time as we can get it there, given all of the challenges of the surface mail, but you’ll have it soon and you’ll be able to not only review what you’ve already heard, but follow along in the things that are yet to be aired uh in this series.
Once again, I want to thank you for your investment in what we’re doing. We can’t do this without you.
I I’m reminded of that every day.
The amazing things that God has done through turning point are amazing because of the amazing people who make it happen.
You’re certainly one of them and we thank you.
And uh I hope that we’ll continue, be able to bless you through the word of God.
Here’s part one of the falling away of theological prophecy.
Imagine writing your first book at the age of 22 and watching it land on a best seller list everywhere.
A few years ago that happened to an American pastor.
His book conveyed biblical advice about love and relationship and it encouraged thousands of young people to make better choices.
This pastor became known for his speaking and writing and counseling as well as for nearly two decades of pastoral ministry in a local church.
Yet somehow somewhere during those years, his own relationship with God evaporated in 2019, he announced his marriage had come to an end.
Then in a follow up post on Instagram, he disclosed an even deeper divorce.
He wrote quote, I have undergone a massive shift in regard to my faith in Jesus.
The popular phrase for this is deconstruction.
The biblical phrase is falling away by all the measurements that I have for defining a Christian.
He wrote, I am not a Christian.
Many people tell me that there’s a different way to practice faith and I want to remain open to this, but I am not there now, now that probably touches you in some way, but it cuts me to the heart because I am a pastor and this is happening to more pastors than I’ve ever seen before.
Many others seem to be falling away from Christ in his gospel.
I saw a recent op ed with this title. Everyone is leaving Christianity and nobody knows where they’re going.
This departure from biblical faith is happening so often that there’s a new word that’s been coined.
These defectors are no longer evangelicals, they’re ex evangelicals. Why is that?
What is that all about? Well, the falling away is not a new phenomenon throughout history.
There have been many who have taken up the banner of Christ only to lay it down again.
Even the first generation of Christians face challenges like this.
Have you ever heard about a guy named when Paul wrote to the Colossians and to Philemon, he sent them greetings from his co worker demo who was at his side in second Timothy 4 10.
He described him like this demo has forsaken me, having loved this present world.
There’s another book in the Bible that’s devoted to this topic. It’s the little book, Jude.
I always love to tell people about Jude and tempt them to ask me what chapter.
Because if you ask me what chapter I know you have read the Bible.
There’s only one chapter in the book of Jude.
So when you say Jude, you just give verse numbers, you don’t give chapter numbers.
This book was written by our Lord’s half brother, the son of Joseph and Mary.
And in only 25 verses, Jude reminds us that some of the angels themselves fell away from their allegiance to God.
Did you hear that? I’m almost hesitant to say it, but it’s true.
A third of the angels left their first estate and walked away from God who had created them as angels of light.
I’m almost hesitant to read Christian news sites these days because it seems like every time I do I read or hear somebody else who has walked away from their faith.
Recent headlines are not encouraging and neither are the statistics.
There are more than 72 million millennials in America.
Almost one quarter of our population, an increasingly large percentage of that generation has walked away from faith of any kind, choosing to identify themselves as religious nuns, N O N E S.
When you check on the questionnaire, are you a Baptist? Are you a Presbyterian? Are you a Charismatic?
Are you a Catholic? And the bottom part says none of the above, that’s where they all check.
None of the above. In 2008, researchers noted that close to a third of all millennials described themselves as religiously unaffiliated.
And just 10 years later, that number had grown to 42%. And there are more troubling numbers.
Church membership in America has suffered a decades long decline no matter what you hear from church growth.
Experts about the explosion of the church. Let me give you the truth.
When Gallup first measured us church membership in 1937 the number came in at 73%.
In the early 19 eighties, more than 70% of American adults were church members in the year 2000, it was 65% by 2010.
It was 59% and now less than half of Americans, 47% belong to the local church and there are corresponding declines in regular church attendance.
That’s not a good sign. That’s not a good study. That’s not a good trend.
But the core issue here isn’t even people falling away from the church or falling away from faith.
We’re talking in this lesson about falling away from Jesus himself.
These are people who have and these words are stark trampled, the son of God underfoot treated as an unholy thing, the blood of the covenant that sanctified them and insulted the spirit of grace.
Judas Iscariot is the poster child for all of this.
He’s the best example in the Bible of someone falling away from Christ. Listen to this.
He was one of the 12 of Jesus inner circle of disciples. He had the perfect light.
He had the perfect example, he had the perfect evidence.
And for some three years, he lived with truth incarnate and life incarnate and he turned his back on the one who is truth and life.
One of our Lord’s 12 disciples did that so did a pastor here in California.
After several instances of publicly criticizing the Bible’s view on sexuality. This man was asked to resign from his church.
He also lost his teaching position at two Christian universities.
As a result, he decided to live for a year without God.
In his words, he planned to try on atheism as a new Year’s resolution for the next 12 months.
I will live as if there is no God. He wrote, I will not pray, read the Bible for inspiration.
Refer to God as the cause of things or hope that God might intervene and change my own or someone else’s circumstances.
At the end of his experiment, he officially rejected his lifelong belief, declaring on national public radio.
I do not think that God exists. Again. This man didn’t just simply fall away from the church.
He didn’t fall away from his faith.
He chose to abandon his savior and he was left with nothing except atheism, which literally is faith in nothing.
If jude were alive today, he would take notice. And so should we, what does this mean?
What does this mean to us when I was getting started in ministry?
However many years ago that I choose not to reveal apostasy was a hot topic.
And you know what they thought it was while there was the apostasy of long hair on men in short skirts, on women.
And there was the apostasy of dancing and going to movies and there was the apostasy of having fellowship with other Christians who did not perfectly line up with all of your personal convictions some time after going to seminary, I found out what apostasy really was and I found it to be something way more deadly than anything I had mentioned above.
In fact, true apostasy is far more deadly than all of them put together. To be clear.
Apostasy is not the same thing as atheism by apostasy, which is the New Testament word for falling away.
I’m not referring to people in general who reject Christianity or deny the truth of the gospel.
That’s not what this is all about apostasy doesn’t reflect the rise of atheism in and of itself nor does it apply to everyone who chooses religious systems other than Christianity.
Instead, the concept of falling away has a narrower focus.
It applies specifically to apparent Christians to those who claim to follow Jesus, but then turn their backs on him.
Here is the best definition I have found for this term.
This comes from the writing of John Walford, the former president of Dallas Seminary.
He said the Greek word for apostasy is found only twice in the New Testament Acts 21 21 2nd Thessalonians chapter two and verse three.
And the word means a falling away from a deserting or turning from a position formally held spiritual apostasy occurs when a person who once claimed to be a believer departs from what he formally professed to believe.
An apostate is not one who was saved and lost his salvation, an apostate though having claimed to be a believer never was saved in the first place.
Every apostate is an unbeliever but not every unbeliever is an apostate. Here’s what I mean.
There are many people who have never heard about the gospel.
They wouldn’t know the gospel from anything so they can’t be apostate.
They can’t walk away from something they never heard of before. They are unbelievers because they have not heard.
But an apostate is well acquainted with the gospel.
He knows more than enough to be saved, but he walks away from it anyway.
And the sun also rises.
Ernest Hemingway said, there are two ways to go bankrupt gradually and then suddenly and it’s the same with spiritual bankruptcy.
We drift away gradually and then suddenly we’re out in the cold.
Why am I talking about this theme of falling away? Why should I even bring it up?
It seems sort of extraneous to some of you wondering where is he going with this?
Because the proliferation of apostasy is an important but overlooked, often piece to the end times puzzle as we know from scripture.
One of the signs of the end times is a rising number of self proclaimed Christians who ultimately reject Christ.
Let me show you where that is in the Bible. Second Thessalonians chapter two verses one through three.
Here’s what the word of God says.
Now brethren, concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to him.
We ask you not to be soon shaken in mind or troubled either by spirit or by word or by letter as from us as though the day of Christ had come.
Now listen carefully, let no one deceive you by any means for that day will not come unless the falling away comes first.
And the man of sin has revealed the son of tradition.
This is indeed a prophecy about tomorrow that has implications for us today.
This falling away that Paul is writing about is not just some gradual defection from the church.
Paul calls this the falling away like it’s a specific thing at a specific time at a specific moment.
Paul calls this departure from the faith and it will happen according to the scripture during what we call the tribulation period.
Now, most of you know enough about prophecy to know there’s some general things you should be aware of.
First of all, the next thing that’s going to happen in the future is the rapture of the church.
The Bible says that the Lord is going to descend and take to heaven, those who have put their trust in him and that can happen any time.
There’s no signs for that. It could happen before we say amen.
At the end of the service, we could go to heaven before we go home and that would be all right, because we’d really be home then amen.
So you don’t have to worry about that.
You say, well, what is gonna happen before Jesus comes to get us?
Not one thing he can come any time after the rapture when the saints are all gone on this earth.
The Bible teaches there’s going to be a period of seven years of tribulation.
This will be literally hell on earth. And it’s divided into two sections, 3.5 years.
The first part of the tribulation and the last part, the last 3.5 years is called the Great tribulation.
Now, when Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, he said in the tribulation period, there’s going to be a great falling away, a great defection from the faith.
Now, let’s just suppose that this is not something that happens until the middle of the tribulation.
I don’t believe that’s true, but let’s just give ourselves a little wiggle room here.
Let’s say that this falling away doesn’t happen until halfway through the tribulation period. That would be 3.5 years.
And let’s remember that the tribulation commences immediately after the rapture of the church. Watch this.
And let’s not forget that the rapture could happen at any moment and that the tribulation is a period of seven years so that the middle of the tribulation is just 3.5 years.
If all those things are true and they are the falling away could happen within our lifetime.
If Jesus came back today, it would happen within 3.5 years.
So this isn’t just something way out in the future that we don’t have to be concerned about.
It could happen and it could start happening before we go to heaven.
It won’t fully, completely happen until we’re in heaven.
But it could start happening before then the Christians in Thessalonica were facing this kind of persecution.
So they believed the last days were upon them and they were troubled and we should be troubled when we go through trouble, right?
That’s part of it. But Paul wrote this letter to them to say, look, don’t be soon troubled because the falling away hasn’t happened yet.
So you’re not in the tribulation.
If you’re in the tribulation, the falling away would have happened, but it hasn’t happened.
That hasn’t happened for us yet either.
You know, I sometimes hear people talk about how before Jesus comes back, we’re gonna have this great worldwide revival.
Have you ever heard anybody say that before Jesus comes back? We’re gonna have this great worldwide revival.
Well, I hope we do, but there’s not anything in the Bible about that.
Somebody got their wires mixed when they started teaching that because that’s not true.
You know what it is in the Bible, in the Bible.
It says there’s gonna be a great defection from the faith before Jesus comes back and there is going to be a revival in the tribulation period.
You know why? 144,000 Jewish Witnesses are going to be let loose on the earth.
If you can’t get a revival of that, there’s no hope.
And two witnesses, two special witnesses are going to do miraculous things.
And the Bible says that thousands will come to Christ during the tribulation period.
But not before we go to heaven. Could there be a great awakening?
I believe there could be and I pray that there would be every day because that would just give us a few more years to preach the gospel.
Sometimes I think we might be on the edge of it and then sometimes I think it’s so far away, you’ll never see it.
But what I want you to know is this while the scripture does not prophesy a great revival that doesn’t mean there couldn’t be one.
But what you need to know what the scripture does prophesy is there will be a defection at the end of the age.
So here is this prophecy in Thessalonians and John put it this way.
This is really a very specific verse.
First John 2 18 and 19, he said it is the last hour.
And as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come by which we know that it is the last hour they went out from us.
They were not of us for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us.
John said there are many people who were in the church and they went out and they became part of the false gospel.
He said they went out because they were never a part of us.
They went out from us, but they were never of us.
How many of you know that in our churches today, there are many people who are with us but they’re not from us.
They’re not of us. They come to church, they hang around the edges. They love the excitement of the church.
They love the joy of the church. They love the comfort of the church.
But if they’ve never accepted Jesus Christ, they’re not of the church.
And it’s possible just to be around the edges.
And then the problem is when trouble really comes and stress comes, a lot of things are revealed that you would never imagine in his, all of it discourse, Jesus said this and because of lawlessness, the love of many will grow old.
How can this happen?
How could anyone who has tasted the goodness of Christ in the church and the love of God?
How could they ever fall away?
Well, I’m going to give you three things that could happen and I think they all are in play.
Why do some people get discouraged and walk away from their faith?
First of all, some people fall away because they are deceived.
There are many deceivers out there today. Can I get a witness?
But the most dangerous ones aren’t the cheats who take our money as bad as that is.
There’s a scam every day somewhere, but that’s not the worst. It’s the ones who operate in the spiritual realm.
According to the Bible, spiritual deception will cause many to fall away from Christ in the days leading up to the end times.
First Timothy 41 and two says it this way.
Now the spirit expressly says that in latter times, some will depart from the faith giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons.
Speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron.
According to this passage of scripture, there are unseen demonic forces that are operating in our world enticing and deceiving people into abandoning their faith in Christ, their influence, even in the church will only increase as we draw near to the end of history.
It’s overwhelming to see the deception that’s going on within the church.
You can watch it, you can see it. Maybe it’s touched you or your family. You’ve been victimized by it.
The passage in first Timothy warns of false teachers who traffic in lies and hypocrisy.
These men and women attempt to cause spiritual damage and to manipulate God’s people for their own purposes.
They’re cold, they’re callous and they’re calculating and Paul says they don’t even have a conscience anymore.
It’s been seared, they have lost moral sensitivity and their spiritual compasses are broken.
That’s the reason why some people fall away.
They get caught up in a spiritual scam can get a witness. We know people like that.
Sometimes we end up having to pick the pieces up from people who have been hurt like that.
Well, I don’t want to dig any deeper into that because it brings back some vivid memories of things that have happened to me in recent days.
Stories that if I told you, you wouldn’t believe things that have happened to people that I knew at one time who preached with great power and taught with great ability, perhaps some of the most effective teaching I’ve ever heard.
And now all in shambles because of issues that uh should never have taken place, the falling away, the, the moving away from the faith.
We’ll have more of that tomorrow.
We have a little bit more to teach uh from Second Thessalonians chapter two and we’ll do it on the Friday edition of this week and I hope you’ll be with us then.
Don’t forget we’re going to Israel in March. I’m gonna say this a lot. So get used to it.
March the 12th through the 22nd, 2024 major sites, Jerusalem, Galilee, the Dead Sea, and the Jordan River.
Uh many other places and places that we have visited before, but long to see again.
And we’ll have artists with us, Michael Sanchez. Yo, Vega, many others who will be joining us for this tour.
You don’t want to wait until the last minute. This will fill up quickly.
I mentioned last week that our Alaska cruise is sold out and it’s not until the end of July.
There’s a great following here that you want to be a part of the beginning of it.
And I hope you will be see you next time for more information on Dr Jeremiah’s series.
Where do we go from here? Please visit our website there.
You’ll also find two free ways to help you stay connected.
Our monthly magazine Turning Points and our daily email devotional sign up today at David Jeremiah dot org radio.
That’s David Jeremiah dot org slash radio or call us at 809 47 1993.
Ask for your copy of David’s Timely book. Where do we go from here?
Plus the bonus resource, warning signs of the end times.