Here's what John the apostle, through divine inspiration, had to say two thousand years ago:
Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world. Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world. (1 John 4:1–3)
The Laodicean church is symbolized as the church that will at the very end of the Church Age (Age of Grace) literally make the God of all creation sick at His stomach. The Lord describes through John that organization's true character, and why He is sickened: Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked. (Revelation 3:17)
Jesus spoke to the very things that mark the Laodicean church in foretelling the end of the age. The prophecy is prominent—is, as a matter of fact, the very first characteristic Jesus lists in His Olivet Discourse for the time just before His return: And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the [age]? And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you. For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many. (Matthew 24:3-5)
Only one who denies that God's Word is truth can miss the importance of the Lord's words here. Jesus is speaking to the deception that will be tied up in false teachings and false prophesying at the time just before He returns. Please understand that I'm not meaning next that all large, even mega-churches, are evil. Some still adhere to Bible truth in their preaching and teaching. However, the "if-we-can't-beat-'em-we-will-join-'em" false religionists of recent years have expropriated the church’s personnel and presented a compromised message before the senses of the glitz-mad American public. The tactic has worked. The mega-church super-complexes under whose roofs the masses continue to swell mark this generation, almost certainly, as the Laodicean church. I believe these church entities are organizations or multiple level of organizations filled not with the Holy Spirit, but with the spirit of antichrist.
A primary tactic chosen by most of these organizations to draw the masses is to give people an entertainment spectacle every time they sit in the plush theater pews. Nothing wrong with being physically comfortable while sitting, but to be always spiritually comfortable sitting under preaching and teaching that should point to the more abundant life conviction of the Holy Spirit is devastating to the soul. The compromise is in the "Let's talk about it," feel-good, do-good message of "God loves you, and would never condemn you to a hell, which in any case, doesn't exist." God DOES love us—so much so that He sent His only Son, Jesus the Christ, to die as the once-and-for-all sacrifice for the sin in which we are otherwise lost forever.
The thesis-antithesis-synthesis psychobabble theologizing—“Let's talk about it" compromise—is proof that these organizations of religiosity deny that Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation—to reconciliation with God the Father. They are of the Antichrist spirit. These believe they are indeed “rich, and increased with goods, and think they have need of nothing; and know not that they are wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked,” in God's holy view.
Troubling as these unredeemed type of churches are in these fleeting days of this age, the overt, deliberate ignorance of things of God's prophetic Word in those true Christian churches who still adhere to Jesus as the only Way must be heart-wrenching to the Lord of heaven. Most Christians are without any understanding of the times in which we find ourselves.
To those who study the times in light of Bible prophecy, the seminaries, pastors, teachers, and Christians in the pews of America are observably, for the most part, happily ignorant of the astonishing fact that Israel is being put in the position of Zechariah 12:1-3—that the Jewish state is being forced toward a peace from which will come Antichrist and the Tribulation.
Christians by and large have no idea that the European Union is shaping to be the matrix out of which Antichrist will come, that the Russian/Iranian/Turkey/other nation alignment is configuring for the Gog-Magog war of Ezekiel chapters 38 and 39.
Today's church can't discern that powerful spiritual as well as geopolitical dynamics are forcing the economies of America and the world into a one-world mold that will eventuate in the ten-kingdom rearrangement of Revelation 17:12-13. They don't see that we are in the "perilous times" of Paul's forewarning in 2 Timothy, chapter 3. They don't understand that this nation and the world are filled with the spirit of Antichrist, and that God's judgment and wrath must be near.
As they go through their routines of life, Christians today are doing anything and everything except heeding the words of forewarning of our Lord: “And what I say unto one, I say unto all, watch" (Mark 13:37). He said also: "For when you see all these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your head, for your redemption draweth near" (Luke 21:28).
Jesus said one thing more. He forewarned that a great many believers will be caught by surprise at the time of His return in the Rapture: "Be ye also ready, for in an hour ye think not, the Son of man cometh" (Matthew 24:44).
Seems to me we are in such a "think not" time at present.
Terry
