The Signs of the End :: By Sean Gooding
Published on: [April 16, 2025]
Matthew 24:3-8, 23-25
“Now as He sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying, ‘Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?’ And Jesus answered and said to them: “Take heed that no one deceives you. For many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and will deceive many. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of sorrows….
“Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘There!’ do not believe it. For false christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. See, I have told you beforehand.”
Just last Saturday, I was walking into one of my manager’s offices, and all three managers on site asked me what the signs of the apocalypse were. I had to think for a minute, and it would have been able to get to the sensational things like wars and pestilence and the like, but over and over again in this passage, in fact, three times, we are warned not to be ‘deceived,’ and in another verse not to ‘believe’ what you are hearing about Jesus being here and there.
As children of God, we should be ready to answer these questions. People, even lost people, know that something crazy is happening. There is something going on beneath the surface, and they can’t put their fingers on it. There is a great division in households with those who are ‘woke’ and their partners or kids who are ‘awake.’ There are those who can see the deception and those who have swallowed the deception hook, line and sinker. There is real division, as Jesus said there would be; a man’s enemies will be the very persons in his household.
Sadly, this deception has crept into churches; too many want to look to the world system and embrace the lies. The idea of ‘inclusion’ has crept in to pervert the Gospel, and now our true living God is the bad boogeyman because He has strict rules about entering Heaven. Jesus is the only way is now a statement of hate, and all of a sudden, churches can’t say that because it is not about love. This is heresy.
I just saw a situation at a church where the speaker, I will not call him a pastor, stated in relation to a teaching that Jesus did, that Jesus needed to be re-educated about the subject and that, had Jesus lived in the modern times, He would not have said what He said. This is blasphemy.
To openly state that Jesus needed to learn something is crazy. Yet there are hundreds of ‘churches’ that speak this same drivel every week, and they are filled with people who amen and agree with this heresy. The deception is real.
There are other deceptions like someone telling his congregation that most people are good people. This is a direct contradiction of Romans 3:10-18. In this passage, we are all evil and unable to help ourselves; we are in need of a Savior.
There are old deceptions that still run rampant today like we need to work to be saved or stay saved, and there is a select group that is going to Heaven, and no one else gets to go. I had a family member make a statement about my FIL, saying that even if he did call on Jesus, maybe Jesus was not listening because he was not one of the called. Heresy. The Bible tells us that ‘all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved,’ yet this idea that they are in some specially selected group is so very popular.
There are many other deceptions; we can go on and on about them. Girls can be boys and vice-versa, and if you say differently, it is because you are hateful. The truth has become hateful. The truth about salvation has become hateful. There is a hatred for the Gospel, for the word of God in its basic purity and simplicity that is so real and dangerous. There is a hatred from the ones who are deceived that is pointed at the ones who have seen the ‘light’ and come to understand that there is good and evil, right and wrong, light and dark, and one has to choose.
There is a deception in our schools masked as education that is indoctrinating our kids against their own parents and teaching them to hate them. There is a deception in our government that tells parents that their children belong to the collective society and not to the parents. There is a deception that has people truly believing that the Government is their friend. Government is the new ‘god.’ The ‘god’ who determines what is true, what is right, and the one who makes sure that the ‘poor’ have their fair share of someone else’s goods.
There is a deception amongst us that tells many of our people that we can solve the world’s problems without God. All we need is more laws, more government intervention, more oversight, less freedom, and if we can all just get along. But that is not the case; our overlords are simply getting richer, taking more of our freedoms, and, in many cases, trying to kill us in the guise of health care.
There is a deception that tells us from the pulpits of the world systems that only if there were fewer of us, we could save the planet. They tell the masses not to have babies, but they do. They tell the masses not to own homes, but they own multiple homes. They tell the masses not to get married, but the elites’ kids are still marrying. They tell the masses that there is no need for privacy, but they have tons of secrets. They tell the masses not to buy cars, but they own planes and travel all over the world. They are liars, and they have told the lies so much that the truth is no longer even wanted, furthermore needed.
Jesus warned us that this deception would be so ‘good’ that it may even deceive the saved person. Yes, some of the children of God may swallow the lies, drink the Kool-Aid as they say. Too many Christians do not spend enough time on the word of God, in prayer, and in study. They have not filled their hearts and minds with the truth and, as such, are susceptible to the lies. It is a sad state of affairs.
Jesus is the Way, Jesus is the Truth, and Jesus is the Life; no one can come to the Father except through Him. This has not changed, and there are no other options for eternal life. God does not need to learn, grow, or change; we do!
The ONLY antidote to the lies is the Word of God. Get in it, read it, know it, live it, obey it, and make it your own. Never let it go; pass everything you hear through it and check to see what God says about what you hear before you accept what the masses or what the government says. As a child of God, the lies won’t take you to Hell, but it will destroy your home, your testimony, your church family, and thwart the Gospel if you let them in.
Jesus is coming soon; that is the Truth. There is no deception here.
God bless you,