Why have fundamental Christian believers been deceived so easily? For three reasons. First, we do not deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow the Lord Jesus. Second, we do not pray carefully enough. Third, we are living in a world culture that is being influenced heavily by the spirit of Antichrist.

We have been deceived.

God has commanded us to lay down our own life, to deny ourselves, to take up our cross and follow the Lord Jesus. Because we have rejected the personal cross of humiliation, denial, patience, God has sent delusion upon us.

We know from the Scriptures that the closing days of the age will be filled with evil and religious deception. The tares will come to maturity.

For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect. (Matthew 24:24)

This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of Godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. (II Timothy 3:1-5)

The Lord Jesus warned us that there was coming an hour so dark that man could not work.

I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work. (John 9:4)

The hour of darkness is here—now!

Antichrist and his chief supporter, the spirit of religious delusion (the False Prophet), have already destroyed the Christian witness in America.

What can we look for in the future?

The philosophy and spirit of freedom of expression, of man making himself God, will spread until it holds civilized man in its chains. The spirit of religious seduction will give supernatural power to the Antichrist government. It will be "Christian" miracle-workers who validate the efforts of Antichrist as he fills the earth with the doctrine that man can attain peace and prosperity by his own efforts.

The philosophy of libertarian democracy does not have enough power to hold the allegiance of people. It must be supplemented with supernatural power.

Antichrist, we believe, will begin his (or her) career as a Christian disciple (just as Judas did). He will arise at the time that most of the earth has been converted in the latter-rain revival—that unprecedented manifestation of the Glory of God portrayed in the Book of Revelation by the two witnesses.

Antichrist will perceive the possibility of uniting all the religious people of the earth in a miracle-working Christianity, and of the suitability of libertarian democracy, and perhaps capitalism, as a form of one-world government and economics seemingly compatible with Christianity.

The truth is, there are elements in libertarian democracy and capitalism that could not be more violently opposed to the Kingdom of God.

Antichrist will involve the churches in the government and the government in the churches.

He may present "Christian" supernatural power as a means of relieving the problems of the world: hunger, disease, crime, poverty, violence, addiction. He may support the notion that all of mankind's ills can be healed by a positive-thinking, miracle-working "Christianity."

To be continued.