Deception in the Last Days- 2

Subtitle: Warnings From The Apostles

A link to the audio can be found at the bottom of this article.

Multiple Passages. This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on Sunday, October 25, 2026.

Last week, we looked at the warnings of Jesus regarding deception.  He warned against deception in general in the days ahead, but he also warned of a specific deception that would come about during the Great Tribulation.

Today, we are going to look at how the apostles of Jesus continued the warning about deception both in general and specifically in the last days.

Let’s get started.

A warning for the Church Age

We are going to look at a number of passages which demonstrate that the apostles warned about deception in general for the Christians.  This will involve multiple passages.

I would say up front that the whole letter to the Galatians could serve as a warning against the deception of requiring Gentiles to follow the Law of Moses in order to also follow Jesus.  Paul even used a term in Galatians 3:1 describing them as being charmed or bewitched into following this deception.  They had come under a persuasion that was not of the Holy Spirit.

We can also recognize that some passages speak of the Last Days as having already started in the first century, whereas other passages are clearly looking to the end of this age.

The Messiah had been revealed.  The nation of Israel had rejected him.  Yet God was calling all men (Jew and Gentile) everywhere to repent and believe upon Jesus as the one anointed to save them.  The rejection of Messiah by the Jews had led to the grace of God going out to the nations.  This is often called the Age of the Church.  However, it is more specifically an age of grace to the nations.  The length of this age of grace is unknown.  However, it will come to an end (see Matthew 24:3 and Matthew 28:20).

This is God’s last program before sending Christ to take up the kingdoms of this world and restore the Kingdom promised by God through the prophets.  In this sense, we are in the last days.

Yet other passages make clear that there will be a period at the end of this age, the last of the last days.  Jesus referred to it as The Great Tribulation.  The believers are removed and the earth plunges into the last great test that prepares everyone for the coming of Christ.  Some will be judged and removed, and some will be found worthy to enter the Millennial Kingdom.

For now, let’s focus on passages that speak to the Church Age, or the Age of Grace to the Nations.

2 Peter 2:1-3

This whole chapter is a warning to Christians that false teachers will try to pull them away from the truth of Christ given through his apostles.  They are false prophets because they have not actually heard from God, and they are false teachers because they do not actually teach you how to please God and serve Him.  They have heard from something else and teach you to serve them and yourself.

Peter warns that they “introduce destructive heresies.”  These are the opinions of teachers that fly in the face of the Truth revealed in the Bible.  The word “heresy” also has a sense of people being captured to their false position.  Peter emphasizes that the power of their deceptions will even lead to Christians “denying the Master who bought them…”

How could a Christian deny the Lord Jesus who purchased them by his blood?  This is typically done by denying a part of the teaching about Jesus.  In short, they redefine who Jesus is and what he has accomplished.

Very early on, you had some people who denied that Jesus was really human.  They had no problem believing that he was God among men, but they could not fathom him taking on a human, flesh nature.  To them Spirit was good and mortal flesh was bad.  They refused to accept that a good Spirit took on bad flesh.  Jesus only seemed to be human, only appeared to die on the cross, but this didn’t actually happen, according to them.

The opposite heresy was promoted as well.  Jesus was human: a great prophet, teacher, and example for us.  However, he was not God.  Sometimes these heresies only demoted Jesus to a lesser heavenly being, but generally he was treated as only a wise man.

A common heresy today is to teach that Jesus didn’t actually pay a price for our sins.  They teach that Jesus only came to give an example of how to love.  Our salvation is accomplished by us as we follow him.

In all of these, a critical part of the New Testament is rejected and a different picture of Jesus and his work appears.  In the letter to the Galatians, Paul called this a different Jesus and a different gospel.  These are people who did not get rid of the idea of Jesus and the Gospel.  Instead, they hollow out the meaning of these words and fill it with what they think.  I know that they have not been authorized to do that by the “Master (Jesus) who bought them.”  Thus, they are bringing destruction on themselves, all while claiming to believe in Jesus.

Verse 2 tells us that their way of life is sensual (flesh-based).  Many believers throughout history have been attracted by such teachings.  How many people do a good job of restraining their flesh, and yet, a part of them resents not being able to cast off restraint.  When a false teacher comes along with a deceptive rationalization for why they can do it, their flesh can jump at the opportunity.  We are not saved by our perfect performance, but true faith in Christ will go to battle against the lusts of the flesh.    In fact, Scripture tells us that our fleshly lusts war against our souls.  When you show up in that battle (no matter how well you do), you are helping to guard your heart against deceivers who come along promising freedom.

Peter says that they cause the way of Truth to be maligned (vs 2).  They help to keep the lost deceived to the truth of the Gospel of Christ.  No matter what your history has been, or what others have done throughout history in the name of Christ, you are called to believe on Jesus and not on them.  The job of true Christians is to live our life in such a way that the lost will be able to see Jesus over the top of the pretenders.

Verse 3 states that they will exploit Christians (who are not paying attention to the fact that their words are false).  God help us to be Christians who are standing against the attack of our own flesh through lust and who are paying attention to the deceivers that come along shilling a false gospel.

Of course, the rest of the chapter continues warning against false teachers, but let’s move to another passage.

James 5:7-8

The Apostle James also dealt with people who promoted the idea of faith without works.  Essentially, James warns that this is not a true faith.  A true, living faith will find its way to the surface of our life.  It always does something, never nothing.  A person who claims such does not understand the Gospel is not being led by the Holy Spirit.

In verses 1 to 6 of chapter 5, James warned the rich of this world who have heaped up treasures in this world in the last days.  This is pictured as something that has happened, and so, this is one of those verses that speaks of the Church Age as the last days.  The rich have also oppressed their workers while living in pleasure and luxury.  He closes the description with the challenge that the rich have condemned and even murdered the righteous while going after luxury.

Verses 7 to 8 then turn to Christians.  Christians need to be patient in a world where the wicked pursue luxury at the expense of the righteous.  The word for patient here is not the “hang-in-there” word.  It is the idea of having a long fuse.  In other words, be patient in the sense that you don’t blow your cool, explode in anger. 

What does this have to do with deception?  There are many ways to be deceived.  Anger is a powerful motivator.  The Christian can blow their top towards the rich and be deceived in thinking that getting justice against the rich is the main thing in life.  However, we can also be tempted to be angry with God.  We can be tempted to quit “farming for God” and start farming for ourselves.

James reminds them, us, that the Lord’s judgment will come.  No one is getting away with anything.  We must strengthen our hearts because the coming of the Lord is near.  Jesus will be the judge of both us and them.  It would be tragic to lose my soul because of the deceitfulness of riches or any other sin.  We have a whole generation that is raging on either side of this issue.  Do you trust that Christ is coming to set these things right?  Can you trust him and live out the truth in this age until he comes?  That is the question.

Jude 1:4

Lastly in this section, we have the Apostle Jude whose warnings follow closely to Peter’s warnings in his letters.

Jude was going to write about the salvation that Christians shared.  However, he found it necessary to challenge them in this area of deception.  Verse 4 makes it very clear that already in that first generation, “certain persons have crept in unnoticed…”  These men were in the process of turning “the grace of our God into licentiousness…”  The verb for this is present tense.

Licentiousness pictures someone who is unrestrained by the truth of God.  It is unbridled lust.  The point is not that they have desire, but that these desires are out of control and out of God’s proper boundaries.  The NIV translates it as a license for immorality.  Jesus, of course, did not teach this and did not die on a cross so that we could continue in slavery to sin.  Such people deny the teaching and purpose of Christ in favor of a twisted teaching that promotes a purpose of their own making.

Jude says that they also deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.  This is not only in theory or interpretation of Scripture, but also a denial of the Holy Spirit sent by the Lord to teach us how to follow him.

Jude writes his letter to warn believers not to go along with those people (or any such in the future).  Instead, he says, “Build yourselves up in your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.”  Christians must keep focused on Jesus and his way instead of being drawn away by the deceivers who are deceived themselves.

This has continued down through the centuries into the modern era.  Yet Scripture also speaks of an intensified deception that occurs in the Last Days leading up to the Great Tribulation.  We already see deception ramping up to greater and greater levels of attack and sophistication. 

A warning for the end of the age

I believe that Christians will be raptured before the great deception of the Great Tribulation.  However, this does not mean we can ignore the truth about how great the deception is that lies ahead of us.  First of all, that deception does not drop out of nowhere.  The groundwork is even now being laid for these things.  People are even now being deceived and drawn away from the truth of Jesus.

On top of this, there will be people who are not ready at the rapture that come to faith in Jesus during the Tribulation.  Yes, a great deception will sweep over the lost of this world and most will be taken up in it.  Yet the warnings we give today will live on in the minds of people and the media we leave behind.  No matter what, the biblical warning is that an Antichrist figure will arise and make the world take a mark in order to buy and sell.  Anyone who yields to this deception will forfeit salvation.  Our warnings today leave signposts and footprints for those who realize too late that the warnings of God’s judgment at the end of the age are very real.

We are going to look at four passages that speak to this end time deception, saving 2 Thessalonians 2 for next week.

By the way, let me just add this.  It is not our belief about how and when the rapture will occur that saves us.  Neither does our particular belief disqualify us.  Regardless of your belief about the rapture, hear the warnings of the apostles on top of the warnings of our Lord from last week.

2 Peter 3:3-4

Just as Peter warned against deception in general in chapter 2, he also warned against deception at the end of the age.  He speaks of mockers in the Last Days.  There have always been mockers and scoffers, but it is even now growing stronger and stronger. 

Peter warns that it will be common to mock the second coming of Jesus.  “Things have continued as they always have from the beginning!  Where is this coming of Jesus!”  Of course, this is said in ridicule.  It is easy to think of this as only being unbelievers.  However, this has also started to enter into the Church.  There are teachers in the Church who do not believe in a literal return of Jesus to this earth.  If you think I am being too judgmental to say that they are mockers, you should listen to some of their diatribes against those who expect and look forward to a literal return of Jesus Christ.  Yes, not every single individual who believes this is a mocker.  But this is a very real dynamic happening today.

Mocking is a subtle form of deception.  It creates a tension and environment that is uncomfortable for you.  You are tempted to feel smaller and smaller, and more and more isolated.  As the ridicule mounts, you can be tempted to drop the Truth you are holding or at least moderate it to a less “ridiculous” (as defined by the mockers) form.  The temptation is to relieve the tension through compromise.

In truth, the apostles all hold forth the return of Jesus as the blessed hope of every generation of Christians.  Just because Christians in prior generations lived and died without Jesus coming, it doesn’t mean that their hope was in vain.  First of all, that hope strengthened them through many difficulties in their life.  They kept the faith knowing that Jesus would come back to set all things right.  Second of all, all such people who kept the faith in prior generations will participate in the resurrection together with those of us who are still alive.  The Blessed Hope did not fail them because they are even now at the right hand of the Lord anticipating the Father’s command, “Go!”  What a glorious day that will be!

1 Timothy 4:1-3

Let’s look at several passages from the Apostle Paul.  He tells us that the Holy Spirit explicitly says that in the latter times “some” will fall away from the faith.  This pronoun in English comes across as meaning a small number.  However, in the Greek, it does not have this idea.  It is simply an indefinite pronoun referring to an indefinite number of Christians defecting from the faith.  We call this apostacy.  They are apostatizing from the faith.

Paul states that they will do this because they will pay attention to “deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons.”  How do we connect with deceitful spirits and the teachings of demons?  The answer is in verse 2. It is through hypocritical and lying humans whose conscience has been seared.  They may have at one time, but they no longer have any qualms about teaching things that are contradictory to the words of Christ and his apostles.

Let’s dispense of one idea.  Demons, fallen angels, and the devil are not teaching anything good through these unwitting humans.  These beings have no love for humanity.  Satan was a murderer from the very beginning as he tempted Adam and Eve into rejecting God’s instruction.  He was a liar from the beginning when he questioned God’s veracity and intentions.  When he says, “Did God really say that?”, how ought we to respond?  We should respond with the Words of God and stick with it.  To stay close to God’s Word is to stay close to safety.  The last days will be full of people who have been enticed to embrace teachings that have their source in a spirit being that hates us, a demonic source.

Verse 3 mentions that men will forbid marriage and advocate abstaining from certain foods.  It may seem strange to think that large groups of people could be deceived into embracing a theology, a teaching, that forbids marriage.  It seems like society has been fighting over the ability of homosexuals to marry.  But the ultimate trend is not towards more and more people marrying.  Homosexuals marrying only dilutes and diminishes the institution that God created to be between a man and a woman.

Many today are blaming hard break ups on the old notion of marriage for life.  Like somehow making commitments to one another is the problem.  No, the problem is that we lack the intestinal fortitude to back up our commitments. 

Marriage is also slandered as a patriarchal construct to bind women under tyranny.  Some people may be using it this way, but they will have to answer to God for it.  Men did not make marriage.  God did.  When we abuse what God has given us for His very good reasons, we sin against Him and against one another.  We do great damage even to ourselves.  Open relationships (uncommitted to one another beyond the present) will not solve the woes of humanity.  It will only plunge us into even greater pain and suffering.

The same thing is happening with parenting.  The trend will be away from people raising kids.  The emphasis will be on the importance of kids being raised “by professionals.”  It is true that parents are not “professionals” at raising kids.  The lie is that this will make things better as we reject God’s better way.  In fact, getting pregnant will be seen as a tragedy for women.  The government can artificially produce the necessary number of citizens each year.  Women can have their DNA modified to make them sterile so they will never have to face the “horrors” of pregnancy.  The message will be, “Quit getting married; quit making babies, and just have fun with sex!”

However, these are solutions that refuse to understand how God has created us.  Marriage and family are powerful parts of how God has wired humanity.  We reject this at our own peril.  It is kicking at God for how He has created us.  It is foolish to think that we can fix His creation with our “better” vision for humanity when the true source of this is demonic.

The area of food is not made explicit, perhaps because there may be several different approaches to this.  It may have the angle of the Old Testament dietary laws.  We see that cropping up throughout the centuries.  Certain teachers and certain groups have taught that Christians should be following these restrictions, which is contrary to the teaching of the apostles.  There is nothing wrong with a person following these restrictions, but it should have nothing to do with a kind of legalism that affects our relationship with God. 

It could also connect with the modern movement towards veganism.  Various groups, religious and secular, have promoted this way of living as a higher and enlightened form of living.

Paul emphasizes that everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with gratitude (to the person offering it and to God who created it).  Christians should not be judging one another on the food that they do or do not eat.  It should remain at the level of person taste, and that is all.

2 Timothy 3:1-5

Paul tells us that difficult times will (future tense) come in the last days.  The word for “difficult” refers to strong resistance against making the proper movement.  Christians who want to follow Jesus will find more and more resistance from society, peers, families, even from within the Church.

He then describes why this will be so.  The hardness of these times will be driven by the fact that people are essentially lovers of themselves.  The list he gives begins with “lovers of self” and ends with “rather than lovers of God…”  This creates a kind of parenthesis.  Because they love themselves rather than God, their character exudes along list of vices: love of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, and lovers of pleasure.

This has always been a list of things the world does.  However, this is clearly about the way that many will turn from loving God in the last days, the apostacy.  Verse 5 further describes this as holding to a form of godliness but denying its power.  The deception is to hang on to some outward shell of godliness, or Christlikeness, while refusing to let the power of the Spirit of God to work in your life.  It is to hollow out what it means to follow Christ and fill it with self-serving substitutes.

The power of following Christ is that the Holy Spirit dwells within us.  He helps us to resist and even conquer the war of our own lust against our soul.  The power of godliness is the power of fruitfulness that comes from obeying Christ and his apostles.  It is powerful because it is built upon and works in conformity with truth, reality, God’s creation.

True Christians are to avoid those who are lovers of self over the top of loving God.  You can warn them of the perils they are surrounded by, but do not embrace them.  They will become a stumbling block to you.

One form of this deception has been to emphasize that you can’t love others until you properly love yourself.  The truth is that this is not your problem.  You should first press into loving God.  He will teach you to love others, and in that experience, also heal the things that are wrong within your heart.  You will never heal yourself by turning towards yourself.  Jesus never taught this.

2 Timothy 4:1-2

There are some textual issues in verse 1, whether it should be “at his appearing and His kingdom” or “by his appearing and His kingdom…”  Regardless of this, Paul reminds Timothy who is a pastor that Jesus will come back and judge those who are alive and those who are dead.  Because of this, he is to preach the word and always be ready to correct people with great patience and instruction.  The point of this is that his job is to help Christians resist the things that are pulling them away from the truth.

Verse 3 states that “the time will come” (in the future latter days) when people not endure sound (healthy) doctrine.  Notice this too describes people being tempted to fall away from the truth, apostasy.

He pictures a time when people will no longer listen to truth, but instead, they will want to hear “myths.”  Myths are fictitious narratives.  It is interesting that political parties and the media love to talk about “narratives” and “controlling the narrative.”  Talk about myths!  Yet, when it comes to God, His narratives are truth!  The baby in a manger is not just a fictitious story to inspire us.  Jesus hanging on the cross is not myth to inspire us.  It is Truth intersecting a world enamored with lies and built upon them.

C.S. Lewis left the world of atheism and became a believer in Jesus when he saw that God’s stories were real.  In a sea of fictitious stories, God sent a real story to reach the hearts of the lost.

Paul says that they want their ears to be tickled.  So they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance with what they desire.  Think about how platforms like YouTube accelerate this process.  In the past, you would have had to drive to a location, or buy a cassette tape, CD, DVD, etc., in order to hear what you like to hear.  Now a computer algorithm will analyze what you like to click on and create an echo chamber of your own desires.

This only accelerates our turning from truth and embrace of fictitious narratives.  This is the basic war between lies and truth.  Lies cannot win because they deny reality.  They persist against that which cannot cease being true.  This is the tragedy of our modern era.  We will encourage a young kid to chop off their breasts and have a sex change surgery promising freedom.  In truth, they are being taught how to war against truth and reality.  Kill it and burn the bridge behind you.  Make your own path in defiance of all that is true. 

One man who was on the leading edge of transgender surgery back in the 1970s tells the story of how he was perverted at a young age by a grandmother who loved to see him wearing a purple dress when he visited.  This messed with his young psyche.  Long story short, as an adult he tried living as a cross-dresser and then made the plunge to surgery.  It never made him happy.  Later, as a 70-year-old he realized that all along this torturous path, there was a young boy inside of him wondering why he was never enough. 

God help us to stand with the truth of Christ given to us in the Scriptures without losing compassion and hope for a world tortured by lies and tortured by the deceptions that have led them down a long path of shame, guilt, and regret.

It is getting darker in this world, but we are still the light in this world for now!

The Apostles Warn audio