HARBINGER’S DAILY
By Dean Dwyer
May 18, 2024
CCPO Note: Increasing apostasy within the church in our own time is yet another indicator that we are rapidly approaching a time referred to as the seven-year Tribulation Period.
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Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many (Matthew 24:11 NKJV).
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For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables (2 Timothy 4:3-4 NKJV).
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It is a common misconception that Satan hates religion. If that were the case, he wouldn’t have been the driving force behind over 4,000 false religions. Yes, Satan loves religion, particularly when he can use it to counterfeit the truth of God’s Word and manufacture empty ritualistic faiths that are devoid of the soul-saving gospel.
In his book “Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth”, C I Scofield warned that the church turned away from its appointed pathway of separation, holiness, heavenliness and testimony and instead appointed itself to the work of civilizing the world, building magnificent temples and acquiring earthly power and wealth. This was not the commission of the church. But as Oswald Chambers once aptly pointed out, “Satan’s great aim is to cause us to be devoted to the death to any cause, any enterprise, to anything but the Lord Jesus.”
You see, many churches congratulate themselves on not being persecuted by the enemy. Perhaps that is because they are no threat to him. After all, if you are not in collision with the devil, you may well be in collusion with him. Satan figured out long ago that he could never destroy the church. He does more harm by imitation than outright opposition and he achieves much in this world by peddling false doctrine under the banner of counterfeit Christianity. As Vance Havner used to say, “The devil is not fighting religion; he is too smart for that. He is producing a counterfeit Christianity so much like the real one that good Christians are afraid to speak out against it.” Part of that strategy involves planting counterfeit preachers in the pulpits. Adrian Rogers once said, “When you look for the devil, never fail to look in the pulpit.” That is a sobering thought. All of us would love to think that every church was led by a godly man who has been called by God into that position and has consecrated himself to the Lord’s service. However, I think it is apparent to all of us that there are many counterfeits who parade as godly men.
In Satan’s counterfeit Christianity, …