Avoid Deceit

When the disciples asked Jesus how to successfully navigate His Second Coming, the first thing He did was warn them about deceit in Matthew 24:4-8. Jesus knew that false prophets and teachers from every generation would randomly link common natural and man-made disasters to arbitrary Bible verses and call them signs. Jesus also knew that large numbers of unsuspecting Christians would buy into their rhetoric and be deceived. So, by addressing this problem head on, Jesus established deceit as a primary reason Christians won’t be ready when He comes again. 

A modern example of this form of deceit is when people claim Revelation 8:7 is a sign of an impending nuclear holocaust. To do so they replace the words “hail and fire mixed with blood was hurled down on the earth” with the words “nuclear holocaust” and call it a sign. However, God doesn’t need our nuclear weapons to unleash His wrath on earth. According to Genesis 19:24-25 God is more than capable of doing so on His own. Additionally, Revelation 22:18-19 warns us not to take the words "hail and fire mixed with blood was hurled down to the earth" away from the Revelation by adding the words “nuclear holocaust”. And shame on anyone who attempts to pass these and other prophetic blunders off as innocent mistakes. The reality is they harm the broader Christian community in these ways: 

1. The Church loses credibility in the eyes of the world

2. Christians become apathetic toward the Second Coming 

3. False end-time doctrines become the norm

Clearly, Jesus had good reason to warn His disciples in every generation about deceit. Therefore, the next time you hear someone claim that a current war, conflict, earthquake, famine, disease, volcano, drought, or other natural or human-made event is a sign of the end, ignore them! Jesus said: "Such things must happen, but the end is still to come"- Matthew 24:6

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