There are about four different ways that people approach Bible prophecy. Some don’t want to hear about it because it scares them. They’ve heard stories, seen books and movies, and the whole subject makes them uncomfortable. Others don’t approach it because they don’t understand it—the material seems overwhelming and complicated, so they just avoid it altogether. Then there are those who approach Bible prophecy from a sensational point of view, always looking for someone to tell them the future like a fortune teller. Those people who put dates on Jesus’ return get a lot of publicity, but it’s always fake. And finally, there are people who study prophecy because the Bible itself contains between 27 to 32 percent prophetic content. That’s a significant portion of Scripture, and we don’t talk about it nearly enough.
People throughout history have talked about Bible prophecy and have brought up the last days. Some will scoff at that, saying people have been claiming we’re in the last days for 2,000 years. And they’re right—people have been saying Jesus is coming back for two millennia. But something significant happened that changed everything. In May of 1948, Israel was declared a nation. That’s a big deal, because before that point, key Bible prophecy couldn’t be fulfilled without Israel being in place. Isaiah 66:8 asks, “Who has heard of such a thing? Who has seen such a thing? Can a land be born in one day or a nation be delivered in an instant? Yet as soon as Zion was in labor, she gave birth to her sons.” Can a nation be born in one day? Yes, it can—when the whole world declares that Israel is now a nation.
Since 1948, things have kept moving and accelerating. If you know anybody who has looked into Bible prophecy, they’re willing to acknowledge that things are getting a little crazy now. Part of the problem for many is that they don’t know what Bible prophecy says. They don’t know what to expect or what it’s supposed to look like, so when they see it, they can’t identify it. But as believers, we are supposed to be able to identify the signs. Jesus told us we need to recognize what’s happening out there.
Understanding the Signs in Matthew 24
One of the major chapters of prophecy is Matthew chapter 24. When Jesus’ disciples came up and called His attention to the temple buildings, He replied, “Don’t you see all these things? I assure you, not one stone will be left here on another that will not be thrown down.” While He was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples approached Him privately and asked three questions: When will these things happen? What is the sign of your coming? And what is the sign of the end of the age?
Jesus replied to them with an urgent warning: “Watch out that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am the Messiah,’ and they will deceive many.” He continued, telling them about wars and rumors of wars, about nations rising against nations, about famines and earthquakes in various places—and that all these events are just the beginning of birth pains.
Do you feel like you hear about those things more frequently now? Some people say it’s because communication is faster today. That might be part of it, but things are also ramping up on a greater and grander scale. Jesus said these things are just the beginning of birth pains.
He continued in verse 9: “Then they will hand you over for persecution and they will kill you. You will be hated by all nations because of my name. Then many will take offense, betray one another, and hate one another. Many false prophets will rise up and deceive many. Because lawlessness will multiply, the love of many will grow cold.” When we look at that word lawlessness, it means not being obedient to the Word of God. Do we feel like we live in a time where people’s love has grown cold? It seems like everybody’s angry with each other.
Later in the chapter, Jesus warns again: “If anyone tells you, ‘Look, here is the Messiah!’ or ‘Over here!’ do not believe it. False messiahs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders to lead astray, if possible, even the elect.” Four times in this one chapter, Jesus talks about deception. It’s going to be a characteristic of the last days.
How Easy It Is to Be Deceived Today
We all know there are deceptive things out there. We hear about the government, about this and that, and it’s one of those things. People will say, “I read this thing on the internet.” Just recently, I was scrolling Facebook and saw a post claiming CJ Stroud’s mom had died, showing her in a wheelchair. But I knew it wasn’t true because I had just watched the pregame show where they showed Stroud’s mom standing up with him, praying together before the game. She wasn’t in a wheelchair—she was standing. It was just a fake thing. There’s so much fake out there.
We’re living in a day and age where it is incredibly easy to deceive. With modern technology and AI, I was able to take a picture of myself, put it into an AI program, and create a video of me walking through a neighborhood with the sound of crickets and my footsteps. It turned my face, made me appear to be walking—it was absolutely nuts. If I can do that easily, imagine someone who is really putting forth effort into deception.
Technology and AI aren’t inherently bad, but deception can ramp up much faster now. It’s a lot easier to deceive out there. There’s propaganda, fake pictures, doctored videos—and sometimes the AI is so bad you can spot it with six-fingered people or heads turned backwards. But they throw this stuff out there anyway, and deception runs wild.
The Pattern of Deception in Jeremiah 28
When we look at Bible prophecy, one important thing to understand is that Jewish prophecy works in patterns, not just linear timelines. It resembles other times in history—not exactly alike, but with similarities. Think of it like a spiral going upward with resemblances across the way.
One pattern worth examining is Jeremiah chapter 28. If we’re talking about the last days here on earth, let’s look at the last days of the people in Jerusalem before they were sent into exile and captured by Babylon. In Jeremiah 28, a prophet named Hananiah proclaimed in the temple, in the presence of the priests and all the people: “This is what the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel says: I have broken the yoke of the King of Babylon. Within two years, I will restore to this place all the articles of the Lord’s temple that King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon took from here and transported to Babylon.”
If you were being oppressed by Babylon, that’s exactly what you’d want to hear. People would listen to that and think, “Yes! We want to be free of Babylon!” Hananiah was very firm and bold in his proclamation—two years and everything would be back to normal.
Jeremiah responded carefully: “Amen. May the Lord do so. May the Lord make the words you have prophesied come true.” But then he added this: “The prophets who preceded you and me from ancient times prophesied war, disaster, and plague against many lands and great kingdoms. As for the prophet who prophesies peace, only when the word of the prophet comes true will the prophet be recognized as one the Lord has truly sent.” He was saying that only time would tell if this prophecy of peace was genuine.
Hananiah then took the yoke bar from Jeremiah’s neck and broke it, proclaiming boldly that within two years, God would break Babylon’s yoke from all the nations. But then the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah: “Go say to Hananiah, this is what the Lord says: you broke a wooden yoke bar, but in its place, you will make an iron yoke bar.” God told Jeremiah to confront Hananiah directly: “Listen Hananiah, the Lord did not send you, but you have led these people to trust a lie. Therefore, this is what the Lord says: I am about to send you off the face of the earth. You will die this year because you have preached rebellion against the Lord.” In the seventh month of that same year, the prophet Hananiah died.
We know what happened from Scripture. The king of Babylon came, destroyed the temple completely, stripped the gold, silver, and bronze, and took it back to Babylon. They killed many people, and those who remained were the weak ones left to tend the land. These people were deceived because they listened to the wrong person.
The Deception Targets Believers
Here’s something crucial to understand: we’re not talking about the deception of those who don’t follow God. Those people are already living without understanding of spiritual things. The people being deceived in Jeremiah 28 and in Matthew 24 are those who believe—people looking for Jesus, people in the faith. Jesus says if they claim He’s in the wilderness, don’t go. If they say He’s over here, don’t go. Don’t be deceived, because there’s going to be a lot of deception out there.
There are churches today preaching things they shouldn’t be preaching, things that are not biblical and don’t follow the things of God. There are preachers talking about living in ways that the Bible clearly calls sinful, but they say it’s okay because we’re living in different times now. No—the things of God do not change. People with some understanding of spiritual things get deceived into something else, and you don’t have to be overly deceived. You just need to be a little bit deceived. “Does the Bible really say that? No, that’s old school thinking. That was for the Old Testament.”
It’s the same exact tactic Satan used with Adam and Eve in the garden. He planted another idea: “Do you really need to obey God that way? You’re not going to die. He just knows that if you eat the fruit, you’ll become like Him.” That deception from the very beginning of time is the same deception we see today. Deception becomes better and stronger, and it pulls the people of God away from truly living for Him. We’re not supposed to embrace the culture—we’re supposed to embrace the things of God, so that people in the culture see the difference in how we live.
The Protection Against Last Days Deception
So how do the people of God not get deceived in the last days? How do we become people who can see the signs like Jesus told us to? 2 Timothy chapter 3 is also talking about the end times, and it tells us plainly: “But know this: difficult times will come in the last days.” Do you feel like there’s been difficult times? Things aren’t as easy as they used to be, and sometimes you look around wondering why everything is so difficult.
Paul continues: “For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, without love for what is good, traitors, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to the form of godliness but denying its power.” Does that fit the bill for the age we’re living in?
That phrase “holding to the form of godliness but denying its power” is interesting. People of this world who don’t believe in God aren’t trying to have some form of godliness—they don’t care. But there are plenty of people sitting in churches today, even pastors leading big churches, who have a form of godliness that looks good on the outside but denies the true power of God to transform them on the inside. Paul told Timothy to avoid these people.
Then comes the protection. Verse 13 says: “Evil people and imposters will become worse, deceiving and being deceived.” There’s that deception again. “But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed. You know those who taught you, and you know that from childhood you have known the sacred Scriptures, which are able to give you wisdom for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”
How do we protect ourselves from deception in the last days? It’s the same thing Paul told Timothy: be in the Word. The Word of God is what gives us the wisdom we need. It’s the inspiration God has given us for teaching, for rebuking, for training. Without the Word of God, we can’t identify the deception that’s out there. We have so many Bible helps and ways to learn and understand Scripture today, yet we’re often so inept at understanding what the Bible means. The way you protect yourself against deception is to be in the Word of God.
The book of Hebrews says this: “The word of God is living and effective and sharper than any double-edged sword, penetrating as far as the separation of soul and spirit, joints and marrow. It is able to judge the ideas and the thoughts of the heart.” If you’ve ever looked at a bone cut in half, you can see the bone material and the marrow, and where they meet, they’re right up against each other. The author of Hebrews is saying the Word of God is so powerful it can surgically separate the bone and the marrow. The Bible is very powerful—it can do so many different things and it helps us. Not being in the Word of God on a regular basis gets you to the point where you can fall into deception. As Bible-believing people, we need to make sure that doesn’t happen to us or to our loved ones who are believers.
A Challenge for the Days Ahead
What influences you today? What shapes your thinking and the way you process things? Is it TV, movies, books, magazines, the internet, sports, making money, fame, or fun? What truly influences you? What influences the people around you? When you’re in the break room hearing what truly matters to your coworkers, what do you notice? And then you can turn that question on yourself—what truly influences you? What are you giving your time to?
This is our challenge, not only this week but for the rest of our time living here on earth: read the Word of God and understand it. The more you do, the closer you get to God, the closer you get to Jesus, and the less likely you are to be deceived—especially as we’re living in this time at the end of the age. The biggest payoff is that it helps you know God and deepens your relationship with Jesus Christ.
Peace,
Todd