A Theological Prophecy: The Falling Away (Pt. 1)

SPEAKER 02 : 0:05

Many self-proclaimed Christians are leaving the faith in a movement they call deconstructing. Is it just a trend or is it the fulfillment of prophecy? Today on Turning Point, Dr. David Jeremiah looks at this current phenomenon and its possible connection to end times prophecy. From where do we go from here? David introduces today’s message, The Falling Away, a theological prophecy.

SPEAKER 01 : 0:31

What I’m going to tell you today on Turning Point will Well, it will surprise some of you. And some of you will say, I never heard that before, but this is what the Scripture says. The Bible says that before Jesus comes back, there will be a great apostasy, a great falling away. How does that work out? We’ll look at the Scripture in just a moment as we turn in our Bibles to 2 Thessalonians 2. I hope you’ll find your place there. If you have a study guide, get in the right chapter with us, and we’ll get started in just a moment as we talk about this provocative question. What’s going to happen to the church before Jesus comes back for His bride? Before we get into today’s lesson, let me once again take a moment and speak to our Canadian friends across the border and let you know we’re so happy to have you as a part of Turning Point’s family. We have a very special office in Canada where Canadian people help us do what we do there. And I think it’s important for you to know that when you support Turning Point, you support Turning Point Canada. Your money goes to the resources in Canada. It doesn’t cross the border to Turning Point in America. We are on many stations in Canada, have many initiatives in Canada, and your resources are needed to support all of those initiatives and initiatives We have a very special office, and we have accounts in Canada, so that your money stays there to help your Canadian brothers and sisters understand the Word of God and grow in their faith. We’re so happy to be able to cooperate with you in that way, and we know God is honoring that, and we sense that you approve of it as well. Well, let’s get started with our lesson today. This is The Falling Away of Theological Prophecy. Imagine writing your first book at the age of 22 and watching it land on a bestsellers list everywhere. A few years ago that happened to an American pastor. His book conveyed biblical advice about love and relationship and it encouraged thousands of young people to make better choices. This pastor became known for his speaking and writing and counseling as well as for nearly two decades of pastoral ministry in a local church. Yet somehow and somewhere during those years, his own relationship with God evaporated. In 2019, he announced his marriage had come to an end. Then in a follow-up post on Instagram, he disclosed an even deeper divorce. He wrote, quote, “‘I have undergone a massive shift in regard to my faith in Jesus.'” The popular phrase for this is deconstruction. The biblical phrase is falling away. By all the measurements that I have for defining a Christian, he wrote, I am not a Christian. Many people tell me that there’s a different way to practice faith, and I want to remain open to this, but I am not there now. Now, that probably touches you in some way, but it cuts me to the heart. because I am a pastor, and this is happening to more pastors than I’ve ever seen before. Many others seem to be falling away from Christ and his gospel. I saw a recent op-ed with this title, Everyone is Leaving Christianity and Nobody Knows Where They’re Going. This departure from biblical faith is happening so often that there’s a new word that’s been coined. These defectors are no longer evangelicals, they’re ex-evangelicals. Why is that and what is that all about? Well, the falling away is not a new phenomenon. Throughout history, there have been many who have taken up the banner of Christ only to lay it down again. Even the first generation of Christians faced challenges like this. Have you ever heard about a guy named Demas? When Paul wrote to the Colossians and to Philemon, he sent them greetings from his coworker, Demas, who was at his side. In 2 Timothy 4.10, he described him like this. Demas has forsaken me, having loved this present world. There’s another book in the Bible that’s devoted to this topic. It’s the little book Jude. I always love to tell people about Jude and tempt them to ask me what chapter. Because if you ask me what chapter, I know you have read the Bible. There’s only one chapter in the book of Jude. So when you say Jude, you just give verse numbers. You don’t give chapter numbers. This book was written by our Lord’s half-brother, the son of Joseph and Mary. And in only 25 verses, Jude reminds us that some of the angels themselves fell away from their allegiance to God. Did you hear that? I’m almost hesitant to say it, but it’s true. A third of the angels left their first estate and walked away from God who had created them as angels of light. I’m almost hesitant to read Christian news sites these days because it seems like every time I do, I read or hear of somebody else who’s walked away from their faith. Recent headlines are not encouraging and neither are the statistics. There are more than 72 million millennials in America, almost one quarter of our population. An increasingly large percentage of that generation has walked away from faith of any kind, choosing to identify themselves as religious nuns, N-O-N-E-S, when you check on the questionnaire, are you a Baptist, are you a Presbyterian, are you a Charismatic, are you a Catholic, and the bottom part says none of the above, that’s where they all check, none of the above. In 2008, researchers noted that close to a third of all millennials described themselves as religiously unaffiliated. And just 10 years later, that number had grown to 42%. And there are more troubling numbers. Church membership in America has suffered a decades-long decline. No matter what you hear from church growth experts about the explosion of the church, let me give you the truth. When Gallup first measured U.S. church membership in 1937, the number came in at 73%. In early 1980s, more than 70% of American adults were church members. In the year 2000, it was 65%. By 2010, it was 59%. And now less than half of Americans, 47%, belong to the local church. And there are corresponding declines in regular church attendance. That’s not a good sign. That’s not a good study. That’s not a good trend. But the core issue here isn’t even people falling away from the church or falling away from faith. We’re talking in this lesson about falling away from Jesus himself. These are people who have, and these words are stark, trampled the Son of God underfoot, treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified them and insulted the spirit of grace. Judas Iscariot is the poster child for all of this. He’s the best example in the Bible of someone falling away from Christ. Listen to this. He was one of the 12 of Jesus’ inner circle of disciples. He had the perfect light. He had the perfect example. He had the perfect evidence. And for some three years, he lived with truth incarnate and life incarnate, and he turned his back on the one who is truth and life. One of our Lord’s 12 disciples did that. So did a pastor here in California. After several instances of publicly criticizing the Bible’s view on sexuality, this man was asked to resign from his church. He also lost his teaching position at two Christian universities. As a result, he decided to live for a year without God. In his words, he planned to try on atheism as a New Year’s resolution. For the next 12 months, I will live as if there is no God, he wrote. I will not pray, read the Bible for inspiration, refer to God as the cause of things, or hope that God might intervene and change my own or someone else’s circumstances. At the end of his experiment, he officially rejected his lifelong belief, declaring on national public radio, I do not think that God exists. Again, this man didn’t just simply fall away from the church. He didn’t fall away from his faith. He chose to abandon his Savior, and he was left with nothing except atheism, which literally is faith in nothing. If Jude were alive today, he would take notice, and so should we. What does this mean? What does this mean to us? When I was getting started in ministry, however many years ago that I choose not to reveal, apostasy was a hot topic. And you know what they thought it was? There was the apostasy of long hair on men and short skirts on women. And there was the apostasy of dancing and going to movies. And there was the apostasy of having fellowship with other Christians who did not perfectly line up with all of your personal convictions. Sometime after going to seminary, I found out what apostasy really was. And I found it to be something way more deadly than anything I had mentioned above. In fact, true apostasy is far more deadly than all of them put together. To be clear, apostasy is not the same thing as atheism. By apostasy, which is the New Testament word for falling away, I’m not referring to people in general who reject Christianity or deny the truth of the gospel. That’s not what this is all about. Apostasy doesn’t reflect the rise of atheism in and of itself, nor does it apply to everyone who chooses religious systems other than Christianity. Instead, the concept of falling away has a narrower focus. It applies specifically to apparent Christians, to those who claim to follow Jesus, but then turn their backs on him. Here is the best definition I have found for this term. This comes from the writing of John Walvoord, the former president of Dallas Seminary. He said, the Greek word for apostasy is found only twice in the New Testament. Acts 21, 21, and 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 and verse 3. And the word means a falling away from, a deserting or a turning from a position formerly held. Spiritual apostasy occurs when a person who once claimed to be a believer departs from what he formerly professed to believe. An apostate is not one who was saved and lost his salvation. An apostate though having claimed to be a believer, never was saved in the first place.” Every apostate is an unbeliever, but not every unbeliever is an apostate. Here’s what I mean. There are many people who have never heard about the gospel. They wouldn’t know the gospel from anything. So they can’t be apostate. They can’t walk away from something they never heard of before. They are unbelievers because they have not heard, but an apostate is well acquainted with the gospel. He knows more than enough to be saved, but he walks away from it anyway. In The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway said, there are two ways to go bankrupt, gradually and then suddenly. And it’s the same with spiritual bankruptcy. We drift away gradually, and then suddenly we’re out in the cold. Why am I talking about this theme of falling away? Why should I even bring it up? It seems sort of extraneous to some of you wondering where is he going with this? Because the proliferation of apostasy is an important but overlooked often piece to the end times puzzle. As we know from scripture, One of the signs of the end times is a rising number of self-proclaimed Christians who ultimately reject Christ. Let me show you where that is in the Bible. 2 Thessalonians chapter 2, verses 1 through 3. Here’s what the Word of God says. Now, brethren, concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to him, we ask you not to be soon shaken in mind or troubled, either by spirit or by word or by letter, as from us, as though the day of Christ had come. Now, listen carefully. Let no one deceive you by any means, for that day will not come unless the falling away comes first.” and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition. This is indeed a prophecy about tomorrow that has implications for us today. This falling away that Paul is writing about is not just some gradual defection from the church. Paul calls this the falling away, like it’s a specific thing at a specific time at a specific moment. Paul calls this departure from the faith, and it will happen according to the Scripture during what we call the tribulation period. Now, most of you know enough about prophecy to know there’s some general things you should be aware of. First of all, the next thing that’s going to happen in the future is the rapture of the church. The Bible says that the Lord is going to descend and take to heaven those who have put their trust in him. And that can happen anytime. There’s no signs for that. It could happen before we say amen at the end of this service. We could go to heaven before we go home and that would be all right because we’d really be home then. Amen. So you don’t have to worry about that. You say, well, what has got to happen before Jesus comes to get us? Not one thing. He can come any time. After the rapture, when the saints are all gone, on this earth, the Bible teaches there’s going to be a period of seven years of tribulation. This will be literally hell on earth. And it’s divided into two sections, three and a half years, the first part of the tribulation, and the last part, the last three and a half years, is called the great tribulation. Now, when Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, he said, in the tribulation period, there’s going to be a great falling away, a great defection from the faith. Now, let’s just suppose that this is not something that happens until the middle of the tribulation. I don’t believe that’s true, but let’s just give ourselves a little wiggle room here. Let’s say that this falling away doesn’t happen until halfway through the tribulation period. That would be three and a half years. And let’s remember that the tribulation commences immediately after the rapture of the church. And let’s not forget that the rapture could happen at any moment and that the tribulation is a period of seven years so that the middle of the tribulation is just three and a half years. If all those things are true and they are, the falling away could happen within our lifetime. If Jesus came back today, it would happen within three and a half years. So this isn’t just something way out in the future that we don’t have to be concerned about. It could happen and it could start happening before we go to heaven. It won’t fully completely happen until we’re in heaven, but it could start happening before then. The Christians in Thessalonica were facing this kind of persecution. So they believed the last days were upon them and they were troubled. And we should be troubled when we go through trouble, right? That’s part of it. But Paul wrote this letter to them to say, look, don’t be soon troubled because the falling away hasn’t happened yet. So you’re not in the tribulation. If you’re in the tribulation, the falling away would have happened, but it hasn’t happened. It hasn’t happened for us yet either. You know, I sometimes hear people talk about how before Jesus comes back, we’re going to have this great worldwide revival. Have you ever heard anybody say that? Before Jesus comes back, we’re going to have this great worldwide revival. Well, I hope we do, but there’s not anything in the Bible about that. Somebody got their wires mixed when they started teaching that because that’s not true. You know what is in the Bible? In the Bible, it says there’s going to be a great defection from the faith before Jesus comes back. And there is gonna be a revival in the tribulation period. You know why? 144,000 Jewish witnesses are gonna be let loose on the earth. If you can’t get a revival with that, there’s no hope. And two witnesses, two special witnesses are gonna do miraculous things. And the Bible says that thousands will come to Christ during the tribulation period, but not before we go to heaven. Could there be a great awakening? I believe there could be, and I pray that there would be every day, because that would just give us a few more years to preach the gospel. Sometimes I think we might be on the edge of it, and then sometimes I think it’s so far away you’ll never see it. But what I want you to know is this. While the Scripture does not prophesy a great revival, that doesn’t mean there couldn’t be one, but what you need to know what the Scripture does prophesy is there will be a defection at the end of the age. So here is this prophecy in Thessalonians. And John put it this way. This is really a very specific verse. 1 John 2, 18 and 19. He said, “‘It is the last hour, “‘and as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, “‘even now many Antichrists have come, “‘by which we know that it is the last hour. “‘They went out from us.'” they were not of us for if they had been of us they would have continued with us john said there are many people were in the church and they went out and they became part of the false gospel he said they went out because they were never a part of us they went out from us but they were never of us how many of you know that in our churches today there are many people who are with us but they’re not of us. They come to church, they hang around the edges, they love the excitement of the church, they love the joy of the church, they love the comfort of the church, but if they’ve never accepted Jesus Christ, they’re not of the church. And it’s possible just to be around the edges. And then the problem is when trouble really comes and stress comes, a lot of things are revealed that you would never imagine. In his Olivet Discourse, Jesus said this, and because of lawlessness, the love of many will grow old. How can this happen? How could anyone who has tasted the goodness of Christ in the church and the love of God, how could they ever fall away? Well, I’m going to give you three things that could happen, and I think they all are in play. Why do some people get discouraged and walk away from their faith? First of all, some people fall away because they’re deceived. There are many deceivers out there today. Can I get a witness? But the most dangerous ones aren’t the cheats who take our money, as bad as that is. There’s a scam every day somewhere. But that’s not the worst. It’s the ones who operate in the spiritual realm. According to the Bible, spiritual deception will cause many to fall away from Christ in the days leading up to the end times. 1 Timothy 4, 1 and 2 says it this way. Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times, some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron. According to this passage of Scripture, there are unseen demonic forces that are operating in our world, enticing and deceiving people into abandoning their faith in Christ. Their influence, even in the church, will only increase as we draw near to the end of history. It’s overwhelming to see the deception that’s going on within the church. You can watch it. You can see it. Maybe it’s touched you or your family. You’ve been victimized by it. The passage in 1 Timothy warns of false teachers who traffic in lies and hypocrisy. These men and women attempt to cause spiritual damage and to manipulate God’s people for their own purposes. They’re cold, they’re callous, and they’re calculating. And Paul says they don’t even have a conscience anymore. It’s been seared. They have lost moral sensitivity and their spiritual compasses are broken. That’s the reason why some people fall away. They get caught up in a spiritual scam. Can they get a witness? We know people like that. Sometimes we end up having to pick the pieces up from people who’ve been hurt like that. Some people fall away because they’re disillusioned. Here’s a little parable that you all know, and I’m going to extract some things from this parable and make some assumptions along the way, but I believe they’re accurate. In Luke 8, Jesus told a parable illustrating the reasons why people fall away from the gospel. You know the parable. He said there was this farmer who went out to sow seed, and he broadcast it over a wide area, and some of the seed fell on pathway or on road where it was trampled down. Other seed fell on a rocky soil, and as soon as the plants sprang up, they withered away, having no root. And some seed fell in a thorny patch and were choked by briars. And some of the seed fell on prepared soil, yielding a great harvest.” When the Lord’s disciple asked him to explain the parable, he revealed that the seed represented the gospel message. Here is Jesus’ explanation of what that story means. He said, “‘Those by the wayside are the ones who hear. And the devil comes and takes away the word out of their heart, lest they should believe and be saved. But the ones on the rock are those who, when they hear, receive the word with joy and have no root, who believe for a while in time of temptation, fall away. They want their problems to go away, and they don’t want to surrender anything to get that. They want the blessings of belief without the burden of swimming against the cultural stream. And they like the idea of the gospel, but they lack a personal commitment to Christ. Sooner or later, when they begin to be disillusioned, disenchanted, and disappointed, they just fall away. You know, I remember reading some time ago, several years ago, in fact, that a democracy can only last as long as 200 years because by then the people will have figured out how to devote the money to themselves. And there’s a sense in which that’s also true for the church. If we’re not careful and we don’t keep our eyes on the goal of reaching others to Christ and building up the body of the Lord through evangelism and outreach, and we focus on ourselves, before long we become self-centered and unable to accomplish anything God wants us to do. The outward look is the upward look. And God has called us all to be concerned about those who do not know Him yet through His Son, Jesus Christ. That’s what Turning Point is all about. I hope you’re about that too. Together, let’s make a difference. Let’s populate heaven with many, many people. And we’ll come back and work on that again next time right here on Turning Point.

SPEAKER 02 : 24:56

Today’s message from Dr. Jeremiah came to you from the Appel Room at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City. Turning Point is also on radio and TV this weekend. To learn where to find it, visit our website, davidjeremiah.org slash radio. That’s davidjeremiah.org slash radio or call 800-947-1993. Ask for your copy of David’s powerful new book, Understanding Biblical Prophecy, a 30-day Bible study. It’s yours for a gift of any amount. You can also purchase the Jeremiah Study Bible in the English Standard, New International, and New King James versions, available in a variety of handsome cover options. If this ministry is drawing you closer to God, let us know by writing to Turning Point, P.O. Box 3838, San Diego, California, 92163. This is David Michael Jeremiah. Join us Monday as we continue, Where Do We Go From Here? on Turning Point with Dr. David Jeremiah.