I just wanted to give a word here that the Lord's put on my heart to share, and that is about how Satan deceives the masses across the world.
A lot of Christians think that the battle is against atheism, or against evolution, or against witches and warlocks and things that look obvious. But in reality, if you look up what percent of people are actually atheist, it's only like one or 2% in America. It's virtually no one. But if you look up what percent of people are religious or spiritual or Christian, it's almost 100%.
People want to experience God. They want to experience something spiritual. And so if you were Satan, what would you do to distract people? What would you do to convince people of the wrong way but thinking that it's the right way? If you knew that only 1% of people are atheist, would you put all your eggs in the basket of atheism? No, you wouldn't, because 1% of people is not the majority of people. You're only going to be able to take a small portion of people to hell by atheism, so it's not worth convincing the 99% that atheism is the right way.
But the way to lead people to hell, that is the masses to hell, is convincing them that they're going the right way by following their tradition, by following their religion. So you tell Catholics that they're doing the right thing by going to mass. You convince Christians that they're doing the right thing by going to church. You convince evangelicals to go out and street preach. You tell Jews to believe in Jehovah and read the Torah and be obedient to the 613 laws that come from Moses, from God. So you convince all these people that they are doing the right thing and that they shouldn't change.
And you tell big leaders like presidents, kings, influencers, movie actors to encourage these people to be strong to their faith. That's what you would do if you want to take the masses to hell. But you would not focus on atheism or on Darwin. You wouldn't focus on these things because very few people actually believe in atheism and are following evolution. But there's a lot of people who follow a form of Christianity, Catholicism, so that is where you put your focus as Satan, as the devil.
I want to read to you what Jesus said in Matthew chapter 23, because this group of people that Jesus rebukes are people who were convinced that they themselves were the best of the best and were leading other people into heaven.
Then Jesus spoke to the crowds and his disciples, saying, “The scribes and the Pharisees have seated themselves in the chair of Moses.” What is the chair of Moses? This is the same seat that the pastors today put themselves in. It's behind the pulpit. It's in the place that they think they're a mouthpiece for God. Moses was the leader of his people, and we know that Aaron was actually his mouthpiece, but he was in the seat of God to the people. That's what it says in the scriptures, that he was as God.
Pastors have put themselves in the same position as if they are God to you. And churches think that they are the hand of God, that they're leading people to God. The Catholic Church thinks that they're the one true religion and that if you want to be saved, you have to come through them, their pope, their fathers.
So this is what Jesus says. They've seated themselves in the chair of Moses. “Therefore, all that they tell you, do and observe. But watch this. But do not do according to their deeds, for they say things and they do not do them. They are hypocrites.”
This is the crux of it. A lot of the Christians in the church, they do tell you, “Know Jesus. Repent of your sins. Get rid of addiction. Stop smoking. Stop drinking. Marijuana is evil.” They say all these sorts of things. Don't go to the R-rated movie. Don't be looking at pornography. They preach all of these things, but don't do as they do, because they're hypocrites. They're doing these same things. They say don't do these things, but then they go and they pay their good money to watch movie actors commit adultery and fornication, murder, lust. They laugh at the jokes that Hollywood is putting out.
So in church on Sunday, and then they go and pay their own money to watch movie actors do them. Therefore, they're supporting all of this. So that's why Jesus is rebuking this.
And then they tie shoulders, but they themselves are not. They are unwilling to move them with so much of a finger. Many of the churches do the same thing today. They tell you about them for tithe. Otherwise, you're cheating God. You're robbing God. Thus says the scriptures. These guys are hypocrites because they like the new covenant, not the old. But then when it comes to them supporting their ministry, then they go back to the Old Testament and they pull out an Old Testament law of tithe, which is Old Testament, not New, and they say, “You have to keep this law because if you don't, you're robbing God.”
So they make themselves out to be huge hypocrites. Which is it? Are we saved by grace through faith like they're preaching, or are we saved by tithe and going to church and listening to sermons and making sure we keep up our church attendance and going on mission trips? Which is it? They're not sure.
So they tie up all these heavy burdens, but they do all their deeds to be noticed by men. Do they love to look good on Sunday? They love to sound spiritual when they give their sermon. They love the way they sound, so they hang on their every word. They draw out their words to sound aesthetic. But if you catch them on an off day, they don't want to talk about God. No, you need to go to church on Sunday if you want to hear this scripture.
So their actual life, they're not living genuinely for Jesus. It's only during that hour on Sunday for a show. So you can continue to read this. They do all their deeds to be noticed by men. They love the place of honor at banquets and the chief seats in the synagogues. Pastors love to be called, you know, your pastor, your elder, your leader. They love that title. They love the respectful greetings in the marketplace and to be called teacher, teacher, rabbi by all men.
But then Jesus says, “But you do not be called rabbi, for one is your teacher, and you are all brothers. Do not call anyone on earth your father, for one is your father, he who is in heaven. And do not be called leaders, for one is your leader, and that is the Christ. But the greatest among you shall be your servant, who himself shall be exalted.”
A lot of people love titles. They love to be a teacher. But Jesus says we need to clean the inside of our hearts. That way, whenever we go anywhere, we can be pure because we're already pure on the inside.
Now, guys, I come from a background of pastors and missionaries, and most of all my family is still involved in church. They're missionaries around the world, missionaries in Egypt, missionaries in South America, in Europe, in all sorts of places. And members of my family pride themselves in how many countries they're in and how many people they've won into Christ or how many pastors they've made active.
Christians and churches love to boast about this. How many people they made Christians, how many they baptized, how many they brought into the faith. But I now realize that there's a huge difference between making a disciple of religion and making a disciple of Jesus.
See, I used to also go around and tell people that they needed to get into church. When I was in church, I would go to my neighbors. I would knock on their door when I lived in my apartment complex, and I would say to them, “Hey, are you in church?” And they would say, “No, I haven't been to church in 10 years. I need to get back in.” And then I would guilt trip them about it. And I would say, “You need to get back in church because God wants us in church. We don't want to be giving up the fellowship.”
And they'd say, “You're right, brother. I know that's a verse in scripture.” And so I would convince people to come to church. I would get people to come to church with me. And when I was a youth leader, I would do a lot of things to try to encourage people to come to church. I would put on a youth group that looked really fun to people.
And at one point, I had a ministry of around a hundred or over a hundred students who came to my ministry. And the way I was able to get so many kids there is because I would do things that attracted kids. It was things that the world likes to do. The music, skateboarding, taking them to Six Flags, taking them to camps, doing things in the city.
And because the ministry was cool and a lot of people were going there that liked other people there, it just started to build this entropy where it was the cool church that everyone was going to. But what I found was all these numbers and all these people getting plugged into church were not genuinely coming to Jesus. They were coming for every other reason. They were coming for the food. They were coming for the show. They were coming for the girls. They were coming because I was taking them to amusement parks.
But they weren't coming to get right with Jesus, to repent of their sins, and to become part of the kingdom of God. And this is the same thing that the Pharisees were doing. They were calling people to become disciples of their religion, and they would make them, as Jesus says, twice as much a son of hell as themselves.
When I realized this, I knew that I needed to change. I knew that I needed to stop making disciples of religion, and I needed to start making disciples of Jesus. So that's what I've done for over the last 10 years. I've been calling people to repent of religion, to repent of all the sins that they know, and to put their faith in Jesus and to be led out of this phariseical kind of dead religion called church.
Now, I know that church looks good to a lot of people. They say, “It's better that I'm there learning about the Bible than in the bar.” But what I've also noticed is Satan has two kinds of deceptions. He has the obvious evil, and then he has the not so obvious evil.
Satan can come as looking like a gremlin, looking like a grim reaper, looking like something obviously demonic on Halloween, or he can come as an angel of light. He can look like he is of the truth.
So if you are someone that really likes evil, you can engage in that. You know, you can take part of all of these evil things that everyone knows is evil. But if you're someone who appreciates looking good on the outside, there is also a deception for you. And I think most people fall into this category who are good people in the community.
There's obviously people that are evil and corrupt and wicked, but there's also people that want to do good. They want to help their communities and all of that good stuff. So Satan has a way to lead you to hell whether you want to be a good person in the world or a bad person in the world.
So the bad is obvious. Atheism, transgenderism, it's the outward worship of Satan, pornography, drug addictions. But then the other side Satan has is dead religion, going to church, making money, being clothed outwardly like you're a really good person. And I don't just mean physically, but spiritually, you appear to be a really good person.
But both of these agents, whether they're the evil agent or the good-looking agent, are both used by Satan to bring people to hell. And what we as Christians really have to watch out for are the wolves in sheep's clothing. They might not even know that they are a wolf, but they're leading people to hell because they are teaching people to look good on the outside like the Pharisees, without actually being washed clean by the blood of Jesus, taking up their cross daily and following after the Lord.
A lot of these missionaries and these groups, they're making disciples of church. They're training pastors. They're training people to do house groups and to bring people around the Bible. And they end up making a who aren't really making and producing good fruit and children of God.
We need to be careful not to be distracted by religion. We need to really come to Jesus. We need to know his words. If we don't know his words, we need to read his words again and learn them and hide his truth in our heart and practice it.
So I want to pray for those of you that do want to come into the kingdom of God, that don't want to be deceived by false Christian religion or Jewish religion, but that really want to put your faith in Jesus.
So, Lord Jesus, I pray for your true church. I pray to be a good testimony for you, and I pray that people can come into a genuine relationship with you where they know you and they become different. I pray that people would see a difference in us between us who really love and obey you and those that are of the world. I pray that more people can have their eyes open, their ears open, and be led by you. That they wouldn't be distracted by the world or deceived by Satan, by riches or false religion or all the deceptions that are in this world, but they may come to you and be led along by your spirit and have you in their hearts always.
