Consider this prophecy Jesus Christ revealed concerning the end times: "At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved." (Matthew 24:10-13)
Christ tied the rise of evil in the last days with the fall of Christianity and the appearance of false prophets. We certainly see the correlation between the decline of true faith in God and the rise in evil. But what does the appearance of false prophets have to do with the rise in wickedness?
False prophets not only lead people astray by promoting aberrant doctrines that deny the true God of the Bible and His transcendent moral laws, but they also lead people into wickedness through spiritual deception. And when Christ warned of false prophets, he wasn't speaking about people such as Nostradamus or St. Malachi.
Rather, he was speaking about people such as William Branham, Paul Cain, Paul Yonggi Cho, Kenneth Hagin, Benny Hinn, Bob Jones, Norman Vincent Peale, Robert Schuller, William Seymour and John Wimber. All these men have played a significant part in luring multitudes of Christians away from the true church to follow a counterfeit Christ and a false gospel.
How did they accomplish that? Let the apostle Paul explain it: "For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths." (2 Timothy 4:3-4)
These are just some of the false prophets that Christ warned us about. They deceive people by pretending to be Christian prophets and teachers, and then they introduce destructive heresies that point people toward hell. Here's what the apostle Jude wrote: "For certain individuals whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord." (Jude 1:4)
For example, Peale and Schuller denied the need for repentance and promoted a gospel of self-esteem. Cho promotes a new age gospel that claims everyone has the ability to create their own reality while Seymour and Wimber promoted a gospel that based salvation not on faith in Christ, but rather on one's ability to manifest miracles such as speaking in tongues.
But the decline and decay of the end time Christian church is just one manifestation of the rise of evil in the last days. Certainly, while crime has increased significantly since the mid-20th century, so has moral depravity in the form of sexual immorality, alcoholism, drug abuse and gambling.
There's a significant, although often overlooked factor in the rise of evil in the end times. And that factor is the increased contact that the world has made with the demonic. But how? Through hallucinogenic drugs, occult practices and eastern mysticism. How is the increase in evil related to these factors? Because they are conduits to Satan and his demons who spread their lies through people who make contact with them.
Certainly, Satan and his fallen angels hide their identities to those who encounter them. They will masquerade as Christ, Mary, Moses, Muhammad, Buddha, apostles such as Paul or Peter or Hindu avatars. And they will persuade people to reject God's revelatory word in the Bible for an amoral message that promotes hedonism and debauchery, and denies sin, judgment after death and the existence of hell.
Concerning those who willingly pursue falsehood, Paul wrote: "They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness." (2 Thessalonians 2:10-12)
Tragically, many people have embraced powerful delusions that come from the demonic. We see this in professing Christians who embrace new age and occult techniques disguised as Christian practices. We see this in those who consult with fortune-tellers and psychics, despite the fact that God's word condemns those who seek counsel from such people. And we see that in the growing interest in pagan and occult practices such as Kabbalah, Transcendental Meditation, Sufism, Wicca, necromancy and the Ouija Board.
The growing spiritual darkness throughout the world is indeed prophetic. And it's tragic as well. Paul gave us this warning: "Turn away from godless chatter and the opposing ideas of what is falsely called knowledge, which some have professed and in so doing have departed from the faith." (1 Timothy 6:20-21)
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