Crazy Christians

I want to start by just sharing something out of my own life, and that is that for the past almost 30 years now, I've had a solid time in the Word of God every day. And the Lord has helped me to remain faithful at that, usually always at least an hour spent studying and just being in the Word of God. But something has happened to me over the last couple of years that's changed.

And I find myself just so enthralled with God's Word. This is testimony. This isn't just a sermon, okay? I'm just sharing my own experience that something has gripped me, a passion to be in the Word of God like I've never known before.

I just have really become increasingly more interested in it, hungry for it, and spending time in it. Recently I started teaching through the book of Revelation to the staff here on Mondays, and I suppose that the darkening clouds that you feel when you are in that book may have colored my thinking one day. But a couple of weeks ago, I felt a very strong impression come upon me from the Lord.

I'm going to interpret for you in my own California dialect the way it came to me. Christians are crazy if they don't immerse themselves in the Word of God while they still can. And when I look into the future, what I see is an increasingly dark time for God's people.

I'm saying that there is coming upon this earth increasingly the power of the enemy to influence, to deceive, to attempt to destroy our faith, an increasing power of darkness. But I am not afraid. I want you to hear that distinctly this morning.

I am not afraid of that. Because my life is so anchored in with God, I don't fear what the enemy is going to do. But I am very concerned about the church at large.

I'm very concerned about many of you. What John said in the book of Revelation, the enemy was coming in a rage against the people on this earth, knowing that his time was short. I saw a headline on CNN that said something like, is America going insane? You know, two weeks ago, an NFL player killed his live-in girlfriend.

And then for whatever crazy reason, he goes to the ballpark, stands in front of his coach and general manager, and kills himself. It's insane. The power of darkness is growing, and it's agitating and animating people.

And of course, we're all still reeling over what happened two days ago in Newtown, Connecticut. That is the heart of Satan being expressed right there. What you saw him do through that young man to those innocent children is what he wants to do to you, destroy you, and make you suffer forever.

That's his heart. God has kept Satan on a leash for the past 6,000 years, but that leash is being let out little by little. And dear ones, I guarantee you that before it's over, you're going to be witnessing worse horrors than what just happened two days ago.

It's going to come in all kinds of different ways, through earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, bizarre weather patterns, but even more so through human beings. You are going to witness some incredible things. And if you're not solidly attached to God and have a very real sense of who He is, you will eventually be on the side of questioning God.

We have got to fortify ourselves spiritually. It's not a game. We can't do the Christian thing like we've done it in the past.

Those days are coming to an end. Satan's ability to destroy is increasing, and we're seeing that here and there, these little episodes of terrible violence and so on. But what you may not be as aware of, because it's much more subtle, is that his power to deceive and to seduce is also growing exponentially.

My concern for God's people is they are not preparing their hearts. When Paul predicted that the last days would be perilous, he wasn't talking about violence, persecution, or destructive weather. He was talking about a spiritual atmosphere of selfism that would be so pervasive outside and inside the church that masses of professing Christians would find that they had no defense against the enemy's lies and seductions.

That's the perilous times that we are facing and entering into. The peril isn't to our bodies. The peril is to our souls.