The Nature of Christian Deception

In the last chapter of the Book of Daniel, it says twice that the words of the prophecy should be “sealed up and concealed until the end of the age.” Christians have been trying their best to determine the meaning of the prophetic books of the Bible but it will only be revealed to the generation with a “need to know.” Christian writers tried to interpret prophecy in terms of their historical, political and social context. It is easy to see how things could get off.

The biggest source of deception, in my opinion, comes from confusion relating to dispensationalism, a doctrine which started in the 19th century. It started as a vision that the church would experience a “secret rapture” prior to the tribulation. Once theologians believed that the church was gone, they came up with a theory that the church age (or dispensation) ended with the rapture and that God’s attention turned back to Israel. Today, fundamental Christianity is so steeped in this tradition that they can’t see beyond it. What started as a little doctrine has grown to be a huge system of doctrine with one error compounding upon another. This is called systematized error.

This is a huge subject for another book but suffice it to say at this point that the question is not so much the timing of the rapture, but the importance of the church and Israel to be present as the “Two Witnesses” of Revelation 11 – the two olive trees and the two lampstands. The failure of Christians to see the Church in every chapter of the book of Revelations has blinded them to the essential role both groups have.

If Christians assume the church will not be here during the Tribulation period, they will miss the signs. In working on an up coming book, we have read and reread the great theologians of the past – Ironsides, Pentecost, Barnhouse and many others to the present such as Ryrie, Walvoord, Steadman, etc. The blindness of these men caused by one false assumption has led to the failure of an entire generation to grasp the significance of the last days to the church and an escapism worthy of the Laodicean Church.

Two errors make prophecy of little importance to Christians. First, the dispensational approach believed that since the church raptures at the beginning of the tribulation, it is not even present during the final seven year period. The second is preterism, currently promoted by the Bible Answer Man (Hank Hannegraff), which says that Revelation was written before 70 AD and all prophecy has been fulfilled. Both extremes tend to negate the importance of prophecy.

When Will the End Come?

Although Christians down through the ages thought their generation might be “the one”, there are two major events that signal the "beginning of the end”. The end cannot come until these two things occur. One relates to the restoration of the nation of Israel and the other relates to the rise of a nation that dominates the earth like none other in history--a young nation that comes out of the Western Christian world and dominates the entire world (the eleventh horn).

The Bible clearly foretells many times in the Old Testament the scattering of the Jews throughout the world and their gathering in at the end of days just before the Messiah’s reign. In 1948 the nation of Israel was restored, with Jerusalem being captured in 1967.....

This is part of the introduction to Dene McGriff's book Recognizing Apostasy and Deception. Please click on the link below to see the entire book.

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