Watch out that no one deceives you. For many will come in My Name, claiming I am the Christ, and will deceive many. (Matthew 24:4,5 NIV)
In a somewhat extended life and
ministry, again and again I have seen dear people of God who were out in the
open going on with the Lord in the liberty of the Spirit with great promise and
then they’ve been caught in some “ism.” They simply are helpless to escape
themselves from the tenets of that “ism.” Again and again I’ve seen it!
Tragedy.... There’s a great “ism” sweeping right over America and over Europe in
these last years. I can dare to mention this one, well I’m going to at any rate:
Universalism. It’s an “ism” which has captured multitudes! And you just can’t
get anywhere with these people once they’ve got it. But I have known
them, oh so promising... so promising and then this thing has come subtly
along their way, attractive and fascinating.... So appealing: everybody,
ultimately, including the devil himself, will be saved. What are you going to do
with that? Willy-nilly they’ll be saved... undercutting so many of the very
vitals of the Gospel.
You may call these things gross errors,
but there are things that are not such errors. Not such errors, indeed in
themselves they’re quite true, but they have become the beginning of all and the
end of all to the people who have taken them on. You can get no further, no
further. They have lost the great ground, the vast ground of God’s full
purpose for this dispensation and become stuck on some thing that is only
partial at best. Arrested... like Judaism; come to a standstill, or going round
and round in a circle, the circle of this particular thing. It should be a
warning to us because, you see, this is the thing that has been the enemy of the
fullness of Christ all through the centuries - this sort of thing.... There are
many antichrists in the world and an antichrist is not a spurious, fearful
creature, you know, with a tail and a pitchfork. No, an antichrist is something
that assumes the place of Christ....
And with the natural judgment, natural powers, you are not able to distinguish
between the true and the false. The Christ and the antichrist seem to be so much
alike. You can’t discern the difference, but the Anointing will tell you! The
Anointing which you have received, when you come into touch with something
false, will tell you if the Anointing is really governing, saying, “Be careful,”
not in words, but inside. You have a feeling there’s something not quite clear
here, not transparent here, not safe here... “I don’t feel happy about this, I
can’t tell you why but I just don’t feel quite happy about this... there’s
something in me that says: beware.” I am convinced
that in a day like this of deceptions and misleadings and all that,
the great need is our spiritual
discernment; of knowing the Holy Spirit in this way, that He’s able to warn you.