Chuck Missler - How to Avoid Deception - Strategic Perspectives 2015

[Music] no it's obviously been a fabulous time for me to get all this encouragement people say what really encourages you when i see people come up to me and and and claim lives being changed not that we liked you this year that or that no no no that lives are being changed that means the lord has chosen to use us and that's what it's all about and that's one of the things that we'll be talking more about tomorrow night the good news it's kind of late so i don't have a long presentation but i have a little different kind of presentation that i would give you something to think about how many of you believe you know your bible adequately see that's a scary question to really ask because you may feel you do but you really don't admit it here i understand i understand one of the things one of the things we're all we need to recognize that every one of us in this room we included our learning god is not finished with any one of us most of you look at me as okay i've learned it and you're on the way of learning no no no no no all of us are on a learning path he's not incomplete yeah none of us are completed works in progress in fact i'm going to suggest the challenge that lies before each one of us is different for some of you it may be just to move diligently to the next book whatever series you're looking at for others it may be something else and i used to have this meeting plan or that reading plan but i also learned over time to change from time to time not to get locked into there was a time i was doing a lot of scripture memory but i realized i was getting bits not context i discovered every pattern i used had its strengths and its deficiencies so a mixed strategy is best of course but the main point is there is a challenge for each of you in the scripture there is a page a chapter whatever that the lord would have you investigate and it's different for all of us so you just need to know that when you're 15 minutes early for a doctor's appointment no problem pull out your phone and knock off a chapter or two doesn't take long but but have some way to stay in the word and so i could go on and on about this but i think i'm preaching to the choir you understand what i'm saying but i have a topic that is a troublesome one and that is jesus himself several times gives us a command be not to see that's not a suggestion that's an imperative case it's also in the in the present tense i mean it's continuous how do you that sounds pretty good you're not deceived okay the problem is how how do you and i fulfill that command how do you and i keep ourselves from being deceived fair question it's a good discussion question in your study groups too just to unravel that and get into it and trade insights about it no problem okay so the other the question that begs in my mind what are the tools that we have to prevent are being deceived or misled there are certain tools i believe that are available if we dig them out to help us from being deceived every one of us in each chair in this room is a target for deception satan has a plan for your life and it's different than the one the lord has for you okay okay but how do you prepare for his deception how do you keep from being deceived it's a fair question and i encourage you to air that in your study group so let's talk a little bit about tools what kind of tools are there well there's one that i think i've discovered enough to single out and that's the idea of using precision it shocks me to realize how many people publish books not being precise in the use of terms now it's one thing just to study it casually okay but many people who are publishing are perpetuating imprecise words i read all kinds of prophecy books that talks about the antichrist going to sign a treaty with israel for seven years where does it say that it doesn't talk about him signing any treaty what it says is that he affirms a covenant that's not the same thing it may be signing a treaty doesn't have to be in other words what the text actually says he affirms the covenant now for someone that's a diligent student we've got some among us are some people who publish that are distinguished in the fact that they are precise and i and i applaud that but i'm more interested in getting each of us to have a respect for certain tools and that's one of them precision and in today's world you can find out what the word really is you're not limited to the king james or this or that no no because there's software that will take the actual word and tell you what it is in the greek or the hebrew depending on where you're looking and you don't have to know hebrew or greek to take advantage of that why because you've got information appliances in your pocket that have the power to unravel that for you and the software to do that is free of charge there are packages around you can download for free there are a few you can spend a little to get a nicer one fine but the point is there are many that are free of charge if you haven't discovered the blue letter bible it's one of the deadliest but there's others okay we helped start that so we're out to encourage them but they're not the only one we promote but precision in the use of terms is one of the things i believe is one of your tools to avoid being deceived because by being imprecise you're exposing yourself to error and those errors can compile or leverage against you so that's a something you can do in terms of your personal attitude to the word of god are we together so far okay there's another thing that i believe i've discovered that surprised me to fully realize and it's a belief that there are no synonyms we use that term for two words that mean about the same thing watch out for that about two words may be synonymous in that they mean almost the same thing and when you encounter one of those praise god because i'm going to predict that in the gap between the two may be hidden a treasure because we discover interestingly that the holy spirit exploits those he will say things that sound synonymous but are not and tucked away in the different the subtle differences is a surprise is a discovery it's something that the holy spirit uses to authenticate the message in the first place it's astonishing to me to realize that the denial of synonyms as being synonymous is a useful tool in language when you find them almost mean the same thing check into it not necessarily but very likely there can be a subtle difference in there and that's useful the antichrist doesn't sign a treaty he affirms a covenant that's not the same thing the tribulation is not seven years how many prophecy books talks about the seven year tribulation it's become a cliche even in our own vocabulary in error the great tribulation is defined by none other than the lord jesus christ in matthew 20 verse 15 24 15 as how much three and a half years exactly so it's half of a year half of a seven year period and so the point is that's that's an issue but it leads to confusion and that's one of the early things i think we've emphasized in our studies the value and really understanding the last four verses of daniel 9 because by doing that so many things fall into place if you're confused on the last four verses of daniel 9 or some aspect to that confusion follows and the lord jesus points his disciples to that passage but again the idea is it's me to be precise and be cautious about synonyms and i think i've i can sneak one of my favorites in right now that you may have all heard this and if so i apologize but it just happens to be one of my favorites you all know about rahab and you know about how she gave security asylum to the two spies remember that okay it's all in uh joshua two i believe and uh it's interesting she advises the two spies not to head back home but to go hide in the hills until the search is over good advice so she she says she's going to take a cord or a line and put it out the door she's on the the edge of the the city so she's on the city wall so she puts out a cord and she said i'll lower you on that cord and go to the hide in the hills don't go back because that'll tip off where your camp is so wait until the search is over and then go it's good strategy it turns out where she says that in verse 14 there in chapter two she happens to use a term in hebrew called hebel hebel is a word that can mean a chord or a line obviously but it's also a word that has it's a pun it's also a word that can mean pain suffering okay no problem they respond to her by saying gee that's great what you do is you get your family assembled up here and that will take that scarlet line and we put it out the window and we will protect your family as our uh quid pro quo uh your you know our in for the fact that you've given us asylum you follow me so they think that's a great idea but it's kind of interesting that when they respond to her they don't happen to use the word hebel they use a different word it also happens to mean a line the word they use is ticla now tikva can mean a chord or line obviously but it also is a word that can mean hope and hatikva the hope is the national anthem of israel well that's pretty cool but there's something you heard that too didn't you where's security when you need it right it's interesting that after they mentioned that her suggestion of them is when they go in the hills they should hide for three days and i would love to know why she said three why not two or four or five no the holy spirit somehow nudged her go and hide for three days in the mountains before you go back you follow me so far so you look carefully with the holy spirit has put in front of us and it's something that i don't believe that rahab fully understood she had a glimpse but only a glimpse because we discover that between the hebel of the golgotha it's three days later that we have the tikvah of the resurrection and the hatikva is as i said so it's a interesting the words create the and it fits the model of what really is being described here uh in the future did she know that no i don't think so did the holy spirit diddle with the text to make it fit that i believe that now somebody will say chuck you're making something out of nothing maybe but i challenge you to find those and you'll find them all through the scripture places where the language has been biddled and one there's one that i know you know that's it genesis 22 verse 19 or the name or the person of isaac is headed out of the record until he's united with his bride you've heard me go through all of that i'm sure if not i encourage you to chase it down okay so the point is i encourage you to discover the in the overlaps of apparent synonyms nuances or discoveries and in fact i have a little contest going among our students to find me places in the tanakh in the old testament that demonstrate the anticipation of design and one of the best examples i usually use is numbers 21 and the raisin serpent is one example there are others but i want to collect those because those collectively speaking are staggering apologetics authenticating the source of the text in the first place so i'll leave you with that but that leads me to something else it's a concept that i'm guilty of promoting among certain of us that may be a tool that you need to be sensitized to for what's coming i'm calling it hermeneutical hygiene kind of a fancy word the word hermeneutical is just a word meaning our approach and guidelines used to interpret a text how you treat a text is your hermeneutic and some people may treat it allegorically very softly what we call a soft hemorrhagic others are very strict very literal and we tend of course to lean that way but in fact if i know your hermeneutics i can predict your eschatology if you're willing to allegorize and be soft you'll shift on the left side of the chart i'll show you shortly if you're really strict and you insist upon taking it literally you shift on the other end and and i can predict your eschatology by your hermeneutics okay now this question of hygiene what do you mean by hygiene well that's simply your discipline you think of hygiene in terms of maybe a diet no hygiene can be a lot of other things okay it's interesting if for those of you students of the naval academy it's the only uh course required by law all midshipmen have to take hygiene because of some obscure law way way back and it's on the books and we always joke about it because that's the only book that's that's the only specific subject required by law at the cab anyway hygiene but i'm talking about hermeneutical hygiene what on earth am i talking about well first of all if you and i were to engage in a discussion about the attributes of the holy word of god i suspect we would very quickly be in agreement on some extreme statements the attributes of the word of god i think we recognize the word of god is true right some of us might say it's probably the only thing that really is true but i think we agree on that pretty much in the spirit of that thing okay i think we'd say it's infallible how many are agreeing with me okay is it trustworthy absolutely okay now we even go so far as to describe the word of god as god breathed that's why the early church rejected any documents that were written under a pen name because they felt that was in not consistent with the consequent being god breathed they may be interesting documents they may be useful for study for a lot of reasons but they're not inspired are we together do we we i think you you and i are sensitive to the sanctity that we ascribe to the word of god how many agree with me okay now if that's the case what i we put the word of god on a very unique pedestal in our studies and our attitudes and what have you we put it on a pedestal i want all of us to especially be sensitive to that issue because we're going to see it endangered from left field and i'll show you what i mean by that there are legitimate inferences that we can make from the word of god jesus himself uses the expression the gates of hell so the concept of portals of some kind is scriptural we see that in matthew 16 18 the gates of hell shall never that's jesus's own words so the concept of a portal is in the scripture don't misunderstand me i'm not saying all portals are scriptural but we do know portals can exist because some do in the scripture you see what i'm saying okay we also learn a lot about hades versus gehenna and tartarus and all that versus sheol all that in luke 16. most of us here have done a study of angels or whatever and afterlife and know that most of what we think we know about that area most of it comes out of luke 16. are we together so far that's information that's in the scripture which gives us a measure of confidence in its authenticity and it's truthfulness okay so far there's also in the scripture descriptions of what i'm going to continue to call cosmic warfare you know i've done a definitive text on cosmic codes you're familiar with all of that i'm sure but more and more we're going to start focusing on cosmic or cosmic warfare because it's going to be increasing now cosmic warfare is not a fab you know a fabric of our imagination it's in daniel 10. it's not the only place in fact part of what i want to do is make an inventory of all the places it shows up that's probably the key place when we study daniel 10 we discover there are super personages behind the different empires that are at war one of them spends three weeks trying to get through to daniel and he explains to daniel even when he finally finishes his course he's going to fight another guy and we we get that glimp it's just a glimpse but we take it from the scripture you with me so far now why am i going down this road because there are circumstances emerging that are going to challenge what i call our hermeneutical hygiene and that's that's what i want to get across here it's not a simple idea we are going to discover our vocabulary personally you and my you and me we're going to have a vocabulary with a lot of new words in it okay we have a vocabulary today with trillion in it and i have yet to find any congressman center can explain what a trillion is in any meaningful terms but that's a whole another discussion we discover now that wormholes have been confirmed scientifically by advanced math and and so forth not only that they are now the experts have now concluded that wormholes are transversable as time tunnels that's a huge huge discovery that pervades the cutting edge documents in those fields very exciting stuff very fascinating stuff that's going to make wormholes a common term in our vocabulary people will be talking about those black holes and wormholes and so forth and people are going to talk about it as if they knew anything about it they may know a little but here's the danger what they think they know is secular information don't confuse it with the word of god even though the word of god may have some similar concepts embedded in it and so we have portals the concept of portals there are books being published that are fascinating that exhibit amazing scholarship about them portals they're people that think they can detect them magnetically and there's there's all kinds of literature starting to talk about wormholes and portals be careful they're interesting they're fascinating and discoveries are being made in the secular world are you tracking with me here do you see the danger i'm trying to anticipate here okay time travel that's a serious thing being discussed by knowledgeable physicist astrophysicists advanced math people and so forth those are legitimate areas for discussion some of what they think they've discovered may be true but maybe it isn't and they might be avenues for being ultimately later deceived that's my point okay so there are profane sources not to be confused with holy sources those profane sources include secular speculations you're going to encounter fascinating documents written by brilliant people that speculate implications of the wormholes and the portals and time travel they're going to be standard stuff that will occupy the internet and and technical people will be talking about them great but i want a flag flying over our masthead that we're going to be we're going to exercise hermeneutical hygiene okay and what i mean by that we want if it's pseudographical or apocrypha these are books that are not inspired but they're highly revered among scholars there are some books that are extremely valuable for grammar for vocabulary for documenting what the rabbis believed back in the second century bc the book of enoch being one of them it's not inspired it's not inspired it's a compilation in our pseudonym but many people treat the book of enoch or one of the books of enoch as scripture be careful well they argue that one they quote from this they quote from that they all overlook the fact they both may be quoting from a third service which has been lost that doesn't prove anything that they may quote one or the other that doesn't quote anything that does not make enoch an inspired book and i'm not knocking it it's a very useful document for if it's not misused don't regard it as inspired okay the book of enoch and i've seen writers write as and make reference to the book of enoch chapter this and that verse as if somehow that authenticates something scripturally be careful it's a useful book if used properly but it's not inspired dan brown does the same kind of thing with some of his references that made his fiction books so popular be careful and so so i wanna one of the concepts i wanted to get across to the audience is a concept you probably won't hear much about because it's sort of a an insider's tool so far at least and i call hermeneutical hygiene what i mean is have a discipline to take what you know from the word of god and put that in a compartment that is inviolate in other words it's truth don't confuse it with all this other stuff which is really fascinating and might be true but we don't know because it's avenues of being deceived so i believe your survival in the forthcoming information environment that we're all plunging into will depend a great deal on your maintaining what i call hermeneutical hygiene to to to leave on the to put the word of god on a pillar and make sure it stays there and make sure the only things that accompany it there are things that come from the word of god don't co-mingle don't co-mingle that's why i call it hygiene you're not commingling you follow me i think the term is descriptive if you follow me here okay now there are other traps too this is just a sort of an opening discussion on some of these things um your presuppositions every one of us bring to any subject presuppositions presumptions and they almost always get us in trouble it's very very important for each of us to be aware of our presuppositions you don't have to abandon them just know their presuppositions but it's important for us to be aware of the fact that we bring to every any subject some presuppositions okay let's just recognize that and make sure that doesn't interfere with our judgment horizon and we make allowances for that so presuppositions are one of the issues the other thing that can get to us is what i call resolving power it turns out that luke mark and john use a phrase the kingdom of god they use it again and again and again in fact that's the only term they use it's very interesting that matthew uses a different word he's the only one that uses a different term he uses a term called kingdom from heaven and what's interesting is many commentators will tell you well he just uses a more jewish phrase no that's not true 33 times he uses the phrase kingdom from heaven many people overlook that of and from in both hebrew and greek are the same word kingdom of heaven kingdom from heaven is more descriptive i'll explain why in a minute mark luke and john never use kingdom of heaven that way matthew uses kingdom from heaven 33 times but not always five times he uses king uh kingdom of god in fact one case side by side actually one commentator says that proves it's about the same thing no it proves just the opposite it's telling us that matthew is being more denotative that the kingdom from god is a subset within the the kingdom of god includes everything under god but when matthew talks about the kingdom from heaven he's talking a very specific subset about which he tells us a great deal so the point is we discover that matthew is using what we call a genitive of source not a genetic genesis of opposition if i say i'm otto von hopsberg that means i'm otto from hapsburg it doesn't mean i'm made of habsburg it means i came from hapsburg that's called a genitive of source it doesn't tell you anything about my intrinsic nature like like if it was a genitive of opposition it'd be like i'm a sinner sure that's a that's a genitive of opposition it's a genitive of source it's the kingdom from heaven and once you know that it's amazing how different those passages read and that's a whole study of its own right the olivet discourse myself for many years didn't catch on the fact that luke 21 is not part of the olivet discourse almost every commentator takes matthew and mark and luke together as the olivet discourse not recognizing the oliver discourse was given at night to four specific disciples luke 21 is giving during the day under different circumstances to a different audience it's not the same thing so we need to understand that so there's an issue of resolving power here that is important to be on to and then there's other things you'll run into that are more technical probably they're connotative transfers that's where we take a connotation and transfer it without authority and the use of outer darkness is one of those it causes a lot of confusion i won't try to deal with a few zombies here but there's also a concept of expositional constancy one of the things that comes to your rescue is that the holy spirit tends to use the same figures of speech consistently through his writings and they they call that the principle of expositional constancy there's certain idioms that he maintains strangely enough and that can be very very useful and one of the examples of that is jotham's parable of trees in judges 9 jotham talks at a about a parable of four trees that has to a very very strange parable to really understand and i mention this only that you really won't understand that unless you get in behind it a little bit and i'll leave that for you to dig out from our notes on judges 9. and we discover that the olive tree is an idiom for the the covenant relationship with the yoriva in israel the fig tree is a common idiom which speaks of israel in a national sense strangely enough and the vine appears to be the spiritual relationship in israel and yodeva and then we get to the bramble which is too low to really cast a shadow but the ramble is the idiomatic of israel in terms of their failure in in judges 9 and following and to unravel that is useful if you're going to get into some of the expositional constancy issues well as you can probably imagine we can go down any one of these channels but what we're really getting into is the next level of understanding if you will and so i don't want to try i wasn't going to try to get in and unravel those here in the evening it's late and we've had enough of this all this for the evening but i do want you and your perception of the what you may carry away from these few days together is a commitment to yourself to take the next step of whatever it is for you to take your bible insights the next to the next level okay if you've if you've gotten bronze go for silver if you're in silver take it to the next level in silver there's four or five of them if you're there if you're on your way to gold praise god but pray through your commitment to be on a program to improve your biblical literacy because i think that's your ultimate protection against being deceived jesus gave you a command be not deceived i think the way you do that is to really repair your biblical literacy and every one of us in this room needs more more insights in the word and they're there it's therefore in a systematic way wherever you are as you think it through and pray it through there's a next natural step for you to take the next book to take under whatever or the next level the next level of understanding and i i think that the important because as you do that that's when god will communicate to you what his calling for you is and i'm going to predict that his calling for you tonight is not the same calling that you might have jotted down on your pad last year it's my hope that you've grown you've got some insights the lord's been dealing with you in some unusual ways praise god but your calling is your challenge and i don't really see anyone here that is needs an evangelical call i think all of you have come to the lordship of the lord jesus christ praise god for that if you're wrong if i'm wrong come see me but the real point is i think most of us have probably less than a complete perception of what jesus has called us to do at the moment i think there's very specific things for each of us and i do all of this with a certain sense of excitement on the one hand and foreboding on the other i have a certain sense of promoting because i think what's coming over the next 6 12 18 months not talking about years away i'm just talking near horizon i think what's coming is going to be more unpredictable than the experts have any capacity to profile profile for us and i don't mean just the debt and i'm not talking about just the election i'm talking we can make the whole panorama layout there and i think it's all going to be more unpredictable and you and i can imagine that's okay the reason it's okay we know who's in charge the good news is is obama is not okay the good news is the god of the universe has already singled you out for a calling and your challenge is simply to discover what that is and as you just discover what it is it pray it through and i predict that it'll get clearer and clearer as time goes on and what a thrill it is because it allows you to focus on your ultimate destiny you may be doing your taking care of yourself financially by your vocational skills electrician plumber dentist whatever you're paying your bill bills probably by your vocational skills that was the path of of the senior mayo of any jewish household they were no matter how well-off they were they were required to have a vocational skill the rabbi said he that raises a son without a vocation raises a thief because they presume that somewhere in life you're going to end up having to fall back on your ability with your hands to provide for your own okay so paul kate was extremely wealthy he was born a roman roman citizen that didn't come easy so he's very wealthy very powerful very but it's interesting that he chose to never take a penny from his ministry there may have been a few exceptions but he brags to the corinthians he brags to the pheasants i will see several years i never took a penny from you i could have he defends the right of the minister to be supported by his ministry but he didn't take himself why because he felt his voice would be less encumbered if he brought his financial independence the table as a credential he took donations for others where he took donations it was for the church in jerusalem but one of the things about paul he believed that his strongest suit was to provide his living expenses personally and not not lean on his people we don't do that in general and that isn't the model for everybody but by the way it could be every one of us could do that to some level because it turns out there's some very unusual ways to supply the difference and there are paths to financial independence that we have been developing for what we call the koinia parsonage reserve it's a very unusual entity that is a subject for another discussion but if you have if there's a responsive note there you can dig into it there's plenty of stuff on our kit websites to talk about it but we have a club within a club called the coina missionary fellowship that has not the only but an answer to financial independence for those that want to achieve it and it's it's very unusual and so but the point is your walk is something that's yours and it's a contract between you and your king and your challenge i believe it may be the primary challenge you carry away from this conference there's a commitment on your part to discover what that calling is and pray for it to get clearer more clearly defined roll up your sleeves and get to it because that's going to be the thing that determines your eternal destiny you can make make your list there's nothing on that list that can match your eternal destiny for the king and the king is coming and he really is that's the other dynamic hopefully that some of these talks will make clear for all of us that's not a cliche or a figure of speech it's real the king is coming and our commitment to him eclipses anything else that we might imagine so with that uh i'll just close for a word of prayer okay that's our hearts heavenly father we come before you staggered as we recognize your willingness to involve yourself in all the details of each of our lives that you care about your presence in our lives and you're there to clarify and guide us we thank you father first of all for your provision for providing for all of us bringing us to exactly where we are right now we thank you that you care where we are right now we do pray father that through your holy spirit and through your word you will make more clear for each of us precisely what it is you would have of each of us in the days that remain we thank you above all these things for your presence that you actually care enough to be involved in and to guide our personal lives we thank you for that as we this evening with no reservations or of any kind we commit ourselves into your hands in the name of yeshua our coming king indeed amen okay [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] you

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Keywords: Bible, Chuck Missler, Deception, Bible Study, prophecy, bible prophecy, chuck missler deception, chuck missler avoid deception, be not deceived, how to discern, discern, discernment, spiritual discernment, biblical discernment, chuck missler discernment, understanding the bible, biblical understanding, bible insight, biblical insight, bible literacy, biblical literacy, chuck missler bible literacy, chuck missler biblical literacy, chuck missler strategic perspectives

Id: WiEPa_eZ-Mk

Length: 44min 28sec (2668 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 01 2020