Kryptonite to the AntiChrist

Years ago, a man who always wanted a barometer decided to finally order it. So he bought one, a very expensive, minutely calibrated model from Abercrombie & Fitch, to tell the weather. He wanted to set it somewhere in his house, perhaps on his mantle. So he carefully unpacked it, and he looked at it, and the needle was pointing to the sector that says hurricane. Well, he shook it. It still didn’t adjust. He shook it again. But the needle just stayed that way. He said, “Well, as much as I paid for this thing—and now I have a defective barometer.”

He lived on Long Island, and on his way into the city—he was a commuter—he sat down and he wrote a scathing letter to Abercrombie & Fitch for sending him a defective barometer. When he arrived back at Long Island, the barometer was gone, and so was his house, because that was 1938, and the Great Hurricane had come through. There was nothing wrong with the barometer; he just refused to believe that a hurricane was coming. And may I tell you, my dear friend, there’s nothing wrong with the Word of God: It doesn’t need adjusting; it needs believing. •

1 John 2:18–26 NASB95

18 Children, it is the last hour; and just as you heard that antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have appeared; from this we know that it is the last hour. 19 They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, so that it would be shown that they all are not of us. 20 But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you all know. 21 I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it, and because no lie is of the truth. 22 Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son. 23 Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father; the one who confesses the Son has the Father also. 24 As for you, let that abide in you which you heard from the beginning. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you also will abide in the Son and in the Father. 25 This is the promise which He Himself made to us: eternal life. 26 These things I have written to you concerning those who are trying to deceive you.

IF CHRISTIANS WILL BE KEPT FROM THE WRATH AND THE MAN OF SIN, WHY DOES GOD WARN US ABOUT HIM?

THE DEVIL DEVELOPS HIS ANTI-HEROES IN EVERY AGE. (V. 18)

We see the battle predicted in:

Genesis 3:15 NASB95

15 And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel.”

a. Sisera

Judges 5:26 NASB95

26 “She reached out her hand for the tent peg, And her right hand for the workmen’s hammer. Then she struck Sisera, she smashed his head; And she shattered and pierced his temple.

b. Goliath

1 Samuel 17:49 NASB95

49 And David put his hand into his bag and took from it a stone and slung it, and struck the Philistine on his forehead. And the stone sank into his forehead, so that he fell on his face to the ground.

c. Hitler

Recently released in paperback by Yale University Press, Eric Kurlander’s book Hitler’s Monsters: A Supernatural History of the Third Reich, details some chilling realities of that monstrous regime and their spiritual beliefs.

Kurlander explains that “no mass political movement drew as consciously or consistently as the Nazis on what I call the ‘supernatural imaginary’ – occultism and ‘border science’, pagan, New Age and Eastern religions, folklore, mythology and many other supernatural doctrines.” This allowed them to attract those who sought “new forms of spirituality and novel explanations of the world that stood somewhere between scientific verifiability and the shopworn truths of traditional religion.”

In the Nazi spiritual imaginary, Jews were not just an inferior race, or a people with a degenerate culture; they were “vampiric, near omnipotent monsters whose sole purpose was to destroy Aryan civilization.”

For the architects of the Holocaust, the essence of Jewishness (biological and spiritual) was enmity to the Aryan race. Thus, they came to believe that even destroying Jewish culture and making them subservient was not enough; only extermination would suffice as a solution to the “Jewish problem.” As Kurlander explains, “Auschwitz…was the border scientific byproduct of the Nazis’ faith-based vision of racial purification and Aryan utopia.” They committed genocide as a sort of spiritual warfare.

Urlander suggests it is about the dangers of a culture and its “supernatural imaginary” becoming untethered from “traditional religion and modern science.” Despite the hopes of secular humanists, the space left when traditional religions decline tends to be filled not by rational scientific empiricism, but by still stranger gods.

God expects Discernment from His Church. (v. 19-22)

Don’t major on minors.

But don’t neglect the importance on majoring on Jesus. You NEVER graduate from growing in Jesus.

Trusting the Word prevents Truth Decay and falling away.

Truth keeps us from Deception.

From false teachers.

1 John 4:1 NASB95

1 Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

We don’t want to join in with ungodly thoughts.

“Sow a thought and you reap an action; sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.”

― Ralph Waldo Emerson

From Ourselves.

1 Corinthians 15:33 NASB95

33 Do not be deceived: “Bad company corrupts good morals.”

A mother told her son that he was not allowed to go swimming that day. However, when he returned home that afternoon his mother noticed that his hair was wet and that he carried under his arm a wet bathing suit.

“Johnny!” his mother scolded, “I told you not to go swimming today.” “I couldn’t help it, Mom. I walked by the lake and it looked so clear and inviting. I was just going to stick my feet in it for a minute, and the water was so warm and felt so good on my legs. I just couldn’t resist!” he said with a big wide smile.

Mom looked at Johnny and said, “One question son, why did you take your bathing suit with you when I had told you that you couldn’t swim today?” “I didn’t trust myself Mom, so I took it with me just in case I was tempted.”

Webster’s Dictionary tells us that temptation is “the act of enticement to do wrong by the promise of pleasure or gain.” Now isn’t that just like the Devil, getting us to do something wrong by promising us something good?

From the Devil.

1 Peter 5:8 NASB95

8 Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.

Where have you neglected living in Christ and feeding your soul?

Quiet time?

Bible reading?

The bible will keep you from sin or sin from the Bible and Christian fellowship.

The Bible is not meant to give you deeper insight into how things work. It is meant to draw you in tighter to the Lord. It guides you in making decisions that honor Him and how He made you. When you neglect the fountains God has called you to you will fill them with unhealthy habits and be lead astray.

“When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.”

― G.K. Chesterton

Serving in Ministry?

Witnessing to the lost?

Standing for the truth?

Where have you become slack in guarding your thoughts and habits?

Today, review Ephesians 6:10-18.

Tomorrow pray with the Lord and apply the armor to your life.