I welcome you to the 2009 Pure Life
Ministries Annual Conference.
I need to give a little bit of
a disclaimer up front here this morning.
I'm going to say to you what the
dentist says to me.
You may experience a little bit of discomfort
this morning, but unlike the dentist, it will
be given in love.
My dentist is very mean.
As I've been praying about this conference for
the last few months, this thought came to
me about the Church of Sardis in Revelations
3, and I want to read some verses.
Revelation 3, To the angel of the church
in Sardis write, He who has the seven
spirits of God and the seven stars says
this, I know your deeds, that you have
a name that you are alive, but you
are dead.
Wake up and strengthen the things that remain,
which were about to die, for I have
not found your deeds completed in the sight
of my God.
So remember what you have received and heard
and keep it and repent.
Therefore, if you do not wake up, I
will come like a thief and you will
not know at what hour I will come
to you.
But you have a few people in Sardis
who have not soiled their garments and they
will walk with me in white, for they
are worthy.
I want to talk this morning about the
predominant group in Sardis, which I believe is
a picture of the end times church.
I write about that in my book, Standing
Firm Through the Great Apostasy.
If you haven't read it, you might want
to pick it up.
But the predominant number of people in the
end times church are not going to be
on fire for the Lord, but are going
to be dead spiritually or near death spiritually.
The title of the message this morning is
A Word to Apostate Christians.
I'm going to tell you right up front,
I'm taking no prisoners.
Because the hour is urgent.
And there is no group of people in
this country that mean more to me than
this group right here.
Your souls mean too much for me to
sit up here and try to win your
approval and have everyone like me and crack
jokes and have a nice fluffy little sermon
that we can all walk out and feel
good about.
I'm giving this word exactly as the Lord
gave it to me to give.
And I realize as well that there will
be people who will be furious with me
within the hour and will stomp out of
here.
And that's okay, I'm okay with that.
Because there's too much at stake.
Now, I believe in this church there are
three groups.
There are those saints.
As Jesus said, you have a few people
in Sardis who have not soiled their garments.
And there are people like that in this
room right now.
I know some of your lives.
We just heard the testimony of one.
God has gotten a hold of you and
done such a work inside of you at
the cross that you have never been the
same since.
And God is going to be doing a
wonderful thing through your life in the days
ahead.
You love the appearing of Christ.
You are waiting and longing for His return.
You're not growing colder in the things of
God.
You're growing hotter in the things of God.
The second group are apostate Christians.
Outwardly, you're doing all the right things.
You're going to church.
You're going probably to a good church.
You're keeping all the rules and so on.
But inwardly, you have backslidden away from the
Lord.
And you are in terrible, terrible danger of
being swept away in an overwhelming wave of
deception that's coming upon this earth and is
already here right now.
The waters of deception are growing deeper every
day.
And you are already neck deep in it.
You have a name that you're alive, but
you are so close to drowning.
And I fear for you.
Now, I don't know who you are, and
again, I'm not aiming anything.
I just know that you're here.
That's between you and God.
I know you're here.
And so this message is for you this
morning.
I am dedicating this word for you.
It's a message that God burned into my
heart several months ago, and I have prayed
over it and fasted over it all these
months, all this time, for this day.
God is going to speak to you this
morning, if you have ears to hear.
And then there's a third group.
You've got the two extremes, and there's the
third group we're in between, kind of undecided.
Now, there are those who have walked with
the Lord.
You have done well with the Lord.
You know what it means to love the
Lord, and you've just gotten off track in
some ways.
You know, that's kind of one end of
the spectrum all the way to the other
end of the spectrum.
You haven't crossed the line into apostasy yet,
but you're headed for trouble if you don't
turn things around.
Now, you know, this message is not aimed
at you.
This message is aimed at those apostate Christians,
those people who are already in deep trouble.
But I'm hoping that if you've kind of
been going in the wrong direction, that something
will happen for you this morning to kind
of startle you and awaken you and get
you back on track.
That's my prayer.
All right.
Now, the rest of this message I am
directing at apostate Christians.
Backsliding is a concept that is found throughout
Scripture, Old Testament, New Testament stories, direct statements.
I mean, all the way through Scripture, it's
talked about.
In fact, in the book of First Timothy
alone, Paul talks about those in the last
days who would fall away from the faith.
He spoke of those who have suffered shipwreck
in regard to their faith.
Those who have denied the faith.
Those who have wandered away from the faith.
And finally, those who have gone astray from
the faith.
And when I did the study for this
book, I studied for about two years this
whole concept of apostasy and so on.
And the thing that shocked me and startled
me was the reality that it would be
the predominant.
That it would be the predominant characteristic of
the end times church.
Not a small group over here who are
going to church but are kind of messing
up.
No, the predominant.
The overwhelming majority.
I was appalled when I started to realize
what Scripture says about the end times church.
Because it meant people who I care about
are on the verge of being forever lost.
I want to talk about three signs of
an apostate Christian.
Lifelessness, lovelessness and lawlessness.
We'll start with this one.
First one, lifelessness.
You have a name that you're alive.
The outward semblance of Christianity is still very
much intact in your life.
All the outward stuff is there.
You know, and if someone that doesn't really
know you or doesn't have much discernment looked
at your life.
Oh yeah, brother so and so, they're a
Christian.
Sister so and so, they're a Christian.
Just like what you just heard with sister
Judy.
You know, yeah, you look at their life.
They're not doing all terrible things or whatever.
They're in church.
You know, they're identifying themselves with the evangelical
movement.
But you know, it's a lot like a
cancer patient who refuses the doctor's treatment.
You know, the doctor keeps trying to reason
with the person and say, You don't understand.
You are near death.
The cancer has raced through your body.
We can still turn it around if you'll
start taking the chemo treatments and so on.
We can still turn this thing around.
We can still save your life.
And the person sitting there with some kind
of a Pollyanna delusion and just kind of
smiling and just walks out unconcerned.
You know, if you study the life of
Christ in the Gospels, you will find that
Jesus was very confronting.
We like the nice little Jesus who gives
us all the things we want and blesses
us and loves on us and makes us
feel good about ourselves.
We like that kind of Jesus.
But that isn't the Jesus of the Bible.
He is love incarnate.
Absolutely.
But it isn't this pathetic, weak-kneed little
thing.
It's a passion.
And He wants to see people saved.
And He hasn't changed.
Do you think there's one Jesus that was
back in those days?
Well, I guess, you know, He was going
to die, so He was in kind of
a bad mood or something.
No.
He's the same Savior today.
We just heard a testimony of Jesus coming
to a woman and confronting her because she
was playing games spiritually, playing church.
He hasn't changed.
He sees inside what's going on inside of
you.
He sees the loves of your heart, where
your affections really are, where your treasures really
are.
He sees it all.
He sees the motives for your actions, why
you do the things you do.
He sees the attitudes.
He sees the idols that have been built
up in your hearts over the years.
Those eyes of fire.
The reality is, if you're a Christian, God
is going to chasten you.
If you're a Christian, God is going to
chasten you.
2 Timothy 3, that passage of Scripture, it's
one of the pictures of the end-time
church.
And Paul says, you have a form of
godliness.
Yes, you keep the evangelical list of do's
and don'ts.
You're very careful to make sure that you're
doing all the things that you're supposed to
do.
And you're very careful that you're not doing
the things you're not supposed to do.
You know, the evangelical church has its list.
It's more or less built on Scripture.
The only problem with it is there's a
lot missing.
It's all built to cater to the American
lifestyle of me first.
And so, verses that talk about heart issues
and talk about where your heart really is
and the way you're living your life and
so on, those are conveniently ignored or kind
of brushed aside.
But you keep that list, that list of
evangelical do's and don'ts, and you're fluent in
Christianese.
You know, the reality is, if you didn't
have a form of godliness, you couldn't handle
it because your conscience would rage within you.
I have told people in the past, and
I know it's not politically correct, people don't
like to hear this kind of talk, but
I have told people it would be better
if you would just backslide completely, throw off
all semblance of Christianity, and go give yourself
over to where your heart really is.
It would be better for you if you
would just do that.
And to continue going in the church, deceiving
yourself, and infecting others around you with your
faithlessness, your corruption.
We keep our form of godliness intact because
it's the only thing that we can hang
on to when our conscience starts trying to
tell us where we're really at, when the
Holy Spirit starts moving in.
We have to have the form of godliness,
something to point to.
We do just enough to deceive ourselves.
Paul said they would have a form of
godliness, but deny the power of the Holy
Spirit.
Deny it.
It means, really a picture of it is
the Holy Spirit is trying to move into
your heart and trying to speak to you,
but you deny entrance to the Holy Spirit.
No, you cannot come in here.
I am not interested in what you have
to say.
We heap unto ourselves teachers who will scratch
our itching ears.
We love to hear preachers who will just
give us nice little sermonettes.
Teach us nice little things about Christianity, but
never really confront us about the sinfulness, the
selfishness in our lives.
We like mild-mannered preachers who are politically
correct and know how to be gracious in
their words and so on.
And we gather around ourselves friends who will
flatter us.
Friends that don't really care about us.
You know, a true friend will confront you
in your sin.
Many of you have had people like that,
and you don't like to be talked to
like that, so you avoid those people who
will tell you the truth.
There's a word from the Apostle Paul written
almost 2,000 years ago to you apostate
Christians who are in this room this morning.
It comes out of 2 Thessalonians 2.
He says you will perish because you did
not receive the love of the truth so
as to be saved.
For this reason, God will send upon you
a deluding influence so that you will believe
what is false.
In other words, God is going to give
you over.
He's going to give you over.
If you keep insisting on believing lies about
yourself, if you keep insisting on avoiding the
truth, the time is going to come when
He is going to give you over to
a deluding influence.
The truth is you hate the truth if
it exposes what's really going on inside because
you're full of pride.
Nobody can tell you anything.
And every time God starts to put His
finger on what's going on inside your heart,
up go the walls and you deny Him.
You resist His every effort.
You grieve this Holy Spirit who loves you.
And you finally are successful to completely quench
the Spirit's voice in your life.
The truth is and the reality is that
spiritual life comes from one place only, Calvary.
That's where all spiritual life comes from, Calvary.
You just heard a testimony of someone who
went to Calvary.
Calvary represents the death of the self-life
and coming into Christ's life.
Calvary represents the end of self-rule and
coming into Christ's rule.
Calvary means acknowledging what you are like with
a sincere heart.
Calvary means taking full responsibility for the sin
in your life.
Calvary means that you grieve over the ugliness
of your sin.
Calvary means you repent of it.
You commit yourself to changing.
But we don't hear much about this anymore
in the church unless it's kept on nice
superficial terms.
You all know that I'm not mad at
you, right?
I'm a little intense this morning, but I'm
not mad at you.
You all look kind of beaten down.
I don't mean to beat up on you.
It's really only for a number of people
anyway.
When the Lord gave the New Covenant, He
said in Ezekiel 36, He said, Then you
will remember your evil ways and your deeds
that were not good, and you will loathe
yourselves in your own sight for your iniquities
and your abominations.
That attitude is always present in true conversions.
Matthew Henry said, Self-love is at the
bottom of sin, but self-loathing is ever
the companion of true repentance.
William Law said, Self-hatred, self-contempt, and
self-denial are as normal to the newborn
believer as self-love, self-esteem, and self
-seeking are to the unbeliever.
I don't see books like that down at
the Christian bookstore.
Charles Spurgeon said, All real repentance is joined
with holy sorrow and self-loathing.
But repentance has comfort in it.
The door of repentance opens into the halls
of joy.
We just heard a wonderful testimony of that.
He went on to say, When God is
seen with admiration, then of necessity we are
filled with self-loathing.
The more you appreciate God, the more you
will depreciate yourself.
While the thought of God rises higher and
higher and higher, you also will sink lower
and lower in your own esteem.
The word used by Job, I abhor myself,
is a strong one.
It might be paraphrased thus, I nauseate myself.
I am disgusted with myself.
I cast forth from my soul every proud
thought of myself.
Cast it out from me as a sickening
and intolerable thing.
Would to God that we had preachers like
that today.
Alright, the second sign is lovelessness.
In 2 Timothy 3, again, Paul said that
these people are unloving and that they're lovers
of pleasure more than lovers of God or
rather than lovers of God.
And in Matthew 24, there's a little section
in there where Jesus, again, is addressing the
end times church, and He said, Most people,
most, their love would grow cold.
Now, love is an interesting thing.
You know, I talk about in sexual idolatry
in the opening chapter there, about idolatry and
just how we have been created in such
a way that we are going to worship
something or another.
I mean, it's just that's the way we've
been created, is to give our devotion to
something.
And, you know, I make the point there
that most people have given their devotion to
all kinds of things, you know, and have
idols that have just formed up inside their
hearts over the years and so on.
But the thing is, with loving God, it's
a different sort of dynamic.
You know, you can have several idols all
at once, and they don't conflict with each
other, really.
You can love your career, your family, your
sports team, your wardrobe.
You can love all kinds of different things
all at the same time.
But it isn't that way with the Lord.
The reason you can do that is because
when self is on the throne, there's plenty
of room for idols because it's all built
in self-love.
But when God is on the throne, it's
a completely different dynamic.
There's only room for one love, and it
is the love that's due to God alone.
That's what Deuteronomy meant.
I mean, with Moses in Deuteronomy, when he
said, The greatest commandment is to love the
Lord your God with all your heart and
all your soul and all your mind and
all your strength.
That's what happens when you've been converted and
Jesus Christ is on your throne.
The conflict is gone.
That conflict is no longer there.
It doesn't mean that you don't have struggles
with things and so on.
I know Judy's had her struggles with different
issues over the years, but there is a
constant movement in a direction towards the Lord
that grows as you mature as a believer.
When God is on the throne, when Jesus
Christ is on the throne, Jesus said it's
impossible to serve God in mammon.
It's impossible.
But people insist on doing it, thinking they're
doing it, and they're not.
They're just deceiving themselves.
Apostate Christians don't love God.
They kind of like him.
The truth is they love other things.
You know, the only difference between an apostate
Christian and a total heathen is form of
godliness, because inside there really is no difference.
An apostate Christian has the same values.
They love the same things as the heathen
loves.
Their heart, their treasure of their heart is
in the same sorts of things.
They're lovers of pleasure.
They love entertainment and all of it.
That's really where their hearts are at.
The only difference really is the outward.
An apostate Christian, you know, holds on to
the form of godliness.
That's the only difference.
For many, maybe you've moved close to the
Lord at one time or whatever, but you've
allowed the things of this world to crowd
in on your life.
And so your spiritual life, if there was
one, I don't know how that works exactly
spiritually.
I'll leave that to the theologians.
But if you had some kind of a
spiritual life, it begins to dry up and
wither away.
And before you know it, you have become
a mechanical Christian.
Everything is done mechanically.
There's no affection for the Lord in what
you're doing.
You're just kind of going through the motions.
You're dying.
That's what it is.
You're dying inside.
Now, you know, again, I need to say
this, that even people who have really come
to the Lord have their dry times.
I have my dry times, you know, and
that's to be expected.
And there's times that you just need to,
you know, be encouraged and you need the
refreshing from the Lord and so on.
It doesn't mean you're apostate or near apostasy.
I'm not saying that.
You know, there are those times when we
have struggles, we get off track a little
bit.
But there's a difference between someone who's the
basic flow of their life is living for
self and someone who's the basic flow of
their life is to live for God, to
please God.
There's a difference between the two.
In my book, Intoxicated with Babylon, I said
this, Nothing will deaden a person's spiritual appetite
like the spirit of this world.
It agitates the flesh and shuts out the
Holy Spirit.
The hunger deep within a believer's spirit for
the satisfying presence of God is eclipsed by
the soul's lust for entertainment.
The things of this world dull a person's
spiritual sensitivity.
Even believers with the best of intentions find
that their passion for God wanes in the
polluted atmosphere of Babylon.
It is interesting how wide awake we are
when it comes to our life in Babylon.
When it comes to Mammon, we rise early
and stay up late.
As one writer put it, the final epitaph
of this person's life could be summed up
thus, He might have been a saint of
God, but alas, he has gained the world,
he has lost his soul.
The third sign of apostasy is lawlessness.
Are you okay?
You're all so quiet.
Okay, I got one guy that told me
to preach and that's all I need.
2 Thessalonians 2, where Paul talks about the
apostasy and he talks about the man of
lawlessness who's the Antichrist.
He talks about the mystery of lawlessness.
There's something involved with the apostasy that is
very tied in with this whole spiritual dynamic
of lawlessness.
Jesus, again, in Matthew 24, it's the same
verse, warned about that lawless attitude that brings
about coldness of heart towards God and the
things of God.
The secular Greek word for apostasy, apostasia, really
in the secular Greek it just is another
word for insurrection.
That's really what it means.
And in fact, some of the translations don't
call it the great apostasy, they call it
the great rebellion.
Because that's really what's going on.
And you know, that is the spirit of
Antichrist is pushing forth that spirit in the
church now.
This spirit of lawlessness that, you know, and
you see it in a lot of teachings.
It's subtle, you have to have discernment.
But it's there in a lot of teachings
and the basic message of the teaching and
it can be packaged in different ways for
different denominational groups and so on.
But the basic underlying principle is this.
You don't have to obey God.
He doesn't expect you to obey Him.
And that's packaged in a lot of different
ways.
Let me tell you, that is the spirit
of Antichrist.
Because the spirit of the living God would
never tell you that you don't have to
obey Him.
The psalmist said, you know, got a sight
of the spirit in Psalm 2.
I mean, it was fulfilled in Jesus' time
and His first time here.
But it was also a foreshadowing of the
end times when there's an attitude and a
spirit and atmosphere that's growing stronger and stronger
in the earth.
He said, the kings of the earth take
their stand.
And you see that in the book of
Revelation.
The kings of the earth take their stand
and the rulers take counsel together against the
Lord and against His anointing saying, let us
tear their fetters apart and cast away their
cords from us.
We don't want to be ruled by anyone.
I don't want anybody telling me what to
do.
And that is in the hearts of a
lot of people who confess themselves to be
Christians.
You know, apostate Christians are willing to obey
God up to a certain point.
They're willing to go along with the program
as long as He doesn't put His finger
on that thing that they don't want to
give up or whatever it might be, whatever
the case is.
They're willing to obey, you know, outwardly as
long as it doesn't reach down into the
inner recesses of their heart.
Their submission is superficial and insincere.
Inside their heart, they're just as rebellious and
unsubmitted as any heathen.
Apostates are rebels, just like their master.
You know what the issue is?
It's control.
That's what the issue is.
It's control.
We just heard it in this testimony.
It was such a perfect picture of what
I'm talking about.
That's what the issue is.
Who is going to control my life?
Who's going to control my life?
When self is on the throne, you do
not easily give up that throne.
We like to watch these movies about Antichrist,
you know, these ridiculous, nonsensical, end-time movies
that are based in fiction and mostly loosely
based around Scripture.
And there is going to be an Antichrist,
and I believe he's alive now, and I
believe he's going to be emerging soon.
But, you know, we like to point the
finger at someone like that, and he's this
monster and all of this stuff.
But the reality is, we're in the same
spirit.
That's the reality.
Self is on the throne.
It might as well be the devil on
the throne.
Apostates have never surrendered control of their lives.
They've never submitted to God's authority.
They've never been to Calvary.
A word that's hardly found in Scripture, but
yet the concept is throughout the Bible, and
it's an enormously important word.
In fact, I would say everything hinges on
it, really.
The word is sincerity.
That's the word, sincerity.
Because when you are sincere before God, you
let the Holy Spirit speak to you.
You are going to be honest with yourself.
You're going to do an inventory of yourself,
and you're going to be truthful about yourself.
But if you're insincere, you'll find one way
or another to slide out from anything that
is convicting or whatever.
But let's just look at these 19 signs
that you're heading into the great apostasy.
1.
Prayer is either nonexistent or mechanical.
2.
You know the word, but you don't really
live it.
3.
Earnest thoughts about eternal things are no longer
regular and gripping.
4.
Sins of the body and of the mind
can be indulged in without an uproar in
your conscience.
5.
Aspirations for Christlike holiness have ceased to be
dominant in your mind.
6.
The acquisition of money and goods takes up
a major part of your thinking.
7.
You can sing worship psalms without really meaning
what they express.
8.
You can hear eternal issues treated flippantly and
not be moved to indignation.
9.
Your main concerns are of your temporal and
earthly life.
10.
Conflicts with others are not a major concern
to you.
11.
You no longer hunger for a deeper life
in God.
12.
You don't live with a full and grateful
heart.
13.
You have little concern over and make little
effort to meet the needs of others.
14.
You always see your level of spirituality in
positive terms.
15.
You are more concerned about your pet doctrines
than you are people's lives.
16.
Sports, recreation and entertainment are a large and
necessary part of your life.
17.
You are more concerned with your image than
with the reality of your life with God.
18.
You are full of bitterness or criticism or
pride or covetousness or lust.
19.
You have a head full of knowledge and
a heart of stone.
I'm hoping that that will give you a
sense of where you're at.
Well, I suppose the main heart we had
of deciding to start this conference years ago
was to give people an opportunity to come
back to the place where they met God
and had an encounter with God and to
get refreshed and to be challenged and so
on.
And I know, like I said before, there
are many godly saints in this place.
The thing is about sincerity, altar calls are
funny because the way it often happens is
the people who need to be at the
altar the most are sitting there smugly in
their chairs thinking they're doing great and the
people who least need to be at the
altar are usually the ones up here throwing
themselves before God, pleading for mercy.
But the reality is in this group is
that most of you here are somewhere in
that in-between group and I know that.
And you know some that maybe you've been
challenged this morning to shake it up a
little bit and to get back on track.
You see you've gotten sloppy spiritually and you've
gotten off track and maybe your life with
God has become kind of mechanical and you've
lost the fire, you've lost the passion, you've
lost the love.
And you've allowed the things of the world
to crowd into your life.
You've been making little alliances with the world
and just kind of giving over in little
ways here and there and before you know
it, your spiritual life, your hunger for God
has waned and is drying up and withering
away.
This would be a good time to get
on your face before God.
This would be a good time to get
on your face before God.
To make a commitment to Him.
You know all we've got to do is
look at the news.
What's it going to take?
All we've got to do is look at
what's happening in the news.
I know most of it's lies and it's
all part of the deception, the way it's
packaged and presented to us.
But can't you see in the news what's
happening?
The time is growing short.
How long?
How long will we continue to play games?
How long will we continue?
Some of you need to just get before
God and make a commitment about some concrete
things in your life.
Coming up and having some kind of a
vague, Oh Lord, I'm sorry, I know I
need to do better.
That's not going to do it for you,
loved ones.
That's not going to do it for you.
What you need to do is, that needs
to be there, but you also need to
say, Oh God, I know this needs to
go.
Oh God, I know I need to change
this.
Oh God, I promise you from this day
forward something is going to be different in
the way that I handle this.
Here is your opportunity now.
You need to change your lifestyle as you
now live it.
Something needs to change.
And so I'm going to just open this
altar up and I'm going to ask you,
if you feel like you need to do
business with God, now is your time to
run to Calvary.
Some of you need to run to Calvary.
You have not really come to Calvary.
Some of you have been playing games and
been around the princes of Christianity your whole
life, but you have never really submitted and
surrendered.
Some of you need to make that consecration
this morning as an act of your will,
once and for all, to nail self to
the cross.
No longer, no longer can I allow self
to rule my life.
It's going to take me into hell.
Some of you need to get serious with
God for the first time.
I know many of you, again, I know
many of you, you just need to get
back on track.
I understand.
But there are others in here I fear
for you, loved ones.
If you can be at a Pure Life
Ministries conference and sit in that seat, stony
-hearted, unmoved, what hope is there for you?