False Prophets, Cults, and Demonic Deceptions, Part 2

Part 1

J.B. Hixson: Hey, it’s my pleasure. Looking forward to continuing the dialogue here.

Tim Moore: Well, we had a great conversation last week about false prophets in general, and obviously we were harkening to The False Prophet. So just to do a review, let’s talk very briefly, what are some examples of false prophets from Scripture, and how can we discern false prophets in our day and age?

J.B. Hixson: Yeah, we talked about several last week. I brought up the false prophets, the 400 false prophets in Ahab’s day. We saw several in the book of Acts. We’ve seen just throughout the Old Testament, warnings and admonitions against these false prophets who kind of infiltrated Israel when they crossed over the Jordan from pagan lands. And yeah, there’s no shortage of them for sure.

Tim Moore: There’s certainly not. We know Paul warned Timothy that in the last days there would be a rise in apostasy and false prophets. And yet, as Jeremiah said, sometimes the people would embrace false prophecy and false prophets. Nathan, we talked about how to discern a false prophet. Give us a brief review of how we can do that.

Nathan Jones: Well, Deuteronomy 18, again, Moses told the people, “If a prophet makes a prophecy and it doesn’t come true,” you know, they’re not a real prophet. They haven’t spoke from God. And he gives quite a condemnation a few verses earlier that false prophets will face the wrath of God one day. So you’ve got to be really careful that as, especially as Christian teachers like we are, that we’re teaching the true work of God. But you find a lot of these people will use religion to advance themselves. Dr. David Reagan, our founder, shared that his brother in his youth, though not saved, found that he could make a lot of money going and preaching, even though he didn’t believe what he was preaching, he was making like $100 or so back in the day, and he got very wealthy from it. Now, he got saved later on, but for a while there, he was becoming a false teacher or a false prophet just to gain money, and you’ll find that these false teachers, false prophets, it’s usually something selfish. It’s either their egos, you know, they have massive… like Kim Jung Un having his entire country worship him or Sun Myung Moon, or you’ll find that they are greedy for money. They always are looking for money and they always exalt themselves, not God.

Tim Moore: Yeah, they seem to point people away from Jesus Christ, whether it’s the law themselves, or as we discussed in the case of Joseph Goebbels and Hitler, to point people to another false Christ. And we know that the false prophet in the end will do that, and inevitably, they lead people away from God. I love what you said about they make false predictions. That’s why we don’t predict the winner of the World Series or even the presidential election because only God knows and He hasn’t revealed those things specifically to us.

Nathan Jones: And we’ll find some Christians who get confused and come to us asking well what does the Bible say prophetically so that I can kind of gauge the stock market or I can kind of gauge? And you’re like that’s not how Bible prophecy works. It’s not what it’s meant for.

Tim Moore: So let’s focus for just a moment on the false prophet because we kind of hinted around at this individual who’s gonna come. Revelation tells us he will be the right hand man to the Antichrist. But let’s talk a little bit more about what this person will do in the period of the Tribulation. I don’t think that individual has been revealed yet any more than the Antichrist has been revealed. But what are they going to do on behalf of the Antichrist?

J.B. Hixson: So he hasn’t been revealed yet. There’s… good chance he may already be alive if the rapture were to happen in our day. But the false prophet, we get most of our data about him from Revelation 13. And it describes him as the second beast, the beast from the earth. And he’s going to serve at the pleasure of the Antichrist. And his primary goal seems to be to get people to worship the Antichrist. So remember, this is the unholy trinity. Satan, the Antichrist, the false prophet. And just as the Holy Spirit is drawing people to Christ, the false prophet in his role is going to draw people to the Antichrist and try to get them to worship him. But he’s also going to oversee kind of in a management role the whole full spectrum planetary control grid through the Mark of the Beast system, forcing people to only buy or sell or whatever if they have government approval.

Tim Moore: So using the analogy and the symbolism there in Revelation 13, the beast from the sea is the Antichrist and the sea would have represented, we believe, the Gentile nations we know from Daniel that this Antichrist will come from the revived Roman Empire. But the beast from the earth, we think, may be Jewish. And just like the sidekick of Klaus Schwab, of the World Economic Forum, he’s got a young man who is leading many astray who is Jewish of heritage, but definitely preaching a false gospel.

Nathan Jones: Yeah, Harari is, the things he says reminds me of Josef Mengele, the evil doctor who worked for the Nazis who didn’t care about life. I’ve heard Harari, and you’re an expert, and maybe you could tell him, say crazy things like, well, we don’t have human rights, or life doesn’t matter, or we can genetically control people’s will. To me, if there’s any candidate for a false prophet, it’s him.

J.B. Hixson: Yeah, I put him right up there. We have a whole chapter on him in “The Spirit of the False Prophet” book, and you’re right. He checks all the boxes. Now, like you said, we don’t like to play pin the tail on the false prophet or pin the tail on the Antichrist either, but he certainly seems to fit the bill. I agree. I think he’s going to be Jewish myself. I don’t think the Antichrist will be Jewish, in the same way that Antiochus Epiphanes was not not Jewish, and he’s the type of the Antichrist. But yeah, one of the things that he said, I played this clip recently at a conference, is he said, “Humans have no rights, no free will.” He said, “If you cut a human open, you’ll see blood and guts, but you’ll see no free will. You’ll see no rights.” And he compared that, and this was very telling, to national sovereignty. And he said, “Similarly, America and Israel, he mentioned by name, do not have rights that you know you can smell and see and touch a mountain, but you can’t smell and see and touch America or Israel. And so they’re setting the stage for complete destruction of humanity and human rights as well as national sovereignty to usher in the one world system.

Tim Moore: Well, obviously we know better, but I think this man does become a precursor of the false prophet. Folks, if you want to learn more about the false prophet, you can read in Revelation, obviously Revelation 13 is a go to chapter. You can get a copy of JB’s book, “The Spirit of the False Prophet,” but you can also go to second Peter chapter two, where Peter lays out 22 different attributes of false prophets that you can be discerning about in our day and age. But our show title said that we are still going to touch on cults and demonic deception. So we’ve seen a multiplicity of cults in our day and age. Some that are very historic and have become so commonplace, we don’t necessarily think of them as cults, but they’re false religions. And so what are some of the cults that are evident in our world today?

J.B. Hixson: Yeah, so we’ve got Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christian Science, you’ve got a lot of cults surrounding the UFO phenomena…

Nathan Jones: Tell us, hold on that one a little more, because we had a lot of people writing in, especially in the last year or two, where the government seems to be declassifying pictures of they look like these flashy things, and they go into the water, so they’re not necessarily UFO’s anymore, they’re what U…?

J.B. Hixson: UAP’s.

Nathan Jones: UAP’s

J.B. Hixson: Which even that’s changed, used to be unidentified aerial phenomena, and now it’s unidentified anomalous phenomena, is the latest word that the U.S. government is using.

Nathan Jones: Okay

J.B. Hixson: Yeah, I mean, it’s an incredible time. I have two chapters in “Spirit of the Antichrist Volume 2,” the red book in which I describe the upsurge in phenomena and UFO. The question isn’t, do UFO’s exist? The question is, what are they according to Scripture? And so the cults are out there suggesting these are little green men from other planets and some branches of the cults think they’re benevolent, some think they’re malevolent, and we’re just waiting for some spaceship to land on the White House lawn. I believe, and I believe I back this up from Scripture, that they are demonic, they’re dimensional, that they are an evidence of Satan sending out reconnaissance missions to try to figure out what’s going on ever since Israel became a nation. Remember the dawn of the modern UFO era was 1947, right around the time that they were talking about making Israel a home land again. You had the Kenneth Arnold sightings, you had Roswell, you had all of these things, and it’s just gotten worse and worse and worse, or at least bigger and bigger and bigger since then. So yeah, it’s a great deception, and certainly it’ll come in handy for the Antichrist after the Rapture to explain away the disappearance.

Tim Moore: It will come in handy. I think that there are other cults out there that harken to this. It’s the Raelians who claim that we were planted here by alien races. Y ‘all remember famously a group out in California that was led by a former evangelical man and woman who departed from the true faith to embrace this crazy UFO cult and they led their followers to a mass suicide because one of the founders had died and they said oh when one of the comets was coming by and that’s really her spaceship and if we’ll just transition to our spirit form we can join her in space. And so they committed suicide. All these false prophecies, whether it’s the Nxivm, which was nothing more than a cult that was perpetuating sexual trafficking and servitude. People will remember Allison Mack, the actress who got caught up and convicted for being a part of that. Dianetics or Scientology, which Tom Cruz is the great advocate for that, along with other actors in Hollywood.

Nathan Jones: And it’s science fiction, it was written by a science L. Ron Hubbard, a science fiction writer. Their version of going to Heaven is getting into a giant silver plane and flying. I mean, it’s such nonsense, yet so many people believe it. And Leah Remini, of course, coming out of that and having a show about the Scientology’s beliefs. And notice one of the thing about the cults is, they capture the people’s will and hold them hostage. Why do the cults do that?

J.B. Hixson: Yeah, listen, we’ve got a section of “Spirit of the Antichrist” volume two where I interview a guy who knew Ron Hubbard personally, interacted with him and was basically held captive demonically for most of his life. I think started when he was around six or eight and he finally got saved at age 56 and he’s a believer and it’s a fascinating interview. I really encourage folks to read it, but he tells a lot of the stories about how they use control and mind control types of things, psychological operations and things to try to get you to do what they want. But yeah, it’s demonic to the core.

Tim Moore: You know, I think we sometimes would be ill advised to dismiss some of these demonic deceivers, these cult leaders, as being crazy or being uneducated. Some of them are very intelligent. L. Ron Hubbard was actually a very good science fiction writer per se, but his religion is a false religion. So he was able to weave and create this whole system that others were deluded to buy into. You mentioned Christian Science early as a false religion, a cult. I’ve always observed, I love the statement, Christian Scientism is like Grape-Nuts Flakes, there’s no grapes, there’s no nuts. Well, in Christian Science, there’s no Christianity and there’s no science. And that’s just one of all of the various cults. But sometimes these demonic deceptions are infiltrating the church. We touched on that last week. You have a great quote.

Nathan Jones: Or they are the church.

Tim Moore: Well, by the presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, a woman by the name of Elizabeth Eaton who said, “There may be a hell, but I think it’s empty.” She is putting herself over the revealed truth of Scripture and over Jesus Christ who warned about hell. He spoke more about hell than heaven, fellas. And yet this evangelical church bishop denies the existence or the threat of hell. And so these demonic deceptions, let’s move to that, are beginning to perpetuate themselves, not just in our society, but too often in our churches.

Nathan Jones: Well, Tim, it’s interesting, Pope Francis came out and said almost the exact same thing in March that he doesn’t believe there’s anyone in Hell. Now, biblically speaking, we know that they’re in Hades and a holding place waiting for Hell, but his statement really is more about, hey, nobody’s really going to go to Hell. We’ll all be saved. There’s general salvation for everybody against what the Bible teaches.

Tim Moore: In the magazine that is reflecting our topic of today from March and April, or excuse me, from May and June of 2024, I have an article that basically asks, “Is the Pope Catholic?” And my answer in a nutshell is no, because he is not even adhering to Catholic doctrine, whether it’s on homosexual marriage, whether it’s on same sex or gender transitioning. He has departed from even the Catholic faith, which has already departed many times from… biblical Christianity.

J.B. Hixson: Remember, Roman Catholicism has three standards for authority. It’s like a three-legged stool, the church, tradition, I mean the church, the Bible, and the pope. And so the pope can, you know, change things. He can issue by fiat and change, you know, a thousand years of church tradition, which is just what happens when you have a man-made religion that doesn’t follow the Word of God as the only standard for our beliefs.

Tim Moore: Certainly is. So how can we recognize these demonic deceptions? Let’s give some other examples, if we will, of what is happening in our world today. Obviously, this is an election year. We touched earlier, last week on some of the political deceptions that are happening. Obviously, politicians, you can tell when they’re lying, because what? Their lips are moving. Yeah, exactly. And I was one at one time, but I determined never to speak falsehood. Maybe I wasn’t a very successful politician, but how can we discern deception because it’s all around us?

J.B. Hixson: Yeah, I think it begins by understanding that if you just make a guess, chances are it’s going to be wrong. It’s going to be a lie. You start with that premise. In other words, assume it’s probably a lie. I make a comment in “Spirit of the Antichrist” volume one every time newspaper writers and media writers, every time they tap the keys, lies appear on the screen. I mean, that’s pretty much the long and the short of it. I think it goes back to knowing the truth. When you know the truth, you can recognize a falsehood instantly. People that are experts in the gold mining industry, they can spot fool’s gold, Pyrite, instantly. They’re not even close to being led astray by it. But your average, you know, vacationer who pays money to go into one of these things and pan for gold in these creek beds, they see a piece of pyrite and they go, “Look, mom, I found some gold.” Why? Because they don’t know the real deal. So we’ve got to get to know the standard of the Word of God.

Nathan Jones: That’s excellent. It seems like all these false religions are, as the Lord said, it was one of the main signs that Jesus gave as we got closer to His return of proliferation of false prophets and false teachers. But when we get to the Tribulation, we learn about the first half of the Tribulation is under this religion called this Mystery Babylon religion, this huge false religion. Can you tell us a little about that?

J.B. Hixson: Yeah, I believe that Mystery Babylon is going to be, the religious part of it, is going to be a pluralistic religion. In other words, there are a lot of enemies. We’ve talked about the role of Roman Catholicism and how it’s a false religion. No offense to our Catholic people out there, but do the research. Look into what’s really going on at the Vatican and the history of it. People talk a lot about Islam. Islam is certainly no friend of Christianity or the Word of God, but it’s not the ultimate enemy either. You know, for years people thought the Antichrist was going to be the Pope, or now then they thought that Islam was going to be the end times religion. I think none of those are the case. Daniel says the Antichrist is going to deny the gods of his father, so he’s not going to be a follower of any one mainstreamed religion. He’s going to be a pluralist that brings all the religions under one tent and that allows Israel to be able to do their thing, you know, false, unbelieving Israel in the first half of the Tribulation, but then at the midpoint boy, the hammer drops and he says, “Forget it. Now you’ve got to worship me.”

Tim Moore: I think there’s a great demonstration of that trend in our society today. But let me double down on what you just said. We do not cast any one individual into Hell. That’s God who knows whether or not you have faith in His Son, Jesus Christ. So by saying, “Well, I’m a Baptist,” that doesn’t put you in Heaven any more than saying “I’m a Roman Catholic.” The only thing that matters is if you put your trust in Jesus Christ, and not in the doctrines of your religion or even your denomination, do you trust in Christ? Now, obviously, all of the denominations get some things wrong. Dare I say, Nathan and I, we get some things wrong, and we are humble enough, a little bit. Well, ask my wife, she’ll tell you and your wife, too. But the point being, do we get the only thing right that matters? And that’s faith in Christ. But having said that, I think that there’s a great demonstration driving around the roads of America today. Every time I see a bumper sticker that says coexist with all of the different symbols, I realize that that is a person who’s advocating, you know what, no matter what the religion is, they all have a blended degree of truth. And I’m just going to blend, or believe in that blended degree of whatever, and so that kind of attitude will harken to this end times religion that says we’re going to try to homogenize everything and make it into a one world religion.

J.B. Hixson: Yeah, it’s classic pluralism, and you’re right, it’s setting the stage for it, that all religions are equally valid pathways to being made right with our Creator. I remember doing a funeral one time and a friend or relative maybe it was of the deceased came up to me and was commenting about the deceased and they said, “Oh, Bob,” I forget his name, we’ll just call him Bob, he said, “Oh, Bob, you know, he had quite a journey.” He said, “he started out as a Lutheran and then he got married and became a Baptist and later they joined the Presbyterian Church.” And then he said, “So I guess he about got it covered. He’s definitely in”. And I just looked at the man and I said, “Well, you know what, he may be in Heaven, but if he’s in Heaven, it’s not because of any one religion or denomination, it’s because he placed his faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who died and rose again to pay his penalty for sin.”

Nathan Jones: That’s excellent. Well, we’ve been talking a lot about deception and we’ve identified deception. Maybe for those who aren’t Christians and don’t know the truth, maybe we ought to identify the truth. What is the truth of salvation? How does one get to Heaven?

J.B. Hixson: Yeah, the Bible is very clear that everyone is born dead in their trespasses in sin. We all have a problem, we’ve sinned. And that problem, God told Adam and Eve very clearly at the beginning of creation, “Look, in the day you eat of this tree, you’re going to die. You are now separated.” Death means separation, separated from Me. But God took the extraordinary step of then providing a remedy for the predicament that we got ourselves into. People often say, “Well, how can so much suffering and evil and problems in the world, how can that be?” And the answer is this isn’t the world the way God made it. We messed it up. God made it perfect. But He gave us free will, which is part of the image of God in men. He didn’t create a bunch of robots. He gave us free will. We sinned. We have a problem. God provided the solution for that problem. That solution is that He sent His eternal Son and our Savior, Jesus Christ, to the earth. He put on human flesh. He walked, lived a perfect holy, sinless life, walked up to Via Dolorosa to Calvary, died a cruel death on the cross, satisfying the righteous demands of a holy God by paying our penalty for sin. But He didn’t stay dead. He rose again the third day, defeating death, Hell, and the grave. And so He is the only one with the power and authority to give life to all who simply trust in Him and Him alone for it.

Tim Moore: You know, a lot of people will say, whether it’s referring to another grievous sinner or in my case the most grievous sinner I know which is me. Well they don’t deserve salvation and my answer is well I don’t deserve salvation. But brothers the good news is I get saved by the grace of God not because of what I deserve but because the price Christ paid and for the infinite love of God that gives me grace, unmerited favor in spite of what I deserve. All of us deserve Hell, and that is the good news. We don’t go to Hell as we deserve, we get to go to Heaven because of the free gift.

J.B. Hixson: Absolutely, that’s what our ministry is so passionate about, Not By Works, not by works of righteousness. We can’t earn it.

Tim Moore: That’s a great title.

J.B. Hixson: Yeah, we can’t earn it, we can’t perform well enough, we can’t do enough. If we could somehow earn our salvation, then Jesus didn’t have to die on the cross.

Tim Moore: So the problem is, in our world, not only is the sin in the heart of man, but we have a deceiver, the father of lies, who’s constantly trying to lead people astray. And as he recognizes, his time is short, he’s gone into overtime. So behind even the demonic deceptions and behind the stooges who sometimes are conduits of that deception, sometimes very eager and willing participants in the demonic deception, there is a father of lies who is spewing a lie that started right in the Garden to deny the living God, to deny the truth of His Word. And so Satan is redoubling his efforts, as we said.

Nathan Jones: Yeah, because we have to go back to the beginning, right? What does Satan, what did he want? He wanted the worship that was coming to God to come to him. He tried to overthrow God, he got cast out, he and his demons are on earth. Now what do they want? They want the worship of mankind made in the image of God. So it seems like all the deception, I would say seems it is, all the deception in the world can be traced back to Satan’s desire to be worshiped, correct?

J.B. Hixson: Yeah, absolutely. And that’s really the premise of the three “Spirit of the Antichrist” books, the “Spirit of the Antichrist,” and the “Spirit of the False Prophet,” is that there is a conspiracy. It started in Heaven when Satan took one third of the angels and tried to rebel, and it’s continuing on in earth with Satan, these fallen angels as well as human coconspirators all working together. Psalm 2 talks about this conspiracy to try to break the cords of God’s control. God’s in control, they want to be in control, and they’re doing everything they can to usher in that one world system, which as we know, they will succeed for one seven year period, but it will not end well when Christ comes back triumphant.

Tim Moore: You make a great point in your “Spirit of the Antichrist” book, the volume one, the blue book, if you will, or the gray book, and you said if the Lord tarries in his return. And we believe he’s coming soon, but if he tarries, we are on a trajectory. There’s a title of our book, Nathan, in America to face horrifying persecution, the likes of which we have never seen in this country and a wise Christian will prepare for what lies ahead. Part of our point today, folks, is to help you prepare your heart for what lies ahead so that you will not be deceived and so that you will not be despairing even as persecution rises. So really, a go to verse that we have spoken of before is where John in 1 John chapter 4 says, “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. By this you know the spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God; and every Spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; and this is the spirit of the antichrist of which you have heard that it is coming and now it is already in the world.” So gentlemen, we confess gladly with great rejoicing that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of living God and He is indeed coming soon. Any last words?

J.B. Hixson: No, amen. You couldn’t have said it better. That’s a great way to end.

Tim Moore: Well, Nathan.

Nathan Jones: Amen too, man. You said it all.

Tim Moore: All right. Well, we may not have said it all in this short program, but we thank you for joining us today, and we’ll have a word to close out here in just a moment.

Closing

Tim Moore: We were grateful that J .B. Hixson was able to join us for two episodes in our False Prophets, Cults, and Demonic Deception series. J .B. has written extensively on the rising tide of false prophets and demonic deceptions infecting our society.

Nathan Jones: Describing the satanic source of all these deceptions, J .B. frequently speaks of the Luciferian conspiracy. Lucifer is simply another name for Satan. In Latin it means morning star, the planet Venus, or the adjective light-bringer. All of those names reflect the biblical teaching that Lucifer was a beautiful angel. A morning star or son of the dawn, who was cut down to earth because a swelling pride caused him to covet God’s position and role. Isaiah 14:12-15 has traditionally been interpreted to support that occurrence, although some see Isaiah text as merely referring to a Babylonian king.

Tim Moore: Paul also warned us to be wary of false prophets and deceitful workers. He said such men disguise themselves and no wonder for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. All of this affirms Jesus’ admonition we shared at the beginning of this series. See to it that no one misleads you. Our society is confused about so many things. Willful rebellion against the Lord is now manifest in our giving over to lust and impurity, to degrading passions, and finally to depraved minds. Consider the mindless mayhem that exploded on America’s so-called elite university campuses this spring. Supposedly well-educated young people chanting support for terrorism while often admitting that they don’t even know where Palestine is on a map and all of it stoked by a grand satanic deception.

Nathan Jones: We realize that we’ve focused on false profits and demonic deception these past two episodes, but next week we’re going to be joined by another special guest who is a highly respected expert on the cults.

Tim Moore: That’s right. James Walker of Watchman Fellowship will be with us. You won’t want to miss that episode when we’ll peel back some of the mystery on various cults raging in the world right now and give some timely suggestions to anybody who has a loved one being lured into a cult. While Lamb & Lion Ministries’ primary mission is proclaiming the soon return of Jesus Christ, for 44 years we’ve sounded the alarm on the rising tide of deception that is leading so many people astray. We have a wealth of resources for anyone who would like to learn more about the false prophets, cults and demonic deceptions multiplying all around us.

Nathan Jones: Whether you just want to guard yourself against deception or whether you want to warn your own friends and family and speak truth into the lives of people you love, please visit our website and consider ordering bundle number 904. While supplies last and at the special price of $30, that includes shipping and handling, it contains Warren Smith’s insightful book, “The Titanic in Today’s Church,” along with four classic Lamb and Lion DVDs. The New Age Movement with David Reagan and Warren Smith. World Religions and The Dangers of the Cults with Dr. Reagan and Ron Carlson. And Catholicism versus Evangelical Christianity with David Reagan and Mike Gendron.

Tim Moore: The May/June edition of our Lamplighter magazine also focused on the diabolical scheme of the devil to condemn people to eternal darkness. You can receive the electronic version of our magazine for free by visiting our website, or you can order the print edition for only $25. Order soon and while copies last, we’ll be sure to send you the May/June edition. Join us again next week for another episode of Christ in Prophecy. Until then do not be misled, but keep watching for our blessed hope, Jesus Christ. Godspeed.

End of Program