I want to study with you this morning a subject that has been one of the great dangers and great problems for Gods people ever since sin entered the world. When Adam was created, he was not created to be a solitary creature, he was created to be a social creature. He was to gain fellowship and happiness in the association of other human beings. It was through an appeal to his social nature that the devil was able to capture Adam. Eve was deceived, the Scriptures are very clear about that, but Adam was not deceived. Adam deliberately, willfully sinned because he was afraid that if he did not, he would lose Eve.

Ever since that time, the devil has used social influence to cause the ruin of countless billions. This is true for adults, but it is even more true for young people. The devil uses social influence to control masses of people. Something that you would never do on your own, if everyone around you is doing it, you will do it. Through this the devil is able to get things introduced into society that actually only a few people are doing. If it is noised about enough in the news, other people start doing it and it soon becomes pervasive.

This is one of the most dangerous factors operating in Seventh-day Adventist academies. There you have large groups of young people who are still in the formative stage of character development, and they can easily be influenced by peer-group pressure.

There are many examples in the Bible about how this works. One right in the book of Genesis is the story of Lot. Lot and his family went down and pitched their tent toward Sodom. Everyone needs some social outlet. Everyone needs some friends. Everybody needs some association. But every association, every friendship that you form has an affect on your character development and you also affect the others in that association. So in the writings of Ellen White as in the Bible, you see a great deal of evidence, a great deal of counsel given in regard to our associations and the choice of associations. This, of course, for Christian parents is one of their greatest concerns.

If you have your Bible, open it to Proverbs 13. Read here about the affect of associations on people. Now this is true for young people and it is true even for adults. This is what it says in Proverbs 13:20, "He who walks with wise men will be wise. But the companion of fools will be destroyed." So, our associations have a great affect upon us and upon our character development.

It is absolutely necessary for us to exercise judgment and the power of choice in regard to our associations. The Bible gives examples of people who in very undesirable situations were still able to develop a Christian character. Because of the nature of the problems that historic Adventist young people are dealing with today, where they seem to be all alone, it is helpful and even necessary for us to study these Bible examples. We need to see what they did to develop a Christian character in the middle of very undesirable situations.

We are not going to look in detail at any one of them, but I will mention several that you might like to study on your own. Try to find out what happened in their lives. What was it in their lives that enabled them to remain faithful to God even when they were in very undesirable circumstances.

One of the first examples that you will see in the Bible is the man Enoch. He was the seventh from Adam. Now, in Enochs day, the world was already very, very wicked. Ellen White is very clear that Enoch had to stand alone. The way she states it you cannot help but wonder if he was alone even in his family.

Enoch had a wife and he had both sons and daughters. So he was a husband and a father, he was also a citizen who had responsibilities to the society in which he lived and he fulfilled all these responsibilities. He was a friend, a citizen, a husband and a father. Yet he had to stand alone. The Bible says he walked with God. In the middle of all his activities and his associations with ungodly people, he was walking with God. Ellen White describes what that means. It says that while he was down here in the world, by faith he dwelt in the realms of light. He also found that he could not remain around ungodly people all the time. Enoch found it necessary to withdraw from society. At stated periods he would withdraw himself from society because he had to spend time alone with God.

We find several examples of this principle in the book of Genesis. Another man was Jacob. Jacob had been taught by his father Isaac and his grandfather Abraham that he was to be the progenitor of the Messiah, but there was no one for him to marry. So he was in a predicament. But Jacob lived in the midst of idolaters. He did not have good associations. Ellen White, in talking about Jacob, makes this statement regarding the contrast between Jacobs character and Esaus character. She states that Esau lived for the present, but Jacob lived for the future.(See Patriarchs and Prophets, 177.)

That is something that is valuable for us to think about, too. If you are living just for the present, you are probably not going to make it. God has given you the capability in your mind to think through both the meaning of the past and of the future so you can decide what is worth living for.

Let me tell you, there is not anything in the present world that is worth much. This world is going down to destruction, anarchy, chaos and ruin, very rapidly. But there is another world coming that is worth living for. That is the world that Jacob lived for and that enabled him to remain stable and not marry heathen wives like Esau did.

Another example in Genesis is Joseph who at seventeen years of age was sold as a slave and taken down to Egypt. He had no friends or associations of like faith--none whatsoever. He had to stand alone. Ellen White said that Joseph made a decision on the way down to Egypt. We must make the same kind of decision if we are going to make it to the end.

Joseph was on a camel on his way to Egypt. In the distance he could see his fathers tents. He knew in his heart that he would never see those tents again. He knew too, that to be a slave was a fate worse than death. A slave had no rights. Right there, Joseph made a decision. He knew his fathers God. He knew how to pray and he decided that he was going to be faithful to God no matter what happened.

Joseph was the kind of person, that if he was the only person in the world who was faithful to God and there was nobody else, he would remain faithful. Everybody in the church had forsaken him. It was the people of the church, the elders of the church, who sold him as a slave! Talk about being betrayed! He was disappointed by Gods chosen people. But Joseph decided that no matter what happened, he was going to be faithful to God.

Friends, we are going to have to make that decision, too. Before it is over it is going to look like we are the only ones left. Think about this example. If you take the number one hundred and forty-four thousand and distribute it evenly around the world, with a population of about five and a half billion, how many would their be in your city or county? I figured it out for Wichita and it would be less than twenty! For the whole state of Kansas, it would be less than fifty. If you took fifty people and scattered them over the state of Kansas, how many would that be? You would be all alone. It is going to look like you are all alone and there is no hope left. If there is nobody else standing faithful to the truth before it is over, if you are going to make it to the end when Jesus comes, my young friend, you are going to have to make a decision. You need to decide that if every other Seventh-day Adventist young person does not make it, that you are going to be faithful to God anyway. You are going to have to make that decision.

That is the decision that Joseph made. When you decide that you are going to be faithful to the Lord no matter what and you make it a covenant with Him, I want to tell you, friend, we serve a God that can keep you in any situation in which you find yourself.

Then there was the man Moses. Moses was taken when he was twelve years of age. He was taken to the idolatrous palace, the headquarters of the nation of Egypt. Moses, at twelve years of age, had made the decision that he was going to serve the God of heaven and be faithful to Him. He refused to worship idols or to get involved with the Egyptians in their religion. And the Lord preserved him.

Later on there was the man David. David had a very interesting history in this regard, also. David was the youngest person in his family and was apparently despised by his older brothers, as you can read when he went down to the camp. But that was just the beginning of his troubles.

King Saul eventually aroused the whole nation against David and he had to flee as a fugitive. For several years, David fled as a fugitive from one place to another and Gods professed people were after him to kill him. Remember, one time David asked the Lord, "Will the people in this city turn me over to Saul?" The Lord said, "Yes, they will." So David had to keep fleeing. How do you sustain yourself and keep going when it seems that everybody has forsaken you? By the way, David was not completely alone. It says that there were four hundred men with him. Do you know who those people were? The Bible says there was everybody who was in debt and everybody who was in trouble. He had to organize those people.

Then there was Daniel and his three friends in Babylon. Another situation where there were four people who made the decision. That was four people out of however many hundreds of thousands of Jewish young men were there. There were only four who proved true.

So, my young friend, do not think that the situation you are in is unique? Do not think that this is something that has happened to you alone? The Bible is full of accounts of other young people who were in the very same situation and they decided to be faithful and to be true to the Lord. If you go all the way with God, God will go all the way with you and keep you and sustain you.

I want to study with you, however, this morning about the great majority. Sometimes Gods people think that they are all alone. Other people are not in our situation. They have all this association, they have all this love that we do not have. The majority has lots of social life. They go to big churches, that claim to be Christian and before it is all over, almost the whole world is going to claim to belong to Christ and to worship Christ.

What is going to happen to the great majority? Instead of thinking about our own life and how we have to stand all alone, sometimes we need to think about the great majority and what is going to happen to them. What is going to happen to most Christians? What is going to happen to the vast majority of Seventh-day Adventist young people?

Here is what is going to happen to the vast majority of Seventh-day Adventist young people. Turn in your Bible and let us read several texts. First of all, from Matthew 24:30. It says, "Then the sign of the Son of man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory." Jesus says that when He comes again, all the tribes of the earth are going to mourn. Now, why are all the tribes of the earth going to mourn when Jesus comes? Do we not want Jesus to come? Should that not be the happiest event of our life? If that is the case, then why are people going to mourn when Jesus comes? The saints are not going to mourn when Jesus comes. Let us read that in the Bible. Look in II Thessalonians 1:10. It says, "When He comes, in that Day to be glorified in His saints and to be admired among all those who believe, because our testimony among you was believed." So for the saints it is going to be the happiest, most exciting day of their lives.

But for the vast majority it is going to be a time of mourning. Why are they going to be mourning so much? The answer, of course, is that they are not ready. Let us look at one more text on this in Revelation 1:7, it says, "Behold, He is coming with clouds, and every eye will see Him, even they who pierced Him. And all the tribes of the earth will mourn because of Him." There you have it again. When Jesus comes everybody in the world is going to mourn. Why? Because they are not ready. Why will they not be ready? What is the problem? The problem is that in the last days almost the whole world is going to be deceived by antichrist. This principle of influence by association is going to operate and deceive almost the entire world. The only people who will not be deceived are people who, like Joseph and Daniel, have decided to be faithful to the Lord and follow Him, no matter what happens.

How are they going to be deceived by antichrist? Let us look at a few texts in the book of Revelation, which describe very graphically how the whole world is going to be deceived just before Jesus comes. Look first at Revelation 12:9. It says here: "The great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world."

Look at Revelation 13:8. It says, "All who dwell on the earth will worship him, whose names have not been written in the Book of Life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." Look at Revelation 16:13, 14: "And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs coming out of the mouth of the dragon, out of the mouth of the beast and out of the mouth of the false prophet. For they are spirits of demons, performing signs which go out to the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty." Notice, the whole world is going to be involved. They are all going to be deceived.

Revelation 18:23, 24 says, "The light of a lamp shall not shine in you anymore, and the voice of bridegroom and bride shall not be heard in you anymore. [Remember, brides and bridegrooms get married in the church.] For your merchants were the great men of the earth. For by your sorcery all the nations were deceived. And in her was found the blood of prophets and saints, and of all who were slain on the earth." So the whole world is going to be deceived. And if you are looking around at what other people are doing, you are going to be deceived. Everyone who simply looks around, and watches and sees what other people are doing, are all going to be deceived. (This is just common for human beings to do.) The only people who will not be deceived are those who study Gods Word, follow it and stand all alone. Ellen White says that the only ones who will stand through the last great conflict are those whose minds are fortified with the truths of the Bible.

When the wicked come to the end, look at what they will do: "And the kings of the earth, and the great men, the rich men, the commanders, the mighty men, every slave and every free man, hid themselves in the caves and in the rocks and the mountains, and said to the mountains and rocks, 'Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! For the great day of His wrath has come and who is able to stand. "Revelation 6:15-17.

How does the devil succeed in deceiving the whole world? If you are a student of Bible prophecy, you could see how everything is in place right now for the devil to deceive the entire world.

Look in II Corinthians 11:13-15. It says, "For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ. And no wonder! For Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also transform themselves into ministers of righteousness, whose end will be according to their works."

Notice that this passage of Scripture proves conclusively that one of the principal ways that the devil deceives people is through the medium of religion. The devil does not come to your house and knock on the door and say to you, "Hello, I am the devil and I have come to deceive you." That will never happen. You would not be deceived. The devil comes as an angel of light and his ministers come as ministers of righteousness. The devil is going to deceive the world through religion in the last days. Now there are two main points on which the devil will deceive the world. One we will just mention in passing. If you do not have a copy of the recently published book by Danny Vierra, called Is the Virgin Mary Dead or Alive, you should get a copy and read it.

I cannot believe the gullibility of people when they hear reports of apparitions of the Virgin Mary. A few years ago there was somebody in Texas or New Mexico who thought they saw a glow in the shape of the Virgin Mary coming out of a woodpile. People got on airplanes all over the United States and flew out there to see if they could see it, too. The gullibility of our generation is beyond belief!

You need to know what the Bible teaches about the state of the dead and what happens to a person when he dies. You need to be able to explain it to anybody who asks. You need to be able to show according to the Bible why the Virgin Mary is not around. Anyone claiming to be the Virgin Mary is a hoax and a fraud.

Let me explain to you how important it is to get straight and understand this point. On his very garments and vestments, Pope Paul John II has inscribed in Latin the words, "Mary, I am all yours." Well, if he is all hers, who does he belong to really, because Mary is in the grave? Who is it who is masquerading as the Virgin Mary? It is some evil spirit When you understand the truth about the situation of the Virgin Mary, you are going to understand the truth about who the Pope is, who he stands for and who is directing his movements.

Understanding who the Virgin Mary is proves conclusively that the Pope is the human representation of the devil himself. He is the representative of the devil and his position on the Virgin Mary proves it. I want to tell you, friends, hundreds of millions of people are being deceived by this. Very soon, it will not be just the Virgin Mary they are going to be worshipping. The apostles are going to come apparently. People are going to think that they are hearing Peter, Paul and the other apostles. They are going to be taught things that are contrary to Gods Word by people who claim to be the same people who wrote Gods Word. It is a great deception. All this is building up to one great climax. The climax will be when the devil himself will impersonate Jesus Christ. He will impersonate the archangel. Remember, Paul says he will transform himself into an angel of light. When that happens, almost the whole world is going to bow down. It is going to be just like it was on the plain of Dura.

I want to tell you the truth, friend. I am not saying this as a prophet, but I have read history. If I understand anything about history at all, I can tell you for sure that it will happen. Probably almost every single person here in this room will have very close friends and relatives that are going to bow down and worship him.

Unless your faith is riveted on Gods Word, unless you have decided, like Joseph, to be faithful to God even if you are the only one in your family or the only one in the world to still be faithful, you will be deceived too.

I tell people sometimes, if you were the only one in the whole world who knew that the seventh day is the Sabbath, it would still be the day to keep because that is what God said. In fact, if nobody in the whole world knew that the seventh day was the Sabbath, it would still be the right day to keep holy.

You all know the story of Galileo. Galileo was the inventor, in modern times at least, of the refractory telescope. Now Sir Isaac Newton later invented the type of telescope that we use most often today--the reflecting telescope that is used with mirrors. A refractory telescope, was a telescope that instead of using mirrors used lenses. They took that telescope and went into high buildings, and what they could see was amazing. You could look twenty miles away and see people walking. It was really an invention. So, of course, they took that telescope and pointed it up to the sky and they started looking at the heavenly bodies. They started writing down their observations of what they were seeing in the sky. They would go from night to night and watch the movement of the different heavenly bodies. They would look through the telescope and mark down the relative positions.

After Galileo had been doing this for a while, he came to a conclusion. He said, "The earth goes around the sun." Now this was a revolutionary deduction because apparently there was not another single person in the whole world at that time that believed that. Everybody had been taught ever since the time of Aristotle, that the earth is the center of the universe, and the sun and all the heavenly bodies go around the earth. We were the center of the whole universe. Galileo said, "No, that is not the way it is. The earth goes around the sun.

The priests and the theologians of the Catholic Church took him to a church trial. They said, "You are a heretic. We can prove from the Bible that you are a heretic!" I will read the text that they used. Turn in your Bibles to Ecclesiastes 1:4, 5. "One generation passes away, and another generation comes; but the earth abides forever. The sun also rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it arose." So they said, We know from this text that the earth is the center of the universe. The sun comes up and goes down. The earth does not go around, the sun goes around the earth. We know that you are a heretic from the Bible. So, if you do not retract and come into harmony with the Bible, we are going to burn you at the stake." So Galileo retracted.

Now, as soon as he recanted, then the sun went around the earth again, right? Is that the way it was? Do you see the truth is the truth whether anybody believes it or not. The truth is never dependent on numbers. Never, ever! The truth, whether it is spiritual truth or scientific truth, the truth is still the truth, and it does not depend on who believes it. Always remember that.

If you are the only one who knows the truth in your family or where you go to church or in your town, your city, your state or your country, if you are the only on who knows the truth, it is still the truth! If we are going to make it to the end, we must read our Bibles and make the same decisions that Joseph made, that Daniel made that Moses made.

The same decision that Timothy made. You know in the early Christian church they were in some respects in situations quite similar to historic Adventist young people today. You see, when the Christian church started, there would be little pockets of people in various parts of the Roman Empire. There would be little groups of people who accepted the Christian faith and all around them, all the people around them were pagans.

Paganism affected every area of human life. So, I want to tell you, when you became a Christian, every aspect of your life changed. The Christian young people in those days had to stand alone. You see, friend, if you are enduring loneliness now, but you are faithful until Jesus comes, you are going to have a wonderful association with people who have had to stand alone in the warfare all their lives down here in this world. Those people are all going to be in heaven and it is going to be a wonderful association you will have with them.

The time is coming very soon, when Jesus is going to say to you before He opens the gates to the Holy City, "Your warfare is ended." And you will never have another fight again. You will never have to deal with loneliness or stand all alone again, because you will be with all the saved forever.

The point is, in order to have that experience forever, you have to get there. And to get there you have to be willing to stand alone. That is what Gods people have had to do in all ages. You have to know that the truth is the truth whether anybody around you believes it or not. That is what Daniel had to do. That is what the three Hebrew worthies had to do. That is what Moses had to do and that is what Joseph had to do. That is what Enoch had to do. That is what Timothy had to do.

Now one point we have already studied on which the devil would deceive the world is this idea of the immortality of the soul. Then that prepares you to accept the deceptions in regard to the Virgin Mary appearing, the Apostles appearing and eventually that will prepare the world for the greatest deception of all, when the antichrist himself will appear. Now the devil is the true antichrist. Just as Christ has representatives in this world, the devil has representatives in this world and he has human antichrists. The Bible says in I John 2 that there are many antichrists, but the devil himself is the chief antichrist. He is going to appear as Christ. Antichrist is made up of two words in the Greek: Christos, which is Christ and anti. The primitive meaning of the Greek word anti is somebody who stands in the place of somebody else.

Just for your interest, let me tell you what the Latin word is, which is the equivalent of the Greek anti. Translated from Greek into Latin, the Latin word is "vicar." I have told people many times that I do not want ever to call me a vicar. In the Church of England, they call their pastors vicars. This is an amazing thing to me. If you call yourself the vicar of Christ, you are calling yourself the antichrist.

I have never figured it out. That is so astonishing to me that the Pope would take as his official title the name of antichrist! The world never seems to figure that out. If you call yourself the Vicar of Christ, you are calling yourself the antichrist. Now, nobody can take the place of Christ. So, if you take the place of Christ, you are against Christ. That is what most people think the word antichrist means.

The common belief is that the antichrist is some Jewish dictator who is an atheist over there in Jerusalem at the end of time. It will be very interesting to see how all that works out, because as you know, the papacy has been trying to get control of Jerusalem for about a thousand years or more. The Lord has not let them do it yet, but whether He will let them do it right at the end, I do not know.

The whole world is going to worship the antichrist. They are going to begin by worshipping a human antichrist, and end up worshipping the real antichrist, the devil himself, as he will appears as Christ. I would have no doubt that the devil will honor his personal representative. When the devil appears and masquerades as Christ, he will have then played his trump card. He will teach the people to break the law of God because he knows that if you break the law of God, you will lose your soul.

The devils business today and his business from now on until the end of the world is to figure out ways to teach people--especially Gods professed people-- that it is all right to break the law of God. That is near the top of the devils agenda. That is the point on which the whole world will be deceived. The idea that you can break the law of God and still be saved.

When I talk to a Roman Catholics and I go over this with them, I have never had a Roman Catholic who did not understand what I am talking about. Never. This is the principal part of their religion, and it has been for thousands of years. The idea is simply this: You sin, and you cannot quit sinning. (In fact, I have had Seventh-day Adventist audiences challenge me as to whether you could quit sinning or not.) That is what the Roman Catholics believe. You cannot quit sinning. So because you are going to go on and sin for the rest of your life, you have to go to confession--at least every week-- and keep your sins confessed. If you keep your sins confessed, you are going to be saved. That is what they believe. Martin Luther refused to give them absolution because there was no repentance and no turning away from sin. The Protestant Reformers refused all of those teachings. They taught that you needed to live a godly life, and you could not go on and sin and go to confession, and sin and go to confession.

In the Mafia (most of the people in the Mafia are Roman Catholics) there are people who are hit men. They go and kill people, but they think that they are going to go to heaven because they go to confession. What a delusion!

Nothing like that could ever get into Adventism could it? Well, friend, it is here and it has been here for several years. It is called the New Theology. And what is the essence of the New Theology? Desmond Ford expressed it as good as anybody. When he was questioned about it, he acknowledged that he did not believe that you could keep the law of God perfectly. Interesting! God gave a law and you cannot keep it. It is so hard to keep that you can approach keeping it but you cannot quite make it. Well, friends, that is the same as the Roman Catholic people have believed for thousands of years. That is what we were meeting when I was young. We used to meet that in the other Protestant Churches. Protestant ministers used to tell the people, "Well, you cannot really keep the law anyway, so dont worry about the Sabbath." And now we have it in the Adventist Church.

It is so pervasive that it has affected even historic Adventist young people. They do not realize that their associations affect them. It is all around. We are living in a sea of immorality. It is pervasive. Remember that we influence each other because we are social creatures. In the end time as we influence each other, the Bible predicts that almost the whole world is going to be destroyed.

People influence each other. People say that everybody is doing it. When I was a boy in the United States, if people decided to live together without marriage, they did not want anybody to know. Why? Because everybody knew that it was wrong, and they just felt guilty.

But we have gotten to such a point today that people openly live together and they do not think anything about it.

How did that happen? It happened through what we were talking about at the first, through this principle of association and being influenced by associations. Things that nobody would have even thought of doing, when I was a boy, are done today and nobody thinks anything about it.

If you want to study something interesting in regard to how we influence each other, just study what has happened in the womens bathing suit industry in the last one hundred and fifty years. I have pictures of womens bathing suits from back in the 1 860s on up toward the 1930s. You do not even want to look at them after that. They get too immoral. Years ago, no self-respecting woman would ever, ever appear in a swimming pool or anyplace in the kind of attire they do now. Why? They would be embarrassed. Why are they not embarrassed now? Because of this principle of social influence. If everybody is doing it, it must be all right.

I have often thought to myself, how far can it go? Well, let me tell you how far it can go. You can go to a nudist colony and there will be men and woman absolutely naked walking around in public. Why? Because, if you get together and do it as a group, everyone influences everyone else. That which you would be absolutely embarrassed to do on your own, you will do when everybody around you is doing it. It is the principle of social influence. The devil uses this all the time to drag people down one step at a time, lower, lower and lower.

That is what has happened in Adventist Academies and. It did not happen over night. It has been a process, one step at a time. Apostasy, generally, is not something where you fall off a precipice. It is more like walking down a thousand steps.

I remember when I was in college, I had an uncle who was living in Southern California. In 1963, at Christmas time, we went down there. One day my uncle and I were taking a walk, and he told me something that was so shocking I had never thought of anything so awful. He had been studying Bible prophecy, and he said to me, "Before the Lord comes, immorality is going to get so bad, that in the dormitories of the colleges and schools, you are going to have men and women living in the same quarters." I thought, "What! That could NEVER happen!" I could not fathom anything so wicked as a dormitory where men and women lived in the same building, sharing the same restrooms, the same rooms, the same everything. I could not comprehend such a thing. But he said, "You just wait and see. That is where we are headed in this society and it is going to happen." Well, it happened sooner than I thought.

I remember when I was a teacher in Southwestern Adventist College, a Seventh-day Adventist minister was sitting with me at a banquet at the College. This man had a son who was taking law, at a state university in Texas. He told me that his son was living in the living quarters provided by the university, and he said that both men and women lived in these dormitories. There they shared a bathroom with the next room, and in the next room, to this mans son, there were women. He said, "If my son goes to the bathroom, he hangs his necktie on the outside or something to keep them from coming in right then." I thought, "How awful. What has happened to our so city?" What has happened to our society, friends, is that we are going pell-mell, as fast as we can, toward Sodom and Gomorrah. We are approaching the time very rapidly when the judgments of God are going to come on all the nations of the world for their iniquity.

When you look at the prophecies in the book of Revelation, it talks about the whole world being destroyed, that is not some figure of speech. You do not dare, my young friends, to just look around and see what other people are doing.

When my son was in grade school in the Keene Seventh-day Adventist Elementary School, he was telling me about something that was going on. I told him that he could not do it (whatever it was). He said to me, "Dad, everybody is doing it". So I asked him this question, "Well, if everybody burns up someday, do you want to burn up with everybody?"

I want to tell you, friends, you cannot look at what everybody is doing because all those who are doing those things are going to burn up if they do not repent. God has not changed. His law has not changed. The Bible has not changed. The people who are not in harmony with Gods law are going to burn up, and this is the great deception in the last days. It is affecting a lot of our young people and a lot of old people, too.

It is the idea that you cannot keep Gods law perfectly. So, if you just keep your sins confessed, then you will be saved. Now, I am going to read you some texts in the Bible that show very clearly that this will be the deception in the last days.

First of all, let us read a text where Jesus summarizes what we have been talking about. Look at what it says in Matthew 24:12, 13. "And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold." You see, we have a tendency to look around at what everybody is doing. Everybody, almost, is lawless today. If you just look at what everybody is doing, you are going to go down and lose your soul. Jesus said, "Because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. But he who endures to the end shall be saved."

Turn back to Matthew 7:21-23. Now this is a description of what is going to happen in the last days. Jesus is going to come, and then it says, "Not every one who says to me, 'Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, Cast out demons in Your name and done many wonders in Your name? And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you. Depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.

Notice their problem. These are Christians, because they call Jesus, Lord. Many of them will be Seventh-day Adventists. Ellen White said in Testimonies, vol. 1, 608, "In the last vision given me, I was shown the startling fact that but a small portion of those who now profess the (Seventh-day Adventist faith) truth will be sanctified by it and be saved."

Do not look, my young friend, at what other Seventh-day Adventist young people are doing. If it is contrary to Gods law, they are going to burn up--no matter what they call themselves--unless they repent. The idea that you can break Gods law, just keep your sins confessed, and be saved, is a lie! It is the great lie for the last generation. It is the great deception of antichrist.

A principal identifying mark of Gods people in the last days all through the book of Revelation is that they keep the commandments. Oh, friend, do not be deceived because of what is going on in the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Do not be deceived because of what is going on in the world. The Bible still says the same thing. It is going to look like you are all alone, like Moses or Daniel or Enoch or Joseph. That is what it is going to look like, but they were faithful. If you will put your trust in Jesus, He will help you to be faithful even if there is nobody else around you who is faithful to the truth.

Look at what it says in Revelation 12:17. "And the dragon was enraged, with the woman and he went to make war with the rest of her offspring, who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ." The woman, of course, represents the church, Gods last day people. The devil is enraged with the people who keep Gods commandments. By the way, it was the study of Revelation 12 that first opened my eyes to who and what the church is. I was like everybody else. I used to drive past 2520 South Downey Street in Denver, and look at the Conference Office and I thought to myself, "That is the Church." A few years later when I was studying Revelation 12, I found out that that was not the church. Revelation 12 teaches you unequivocally who the church is and who it is not. But that is not our subject.

Look in Revelation 14:12. This is the last verse of the Three Angels Messages. The Three Angels Messages start in verse 6 and goes through verse 12. It says, "Here is the patience of the saints; here are those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus." God is going to have a people in the last days, friends, who actually do keep His commandments and, praise the Lord, there are going to be some young people among this group.

Every one of you can be among this group. But it is up to you. You are going to have to be willing to face the opposition and go against the current and do what is right, even if there is nobody around who is doing it. That is the decision that we all have to make.

When we talk to people in our evangelistic meetings and our prophecy seminars, that is the decision they have to make. Am I going to be faithful to the truth? Whether my husband or wife does? Whether my parents do? That is the decision they must make.

Ministers must make the same decision. My brother, Marshall, said to me onetime, "You know, when we have evangelistic meetings, we expect people to risk losing their jobs, their family or anything to be faithful to the truth. So we have to be faithful to the truth, whether we lose our jobs as ministers, too." That is the truth.

You have to decide if you are going to be faithful to the truth, no mailer what, even if you do not know if anybody is going to stand with you. You are going to be faithful anyway because that is what God said. This is so important that it is repeated again right in the last chapter of the Bible. It says in Revelation 22:14, "Blessed are those who do His commandments, that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter through the gates into the city."

The antichrist will deceive the whole world on the point that you can break Gods law and still be saved. That is the faith of the devil described in James 2 where James said that the devils believe and tremble. They believe but they do not obey. Belief is not enough if you do not obey.

Friend, it is time today for each one of us to put on our soldierly qualities as Ellen White describes it and decide that we are going to be faithful to God no matter what. In just a little while, if you are faithful, the battle is going to be over and you will never have to deal with loneliness again. You will never have to deal with standing alone again, because all the people in all ages that have been faithful are going to be gathered together. Talk about social development and opportunity! We do not have any idea of what real social life is in this world. In heaven we are going to have the same social life the angels have. We will associate with both the redeemed and with angels and unfallen beings from other worlds. We will associate with them all.

In fact, I want to close with this one. I have thought about this many times. This is something you want to think about if you are lonely and you wish you had more friends because you are having to stand all alone for the truth where you are. Do you know that when you are saved the time will come when you will be a very close intimate friend of every person who has ever lived in this world? Do you know when that time will come? It will probably take billions of years for that to happen, but it will not matter because you will have all that time. The time will come when you will be a close, intimate friend of every other person in this world who has character. The very kind of people you will like to be around you, are going to be around forever.

I want to tell you, it is worth getting ready for. It is worth being faithful for. It is worth standing alone for. It is worth everything because we cannot comprehend the wonderful family life and the wonderful social life that there is going to be in heaven. It is going to be beyond anything that you ever heard or dreamed of in this world.

And do you know what else? The time is coming when every single person who has ever lived in this world is going to long for something more than they have ever wanted anything in their whole life. Do you know what they are going to want? Ellen White tells us that even the wicked will have a craving for eternal life and salvation in that day that they cannot even express--but it is too late. Everybody is going to want it, but only the saved are going to have it. Are you going to have it? Well, it depends on the decisions that you make day by day now.

There is a terrible misconception in the Christian world, even in the Protestant world, today. People think of salvation as something that you just sort of make a decision sometime, choose to accept Christ as your Saviour and that is what salvation is about. That is a deception. Salvation is something that is worked out in your life day by day. It is not where you made a decision one time in your life, accept Jesus as your Saviour from sin and that is all there is to it. That is important, but that is not all there is to it. Salvation is a process that the Lord works out in your life day by day. It is the result of overcoming temptations, being faithful to the truth of Gods law in times of test, when other people around you do not. Learning how to control your thoughts through the power of the Holy Spirit. Learning how to control your appetite and passions through the power of the Holy Spirit. Learning how to control the tongue through the power of the Holy Spirit so that we live and act like Christ would live and act in our place. That is what Salvation is about. It is not some magical thing that happens at some point in your life. It is a process that is worked out through the power of the Holy Spirit as you live.

I want to tell you, friend, I want that process to be completely worked out in my life. I do not claim to be saved. I could never claim to be saved in this world. The apostle Paul said in Philippians 3, "I have not attained yet." Well, if the apostle Paul had not attained yet how could I ever claim to have attained? But I want to be faithful. I want His process to be worked out in my life. How about you? Do you want the Lord through the power of the Holy Spirit to work out this process of salvation in your life? Do you want to make a commitment? Just say, "Lord, I want the process of salvation to be worked out in my heart and my life."

I am so happy that God does not quit when we make mistakes. God does not quit because we have character defects. He says, "Do you want to be perfect? Look to Me. I will work in you." The Holy Spirit will work in your heart. God allows different tests and trials to come to us day by day as part of that process so that the rough edges can come off of our characters. If you want to submit to that, one of these days, when the baffle is over, you can be part of that eternal kingdom and be with the others who have gone through that process.