Derek Prince - Absolute Truths of Our Faith Are Under Attack
This is an excerpt from: True and False Christ - Part 2
Let's go on. I didn't ever get to where I was getting to! Matthew 24:23-24. My theme is this: For false... 'Then if anyone says to you, 'Look, here is the Messiah, or there,' do not believe it. For false messiahs and false prophets will arise and show great signs and wonders, so as to deceive, if possible, even the elect.' So, the forces of deception are going to be tremendously strong. So strong that if it were possible even God's chosen ones would be deceived. Thank God it isn't possible. But brothers and sisters, we really have to take seriously the threat of deception. We have to walk very carefully, very humbly.
Satan has one great lever which he uses to introduce deception. Do you know what it is? Pride, that's right. I don't believe any deception ever comes to Christians except through pride in some form or another. God says in Zechariah 9:13 that He will raise up the sons of Zion against the sons of Greece. What does Greece stand for in the world of thought? Philosophy, that's right. I was a student of Greek philosophy for years, about seven years. I'm very familiar with that field. See, today there is a major movement of thought which has been potentially there for many centuries which is a religion but not a religion. And I believe it is Satan's great tool of deception and I believe it's also the way he'll prepare for the antichrist.
How many of you know what I have in mind in one word? Humanism, that's right. You see, humanism is the deification of man. It's man making himself a god. It's that motive to which the antichrist will appeal because in making this man our god we'll be, in a certain sense, deifying ourselves. The first of all the Greek philosophers in history that's well known was a man called Heraclitus. He has perfectly summed up humanism in three statements. That's all that survives. The first statement is everything flows. Nothing is stable, nothing is fixed, nothing is absolute. The second is you can never step twice into the same river. Because, by the time you go back it's a different river. And the third which sums it all up is this. Man is the measure of all things. What man says, what man determines, how man views things that's it. And that's the essence of humanism.
That's a stream that's been running through European culture since the 5th century before Jesus, and older than that. But, there's another stream which has its origin with the Jewish people and in the Bible. Its simple statement is in the opening verse of the Bible: In the beginning God. And there you have the absolute antithesis. On the one hand man is the measure of all things. Whatever he decides, however he views things, that's it. And the other is in the beginning God. An absolute, unchanging eternal God who has made laws which will never be revoked and can never be broken except to our own great cost.
And there we have the conflict in the realm of thought and the spiritual realm, it's the conflict between the absolute of the Bible and the relativism of humanism. The main manifestation of humanism today is the New Age movement. And in a sense, there's only one sin according to the New Age movement, that's believing something absolute. You can believe anything you like, as silly as it may be, as wicked as it may be, as long as you don't believe that it's the truth, the truth.
So, there's only one target for the New Age. They're pro Hindu, pro Moslem, pro atheism. What are they anti? Christian, that's right. And it's totally illogical. Think of the movements in the United States to keep religion out of the schools. They'll fight tooth and nail against anything that even sounds like Christianity. There is perfect freedom for everybody to think whatever they want to think except one group of people. Who are? Christians. What's that? It's the spirit of antichrist. It's not far away. It's all around us. Brothers and sisters, let's be careful about one thing, that it isn't in us. That's what really matters.