David Reagan - Terry James on Deceivers
One of the warnings that Jesus gave about the end times that we are currently living in is found in Matthew 7. Jesus told us to “Watch out for false prophets.” And He added, “They will come in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they will be ferocious wolves.” This prophecy has come true before our very eyes, and a new book called “Deceivers,” proves it. Stay tuned for an interview with the author.
Dr. Reagan: Greetings in the name of Jesus, our Blessed Hope, and welcome to Christ in Prophecy! My colleague, Nathan Jones, and I have a very special guest with us today. His name is Terry James. Terry has been our guest before, and we have always been blessed by his appearances on this program. You know Terry was born with sight, but later in life he lost his eyesight. And despite his blindness, He continues to pour out book, after book, after book about Bible prophecy. How he does it is beyond my comprehension, all I can decide is that he has a very special anointing of the Holy Spirit. Terry we are delighted to have you with us today.
Terry James: Thank you, Dave. So nice to be with you.
Nathan Jones: So good to have you here, Sir. Always.
Terry James: Thank you, Nathan, I appreciate it.
Nathan Jones: Well, hey, we’ve got you here to talk about your newest book, Deceivers: Exposing Evil Seducers and Their Last Days Deception. Can you please tell us a little about it?
Terry James: Yeah, well I think first of all how the concept came about–of course I like to, I always am a firm believer in a lot of prayer before you start any project, and especially a book. So, it was the Holy Spirit’s inspiration. But I’ll tell you what really, what really brought to mind deception and deceivers and Jesus’ first warning there in Matthew 7, Matthew 24, and 7 that Dave talked about is the fact that we’ve been through one of the most contentious presidential campaigns in history. I’ve never seen anything like it. Deception at every level. And I think it points to a time, we are in the time that Jesus talked about; a time of great deception and deceivers. Everywhere you look the deception in the media, in certain political areas, just tremendous. And I thought it would be great to at least bring together a group of authors who would really delve into this prophecy, because Jesus gave it as His first prophecy in the Olivet Discourse list of prophecies. So it must be important. And He emphasized it on several more occasions. So that really is what sparked I think the idea for the book.
Dr. Reagan: Well, you know, Nathan you have a chapter in this book. A very good one in fact.
Nathan Jones: Well, praise the Lord.
Dr. Reagan: With an absolutely intriguing introduction to the chapter. And the title of the chapter is “The Foreteller-Fabricators.” And it just fits into everything he just said because you talk about deceivers in the end time, and you focus on Matthew 24 where Jesus talks about the signs of the end times. And it is interesting that He, the only one He mentions more than once is deceivers; He mentions it three times.
Nathan Jones: Three times.
Dr. Reagan: Go ahead, tell us about your chapter and what the thesis of it is and something about it.
Nathan Jones: Well, I wish I could take credit for the title that was all Terry here. He said write about the foreteller-fabricators. But it focuses primarily on those who lust after God’s position. Of course we know Satan was the first to want what God wanted. He wanted God’s power. He wanted God’s authority. He wanted God’s worship. And so those who follow Satan want the same thing, they want the attention, they want the control. So, they end up parading themselves as false prophets, false messiahs, false teachers. And Jesus like you said three times in Luke 21 and Matthew 24 the very first sign of the ten signs He gave of the end times was that there will be false prophets, false messiahs, false teachers. Now Watchman Fellowship the cult watching website has recorded there are 1,200 religions in the United States, and 500 Christian cults right now in the United States.
Dr. Reagan: I think in Los Angeles right now you have one on every other corner.
Nathan Jones: You do. One of my favorite actresses Allison Mack just got arrested from leading a sex cult. I mean you hear about them all the time. And Jesus said as we get closer to His return they would increase in frequency and intensity.
Dr. Reagan: Okay, on that point you point out in your chapter that there have always been cultic groups in Christianity. At the very beginning we had the Judaizers, and the Gnostics. But Jesus talked about they are going to be birth pains and they will increase in frequency and intensity. And that didn’t begin until about the middle of the 19th Century with the Mormons and the Jehovah’s Witnesses. And then as we get into the 20th Century a literal explosion of these.
Nathan Jones: Oh, yeah, yeah. Jesus said, like you said, they would increase in frequency and intensity the closer we got to Jesus’ return. He covered three periods, the time leading up to the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD. And like you said there were false prophets, false messiahs during that time period. But they would increase the closer we get to the Rapture. And then we have the proliferation that we do have today. But interestingly enough then we get into the Tribulation before Jesus’ Second Coming and it reduces down to two; the Antichrist and the False Prophet.
Dr. Reagan: Yeah, they get rid of the rest.
Nathan Jones: Yeah, there is no competition. Satan is like okay, I am done with these false guys I am going to be worshipped through the Antichrist.
Dr. Reagan: Well, you have a very interesting historical analysis of all this over the years the different false prophets who came on the scene including the new ones. And then as you come near the end of your chapter you start talking about a diseases called symbolically. What in the world is that?
Nathan Jones: Oh, that is a little fun that my associate and I had when we made an InBox about the dreaded disease of symbolically. That is the desire to spiritualize the Scriptures into whatever meaning that you want.
Dr. Reagan: Yeah, in which you play God, because you can make them mean whatever you want them to mean.
Nathan Jones: Yeah, definitely. And the cure to that is to follow the golden rule of biblical interpretation: If the plan sense makes sense, don’t look for any other sense, lest you end up with nonsense.
Dr. Reagan: And that’s one of the most interesting parts of your chapter because you get into some modern day examples of people who are spiritualizing the scriptures into meaninglessness, and even into scoffers who are scoffing.
Nathan Jones: And that was an excellent point because when Terry asked me to do this chapter he was like, “Well, cover the false prophets, but I’d like you also to cover the ones that aren’t necessarily false prophets, but either because they are disinterested in the 31% of the Bible that is prophecy, or they actually openly skeptical of it, then why don’t we cover that.” And that was great, because it’s true. By pastors ignoring 31% of the Bible they are actually promoting symbolically so to speak.
Dr. Reagan: Yeah, and I noticed too, you know one of the best known spokesman in Christendom today who has best-selling books out there all over the place has made the comment that Bible prophecy is simply a waste of time. It is a distraction from the core of the Gospel message.
Nathan Jones: Distraction from the fact that Jesus Christ wins and Christians through Christ win as well? I don’t know about you but I’ll be distracted by that any day.
Dr. Reagan: Well, Bible prophecy is where we find really our source of hope in the return of Jesus, His promise to return. And I just want to congratulate you on a very fine chapter.
Nathan Jones: Praise the Lord.
Dr. Reagan: And the book over all Terry you did an outstanding job.
Nathan Jones: Every one of these chapters were.
Dr. Reagan: Well, folks, we are going to take a little brief break and we’ll come back with another author of one of these chapters.
Part 2
Dr. Reagan: Welcome back to Christ in Prophecy and our interview with Terry James, who is the editor of a new book called, Deceivers. Terry, we have on the set with us another one of your authors in this book, and why don’t you introduce him to us.
Terry James: I certainly will. He is one of dearest friends and closets associates, Mike Hile he is President of Signs of our Times Ministries, out of Little Rock, in the Little Rock area. And we travel together and do a lot of things together. Mike has written a superb chapter called “Tracking Truth in these Deceptive Times.”
Dr. Reagan: Well, you talk about superb chapter. You know several months ago Mike submitted an article to our magazine about the nations in the end times. And it was a profound article, really, really outstanding. And we published it in our magazine. So, on this particular chapter, the whole book now here is about deceivers. And this chapter Mike is called, “Tracking Truth in Deceptive Time,” and you begin it with this sentence, “To many Satan is a cartoon character, or mythological creation that is imaginary and harmless.” And the polls show this beyond a shadow of a doubt that most people either don’t believe in Satan or they believe he is cartoon character. Let’s take it off from there.
Mike Hile: Right, the deception that has gone on in our country over the 200 years plus that our nation has been around is just amazing. Satan is not a cartoon character as we mentioned, but he is actually a very deceptive individual.
Dr. Reagan: I would imagine he is delighted with this.
Mike Hile: That’s true. And whenever Satan deceived Eve in the Garden of Eden it was in a way that she didn’t know what was going on. And so his deception has continued today. He deceives the leaders of the world. He deceives us in ways a lot of times that we don’t understand.
Dr. Reagan: Well, let me read you another statement that you make in this chapter and I wish you’d just take off from there, okay. It says, “Satan’s main goal has been to infiltrate and destroy the United States from within by using leftist, subversive groups to create chaos and anarchy. Satan’s multiphase plan has been to destroy Israel by first neutralizing the United States, and that plan is well underway.”
Mike Hile: That’s correct. The United States is sometimes called the Great Satan, and Israel is called the Little Satan. And Satan definitely has a plan. And that plan is to in my opinion take out the United States, and once he’s done that then he’ll neutralize any opposition to taking out Israel. And so, Satan is working through the different leaders over in the Middle East and around the world in order to take out Israel. But, I believe that he wants to take out the United States before he actually does that.
Dr. Reagan: And one of the problems you point to in this chapter is the fact that the average pastor in America today very rarely will ever, if ever address problems in society from a biblical viewpoint and talk about those. You know if you go back to the early history of the United States to the colonial times those pastors were in those pulpits constantly preaching about societal problems as they relate to the Bible and what the Bible has to say about them. And they were emphasizing to people, like if they had a major catastrophe they were emphasizing that was because God was upset with them and they needed to repent before the Lord. We don’t hear that kind of preaching anymore. In fact on page 80 you make the point that even in the 20th Century we started off with a lot of people who were evangelists and really preaching the Word of God. And then we moved to those who were simply Bible teachers. And finally ended up with pastors who were primarily therapists who were talking about how you can feel better. And how you can–you know really applying modern psychology rather than biblical principles.
Mike Hile: Right, there’s been a progression from interpreting the Bible literally as to what the Scriptures actually say, to interpret them allegorically.
Dr. Reagan: Yes. Symbolically.
Mike Hile: Right. Right. Taking what the Lord actually says and twisting the meanings to give you something that may make you feel good, or be a psychological explanation for something. But the pastors a lot of times today they will preach out of the Bible, but they don’t always apply it to what’s going on today.
Dr. Reagan: That’s the point. That is called prophetic teaching when you do that and apply.
Mike Hile: Right. Not only applying it to what is going on today, but also applying to what’s coming in the future. And the meat of the Scriptures is getting into applying what’s going on today, and also applying what is going on in the future.
Dr. Reagan: Very quickly you write, “At the beginning of the 20th Century there were not any large organized anti-Christian groups in the United States that were trying to cleanse Christianity from our culture. Today there are more than 200 anti-Christian organizations that are deeply intolerant of the Christian religion.”
Mike Hile: That’s Satan’s plan to abolish Christianity, and neutralize it.
Dr. Reagan: And you go into detail about this from the ACLU to Planned Parenthood and all.
Mike Hile: Right, and that process has increased considerably in the last 60 years. In 1962 they took prayer out of the schools, ’63 they took the Bible reading out of schools. And then we had a lot of other things happen in schools.
Dr. Reagan: In fact one of the important things you do here in your chapter is to talk about the way the Supreme Court of the United States has taken Humanism and applied it to its decisions instead of the Constitution.
Mike Hile: That’s right. The Constitution does not give the courts the authority to take away our religious freedoms. In fact the First Amendment of the Constitution puts restrictions on Congress.
Dr. Reagan: Yes.
Mike Hile: It does not put restrictions on the people.
Part 3
Dr. Reagan: Welcome back to Christ in Prophecy and our interview with Terry James who is the editor of a new book called, Deceivers. Terry, I didn’t mention at the beginning of the program that you are the co-host of one of the most popular websites concerning Bible Prophecy; and that is Rapture Ready. And sitting next to you is the fella who actually began that. Introduce him for us.
Terry James: Todd Strandberg, and he is my close associate. He’s like, he’s become like one of my own sons. I have sons and he’s become just like one of them. Except he’s my boss. Well, they think they are too. But any way Rapture Ready, he started back–I’ll let him tell you about it, I think way back in 1987. So it has progressed. It is one of the top prophecy, has been one of the top prophecy website on the net. So, I’ll turn it over to you and him.
Dr. Reagan: Okay, well, Todd you have a wonderful chapter in here titled, “Media Manipulators.” And you focus on the liberal media in America. Wow. Take off.
Todd Strandberg: Yeah. Okay, this topic is very close because I believe the liberal media is Satan’s greatest tool in America for controlling society. Because I think he spends more time in New York than he does in Washington.
Dr. Reagan: You know its interesting back in the 1970’s Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn gave a talk at Harvard University in which he made the same point, the greatest danger to America is uncontrolled media.
Todd Strandberg: You know when I was in Israel we went to all these demonic temples, and tale of Baal. But when I was in New York in 2012 I felt like I was in a more dangerous place because of all the demons that were in the Middle East are now in New York.
Dr. Reagan: Well, tell us about the liberal media. Why are you so upset about the liberal media?
Todd Strandberg: Well, they just go from bad to worse, to worse to bad. They control 90% of what people see every day, you know Facebook, all the major networks, radio.
Dr. Reagan: And incidentally the recent polls are showing that 90% of them for example right now are Democrats.
Todd Strandberg: Yeah, they are hardcore Democrats. I mean in fact at CNN I don’t think a Republican can really have a job there. If you say you voted for Trump you are going to be fired.
Dr. Reagan: Yeah. Well, you make this comment, you say, “What the Press doesn’t understand is that God is in control.” Talk about that.
Todd Strandberg: Well, I think where God is controlling. Remember back in 2006 the Republicans were just wiped out. The Democrats had all three branches of government. They even had filibuster proof in the Senate, but they didn’t do anything because God, it wasn’t time and God held them back. But now if they get into power they are just going to ruin everything. They’ll basically outlaw all conservative sites. They’re going to outlaw Lamb & Lion Ministries. They are going to outlaw Rapture Ready.
Dr. Reagan: Well, they are already in a process of doing that, not legally but in the sense that your sites, like the video sites are–
Todd Strandberg: Well that is what they want to do. Hillary Clinton wanted to make every link illegal. Every news link. And everybody had to be registered as a news provider, and get the approval from them.
Dr. Reagan: And you know Prager puts out these wonderful videos that are about 5 minutes long. They’re not Christian but they are conservative and they are very well done. And he’s had over 40 of them cancelled from the internet. Just taken off because they didn’t agree with them.
Todd Strandberg: You know if you have somebody to put their thumb on the scale they can block you a whole number of ways. I was wondering why my e-mails weren’t getting out to AT&T sites, and I come to find that AT&T will put your e-mail into a spam box when you send it to someone. And if you have subscribers maybe it only goes out to 80% of them. They can block your domain. They can do all sorts of things.
Dr. Reagan: We can’t bring this to a close unless you tell us, do you think we’re near the Rapture?
Todd Strandberg: I think we’re very near the Rapture. I think everything is just lining up. I think we are just in a holding pattern. And there are more things that are being added to that holding pattern. And I just think–you know Jesus said we will not know it is going to be a surprise. But all I can do is just focus on the Rapture more every day.
Part 4
Nathan Jones: Welcome back to Christ in Prophecy and our interview with Terry James, who is the editor of a new book called, “Deceivers.” Terry, we covered three of the authors and their subjects so far. Let me run through the index here and maybe you can give a little more information about some of the other wonderful chapters. For instance you had Jan Markell as one of the authors and she wrote about, “Religionist Deceivers Rampant.” What is that all about?
Terry James: Yeah, well she really outlined I think in fine fashion as only Jan can about what is going on among Christianity, and within Christianity today. She just dissected, diced, and dissected those who are false teachers, and false prophets, and great deceivers.
Nathan Jones: Okay, you also have Dr. Gary Frasier who spoke about, “Laodicean Lies.” What are Laodicean lies?
Terry James: Of course that is Revelation chapter 3 and the church of Laodicea that they would not endure sound doctrine. And Gary points out very well how they diverted from sound doctrine and they’ve heaped unto themselves teachers having itching ears that will believe fables, and will not accept truth. And Gary again did a good job on that one.
Nathan Jones: Excellent. I see you have Israel Wayne who did “The Schoolroom Seducers.” Who is seducing in the school rooms?
Terry James: That is a very, very special chapter in my estimation because as Todd talked about earlier, talked about how prayer was taken out in ’62, ’63, and prayer and Bible reading in the classrooms. How from that very time we’ve gone through the entire values clarification, no absolute truth down through the educational system.
Nathan Jones: Post-modernism.
Terry James: Post-modernism and how it has totally affected and destroyed the American educational system. And Israel did a fantastic job on that.
Nathan Jones: I know Dr. Billy Crone did “Demon-Conjuring Con Men.” And that was particularly interesting. Again particularly clever title. Who are the demon conjuring con men?
Terry James: I don’t know what I was thinking about when I assigned that title, but there are so many of them. And Billy if anybody knows him he is a powerful, powerful, dynamic speaker. And he’s presented this in a written form from some of his speaking engagements. And I knew about it would be like when he wrote it. It is just the great deception going on in general in this country. And he got into some specifics about who and why, and when these things are happening and what the likely results is.
Nathan Jones: It was a great study in Satanology. I mean he gave you every detail about Satan. Probably your best chapter though must be by this guy, Dr. David Reagan, “Signs Outshine Satan’s Seductions.” Maybe he would tell us a little about that chapter.
Dr. Reagan: Well, before I do that I wanted to mention chapter 8 is by Daymond Duck who is one of my favorite people in the field of Bible prophecy called, “New World Order Wizardry.” Every time I think of Daymond Duck I think about the time that he told me that a church invited him to come and hold a conference and they really wanted to get a big crowd out. So, they got their heads together, what can we do to get a crowd out? And evidentially they had a marketing man as a member.
Terry James: Yeah, I understand that.
Dr. Reagan: You know you made your living as a marketing person. And so they came up with a headline. They ran a big feature ad in the paper and the headline said, “Have You Ever Heard a Duck Talk?”
Terry James: I remember that. I remember Daymond telling me that.
Dr. Reagan: Have you ever heard a duck talk? And boy the people came out to hear the duck talk. Yeah, I want to thank you first of all for inviting me to contribute a chapter.
Terry James: Thank you so much.
Dr. Reagan: Nathan and I both were really blessed by your invitation. And you asked me to write something about signs of the times. And you gave it the title, “Signs Outshine Satan’s Seduction.” And I thought that was very clever.
Nathan Jones: Yeah.
Dr. Reagan: But anyway my chapter is about the fact that Bible prophecy is just kicked around all over the place and Satan loves that. He doesn’t want anyone to respect Bible prophecy. Doesn’t want anybody to pay any attention to Bible prophecy. So we have Christian leaders who deny there is any prophecy in the Bible. The Liberals say there is no prophecy in the Bible. That is just poetic expressions and that sort of thing, or it was all written after the fact to make it sound like prophecy. And then you have the abusers who spiritualize prophecy, symbolically and they spiritualize everything so it no longer has any meaning. And when you spiritualize prophecy one problem is you never know when it is fulfilled. And then you have the people who take prophecy very seriously but consider it to be a playground, and so they’re constantly trying to identify what date the Lord is going to return, or who is the Antichrist, or crazy stuff like that. Sensationalism of all kinds. And Satan just loves that sort of stuff because what happens is it creates in the minds of people the attitude that Bible prophecy is a playground for fanatics, it is just a waste of time, and no one should get involved in it.
I grew up in an Amillennial church where Bible prophecy was never taught. It is a miracle of God that I am a Bible prophecy teacher. But we were just told that for example the only sermon we ever heard about Bible prophecy was, “There is not one verse in the Bible that even implies that Jesus will ever put His feet on this earth again.” I heard that over, and over, and over. And when I was 12 years old I was thumbing through the Bible and found Zechariah 14 and it said that in the end times the Lord is coming back to the Mount of Olives. When His foot touches the mount it is going to split in half. He is going to speak a supernatural word, the Antichrist and his forces will be destroyed. And verse 9 says He will become king over all the earth. At 12 years old I understood that. And I took it to my pastor scared to death. And I said, “You know you say there’s not one verse that implies that He’ll ever put. What about this?” And I remember he just sat there and he read it forever, and he read it and read it. Finally he just put his finger in my face and said, “Son, I want to tell you something. I don’t know what this means, but I’ll guarantee you it doesn’t mean what it says.” Because it didn’t agree with his particular interpretation. So, anyway I–my turn around in Bible prophecy came when I sat down one day I was probably 30 years old and read the Minor Prophets. And it was like reading the headlines of yesterday’s paper. They are as relevant today as they have ever been. My colleague here, Nathan, has written the best book I’ve ever read on the Minor Prophets.
Terry James: I agree.
Dr. Reagan: And he shows how relevant they are. And when I got to Zechariah I had never read the whole book of Zechariah. I read it and you don’t have to be a space scientist, it just suddenly dawned on me every prophecy in that book about the First Coming of Jesus was literally fulfilled. Why wouldn’t the Second Coming prophecies be literally fulfilled?
Nathan Jones: Exactly.
Dr. Reagan: And that was my turning point. Well, folks, that is our program for this week. I hope it’s been a blessing to you and I hope that you’ll be back with us next week. Until then the Lord willing this is Dave Reagan speaking for Lamb & Lion Ministries saying, “Look up, be watchful, for our redemption is drawing near.”