The young man stopped at the base of the mountain.  He gazed at its snowy peak thrust into the low hanging clouds.  At the beginning of a road that spiraled upwards, disappearing into the mountainside, there stood an old house.  The stone path leading to the front porch steps was worn smooth by years of constant traffic.  They young stranger knocked on the door.  In a few seconds he was greeted by an old man.  His timeless face was free from worry lines.  The corners of his eyes and mouth were crinkled from years of smiling.  Kindness exuded from his deep blue eyes as his soft voice asked, “May I help you?”

“Yes,” replied the young man.  “I want to travel to the top of that mountain.”

“Well, that’s easy,” replied the old man.  “Just follow that road and it will take you all the way to the summit.”  

“But, I don’t really want to take that road.”

“Why not?” asked the old man.

“Well,” the young stranger began hesitantly, “it’s difficult to explain.  Let me just say that I’m adventurous and I don’t like using the same roads that other people travel.”

“Hmm,” the old man mused.  “Well, if you want to get to the top, that’s the only way unless you climb up the face.”

“Thanks anyway…I’ll just find my own way up.”

With that, the young man left and went back into a nearby small village.  For the next several years, he tried to discover another way up the mountain, but to no avail.  It became an obsession with him.  Night and day, his mind was plagued with ideas of how he could go up to the summit a different way.  He spent most of his income on research and failed attempts to forge a new path.

Then one night an angel appeared in his bedroom.  Although he was at first terrified, his fright soon turned to joy.  The angel revealed in great detail that there was another way up the mountain.  The only catch was that the road would not be opened until sometime in the future.  However, he would be free to tell everyone about it now.

The young man was ecstatic.  He could not go back to sleep, so he spent the rest of the night trying to write down the angel’s instructions.  However, the angel had put a lot of information into his mind in a short amount of time.  It eventually took several weeks for him to write it all down.  When he was finished, he published the book and ordered thousands of copies.  

When the book was offered for sale, all the copies were sold in a matter of days.  Thousands more had to be printed and people bought them to give away.  Eventually, a society, called the New Path, was created to promote the new road that would be revealed in the near future. For some strange reason no one asked the young man to provide evidence that his claim of a new road was valid.  Also, no one stopped to consider that a new road wasn’t needed since the old one was completely adequate.  However, many people quit traveling the old road to the summit of the mountain, but instead waited for the new road to open. 

As time passed by, fewer and fewer visitors stopped at the old man’s cabin.  Multitudes had journeyed to the place where the new road was supposed to be opened in the future.  They built homes and established a large city.  Eventually, no one was allowed to even mention the old road.  One day after many years of not one visitor, the old man placed a  sign the beginning of the old road that read, Road Closed.

It was an otherwise peaceful summer night when the folly of their dedication to the New Path was revealed to them in a terrible, catastrophic event.  Not long after midnight and hours before the sun would poke its bright orange face over the mountain peak, everyone was asleep.  The only noise was a nearby gurgling river and the faint hum of electrical generators that powered the city.

The explosion was deafening and followed immediately by a distant rumbling that sounded like tons of boulders and wind rushing down the mountain.  In a few seconds, people were awake and trying to grasp what was occurring.  Roofs began to blow off the houses.  Immediately, their homes started filling up with hot ash.  Their breathing was stifled and many people suffocated while still lying in their beds.  Other people began to run, but to no avail.  The entire city was engulfed as hot molten lava rained down in huge globs.  In less than five minutes, there was a huge smoking lava mass where a city once stood.  A dormant volcano had come to life.  Bursting through the side of the mountain, it had collapsed in a fiery heap on the sleeping city.

Early that same morning, on the other side of the mountain, the door to the little house creaked open.  The old man walked down the worn path to the old roads entrance.  His wizened old hand clutched a hammer. First, he broke off the boards of the sign that read Road Closed.  Then he worked the posts back and forth until he could pull them out of their holes.  After packing the empty holes with dirt and gravel, he went back into the little house.

It was not long before there was a knock at the door.  The old man, his timeless face still smiling, greeted the visitor with, “May I help you?”

“Yes,” replied the young stranger.  “Is that the only way up the mountain?”

“That is correct,” replied the old man.

“Thanks,” replied the young man. 

He turned to walk away, and then stopped.  As he turned to face the old man again, he asked, “What’s the name of the road?”

“It’s called Truth,” replied the old man.

“Has it been there long?”

“Yes, it has been in the same place for a great number of years.”

“Well, who built it in the first place?”

“It was built by a man named Jesus.”

“But, what about other ways up the mountain?” asked the young man?  “Are there no other ways that lead to the top?”

“None,” replied the old man.  “But a few people have claimed that there were.  I can tell you for sure that this is the only one.”

The young stranger thanked the old man and started down the path again.  As he went out the gate, he paused to ask the old man one final question.

“What is your name, old man?” he asked.

“My name is Wisdom,” replied the old man with his constant smile.

(Proverbs 14:12 NKJV)  There is a way that seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death.

I believe that one of the most frustrating experiences is communicating with spiritually deceived people.  A person that is under a spiritual deception does not know that they are thus afflicted.  So they behave as if they are not deceived.  Therefore, they believe everyone that disagrees with them is under a deception.  You can inform them that they are under a deception, and they will reply, “No, you’re the one that is deceived.”   Tell them that they are not being reasonable, and they will accuse you of being unreasonable.  Explain the truth to them, and they will counter that you are the one who believes a lie, and that they are actually the ones possessing truth.  Back and forth it goes until a predictable impasse is reached.

In their world everything is okay.  They view everyone outside of their world as the weird and misled ones.  They believe that all evidence exposing their deception is somehow rigged.  Everyone that attempts to expose their deception is either ignorant or is somehow being used by Satan.  There is no reasoning with them because they believe the lie is truth and truth is a lie.  In fact, they believe exactly the same things about the non-deceived people that are believed about themselves.

So then, how do we reach them?  It is usually an impossible task.  You cannot reach a deceived person unless they are humble enough to consider that they might be deceived.  Deceived individuals demand that non-deceived people agree to those same conditions for discourse.  Okay, then what determines who is deceived who is not?  There is only one standard and that is the Word of God.  Many of them claim their beliefs are based on the word of God.  However, a close inspection of their belief system reveals that it is like a gigantic house perched on top of a very skinny pole.  

The truth is that no false doctrines are based on context of the Scriptures.  All deceived individuals will twist scriptures, take them out of context, apply extra-biblical information, and add either their own opinion or someone else’s.  They refuse to agree that one sentence or a few words collected from various verses do not a context make.  They all claim, borrow, and opine, until the skinny pole is set.  Then they begin to build their great house of doctrine.  When the work is finished, they seldom point to the skinny pole as their proof of validity, but to the elaborate house built on top of it.  In fact, they sell books, videos, and speak at conferences about their elaborate house.  They have little to say about the skinny pole until they are challenged.           

Of course, deceived individuals declare exactly the scenario applies to non-deceived people.  But when they are chased into a corner of flawed logic, they will lash out with ad hominem.  Thus, all discourse ends in a cloud of contention and they go on their way satisfied that they have once again defended their belief system. 

I have tried to reason with deceived people that insist the Word of God says what it does not say.  I want to say, “Not so fast.  Let’s put some real estate under that thought before you take the leap to that next mountaintop.”  The fact is that one can stuff non-essential doctrine with a clip of scripture and some expository filling.  However, a solid context of scripture is necessary for every doctrine of worth.  That is because every step of logic must be upon the solid foundation of the text in context.  Solid footing does not exist on the clouds between two mountains of an attempted logical path. 

Having said all of that, I rest my case on a bit of simple common sense.  If it is sound doctrine, then it was discovered years ago by better Christians than we are in this age of so-called post-modernity.   We are not more intelligent or more connected with God than they were.  What makes us think that God has reserved some great truth for this anemic, pasty, and knock-kneed generation of professing Christians that must be pampered, pandered to, and bottle-fed with sweet pabulum, before they will even attend a church meeting?  I’m with Solomon here; there is nothing new under the sun.  But if we desire a beautiful house of strange doctrine, Satan is more than willing to supply the skinny pole.

My advice, for all its worth, is to reject everything new until we have finished receiving and obeying all that God has revealed over the last 2000 years.  Otherwise, one is consigned to sway in the wind on a skinny pole while lashing out at the weird doctrine of deceived people “below” him or her.  You know…doctrines such as Jesus Christ is the only Way, Truth, and Life, the Bible, Prayer, and the Holy Spirit are sufficient, and true Christians ought to bear fruit accordingly.  Those and other biblical time-honored doctrines are the beliefs of those bizarre folks who dare to build on solid rock.         

There is much more that I could write about the invasion of paganism into Christianity, but I do not have the unction from God to do so.  There has been enough written and said to inform individuals that want to know the truth.  Sadly, the majority of professing Christians experience their Christianity vicariously through a pastor or some other church leader.  They do not gather information for themselves and totally depend on someone else to tell them what is right or wrong.  Roman Catholics are famous for that error.  It is the same way in the secular realm.  In spite of an overload of evidence that a presidential candidate is unfit for office, millions of Americans ignore the information and vote according to CNN, ABC, MSNBC, NBC, CBS, instead of GOD.

It is the curse of herd instinct, doing what everyone else is doing, following the path of least resistance, and succumbing to the spiritual elixir of camaraderie in error. Additionally, many professing Christians believe that God will excuse their heresy if it is approved by a pastor or denomination.  Therefore, even exceedingly wicked sins, such as homosexuality, that are “sanctified” by denomination leaders are accepted by the masses against their better judgment.  Subsequently, Christianity, that is supposed to be the last defense against the enemies flood, has crumbled before it like a sand dike in a tsunami.  Many that profess do not possess true faith in Christ and God.  Therefore, I have no unction to repeatedly warn them.  They have not won the battle.  Instead, they are what they will be and they have their reward.

As they head into the realm of the Cosmic Christ, they drift further from there rescue ropes of truth that have been thrown to them.  There is a point of no return; that moment after trepid following becomes timid following and eventually morphs into enthusiastic following.  We have dealt with the same declension in crack addicts.  No matter what we told them, how much we counseled with them, or the near misses with death, most of them went on to lose everything including their families.  Some of them lost their lives.  The present great deception is like spiritual crack cocaine.  The junkies are the spiritual directors, neo-pagan gurus that peddle their wares for fame and profit.  Could this be the generation that is right in their own eyes and yet are not washed from their filthiness?   

Is it really that bad?  Yes.  The danger of succumbing to Contemplative Spirituality today is that it is an essential ingredient in the final deception.  Partaking of it leads to delusion.  The definition of delusion is; believing something in the presence of evidence normally sufficient to destroy that belief.  Contemplative Spirituality is a path to eternal damnation.  The stages are deception, delusion, apostasy, and damnation.  The lifeline of truth only reaches a little further than an arm-length from them.  They have to reach out to be delivered.  Sadly, they have turned their backs and plunged into the abyss of Contemplative/New Age/Emergent/pagan heresy. 

Other ones may continue the fight, and I respect them for it.  My commission over the past several decades has been and continues to be the task of preparing true Christians for the final storm.  If you notice that I am not posting as much in the next few weeks it is because I am producing a video.  I hope and pray that it will be helpful to true Christians as they navigate the last days.