Dr. Michael Youssef, beginning this episode of Leading the Way Audio. Those of us who have been set free from the clutches of Satan and sin, we have no fear of him. Those of us who know the Lord Jesus Christ washed by his blood, we have no fear. To us, he is a defeated foe. He's a toothless lion.
He is no match to the lion of Judah. And therefore, my beloved friends, our preaching, our witness, our testimonies, our prayers should be fueled by the power of the Holy Spirit to do what? To set the captives free, to proclaim the power of the cross, to declare that Jesus and only Jesus saves. Have you been set free from Satan and from sin? Then, as pastor and author Dr. Michael Youssef so eloquently said, you should not fear Satan and what he's capable of doing in the world. Today on Leading the Way, a pointed, powerful reminder straight from the pages of God's Word that our God always wins. You'll see recent and current events through the lens of God's Word, how God offers hope and brings victory for his kingdom. Do you have faith questions? Then consider speaking with a Leading the Way pastor or counselor. Just fill out a short contact form at ltw.org slash Jesus.
Right now, though, join me in listening as Dr. Michael Youssef begins this episode of Leading the Way. I left you with the message of the knowledge of how so many anti-God forces that are working throughout the globe. We see it and we feel it here in America, but trust me, it is even more intense in Europe, in Australia, in Canada, in other parts of the world. These anti-Christ forces are anti-Christ with small a, small a. As John says in his epistles, there are many anti-Christ. They're all small a, but these anti-Christ forces with a small a are preparing the way for the anti-Christ with capital a. Now we are seeing how now this global group of very wealthy, very powerful people from around the world who convene every winter in a little town in Davos, Switzerland. Thousand people who feel that they are the ones who are to bring about the long awaited and the longed for one world government. This world economic forum holds vast influence.
These people may ethnically differ, they may politically even differ, but they united in one thing and that is creating of one world government. But our God always what? As I showed you in the last message that these people are basically preparing the world for the coming of the anti-Christ with capital a.
But the Bible says that after the anti-Christ comes, the Lord Jesus is going to return and he's going to smite him and destroyed him and his master Satan forever. Just to help me out, I'm going to ask you raise your hand if you heard the term the great reset. What is that great reset?
It is the epiphany. It is a revelation that occurred to them as a result of watching what happened during the lockdown of the pandemic COVID-19. COVID-19 great lockdown provided the world economic forum with a picture of how to control the world. It is complicated theory and again they double talk. Really, I mean it's a lot of double talk.
Let me give you the bare bones so you don't have to waste your time. When the whole world sheep like followed orders by being locked down because of the pandemic. This became a model for them to bring about the global change that they believe should take place. And this global change that took place during COVID-19 may have been impossible to even contemplate prior to 2020 but now you do. But now people are willing to do anything out of fear so they got the handle on it. Now, we can have permanent global lockdown and they want to do this with global taxation system with a global agricultural policy with global economic policy and on and on and on. Now, societies could be poised to accept authoritarianism and inclusivity.
But there's more to this great reset. I want you to think, I want you to think back 50 years ago. Okay, where we were 50 years ago and where we are now. I'm talking about where we were ethically, morally and in every other way. And think of where we are now. Western culture is forced to accommodate to the whims and the fantasies of a tiny, tiny few. A tiny few who are now in control of the media and vast parts of the economy and education. There is not a single show whether from Australia, whether from England or from Canada or the United States that does not have something about LGBTQRXYZ.
It has to be there now in order to be accepted. Also, we saw in the last message these so-called ancient gods are raising their ugly head again after they've been in the wilderness for nearly 2,000 years. And the reason they disappeared or at least went into exile for nearly 2,000 years, not quite, but nearly 2,000 years, these gods that were so prevalent during the Old Testament times that gave God's people the hardest time, the most difficult time, the biggest temptation, all these gods went away for nearly 2,000 years.
Why? Because of the preaching of the Gospel in Roman Empire at the time and then the West after that. We saw the rise of Baal and Baal worship and that came many decades ago. Baal basically gets people to focus on materialism and prosperity. Now remember, God is the one who prospers. God loves to prosper his faithful children.
But they said, take your eyes off the one who prosper you, focus on the prosperity itself as an end in itself. Once Baal came in and opened the door to that kind of thinking, the second god or goddess of that evil trinity that we read about in the Old Testament over and over and over again was Asher Din. I'm talking about the goddess, the queen of heaven, they called her, who is associated with the moonlight.
In western world was known as Venus because that's the last of its appearance in the Roman culture. She's the goddess of sexuality. This goddess of the ancient world was renowned for her emotional demands and fierce carnality. She is given to raging romance full of unbridled passion and insatiable sexual desire.
If offended or shunned, she would become vengeful and violent. This goddess was known as a transgressor of standards and of conventions. She demanded and took from other gods, so-called. The ancient mythology, she literally scammed and stole what belongs to other gods when they're not watching.
But that's not all. She was the goddess of prostitution. And that is why you read in the Bible again and again and again and again, sometimes I just marvel at God's patience about the temple prostitutes.
You read about it again and again of how evil people came and tempted God's people into falling in that evil practice. From this pagan practice came what became known as sacred sex or sacred prostitution. This is the pagan goddess whom the Bible called Ishtar or Ashtaroth in plural. In Canaanite mythology, she was connected to Baal as his consort or his lover.
To the Greek, she became Aphrodite. And don't ever forget whatever names these gods are called, they're the same ones. They're the same store front for Satan and demonic forces.
They're store front, there's no such thing as these gods and goddesses. Satan set them up, I'm going to show you why he did this. Because from the very beginning, Satan wanted to be worshipped instead of God. From the very beginning, that's why he got kicked out of heaven. And when he failed, he shifted and sought the worship of these pagan individuals and cultures through these so-called gods.
Listen to me. We're all designed, scheme designed by Satan in order to keep people living in terror and fear of these gods. You see, that way, people remain as Satan's slaves. That's how he does it, under the control. Those of us who have been set free from the clutches of Satan and sin, we have no fear of him.
Did you get that? Those of us who know the Lord Jesus Christ washed by his blood, we have no fear. To us, he is a defeated foe. He's a toothless lion.
He is no match to the lion of Judah. And therefore, my beloved friends, our preaching, our witness, our testimonies, our prayers should be fueled by the power of the Holy Spirit to do what? To set the captives free, to proclaim the power of the cross, to declare that Jesus and only Jesus saves. And my beloved friends, we must let the world know that no one can sin beyond the reaches of the grace of Jesus Christ.
No one. When this dreadful slave trader who did horrible things, when he was confronted by the grace of Jesus, he could say, amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved the rich like me. I once was lost, but now I'm found, was blind, but now I see. In these last days where the world is gripped by so many evil powers, the faithful remnant cannot, cannot, cannot say it with me, cannot, cannot sit on their blessed assurance and do nothing more than ever before. Our prayer, our giving, our serving, doing whatever God calls us to do and every one of us is called of God to do something. It is all to reach the lost that the lost can be found and so that the blind can see and that the dumb can speak and the deaf can hear in the power of Jesus' name. Now sadly today instead of Christians enjoining the battle knowing that Jesus already won it, right, and therefore do it with confidence, there are some churches have joined the enemy forces.
Some have joined the enemy forces. Baal and Ashtoreth invaded so many called churches. Baal prepares a way for Ashtoreth and so first comes in, divert people's attention from the blessed to the blessing and once they bought into this in the last 50, 60 years or so, then he ushers in Ashtoreth, the goddess of sensuality. Once Baal opened the door for Ashtoreth to move in, she moves in with viciousness, with militant gesture, with sexual perversion. That way Ashtoreth comes into a fertile ground already being prepared by Baal to unbridled sexuality, unbridled licentiousness, unbridled decadence. And the so-called Baal ushers the goddess Ashtoreth and she ushers Moloch. The god Moloch is the god who demands children sacrifice.
Children be sacrificed. I'll tell you more about this. Can you see the pattern here? Can you see it in America?
Can you see it in the West? Once materialism, prosperity become our focus, sensuality moves in and finally children are offered as a sacrifice to the goddess and the god of the transgender. And mutilation, I want to explain that in a minute. Beginning in the 60s, we slowly but surely began as a culture, as a nation, to move away from the one true god. Thus opening the door first to Baal, then Ashtoreth, the goddess of sexuality. First they said all we need is acceptance, all we need is equality with biblical sexuality and no sooner than the gullible acquiesced to that demand than Ashtoreth revealed her true nature of altering biblical standards, altering biblical morality and altering biblical ethics. There was another sexual revolution in history that took place some years ago.
Yes, it took place in the Roman Empire in the Western world. It was the revolution by which biblical sexuality and biblical ethics and biblical morality invaded the pagan world and replaced all of these false gods and false demons. How? By the preaching of the gospel.
By preaching of the gospel. Oh God, may it happen again. May it happen again.
When we return to biblical morality and godly morality, it can happen again. Make no mistake about it that this sexual perversion, the sexual gender confusion, this goddess of sexual confusion that we are experiencing right now can only be overcome by a far greater power than all these demonic Ashtoreths and Aphrodites and Venus and it's the power of the resurrected Jesus. One last thing I need to tell you about this goddess according to ancient mythology. It had dual nature, dual nature. This is very important for us today.
Please listen. On the one hand, she was a goddess of love, beauty, allurement and female sexuality. On the other hand, she embodied fierce, aggressive, violent and destructive character which often ascribed to masculinity. She was one entity that embodied both the feminine and the masculine traits. In fact, ancient Mesopotamia record, she's quoted to have said, I am a woman. I am a man. To turn men into women and women into men is the very essence of the goddess Ashtoreth who has invaded our society. It was Ashtoreth nature to cross the boundaries, break down conventions and blur distinctions and merge the opposites.
Why? In order to create confusion, confusion, confusion and beloved confusion is Satan's tool to hasten the appearance of his puppet, the Antichrist. But our God always what? Back to what I started with the Apostle Paul. I hope you have that passage still open in front of you of 2 Thessalonians, the second epistle to the Thessalonians. When the Thessalonians were confused about the return of Christ, Paul taught them and he teaches us something that we need to take to heart, something we must remember, not just on occasion, not on Sunday, but always remember. Again, look at the passage, verses 1 to 5. Here's what he said, the return of Christ will happen when the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction.
Beloved God always what? In the original Greek what the NIV translated as the rebellion is also going to be translated as apostasy or the falling away, the falling away. This my beloved friends is a reference to great global rejection of the truth of God, particularly for people who are in churches. When Paul writing this epistle, he's writing it to believers in Thessaloniki and most of the people in the Thessalonian church, they were Jewish, they were Jewish converts to Christianity.
In fact, read about it for yourself so you don't have to take my word for it, in Acts chapter 17, how the church was founded. And so when he wrote to this primarily Jewish congregation who are messianic believers now, when he was writing to them, they were all acquainted with the Old Testament regarding the man of lawlessness. They were familiar with it.
He didn't have to go and explain it to them because they're already familiar with it. They're all understood and comprehended from Daniel chapter 9 verses 20 to 27 which contained the original Gabriel's prophecy of the Antichrist. This is the same person that you read about in Daniel four or five hundred years before Christ, Daniel chapter 9. It's the same person our Lord Jesus Christ himself talked about in what we know as the Olivet Discourse. That's in Matthew 24 and 25. Yes, Jesus quoted the Old Testament. Jesus did not get unhitched from the Old Testament.
Jesus believed the Old Testament. Here's what Jesus said, so when you see standing in the holy place the abomination spoken through the prophet Daniel, our God always what? John, the Revelator in his book of Revelation. He refers to that same person as the beast. But do not forget, do not forget, please I beg you, do not forget, do not forget that Christ will appear and he will destroy the Antichrist.
And so I go back as I finish to the beginning. Paul's desire was to comfort the believers, not confuse them. He sought to encourage them, not unsettle them. He longed to correct the errors that the false teachers have inflicted on them and to restore the joy they've lost because of these false teachers.
That's exactly what I long to do. You'll hear things that are going to confuse you, you're going to hear things that are going to disturb you. You come here and I want to lift you up to the very throne room of God.
Why? Because false teaching leads to anxiety and fear. False teaching leads people into disobeying the truth of the scripture. False teaching causes discouragement and disheartening.
So listen to me as I finish. Deception abound, but you stand for the truth. You uphold the truth. You speak the truth. You proclaim the truth.
Let me remind you of this as I close. The truth is not determined by emotions or even by the crushing circumstances or a persuasive, smooth talking, great communicating preacher. The truth is determined only, only, only by the word of God. Thank you for joining Dr. Michael Youssef and listeners around the world for Leading the Way Audio. And if what you heard from Dr. Youssef prompted spiritual questions, maybe you'd like to speak with a Leading the Way counselor or a pastor.
They'd be so happy to talk with you and you can begin your conversation at ltw.org slash Jesus. By the way, in addition to Leading the Way Audio, Dr. Youssef's content is also seen via satellite television and many Arabic speaking communities worldwide through the kingdom set and supported by local teams poised to share Christ, to disciple and help believers in these communities who often face difficulties due to faith in Jesus. Here's a testimony that we recently received and I believe it will encourage you just as it's encouraged our Leading the Way team. Amrak writes for Morocco saying, by mere accident, I found the kingdom sat TV channel and watch the program presented by Dr. Michael Youssef. His words opened my eyes and led me to Christ. I was so happy to find that you offer a phone number in Morocco.
When I contacted the field team, they answered all my questions. So please know that when you stand with Leading the Way, you are helping Dr. Youssef reach into many worldwide Muslim communities with the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ. This month, friends of Leading the Way are challenging you to give a generous year-end gift and you can do that by calling us 866-626-4356 or by going to Leading the Way online. That's ltw.org or you can even stand with Dr. Youssef on the Leading the Way app. No matter how you do it, you are part of taking the gospel to a lost and a hurting generation. This program is furnished by Leading the Way with Dr. Michael Youssef, passionately proclaiming uncompromising truth around the world.
