Matthew 24:10-12

Let us look at this again in Matthew 24. Jesus is speaking here and letting us know what is coming at the end of this age. He talked about the beginning of sorrows and all the things that were going to happen and He was kind of warning us to be careful not to be deceived and fall into this trap. But he says here that many shall be led into sin. There is the cause.

In the King James it says, "the love of many shall wax cold." And the reason for it all is what? Lawlessness. We have to be careful about this, having God's laws written in our hearts and our minds. This is serious. We have got to stay on top of that. Remember what happened to the Worldwide Church of God. They had become big and powerful, wealthy, as it says of the Laodiceans. They did not have need of nothing, so to speak, but they did have need of something. They were letting their love grow cold. And what happened? God blew it apart, did He not? How many people?

Now we had all these splinter groups because Christ says, "I stand at the door and knock" there in Laodicea. In Revelation, He says, "I stand at the door and knock," just let Me in. So a lot of splinter groups have popped up and we have invited Christ back in, so to speak, trying to get regrouped and get ourselves in that relationship and building on that relationship again through the obedience to Jesus Christ. Because He said, "If you love Me, keep My commandments."

So we had to build that love and relationship from there. I am not saying that everybody allowed their candle to go out. Probably those who are still here were able to work on that, repent of any lawlessness or whatever was done, and now we are able to move on with a close relationship with our Savior.

But what happened to most of the people? Were they not called? And that God's people today, My people, spiritual Israel? What does it say in Hosea 6? "My people." If we look at this spiritually, He is talking about the many who were called into an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ and the Father.

Remember, Christ says many times, "Many are called but few are chosen." There are only few that get through that narrow gate even though many try. So, He says, "My people," that is, those who have that intimate relationship with Christ, the ones that were called to that relationship, "are destroyed." In other words, they have been defeated or are being defeated "for a lack of knowledge" because of a gradual withdrawal from the intimacy with Him. He said, "Because you have rejected," because you have allowed your love to wax cold, "I will also reject you from being a priest for Me" in My Kingdom. "Because you have forgotten the law of your God." What did they do in the Worldwide Church of God? The false teachers, deceivers came in and they deceived a lot of people. Because iniquity was abounding in the church, and they allowed their love to wax cold.

You see, this is really serious business, very serious business. We must never allow our love to wax cold. We have our ups and downs. Yeah, we have days that we are on top of it and zealous, and there are times that we get a little slack. But we always have to be in a spirit of repentance and always, always have to keep God's commandments in our hearts, meditate on them and realize that we got to be serious about that. And spiritually we have to have that loving relationship, intimate relationship with Christ.

We have to love each other first. We have to keep that loving relationship with each other. You see, we do this by maintaining that loving and intimate relationship with each other and with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and with our heavenly Father.

Matthew 24:9-12

I think this offense might be twofold, and this is just my thoughts on the scriptures as I went through the study. As I said earlier, truth, and specifically God's truth, offends. I could have gone to several scriptures where Jesus shows that the truth in God's way of life is very offensive to this world and those that are sinning. So I think that Matthew 24 speaks to God's truth offending, but I do think there is a human element as well, where people will simply be offended and betray one another and will hate each other. So those offenses will come in various forms.