Q: Why do you believe we’re seeing deception at such unprecedented levels in this season?
A: It should not be a surprise that we are seeing an unprecedented level of evil in every area of life in the world today. Just as Jesus and the apostles warned us, deception would be the number one concern for believers living in the Last Days. When questioned about the events that would usher in His return in the Second Coming, Jesus did not give a dissertation on Daniel’s ten-toed statue, the warnings of Jeremiah, or even the prophetic insights of Isaiah. Rather, Jesus immediately warned, “Be careful that no one deceives you.” So, deception is part of the End Times landscape, and we can expect to see more of it.
Q: What is one of the most destructive lies being accepted in culture today?
A: I believe the most destructive lie in our culture today is, no doubt, the attack on the human race. I believe what Jesus said, that Satan is the father of all lies, that his malevolence and his resources to propagate a lie knows no limits. From the Garden of Eden, Satan challenged the very image of Adam and Eve when he offered them the idea that something must be missing in their lives. And what they really needed to be happy and meaningful regarding their existence and relationship was to become like God.
I believe that today, Satan is launching a full-scale attack on the image-bearers of God. Satan hates us; that is clear from Scripture. The greatest deception is also leading to the greatest damage – getting children to believe that they are not what they seem to be, having them question and be discontent with being created in the image of God as male and female. Thus, we are seeing an onslaught of doctrines of demons and deceiving spirits with a worldview and an ideology that leads to the absolute and total destruction of the human race, beginning with human sexuality, which God created.
Q: What is a deception you see being accepted in the Church?
A: There are many deceptions today that are being accepted in the church. Along those lines, of course, are blatantly false doctrines – the Bible being taken out of context, or emotionalism, being revered rather than a high view of Scripture. Tragically, today, there are far too many churches that have no true biblical foundation, and they do not see the Bible as the inerrant, infallible, and holy Word of God. Because that’s true, man’s ideas and constructs have been the very things replacing the authority of God’s Word. When that happens, traditions become more important than the Bible, and feelings become more important than faith.
Today, we are seeing a tremendous decline in New Testament churches. We are suffering greatly because the pulpits are no longer a place of divine authority where the power is in God’s Word, as the Holy Spirit drives the very Word of God into the hearts of His people. One tragic manifestation of proof is that there are those who say they preach the Gospel but never mention the first word of the Gospel, which is the word “repent.” What Jesus said, is what Peter said, is what Paul said, it is what all the disciples and apostles said, and it is what the Bible says today, and that is – we must repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and we shall be saved.
One of the great deceptions in the church is that Sunday morning comes and goes, without sin scarcely ever being mentioned or anyone feeling the conviction of the Holy Spirit, causing them to run to Christ and exclaim, “What must I do to be saved?”
Q: What is the antidote to deception?
A: There is only one antidote to deception; the Bible is clear on this – it is the Word of God! King David said it himself, “I have hidden Your word in my heart that I might not sin against You.” Discernment is the great need of the hour for every follower of Christ, and that comes by full immersion into God’s Word. Believers must embrace and apply themselves to knowing doctrine.
Sadly, today, if you stop a professing Christian on the street and ask them to define who God is and what His attributes are, they would hardly be able to provide any descriptive analysis or rendering of who the God of the Bible really is. For example, can they defend the deity of Jesus Christ from the Old Testament? Do they know the power of the Holy Spirit as found in the New Testament? If you were to ask someone who professes Jesus, “On what basis does God forgive sins?” few would know that the answer is simply ‘the Cross of Jesus Christ.’ At the Cross, Jesus Christ paid the debt owed to God for our sins, a debt that no human could ever pay. But Christ alone became our salvation by paying the debt we could never pay, to give us a gift that we could never earn.
Q: How would you encourage someone who wants to grow in the gift of discernment?
A: I would encourage someone who wants to grow in discernment to ask God for it. When we put together Romans, Chapter 12, I Corinthians, Chapter 12, and Ephesians, Chapter 4, we come away with discernment being a gift of the Holy Spirit. Why not ask for this gift? Ask God, knowing all the while He will be delighted and intentional to see to it that we have the gift of discernment. He knows that we would never survive in this world without the gifts of the Holy Spirit active and present in our lives. I often view them as beautiful gifts of warfare, weapons freely given to live our lives in the battle of faith against the darkness of evil.
The bottom line is that there is no substitute for the Word of God. Discernment comes from knowing the truth – so that we will know what to avoid and what to cling to. That truth sets us free, and to live in that freedom is to live a life of faith. The Bible tells us that “faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.”
Q: What counsel would you give parents raising the next generation in today’s culture?
A: I know the answer, but I fear that the answer will not be received. The answer has always been the same, always true, and that is to pour our lives into our children. I don’t mean gifts, toys, or trinkets. I am talking about the Word of God coming from a mother and coming from a father and having the Bible as the centrality of a home. The very nucleus of the home must be the Word of God. So, as archaic as this sounds, I believe that Christian parents need to make a dramatic change in the priorities of their lives, sacrificing whatever they must be available to raise their children in the things of God.
It is no mistake that the homeschool movement is the fastest-growing grassroots movement in all fifty states. So many are choosing private education or tutors or homeschool co-ops for their children’s learning experience, to protect them and rightly educate them. Not all parents can homeschool their children. I understand that, but our schools today have proven beyond any shadow of a doubt that they are unfit to educate our children.
Q: How has God equipped believers for spiritual protection?
A: It is an amazing and thrilling reality that the believer has been given everything to succeed on the battlefield of faith in this world. There are innumerable passages in God’s Word that support this, especially the Christian’s armament given in Ephesians, Chapter 6. It is not that we lack weaponry or protection; we have the Word of God and the armor of the Christian soldier. The issue is that people need to get into the fight.
The greatest way for a Christian to be protected is to get into the battle. I know that sounds strange. I can see it in someone’s mind right now that if they think they are going to survive, they’re going to hide or pull the sheets over their head until the evil is passed. That is not Christianity. The victory for the Christian is to get involved and shine Christ’s light into every dark area of this world. The Holy Spirit is the One who has been commissioned to be our teacher and provides all that is needed for us to live and finish a faithful, dynamic Christian life. The Holy Spirit must be depended on now more than ever before.
Q: What does it look like for a believer to stand for truth when faced with culture’s lies?
A: If we are really going to trust in God’s Word and believe that it is not only for our day but that the biblical truth revealed in Scripture is eternal, then we can rest assured that the believer is to stand against evil and the lies of the culture.
We love the fantastic and awesome accounts of biblical impossibilities, when Deborah went into battle, for example, or when Moses and the children of Israel came to the shores of the Red Sea, or who could forget the moment when David saw how little Goliath was when compared to the Almighty God. Once we realize that the Lord has ordained the battle regarding what is evil in our culture, we can let His light shine through us before a godless culture. We will be truly shining the light as He commanded and living out righteousness in the face of unrighteousness. This makes the Christian life thrilling and fulfilling as we battle against falsehoods, lies, and deception with one simple tool, the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.
Q: How do we speak the truth in love while rejecting the deceptions of our day?
A: To be effective and winsome in our Christian witness, several important things must be implemented with intentionality. For us to love the culture around us to Christ, we must never compromise. A culture cannot respect nor find attractive, a somewhat weaker version of itself. The Church is to be the complete opposite of the culture. The Church is to not look increasingly like the culture it lives in or speak louder and louder like the culture, but to be the exact opposite. When this is so, those who desire to come to the light can see the stark difference between a lost world and a saved church.
Once the Church discovers that righteousness and obedience to Christ have great liberty, power, and freedom, the world will see that the way we live and for Whom we live is worthy of their commitment.
When we speak the truth in love, we must define what “love” means. Love is not automatic acceptance. Love is not unlimited tolerance. Love is not weak. Love is not violent. Love is not complicit. Love has been revealed to us in the person of Jesus Christ, and Paul the apostle wrote about that love in I Corinthians, Chapter 13.
Q: Your program, Real Life with Jack Hibbs, airs twice weekly on Daystar. What can viewers expect when they tune in?
A: I think it is safe to say that for over 33 years, people have come to expect that when they tune into our programs, from podcasts to live events and Sunday or Wednesday sermons, they know that they will receive a full dose of the Word of God.
It is my commitment, on all our platforms, to present the Word of God for itself in its simplest forms and to avoid any temptation to stray away from any passage or doctrine or to ignore any verse or chapter. We teach the entire Word of God, and those who tune in will know that truth speaks for itself. This is real life.
