Not Living by Our Conscience Opens Us to Deceiving Spirits

By Rev. Ernest O'Neill

Loved ones, why all this emphasis on living by your conscience? Well, there's a very important reason for it and it ties up specifically with these days and times in which we are living, and I'll show you it in this book. It's in 1 Timothy 4:1-2, "Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by giving heed to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons, through the pretensions of liars whose consciences are seared." In other words, this dear book of God, says that in the later times -- and so many things in our world today point to us being in the later times -- some will depart from the faith by giving heed to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons. How will they do that? Through the pretensions of liars or through people spreading lies. Through liars whose consciences are seared.

In other words, many of us will be lost in these days because we do not take note of what our consciences are saying. You know that we're all breathing a sigh of relief because "1984" [George Orwell novel] is over, and here we are! “Big Brother” is not watching us, and there is no such thing as doublethink. The tragedy is that we are through "84" and we haven't escaped. Just because “Big Brother” does not take the form of the secret police or the government, we think that we've escaped. But there are thousands of us who are practicing homosexuality, who are engaging in drugs, who are engaging in easy going behavior with our wives. Why? Because ““Big Brother”,” the "in thing," is watching us.

There are thousands of us today who are doing all kinds of things that we would never have dreamed of doing when we were children or, that our parents would never have dreamed of doing, and even that we ourselves never considered doing them. There are thousands of us doing them because ““Big Brother”,” the “in thing” is watching us. Why? Because the people in our office are doing it and the people in our work are doing it. Also, the people in our school and our college are doing it. They all think it’s right. Thousands of us are engaged in all kinds of little and big deviations in our life, not because we think it’s right or wrong in our conscience. As we long ago gave up listening to that. We do it because you're square if you don't do it.