Apostasy Illustrated by Nature - Jude 12-13

JD10-02

© Berean Memorial Church of Irving, Texas, Inc. (1973)

We are looking at the latter part of Jude 12 and at Jude 13 as we look at illustrations of apostasy to be found in nature. Jude 12 and 13 are giving us insights from the divine viewpoint as to the nature of apostasy in our day. Jude 12 has compared apostates to underwater hidden reefs. The apostate, in other words, is an unseen hazard to the Christian's various human relationships. We are speaking of these apostates by way of several illustrations from nature. I want you to remember that this condition all stems from a situation in the soul of this person. Every one of these apostates has the condition where his soul is dominated by his emotions.

All of us have within our souls a mentality. This mentality has been structured within our being in the same relationship that a right particular man is structured in relationship to his right particular woman within marriage. The emotions are another segment of our soul. The emotions are comparable to the right woman. God has ordained that a right woman should respond to her right man. She therefore calls him "lord," the Scripture says, in respect to recognizing that relationship. This is liberty. This is genuine scriptural women's lib. Anything else is a deception. The emotions are to be responding to our mentality. This is always this way.

Emotional Domination of the Soul

There are many Christians who take this lightly, and consequently, we are seeing raging about us today the inroads upon the lives of believers and the destructive force of the tongues movement which is a reversal of this role. Every tongues person has within his soul this kind of a setup. There is a short-circuit here. The mind is not dominating the emotions and the mind is not governing the emotions. Instead, we have this condition where the emotions are telling the mind what to do. So a person tries to think with his emotions. Your emotions are absolutely empty. There is nothing in the emotions whatsoever, but suddenly the emotions become the dominant controlling factor of your life. Now that's apostasy. The only way your mind can control the emotions is with the intake of Bible doctrine. That's what gives you stability. When a person is unstable, or when a person is characterized by these things that we're going to look at, it's because emotions dominate the soul.

Now this domination expresses itself through the old sin nature which all of us have within us. Your emotions will express themselves through your area of your weakness. You will start producing mental attitude sins--sins of the mind. These are the worst kinds of sins because these are the sins that are the staging area for all of the open sins. No one ever sins openly until he has first prepared the ground for that sin in his mind. Or the emotions will express themselves through the strong part of your being, and you will express this in human good production of one kind or another. Or it may express itself through this pattern of lust, and you will express that in pursuing these false objects in your life.

The believer who responds to this hidden reef type of apostate will run amok in his soul. He will make himself miserable. He will suffer boredom. He will have a lack of a sense of purpose. He will chase around trying out different things in order to get happy. Emotional domination of the soul is amply illustrated by Israel of the Old Testament.

For example, Israel, after a year of instruction, came to Kadeshbarnea. Because their souls were rejecting the information that their teachers had given to them, their minds were going negative. Israel had a pattern of lusts. This was expressed in their constant desire for the leeks and garlics of Egypt. Israel had mental attitude sins which they expressed in bitterness, jealousy, and vindictiveness toward their spiritual leader Moses. Israel had a pattern of human good. When they got to Kadeshbarnea, God said, "You can't go in. I will not go with you because you refused to go on the basis of the minority report of the twelve spies." They said, "We were wrong, and we're going to go." They charged up the hill and they were slaughtered. They were going to produce their human good on the basis of their old sin nature. This was all because their souls were dominated by their emotions.

This status of negative volition to true genuine divine communication will distort the mentality of the believer so that emotions begin running your life. That's the wreckage that you will experience upon the hidden reef of this type of apostate. Apostates will lead you into the point where your spiritual maturity structure is deteriorated.

Waterless Clouds

Going on in Jude 12, the next comparison is, "Clouds they are without water, carried about by the winds." Clouds in the sky raise hope of refreshing rain on the thirsty earth. However, some clouds are in a condition where, in effect, they are devoid of water. They are deceptive, and they are useless to those who may be thirsty. This condition is illustrated by the apostate who comes along and he creates expectation in the listeners. He creates the expectation of spiritual refreshment, but instead of spiritual refreshment, he is completely dry. The water here is Bible doctrine, as we have for example in Ephesians 5:26--"the water of the Word." The apostate has none of this to give. He has no doctrine. He has no refreshment to deliver.

The apostate may make quite a promising show. He may crank up visions of spiritual conquests with people responding. He may be able to create the impression that great movements are afoot, and that you can be part of this forward motion. However, when the water of the Word is dried up, you don't have anything. When you're out of water, you're out of water. The Apostate can gather people together. He can whip up a religious rally. You can sing like crazy. You can entertain the crowd. You can explain how loving and sweet it is, but you're still out of water. You're still out of doctrine, and you're still going no place. So the apostate may use very clever techniques, but he offers only human viewpoint in the content.

The apostate is always negative to the doctrine of the Word. They lack water, and there's no way they can have water for growth. Since they are negative to the Word, they have this condition where the emotions are dominating the soul. You may have previously learned some doctrine. When you come to this state where suddenly your soul is dominated by your emotions, you have up here a frame of reference in your mentality, and you have doctrine stored there. You have divine viewpoint which you have acquired through your study of the Word of God. However, your frame of reference and your divine viewpoint comes to a stop.

How long are you going to go in an apostate condition? How long are you going to go where you're in the situation where your emotions dominate the soul? Well, the longer you go, the more this will deteriorate, the more the spiritual maturity structure in your soul is going to break down. The longer you stay out of fellowship where your soul is out of touch with the Word of God, the harder and the longer it is going to be for you to get back to where you once were. It is crucial that we understand that the Christian life is a life of movement. You never stand still in this life. You are either building your spiritual maturity structure or tearing it down. You can get to a certain point where the structure is built with all those various facets and it's solid, and then you go on from there into the greatest era of your life. You go in what the Word of God says will be "much more." He who gave us everything will now give us much more. That's the super life.

The condition of emotional domination may be signaled by several phrases that people may use. They are people who don't want to be bothered. They don't want to buy what you have to say. They don't want to be dissuaded by doctrine, and they may express this in various ways. Sometimes you'll hear a person say, "Oh, I've learned all that before." Or they'll say, "I know everything the Bible teaches that you know." That's their way of cutting you off from what you're trying to explain to them. Or, "You're stagnant on the Word. You don't have any outflow. It's all intake and no expression." That's a favorite one. Boy that shatters you every time. These people are not fanatical about church attendance. They work in bursts of zeal. They come to the point where they're bored, and they're tired. When they open their mouths, it's mostly in clichés with very little content. Sometimes they're actually teachers of classes, and they get put out because the clichés aren't going over on the kids.

Confession of Sin

Confession of sin of this negative attitude to doctrine will reverse the process. It will immediately flip your mind back into control of your being, and emotions will then have something fed to them. Your emotions cannot know how to act or how to feel toward people, situations, or events unless your mind is telling them how to feel according to your doctrinal orientation. These men are clouds without water. We step into this cloud and we receive no refreshment. It often results in a Christian moving into a situation where other things take precedence in their lives. Interestingly enough, I'm always surprised by something, but I should get used to it. There is strange resistance to such a notion that the most important thing a Christian has to do in life is to feed his soul. People rise up in enragement over that instead of saying, "Thank God that it's that simple, now that I know how to come to grips with it." Out of that flows every blessing and every guidance and every provision.

Church Attendance

Instead, we begin to put other things ahead of learning Bible doctrine because our sense of values has been distorted and because our emotions are running the soul. So you stay home on Sunday night because your favorite TV program is there and you're hooked on it and you say, "Well I'll get the teaching anyhow. I'll get the tape for that night." However, listening to the tapes alone, I want to warn you, is the first step toward apostasy. The Word of God in Ephesians 4:12 in the Greek says that the instruction is to be face-to-face. It is to be in a condition that preserves you in your privacy. This is why we gather in an auditorium so that you may listen and you may, before God and as unto the Lord, do whatever you wish with the information you're given. You may receive it or you may reject it. However, it is your business to be here to receive it. Tapes will get you in trouble.

God has a proper pastor-teacher for you in your geographic area. That's the one to get with. God has provided a place where you live. It may not be the most perfect and it may not be the most ideal situation. However, I wonder how many local churches are destroyed because people who should be supporting it are not there to do it. Instead they're at home listening to tapes. You may not even have to be antagonistic to what you're hearing from the local ministry. You just have the idea that you think that church attendance is optional.

If you will read Hebrews 10:25, you will discover that this is not so. God never tells you, "If you feel like going to church Sunday morning, why don't you turn out? If you feel like showing up Sunday night, why don't you turn out?" I'm a big enough fanatic to think that the Bible in this verse is telling you that every time the church doors are open for instruction in the Word of God, you're supposed to be there. In any case, I know that your life will prosper. There will be stability. You'll be capable of dealing with your prosperity as well as your poverty, and you'll be no man's patsy.

The sign of slippage may be simply the fact that you're returning to your old worldly friends. It may be that you're engrossed in your hobby, and that's what you're doing on Sunday nights. Or, it may be that you've gotten tired. You get tired because you've been working all week. You say, "Oh I've had such a hard week." Here it is Sunday morning, but you say, "Oh, I'm so tired. I've got to be ready for work tomorrow morning, and I have to get rested."

That may be a sign of slippage within your soul. You may follow this up with running off to enjoy your possessions somewhere. Or maybe you're just bored. It's no fun anymore. I regularly hear Christians say, "Well, it's just not as much fun as it used to be anymore." That's one of the most ominous statements to me. I get very very concerned when I hear that come out of a Christian's mouth. I know the sign of apostasy is signaled deep and wide by a remark like that. "It's no fun anymore." I know that there is a spiritual drought in the soul because that soul has been saying, "No" when it should have been saying, "Yes." Have you got the picture? Alright.

Instability

What this comparison and this illustration is showing us is the instability of apostasy. These are clouds without water. They are promising water, and instead they produce nothing. What are they? He says they are, in effect, carried about by winds. The word "carry" in the Greek is "paraphero." "Para" means "aside" or "round and round." "Phero" means to carry. So what the word is saying is that the apostate is carried around by the winds of false doctrine, round and round (Ephesians 4:14). This means that he is carried aside from God's word, and he is carried under the authority of someone's leadership while he's revolting against his true shepherd.

One of the things that characterizes a person who is in the emotional domination of the soul is that he is characterized by false attachments. He will fall in love with a false pastor-teacher, and he will reject his true pastor-teacher. He will be attached to the false woman and be false to the true woman. He will be attached to his false friends--his summertime friends, and he will be disloyal to his true friends. Right down the line, one of the signals that your own soul is in emotional domination is the fact that you will be finding yourself attached to false objects. Suddenly you wake up and look at yourself and say, "Why in the world am I carried away with this thing or this person or this situation? I am attaching my affection to false objects." Emotional domination will do it every time. That's what this word means--carried aside from the Word of God. The Word of God will give you guidance so that you will be attached to the right objects. You will be drawn to the right things--not the false ones.

Well, we have the picture here of the unstable believer being seduced by the apostate's views. This word "paraphero" is in the present tense which means that the apostate is constantly carried aside. He's constantly disoriented from God's direction. It is in the passive voice which means that he suffers the consequences because he went negative to true doctrine to begin with. Once you go negative to the Word, you don't have to do a thing after that. All you have to do is sit back and wait for the ax because you're going to get it. You don't have to do a thing. Once you go negative to the Word, your soul takes a flip; your emotions take over; and, pretty soon you're mouthing about how you feel about things, and it's no fun anymore, and right down the line, signaling what has happened. You're carried aside from your true loves to your false ones.

The apostate is at the mercy of Satan just as the waterless clouds are at the mercy of the wind. He's driven by false doctrine, and those who listen to them are going to be carried away from what God thinks. Apostates may speak very accurately about the Word, but they do not explain it in a way that ties into your soul. Emotional domination of your soul will always lead you into false teaching.

Fruitless Trees

The latter part of Jude 12 gives us another illustration. It says, "Trees whose fruit withers, without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots." You should take a pencil and just scratch out the words "whose fruit withers." What the Greek says is, "Trees without fruit." Here is a third analogy, and this one deals with the nature of the production of service. It says, "Trees whose fruit withers." After the word "trees," actually in the Greek there comes a word "phthinoporinos." "Phthinoporinos" means "belonging to late autumn." These are actually autumn trees. When you have a tree in the autumn, you expect it to be fruitful. That's the time of the harvest, and that's the point of this verse.

An apostate is like a tree. You come to him and you anticipate that he's going to be fruitful; he's going to be a blessing to you; he's going to feed your soul; and, he's going to lead you into the things of the Lord, and instead you find him barren. It says, "Without fruit." Apostates may appear promising as an autumn fruit tree, but in reality they bear no fruit. He's devoid of the filling of the spirit, so there's no spiritual fruit possible. Their activity and their productivity may be impressive, but it's not divine good.

These are said to be "twice dead." How is he dead? First of all, he's dead, it says, because he does not produce fruit. "Having died twice" is the expression. He's devoid of divine good production. So he's dead once. He has no fruit-bearing. It's just his old sin nature human good cranking out. He's a barren autumn fruit tree. If you have a barren tree that's supposed to be producing fruit, and that's why you have it there, and you find that it does not produce, you give it a second death. It's already dead as far as you're concerned. The thing that it's there for is not productive. There is no fruit coming, so you take a second step and you cut it down. You tear it out by the roots, and you totally destroy the tree. That's what the Word of God is saying here in the word "plucked up." This barren autumn fruit tree is torn out by its roots.

The apostate in time will experience removal from this life and the divine judgment upon his works. Many an apostate becomes so unfruitful that he ends up under the sin unto death. Any number of Christians come to the point where they pursue a line of action of resistance to the Word of God. They pursue a line where their lives increasingly are devoid of all production of divine good, and finally God simply takes them home to heaven, and they experience the sin unto death.

In this verse, we have two participles. One of them, "having died twice," is an aorist active participle. The aorist tense means a certain point. This person died at the point where he went negative to the Word. Active means he did it by choice--"having died by his own particular active deliberate choice." The words "plucked up by the roots" is also participle, but it's an aorist passive which means that there is a point in time where God acts upon him. Passive means somebody acts upon the subject. Here God reaches out and brings this person up in judgment. An apostate decides to reject Jesus Christ when he rejects the Word of God (that's active), but God passes the judgment on him, and that's passive.

So here is a sobering verse. An apostate is like a tree that you expect to bear fruit. Instead, you find it fruitless, and therefore it's dead as far as its natural productivity is concerned, and then God tears it out by the roots. We translate Jude 12: "These (apostates, that is) are the shoals in the sphere of your loves, feasting with you (unashamedly socializing with you), shepherding themselves (they are their own teachers and rejections of the pastor-teacher), clouds (apostates) without water being carried about (under the authority) of the wind (false doctrine); autumn trees (these apostates) without fruit, having died twice, having been rooted up."

Raging Waves

In Jude 13, we have a fourth illustration. "Raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame." Here we have an illustration of the instability of the apostate. He has no doctrine, so he is like the raging wild sea. The word simply means fierce and violent. As a matter of fact, this word is found in the papyri remains, and it is used of a malignant sore. This is always true of a soul which is under emotional domination; that is, a raging wild fierce thing. This is why if you have apostates in the circle of your friendship, you will find that sooner or later, be they believers or unbelievers, you will get hurt by that person. That person is a wild raging creature and the result will be injury to you sooner or later. This word implies a destructive quality. The sea here is used in the Word of God as a symbol of unbelievers (Isaiah 57:20).

Apostates have a wildness about them. No one can control it. One day this person loves you. The next day, they hate you with a vengeance. This is a quality of a person that you never know what he's going to be like the next time you meet him. He's like the wild raging of the sea, back and forth, back and forth, and you never know where you stand. The word says that he is foaming out. This is the word "epaphrizo." "Epaphrizo" is in the present tense which means he's constantly doing this. It's active which means he's doing it by choice. The picture here is a huge wave coming into the beach. It hits the beach, and then recedes, and it leaves debris upon the beach. Then it comes back, and another huge wave hits. It comes in with a raging thunder.

During the war for a while I was stationed in Hawaii. Since I was on the naval gunfire qualifying staff, they had a couple of Marine officers attached, so I was detailed to supervise qualifications of ships in gunfire. I was to ensure that they were qualified to lay down the proper kind of covering of a beach without hitting the troops. Nobody could engage in a combat mission in the South Pacific until we had qualified them and said that that crew on that ship knows enough that we can release them for a combat mission. When we weren't doing that, we found ourselves on that little island which was just a great huge naval firing range. We found ourselves on a beach that had tremendously big waves. It was really an experience to just body surf in those things. We would get out; see it coming; grab it; and, ride it into the beach. But if you didn't grab it right, you got caught inside, and then you learned what a raging turmoil this wave was because you just went cartwheeling, just spinning your way in, and hoping you wouldn't hit bottom before you came out on top.

That's the picture of a believer who's caught up under the influence of this kind of an apostate who is like a raging wave going back and forth. You're riding it. Sometimes he loves you, and then sometimes you get caught in it, and you get into a turmoil. You're twisted; you're torn; and you're shredded limb from limb because you took to your bosom an apostate. So up and down the beach are the littered lives of those caught up with the apostate. It says that the beach is covered here "with their own shame." The Greek word means baseness. Actually it's in the plural. It is their shames. It is their degradation. It refers to the foul debris that an apostate will bring into your life and cast upon a Christian. It stresses the ugliness and the repulsiveness of his deeds, all because there was a time when he said, "No" to doctrine. He said, "No" to the truth of the Word of God. Emotions took over his soul, and he was on the skids.

Wandering Stars

There's one more. The final illustration is "Wandering stars to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever." This illustrates the lack of direction apart from doctrine--wandering stars. The word "stars" here is "aster," and we get our English word "astro" from it, like an astrodome. Actually this is not a star. This word really here stands for a planet, and the wandering is "planetes," and "planetes" means "roaming" or "wandering." You can see that we get our word "planet" from that. So these are wandering planets; that is, irregular movements.

As ancient people looked up into the skies, they would see that the stars had fixed positions, apparently, as they would look at them. However, then they would notice the planets and they viewed them as another kind of star. They noticed that these did not hold a fixed position, and that they wandered into various orbits. So they called them "wandering stars," and that's the picture here. They didn't understand the action of planets as over against stars. The irregular movements seemed to violate the order of the heavens. So they appeared to them to be wandering aimlessly out there, and these planets were in contrast to the fixed stars.

The apostate here is like a wandering planet. He is not fixed. He does not have a frame of reference. He does not have a point of anchor. The thing that he wants above all else to pursue is freedom. That's the cry of the apostate. I want to be free. I want to do that which I want to do. I don't want rules. I don't want regulations. This one I think is a very apt illustration of our day because this is one of the signs of apostates in a great great way. So he goes to pursue his freedom on his own course of action, and he'll go from his mental secret sins all the way to the open expressions of sexual immorality, and down the line to drugs.

Marijuana

Drugs is one of the biggest way to find freedom. Marijuana is one of the ideal ways, we're told, to find freedom; to find release; and, to find capacity to express yourself. Some of you get the monthly analysis letter from the Christian Anticommunism Crusade. I'm going to take the trouble to read for you a rather extensive section, and I want you to listen carefully because it is a report on freedom from marijuana--the freedom that the drug culture is looking for which is one of the clear expressions of apostasy. This is written by a doctor on the Berkeley campus of the University of California at Berkeley. It is the expression of his analysis of the question, does marijuana really have long range effects? You're told, "No it doesn't. It's not habit-forming. It won't really bother you. His name is Dr. D. Harvey Poulsen, and here's what he says.

"Five years ago, at the time when there was a great deal of discussion about LSD and related hallucinogens, I was asked by a Daily Californian reporter for my views on marijuana. At the time my experience was limited to a few students I had talked to who had used it irregularly and infrequently. In addition to my personal knowledge, there was the medical literature which seemed sparse indeed, but in general seemed to be saying that there was no proof of long term harmful effects from marijuana. I summarized this lack of knowledge to that date for The Daily Californian reporter. I said that there was no proof of harm, and that it should probably be legalized and controlled. In general, this view met with approval from most of the students and most of my professional colleagues.

"Since that time the use of marijuana on this campus in this community and nationally has increased at an explosive rate. My guess is that more than 50% of the campus used marijuana at least occasionally, but that only a small percentage (probably less than 1%) used it daily or frequently enough to be called heads.

"In my job as chief psychiatrist at the University of California, I have an unusual opportunity to observe the effects of the drug on a number of people in a number of contexts. In addition, I have had the task of thinking about my findings and correlating them with whatever scientific data is available. Recently, another reporter from The Daily Californian interviewed me to see if my opinion had changed in the interim. In the course of that interview, I realized in a concrete and explicit way that it had. The headline read, "Psychiatrist says, 'Pot smokers can't think straight.'" This time the response of the community and colleagues was not so approving. It is an interesting fact that questioning the claim of marijuana users leads to much more anger, vilification, and character assassination than does the opposite stance. The following statement is a summary of the observations and the thinking which led me to the consequent change in my views.

"The most important source of information is my daily work as director of the psychiatric clinic doing administration, supervision, and direct work with students. The psychiatric clinic at the University of California Berkeley sees a very large segment of the student population. We interview between 10 and 15% of the students each year. That is, we see roughly 3,000 new students per year, mostly as outpatients, but roughly 200 of them as hospitalized patients. We have made a number of studies attempting to compare our patient population with the general population on all sorts of variables--social, psychological, psychiatric, and so on. We have never found a significant difference between our patients and the student body as a whole.

"Our patients are seen for many reasons, but the majority of them are not in any way significantly different from the general student population. All these patients are seen by a large staff of psychiatrists, social workers, and psychologists. I personally interviewed about 100 a year--some of them many times, and because of the fact that I directly and indirectly supervise the staff, I hear about hundreds more in the course of a year.

My first important shift in thinking occurred as a result of observations made during psychotherapy with the young man, 'S,' who was bright enough to be getting his law and PhD simultaneously, and competent enough to be learning to fly and deal in real estate at the same time. As we proceeded in our work together, I came to know S's way of thinking; that is, how he thought. Most of us do this without thinking about it. All of us come to know to some degree the way our friends and colleagues think. In therapy, the opportunity to hear someone think out loud about a problem important to him maximizes the opportunity to come to know how he uses or misuses logic; remembers clearly or not at all; does or does not exercise good judgment about his own thinking; and, whether or not he is able to know his own feelings.

"We had made enough headway so that S had begun to be able to observe and understand his own thinking. Periodically then we had hours. I was seeing him twice weekly when his thinking became mushy. If I tried to follow him, my head began to spin. When I protested that he'd become impossible to listen to, he'd argue that his own experience was that he was thinking more clearly, more insightfully than ever before. On one such occasion, he mentioned that he'd been to a party two nights before where he had particularly good grass. In Berkeley in 1968 that was not a particularly remarkable memorable remark, but we thought that there might be some connection with his thinking. The same series of events occurred often enough that I finally was able at times to (tell) that S had used some mind-expanding drug, usually marijuana. S, because he was a good observer, helped show me another aspect of the thinking disorder I'm describing.

"Central to his difficulties was a paranoid stance toward the world. By this I mean a style of thinking characterized by a constant suspicion that one is being controlled; that is, by the establishment; the system; and, so on, and simultaneously a constant unwitting search for people in situations which will do just that; that is, drugs, demagogues. If this manner of thinking is carried further, it blends into the condition usually called paranoia. Here the subject is controlled by voices--God, or whatever, and at the same time he is very often, against his will, being controlled by a state hospital or jail. S was forever talking about his search for something or someone he could trust. He very frequently clutched to himself people who were totally untrustworthy and hurt and rejected others who manifestly admired and liked him."

You notice that emotional domination causes us to attach ourselves to pseudo objects.

"When he had used marijuana, his thinking became more paranoid; that is, he became more mistrustful of me, for instance, and at the same time he became more wily, so that he talked glibly, using cliché, theories, and insights, all to avoid noticing concretely and immediately whatever he was really doing and feeling in his relationship with me as well as his relationships outside. In short, the pathological part of his thinking was exaggerated in two ways. One, he was more suspicious. Two, he was more adept at fooling himself about what he was up to while simultaneously maintaining how aware, in touch, and loving he was. S continued in therapy but also continued to use marijuana and hashish. Hashish is merely another more concentrated source of the active principles contained in marijuana. By the end of his therapy, I had decided that so long as he muddied his thinking in this way, there was no use continuing.

"He, however, suffered a fatal accident as a result of an error in judgment before his therapy actually terminated. As I was becoming familiar with these effects of marijuana on S, I gradually learned to pick up signs when they were more subtle. I came to observe the same changes in others; for example, that marijuana exacerbated the pathological aspects of their thinking. In the practice of medicine, these steps in clinical verification are part of the daily practice.

"In the last year, another drug effect has become increasingly visible. Students who have dropped out and were into the drug scene are attempting to return and finding it difficult if not impossible. The usual story is that the young person has become aware that the life he's been leading is unsatisfactory and unproductive. He then stops drugs for six months or so, and then tries to return. When he returns to school, however, he finds that he can't think clearly, and that in ways he finds it difficult to describe, his thinking has changed. Such people also seem to be aware that they've lost their will someplace; that to do something, to do anything, requires gigantic effort. In short, they become (to where they have no will). The irony here is that they have now achieved the freedom they sought. They need an external director. They are right for a demagogue."

I think it's interesting that the word of God indicates to us that one of the factors of the end times will be a drug-oriented society, and how much that will prepare for the antichrist as the demagogue.

"If one listens to such people think, there is a different quality from the one described with S. It is more like wandering in a swamp which has islands of solidity and sudden holes with no surface markings for either the island or the bog. One hears patches of lucidity, and just when he begins to follow, he falls into a hole of confusion. The patient's subjective experience is somewhat similar. I've heard comments like, 'I know I can think sometimes like I used to. I can write papers, for example, but all of a sudden, I'm lost, or during the first hour, I just can't seem to get my feet on the ground.' From these people, I've come to suspect that there are lasting damages from cannabis (that is, marijuana).

"In summary, it is now my judgment based on five years of extensive clinical experience that: One, the use of marijuana leads acutely and for several hours to days thereafter to a disorder of thinking characterized by a general lack of coherence and exacerbation of pathological thinking processes. Two, that the effects of marijuana are cumulative. Three, that after a period of prolonged use, say six months to a year, of marijuana in frequent dosages on the order of one time daily, that chronic changes occur which are similar to those seen in organic brain disease--islands of lucidity intermixed with areas of loss of function."

Marijuana will certainly destroy your soul. However, if you had the idea that marijuana will not damage you physically, remember this clinical report. You may pursue it and find that full freedom that you're looking for. That's exactly what this final apostate is--the wandering star type. So the Scripture says that this one is "reserved under the blackness of darkness forever." The word "reserved" is the Greek word "tereo." "Tereo" means "to be guarded." This apostate is guarded by God. This word, incidentally, is passive. God is doing the guarding. He will not escape. He is guarding him for a grim end. What is this grim end? It is described by the words "blackness of darkness forever." The words "blackness of darkness forever" refer to the blackness of the netherworld. The word "blackness" means a blackness that is a gloomy darkness that you cannot see through. When it says "the blackness of darkness forever," it is actually describing the end of these people in eternity away from God. This, interestingly enough, seems to suggest that out in eternity in the lake of fire there are black spots--heat covered by black spots.

Illustrations of Apostates from Nature

So here's what we have learned from Jude 12 and 13. Nature gives us five illustrations about apostates:
  1. Hidden Reefs

    They are called hidden reefs. They are a hazard to the various human relationships of those who are in contact with them.
  2. Waterless Clouds

    They are waterless clouds. The promise of blessing that they have is never materialized. They have the promise of blessing, but no spiritual refreshment provided.
  3. Fruitless Trees

    They are fruitless trees. They have no projection of divine good. It's all human good.
  4. Raging Waves

    They are wild waves--unstable, and littering the lives of those they influence with corrupting qualities.
  5. Wandering Stars

    They are wandering stars, following an aimless course in life without the guidance of doctrine.
It all stems from the day that that person went negative through instruction in the Word, and the emotions took over the soul. Beware the role of the apostate lest you follow in the illustrations that we see all around us from nature itself.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1973

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