Beware of False Teachers & False Prophets

In our house churches we encourage dialog and the exchange of ideas. This means we let people say things we disagree with. And we listen, not to argue, but to understand. And that means, we listen with the possibility of changing our minds about things. And when people change their minds about things, we're gracious with them. And if people with differing viewpoints remain unpersuaded, we give grace to that too. This is good.

But that doesn't mean we ignore false teaching. And to be sure, bad teaching abounds. Incorrect doctrine is all around and among us. The question is whether those teachings are wrong because of a faulty pursuit of truth, or because of a desire to deceive.

If it's the first, we gently assist. If it's the latter, we firmly resist.

Recently I recorded my thoughts on this, having researched a man who claims to be a prophet, who is influencing some people I care about. Transcript below the description.

DESCRIPTION
How can you tell the difference between a false teacher and a bad teacher? Or a false prophet and a mistaken prophet? Is there a difference between a teacher who deceives and one who is deceived? Today there's an abundance of people who call themselves prophets and some are teaching ludicrous things. While there should be red flags everywhere, Christians are waving the green flag because there are signs and wonders and charisma and eloquence. My concern here is not to "expose" deceivers but to warn the deceived. We must learn how to recognize and rebuke false teaching for ourselves.

00:00 Introduction
00:11 Warnings Against False Prophets
00:49 False Teachings v Different Opinions
02:28 A Popular Prophet Who Teaches Lies
04:01 But What If False Teaching Bears Good Fruit?
04:21 Unity & Discernment
05:15 Get Reacquainted With These Scriptures
05:34 2 Timothy 3 
6:59 Titus 1 & 3
9:00 Jude
12:30 Final Blessing and Doxology

TRANSCRIPT
How can you tell the difference between a false teacher and a bad teacher? Or a false prophet and a mistaken prophet? You may object to that distinction as unnecessary, but here's why I ask it. The scriptures warn that false teachers and false prophets will come, and we're to be on our guard against them and to rebuke them. They are a danger to the flock. They're reprobate. And yet, none of us comes into the faith with complete understanding. We continue to grow in our understanding till the day we die, which means we change our minds about stuff. Having incomplete understanding doesn't make us evil, does it? 

How do we know the difference between evil and ignorance. How do we respond to people who say things we think are incorrect or wrong? How wrong does it need to be for us to declare heresy or apostasy?  

I mean, some things are obvious, at least they should be. If someone preaches that Jesus is not Lord, that's easy to rebuke as false teaching. It's unchristian. That's a danger to the flock. Or if someone claims to be a prophet and declares that God is going to destroy the world again with Flood 2. 0, that's a false prophecy. God already said he wouldn't ever do that again. We can rebuke that quickly. Or if someone says God isn't going to judge the world, or that the earth and all its elements will not be destroyed, we can recognize that right away as false teaching, as false prophecy, because scripture explicitly tells us the opposite. 

If someone teaches that it doesn't matter what we do sexually as long as it's consensual and loving; or that Jesus is just one of many ways to God; or that God just wants you to do whatever makes you happy; or that it's okay to kill your baby in utero, or that it's wrong to have an abortion; or that Trump is God's anointed, or that Trump is the devil incarnate; or that Jewish people or white people or black people, or rich people or poor people, or American people or foreign people, or Catholics or Protestants or Anabaptists or Calvinists or Pentecostals, or Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses are good or bad; or that all people will eventually be saved because a loving God would never send people to hell; or that only those who choose Jesus and are baptized will be saved because a loving God would never force someone to do something they don't want... well, at some point we have to decide whether the person teaching and proclaiming those things is right or wrong, whether their teachings are true or false, and whether they're safe or dangerous. Is there a difference between being deceived and being deceiving?  

People I care about have begun to follow a man who claims to be a prophet. He says that the biggest lie we've been told is that if something doesn't align with scripture, it's not from God. Well, that's a big red flag for me. Not just a yellow flag, not just "go slow." It's a red flag, like "stop now." But Christian people are lured in because he has charisma and speaks eloquently and mystically and puts on displays of signs and wonders where he casts out demons. 

But when someone tells him, I called out to your spirit in prayer he smiles and he celebrates it. And Christians find ways to excuse it. But for me, it's a red flag.  

And he makes up stuff, like God didn't create the heavens and the earth, he just restored it from chaos. And that when he told Adam and Eve to replenish the earth, that meant it had already been full before, and now they need to re plenish it. He's just making stuff up, and Christians aren't concerned. Then he says that in the flood, God said he was going to kill every man, but then he didn't kill Noah, so that means Noah wasn't a man. And everyone oohs and ahs like he's just said something brilliant, but it's just dumb. He's just making stuff up. 

And then he says that the reason he got divorced to his first wife was because he was too close to God, and that God lusts for him, and didn't want to share him with his wife, and that God never tells us to go fix our marriage. I mean, it's so many red flags. Red flag. Red flag. Red flag. Red flag. And yet there are Christians waving the green flag and even promoting him to their friends.  

I know one young lady who came to faith through his ministry. I had counseled her, I had challenged her, I had prayed with her, and I kept praying for her. And she came to Jesus through his ministry. And now her family says she's a better person. She loves the Lord, she sings worship songs all the time. Does that mean that I should pull back the red flag and wave a yellow flag instead?  

I'm big on unity. I advocate for people of different doctrinal persuasions to be in fellowship together. I believe with all my heart that it grieves God's heart when we divide the church around which leader we think is better. I don't think we should demonize people for having different interpretations about peripheral matters.  

But it also grieves my heart that we are so easily deceived by men who have wormed their way into the homes of gullible people with doctrines of demons that give lip service to Jesus, but only so that we let them in. 

But how can you tell the difference between a false teacher and someone who's just not very smart? Or a false prophet and someone who's still learning to discern the Holy Spirit from their own thoughts and wishes? Is it just a matter of motives?  

Motive certainly has something to do with it. If someone's motive is to deceive, they are absolutely in the wrong. They are evil. But some people with good motives are just as deceiving because they are deceived. It might not feel nice, but anyone who preaches a gospel other than the kingdom of God that Jesus taught his disciples and passed down to us through the holy scriptures, that person should be rebuked. And anyone deceived by them should be warned. And the latter is my hope in saying all this.  

Please, let's renew our familiarity with three letters in particular: 2 Timothy, Titus, and Jude. I'm going to read them, and then I'll leave you to God's conviction about it with a prayer of blessing over you, a doxology that Jude concludes his concern with.  

2 Timothy 3. 
"Mark this. There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power, have nothing to do with such people. 

"They are the kind who worm their way into homes and gain control over gullible women who are loaded down with sins and are swayed by all kinds of evil desires, always learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth... These teachers oppose the truth. They are men of depraved minds who, as far as the faith is concerned, are rejected." 

Titus 1.
"An elder must be blameless, faithful to his wife, a man whose children believe and are not open to the charge of being wild and disobedient. Since an overseer manages God's household, he must be blameless, not overbearing, not quick tempered, not given to drunkenness, not violent, not pursuing dishonest gain. Rather, he must be hospitable. One who loves what is good, who is self controlled, upright, holy, and disciplined. He must hold firmly to the trustworthy message, as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it. 

"For there are many rebellious people full of meaningless talk and deception. They must be silenced because they are disrupting whole households by teaching things they ought not to teach, and that for the sake of dishonest gain. Therefore, rebuke them sharply, so that they will be sound in the faith and will pay no attention to myths or the merely human commands of those who reject the truth. 

"To the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are corrupted and do not believe, nothing is pure. In fact, both their minds and consciences are corrupt. They claim to know God, but by their actions they deny Him. They are detestable, disobedient, and unfit for doing anything good. Remind the people to be subject to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready to do whatever is good, to slander no one, to be peaceable and considerate, and always to be gentle toward everyone... Warn a divisive person once, and then warn them a second time. After that, have nothing to do with them. You may be sure that such people are warped and sinful. They are self condemned."

And finally, Jude.
"Dear friends, Although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt compelled to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God's holy people. 

"For certain individuals, whose condemnation was written about long ago, have secretly slipped in among you. They are ungodly people who pervert the grace of God into a license for immorality, and they deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.  

"Though you already know all this, I want to remind you that the Lord at one time delivered his people out of Egypt, but later destroyed those who did not believe. And the angels who did not keep their positions of authority, but abandoned their proper dwelling, these, he has kept in darkness, bound with everlasting chains for judgment on the Great Day.  

"In a similar way, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion. They serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire.  

"In the very same way, on the strength of their dreams, these ungodly people pollute their own bodies, reject authority, and heap abuse on celestial beings... These people slander whatever they do not understand, and the very things they do understand by instinct as irrational animals do, will destroy them.  

"Woe to them. They have taken the way of Cain. They have rushed for profit into Balaam's error. They have been destroyed in Korah's rebellion. 

"These people are blemishes at your love feasts, eating with you without the slightest qualm, shepherds who only feed themselves. They are clouds without rain, blown along by the wind, autumn trees without fruit, and uprooted twice dead. They are wild waves of the sea, foaming up their shame, wandering stars, for whom blackest darkness has been reserved forever. 

"Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about them. He said, See, the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones to judge everyone and to convict all of them of all the ungodly acts they have committed in their ungodliness and of all the defiant words ungodly sinners have spoken against him. These people are grumblers and fault finders. They follow their own evil desires. They boast about themselves and flatter others for their own advantage.  

"But dear friends, remember what the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ foretold. They said to you, In the last times, there will be scoffers who follow their own ungodly desires... These are the people who divide you, who follow mere natural instincts, and do not have the Spirit.  

"You, dear friends, by building yourself up in your most holy faith and praying to the Holy Spirit, keep yourself in God's love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life. 

"Be merciful to those who doubt. Save others by snatching them from the fire. To others, show mercy mixed with fear, hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh." 

And here's the blessing:

"To him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy. To the only God, our Savior, be glory and majesty and power and authority through Jesus Christ, our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore. Amen."

Prayer Please!

I am having such wonderful conversations here in Oregon! I wish I could just invite all of you into the conversations, or tell you everything we've talked about. But their stories are not mine to share. Just know that there is fruitful ministry here, and I believe your prayers are assisting in that! Thank you!