Part 2 - Why Does God Allow False Teachers?

Jesus said, in the Gospels, we need to be wise as serpents and yet harmless as doves.

So anyone who has ever read through the Bible and paid attention, you know that false teachers and warnings against false prophets, this is a major theme that runs straight through the scripture.

Moses talked about it in Deuteronomy, the prophet Jeremiah warned about it, Jesus warned about it in the

Sermon on the Mount, Paul taught on the subject, Peter taught on it, John taught about it, Jude taught about it.

In fact, every New Testament epistle, with the exception of Philemon, addresses this issue to some degree of false prophets and false teaching.

And of course, the Bible ends with the book of Revelation, which warns about what? The beast and the false prophets.

So we have to be discerning. We need to understand this biblical teaching because modern evangelical

Christianity, listen, modern evangelical Christianity, especially the charismatic side, but just as a whole, modern evangelical

Christianity is littered with false teachers. Why does

God have them there? To test people. So do we know what the scripture says?

Have you been reading the Bible? Do you study? Do you pay attention? Are you equipped to handle these things?

Because if you're not, if you're listening right now and you've never been tested with this, you will sooner or later.

And like I said, in our area right now, the pastors are being tested. And in the future, if things keep going the direction they're headed, the people in the pew will soon be tested.

So I'm doing this podcast because I saw a need in the body of Christ to sort of teach people how all of this works and to show you biblically how to respond, because really it's all a matter of application.

It's one thing to know what the Bible says, okay, Titus 310, you know, after the second admonition reject

Roman 16, mark and avoid, you know, it's one thing to read the Bible. That's good.

It's another thing to read the Bible and believe it. Okay, great. But are you applying the word of God?

Are churches upholding the word of God? Are we doing what scripture says, right?

James 1 22 tells us to be doers of the word and not hearers only.

If you're only a hearer of the word, James says you're deceiving yourself. I mean, what good is it if you affirm what the

Bible says, but when it comes time to do what scripture says to apply it, you're unwilling or you make excuses as to why you're not going to do what scripture says.

You know, these verses, let me, if any local pastor who's been on the opposite side and more and more local pastors are getting on the right side of this, praise

God. But let's say there's a pastor watching who's been waffling. Just in case one of them is watching, let me just remind you,

Titus 3 10 is not a recommendation. Roman 16 is not a recommendation.

These are, it's not optional whether or not, you know, can, can we do this?

Should we do it? Maybe I won't do it. No, it's not optional. We're commanded to do these things. So this is something that we're facing in our area.

If you're watching, you're from another state. If your local church or the churches in your area are not facing it right now, as time goes on, the more time goes on, they will.

I'm sure all the churches are facing this pressure from the LGBT mafia and the federal government and all the people pressuring you to become tolerant and inclusive and to trash the

Bible when it comes to these passages from Leviticus and Romans one and first Corinthians six and all the rest.

There's all sorts of pressure to compromise the word of God. And when a false teacher comes in and he's trying to get you to compromise, what are you going to do?

Because that is a test. Again, it's easy to be a

Christian when everything is going good. It's easy to be part of a local church and I believe in Jesus when everything's going fine.

But what about when pressure is applied or what happens when a wolf in sheep's clothing shows up in town and he's trying to pick off weak sheep from the flock?

Here's another big test. Will the shepherd, will the pastor of the church fight off the wolves or will he invite the wolf into the assembly?

Because after all, one pastor said, well, yeah, I know he didn't admit the guy was a false prophet, but I think he understood that he is.

But he said, you know, I just think we need to welcome them into the church just to show them the love of Christ.

And I thought, wow, yeah, here is an even, I never thought I'd see that from an evangelical pastor, but what

I did see it. And what was that? It was a test and some people are passing the test.

Some are definitely failing the test. A great sifting is happening right now.

The character of men and the character of local churches is being tested.

One last passage from 1 John 2, these false teachers that the Lord allows, right?

The apostle John calls them antichrists, 1 John 2 .18. The apostle says, you have heard that the antichrist is coming, but even now many antichrists, plural, have come.

So here John calls the false teachers antichrists. Now, this doesn't mean that they come into the church and the,

Hey, everybody, we are against Jesus. That's not what they do. Jesus called them wolves in sheep's clothing.

So they're going to appear to be as Christians. They're going to say, we love Jesus. We believe in Jesus, but their doctrine in some way, it undermines the true person and work of Christ.

So they're preaching. What they're preaching is an imitation. For example, the Mormons Mormons say they believe in Jesus.

They preach faith in the gospel. They use terms like that, but the Christ that they're not preaching, that they're preaching is not the true

Christ of scripture. Their Christ is the spirit brother of Lucifer and the son spirit child of a man who once lived near the star

Kolob in outer space. So obviously Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, he was, he was an antichrist.

He wasn't the antichrist, that final figure of the end times, but he was an antichrist, lowercase a going back to verse 15, a first John chapter two,

John tells his readers do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the father is not in him for all that is in the world is the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life.

It is not of the father, but it is of the world and the world is passing away in the lust of it.

But he who does the will of God abides forever. So in this context, the statement about antichrist, the false teachers, it's in this context of loving the world.

So the antichrist false teachers, they love the world. They love the philosophies of the world again, you know, like the

BLM, social justice, LGBT, all this stuff, Marxism, and they take the biblical doctrine and they try to blend it with this worldliness and with sin and what you get is a corruption.

So all the things in the Bible that are unpopular, well, we're going to ignore those or maybe in some way deny it.

But those biblical teachings that everybody likes, first Corinthians 13, you don't love your neighbor, all of that.

Oh, we, we, we embrace that course. In the end, they typically twist those passages as well.

But then John says in verse 18, little children, it is the last hour. That is, we are living in the, the last days, you know, this final age in between the first advent and second advent of Christ.

So in this last hour, the latter days, this final age, it will be marked by religious apostasy.

John says that you have heard the antichrist is coming, but now many antichrist plural have already come by which we know it is the last hour.

Then he says, they went out from us, but they were not of us. If they had been of us, they would have continued with us, but they went out that they might be made manifest that none of them were of us.

What's John saying? A true believer will stay within the faith, but the false teachers who test the people of God, they depart.

So typically this is how it works. Not always, but typically the false teachers, they leave the true churches.

They go out, go out from us. John says they leave the church and today they might either start a podcast or a

YouTube channel or they might even start another so -called church, church, quote unquote, but it's not a legitimate

New Testament church. They start some assembly where the leader is self appointed and or unaccountable and they use these new assemblies as sort of their platform for false teaching and they try to pick people away from the true churches into their, you know, really the word is a cult.

If you start a church and it's not a legitimate church and if you're some self appointed pastor that you know, all the true pastors don't recognize you as a pastor and you're unaccountable,

I mean, that's a cult. That's what the Mormons were. It was a cult and there's cults forming every day, but what are they doing?

They're there to test God's people. They're trying to pick people off from the local assemblies.

So the churches in the area and how to respond to this. Now we are being tested and if people in our congregations come into contact with some of these false teachers and apostates, here's,

I'll just end the podcast with this. This is how they lead people astray. They're probably not going to open the

Bible and try to show you that gay marriage or universalism is really what scripture teaches.

They're probably not going to do that, but if they know you have a doubt or some grievance, they're going to try to capitalize on that and really what they do is they try to make some emotional appeal.

You know, people who join cults, ultimately they're looking for a sense of belonging. So they're going to try to make friends with people.

That's why they're showing up to churches and trying to befriend people because they know if they can befriend someone that they're that much more likely to pull them out of their true church, pull them out of the true

Christian faith into their apostate movement. So it's more based on feelings than doctrine.

They're not going to show you a Bible verse to convince you. That's not going to happen. They're going to play on your emotions.

You know, people join these groups because they say, Oh, they're so nice.

You know, there's that pastor, you know, he's up there from the pulpit preaching about, you know, the judge, final judgment from the book of Revelation.

I don't like him and his tone, but these people, they're so nice. See, that's how they work. They play on your emotions to try to get you out of the true church into this cult.

Romans 16, Paul says, don't engage them. Don't enter into dialogue with them. Why? Why? Because they use flattery and deceptive words to deceive the simple minded and nobody thinks that nobody in the history of the world has ever admitted to them saying,

Hey, I'm simple minded. Nobody thinks that of themselves, but if you're tricked by this, you are simple minded.

So it's a test. Will a person be led by their feelings or will they be led by the

Holy Spirit? These are the two options. Will they be led astray by false teachers or are they led of the

Spirit? John says to true believers in verse 20, those who do not fail the test, he says, but you, you have an anointing from the

Holy one and you know all things. You know that when the preacher is opening up the

Bible and teaching things that are maybe some of their, some of the harder truths, that's true, but you know, that's the word of God and you know, it's beneficial.

This is what people need to hear. They need to hear the truth. John says, you know the truth.

Why? Because you are led by the Spirit of God. You have an anointing from the

Holy one, but those who stray, what did

John say? They left because they were never really of us to begin with.

I'll just close with one final statement. If you know someone who has left a local assembly and they're starting to dabble in this false doctrine, if they've been attending some false church or maybe some cult,

James chapter five verses 19 and 20 says, brethren, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone turns him back, let him know that he who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save a soul from death and cover a multitude of sins.