WWUTT 363 Enticing Unsteady Souls?

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Just as the devil was deceptive in the Garden of Eden, so he continues to attempt to deceive us through false prophets today.

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We must be aware of his schemes so we stay away from his lies, grounded in the truth of God's Word, when we understand the text.

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You're listening to When We Understand the Text, committed to the sound teaching of the Word of God. For questions and comments, email whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.

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And don't forget our website, www .utt .com. Here's our host,

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Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. Hey, just yesterday, Tim Chalies posted an article entitled,

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Seven False Teachers in the Church Today. What great timing, right? Right when we're going through 2

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Peter chapter 2. It's posted on his website at chalies .com. It was also posted on our

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Facebook page, which you can find at facebook .com slash www .uttvideos.

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He lists seven kinds of false teachers to look out for, but also gives examples of those false teachers, naming names.

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And I want to talk about this, talk about this article at the end of the lesson today. But first, let's get back to where we left off yesterday in 2

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Peter chapter 2, verses 10 through 16. Again, we start midway through verse 10, where Peter writes, bold and willful, they being the false teachers, do not tremble as they blaspheme the glorious ones.

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Whereas angels, though greater in might and power, do not pronounce a blasphemous judgment against them before the

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Lord. But these, like irrational animals, creatures of instinct, born to be caught and destroyed, blaspheming about matters of which they are ignorant, will also be destroyed in their destruction, suffering wrong as the wage for their wrongdoing.

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They count it pleasure to revel in the daytime. They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions while they feast with you.

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They have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin. They entice unsteady souls.

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They have hearts trained in greed, accursed children, forsaking the right way they have gone astray.

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They have followed the way of Balaam, the son of Beor, who loved gain from wrongdoing, but was rebuked for his own transgression.

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A speechless donkey spoke with human voice and restrained the prophet's madness.

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So coming back again to what we talked about yesterday, we saw a comparison between who we are supposed to be as followers of Christ and how these false teachers are described as irrational animals.

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How are we supposed to be? We're supposed to be spotless and blemishless, like like lambs, like the sheep of God's flock who are following the good shepherd.

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That's the way that we're supposed to be. But these false teachers are like irrational animals, creatures of instinct going every which way and devouring the the more helpless animals like sheep.

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The Apostle Paul warned the Ephesian elders in Acts chapter 2, Acts chapter 20, that fierce wolves will come in among you attempting to devour the sheep.

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And so this is this is the irrational animal. The false teacher is a creature of instinct, meaning that they chase after their own sinful desires.

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And we'll explore that a little bit more today. They are doing what they know to do by their nature.

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And who are we, according to our nature? We are sinful. We are fallen short of the glory of God.

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And we only do sinful things until the Holy Spirit comes into our life, until the act of regeneration that happens on our hearts by the power of the

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Holy Spirit. Everything that we do is sin. Now, you might say, hey, even before I became a

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Christian, I was still kind of a nice guy. I was a nice lady. I did nice things for people.

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Sure, it's possible to do something that is kind for somebody else, at least in the eyes of the world.

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What would be considered to be kind toward another person, kindness toward somebody else. But as we read in Romans 14, 23, everything that is not done in faith is sin.

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So this was all self -righteousness. Even when you did something kind toward somebody else in the eyes of God, it was as filthy as a soiled garment, as described in Isaiah 64, 6.

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Our best deeds are as filthy rags before a holy God. We cannot earn our righteousness by anything good that we do.

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So by our nature, all that we do is sin. By our nature, what we do is in rebellion against God's holiness, his righteousness, his decreed law.

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In fact, it even says here that they have an insatiable appetite for sin.

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Verse 14, and I think of something that Paul said in Romans 1, 30, when he was going through a list of sins, describing a depraved people.

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He said they are inventors of evil. It's like they've run out of sins that they can do, so they invent new kinds of sins.

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And this is the false teachers that we are talking about here. Verse 12, these like irrational animals, creatures of instinct, born to be caught and destroyed, blaspheming about matters of which they are ignorant.

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You know, the apostle Paul said that he was once among them. In 1 Timothy 1, 12 -13,

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I thank Him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because He judged me faithful, appointing me to His service, though formerly

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I was a blasphemer, a persecutor, and insolent opponent.

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But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our

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Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.

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The apostle Paul was once a false teacher, just like those false teachers that he is describing, but the

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Lord showed him mercy, and he had acted ignorantly in unbelief. God rescued him out of that darkness that he once walked in, and into His marvelous light.

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Quite literally, actually, because the Lord appeared to him on the road to Damascus in a bright light, and it blinded the apostle

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Paul. For three days, he fasted and prayed until Ananias came to him and baptized him, and the scales fell from his eyes, and he became a messenger of Jesus Christ to the

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Gentiles. So the apostle Paul was once this person who acted ignorantly in unbelief, blaspheming about matters that he did not understand.

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But instead of being destroyed in his destruction, as it goes on to say in verse 12, Paul was rescued by the mercy of God.

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And so we must pray that these false teachers would repent of their sins. They can be saved, but it is only by the mercy and grace of Jesus Christ that they would turn from their false teaching and follow in the truth, follow in the light of Christ.

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Peter goes on here in 2 Peter 2 .13, suffering wrong is the wage for their wrongdoing. They count it pleasure to revel in the daytime.

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This reminds me also of something else that Paul said to the Thessalonians, where he said that we are not children of the night.

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We're not like those who get drunk in the darkness, as he talks about in 1 Thessalonians chapter five, but we are children of the day.

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So let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love and for a helmet, the hope of salvation.

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For God has not destined us for wrath as what will happen to these false teachers, but to obtain salvation through our

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Lord Jesus Christ who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep, we might live with him.

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Therefore, encourage one another and build one another up just as you are doing. We need to continue to share the gospel with one another and encourage one another according to the truth of the scriptures to keep one another on the path of righteousness and away from straying into the darkness, being led astray by these false teachers.

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They count it pleasure to revel in the daytime. They are blots and blemishes reveling in their deceptions while they feast with you.

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And that was where we ended yesterday. Verse 14, they have eyes that are full of adultery, insatiable for sin.

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Now this doesn't necessarily mean that they sleep around with people that they aren't married to.

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Because in the case of the apostle Paul, he didn't from our understanding as his upstanding character as a

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Pharisee, he was a chaste man, but he did commit adultery, just not as we would consider that word according to sexual immorality.

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In James chapter four, he says, what causes quarrels and what causes fights among you?

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Is it not this that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have.

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So you murder. You covet and cannot obtain. So you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask.

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You ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people.

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Do you not know that the friendship that you have with the world is enmity with God?

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Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. So here we have

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James calling them adulterers because of their friendship with the world. So this statement here in in second

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Peter to 14, they have eyes full of adultery does not necessarily mean that their eyes are full of sexual immorality, although in the case of many false teachers, that is true.

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But it's because they have friendship with the world. They desire the things of the world. They even quarrel with those that they are in opposition with.

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There's competition with other people that do the same things that they do. So they have these eyes that are full of adultery, insatiable for sin.

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They entice unsteady souls. Jesus warned in Matthew chapter 24 about those who will come claiming to be the

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Christ or will say, look, there he is. And they're liars. They are speaking false things for the next return of Christ will be as visible as lightning and the whole world will witness it.

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And he said that they will do miraculous signs and wonders. So as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect, see,

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I have told you beforehand. And so Peter says here that they will entice unsteady souls.

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They won't be able to lead astray the elect because, as Jesus says in John chapter 10, no one will snatch them out of my hand.

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But those who are unsteady will be led astray. Those who who are ignorant and unstable and twist the scriptures to their own destruction, as Peter later talks about in chapter three, verse 16, they would also be among those unsteady souls.

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They have hearts trained in greed, accursed children. Second Timothy chapter three, the apostle

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Paul describes them this way. Understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty for people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self -control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness but denying its power.

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Avoid such people. For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.

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That describes the entire Democratic Party. That's not to say that the Republican Party is innocent, but the

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Democrats are totally sold out to planned parenthood and defending Roe versus Wade and the right for a woman to have an abortion and kill the child that is growing within her.

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That's like the Democratic platform. They are going to stand on that view until the

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Democratic Party completely falls apart or is destroyed, whichever one of those things comes first. But this they they sneak into households and capture weak women burdened with sins and led astray by various passions.

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This is what the liberals and the Democrats are doing in society with that women's march that was that was in Washington, D .C.

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a couple of weeks ago, a couple of weekends ago. The number one issue for that march was to defend the right for a woman to be able to kill her child.

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That was the number one issue for women marching in that march. It is it is a horrible deception.

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This abortion mentality that is in our culture today, it is violent and there is blood on the hands of the decision makers in this nation.

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Blood on the hands of people who have who have partaken in the practice of abortion, of sacrificing children to Malik, forsaking the right way.

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They have gone astray. They have followed the way of Balaam, the son of Bjor, who loved gain from wrongdoing but was rebuked for his own transgression.

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A speechless donkey spoke with human voice and restrained the prophet's madness. You remember the story of Balaam, correct?

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It's in Numbers chapters 22 through 24. And how it begins is

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Balaam, the king of Moab, wanted to levy a curse upon the

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Israelites. The Israelites were moving into the southern area of the promised land. And Balaam was sure that he was going to be overthrown like the kingdoms that had been conquered already by the

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Israelites, by those armies that could not stand against them. So so that Balaam would have an upper hand against the

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Israelites. He summoned Balaam to come and issue a curse against the Israelites.

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And so Balaam's doing this for money. I mean, this is the thing he does. He does this pseudo spirituality for profit.

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And so he's on his way to fulfill this summons of Balaam, the king of Moab, when an angel appears in the road and his donkey turns away from the angel.

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But Balaam didn't see the angel. So he beats the donkey for going to the side. And then the donkey continues on.

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And there's the angel again, who means to kill Balaam. And the donkey swerves to the side again.

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And Balak, I'm sorry, Balaam, Balak and Balaam, you got both of those names that sound the same and I'm going to get them mixed up anyway.

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So Balaam beats his donkey again and his donkey finally talks to him and says, why are you beating me?

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For there was an angel in the road that meant to kill you and I swerved to the side and saved your life and you're beating me for that.

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And so it was the donkey that swerved to miss the angel that restrained the prophet's madness when he was on his way to his own destruction and his own death.

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The Lord allowed him to continue. But Balaam could only say what was put in his heart by the

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Lord to be able to say. So he goes up on a high place with Balak, the king of Moab, with him.

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And as Balak is waiting there for Balaam to issue a curse, instead, Balaam issues a blessing to Israel.

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And Balaak's like, what are you doing? And Balaam's like, well, I can only do what God tells me to do, what God would God leads me to say.

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And so then they go to another high place and Balaam does the same thing. He issues a blessing and Balaak's like, ah.

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So then they go to another high place and Balaam issues yet another blessing, a third oracle for Israel.

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And and then Balaam finally gets fed up with this entire thing. And I'm sorry, see, I'm getting the names mixed up again.

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Balaak gets fed up with the whole thing. And Balaam says to him, did I not tell your messengers whom you sent to me if Balaak should give me his house full of silver and gold,

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I would not be able to go beyond the word of the Lord to do either good or bad of my own will.

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What the Lord speaks that I will speak. And this was a godless man who was saying that.

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And yet even he understood he could only say what the Lord allowed him to say.

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And then Balaam gave his final oracle at the end of Numbers chapter 24. Balaam is not a heroic man.

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He dies when the Israelites come into the promised land to conquer it. In the book of Joshua, it's mentioned in Joshua 13, 22, that Balaam was killed by the sword of the

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Israelites as they took the promised land. So Balaam is not some sort of heroic figure in the

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Bible, nobody that we should be looking up to, especially with what Peter says of him here, that these false teachers are doing like what

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Balaam did. Balaam was going to try to issue a curse against the people of God for profit, for money.

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And so these false teachers are just like what Balaam did. A speechless donkey knew better than Balaam.

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That's kind of the point of the story there. So to this article that Tim Challies wrote, seven false teachers in the church today.

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And as I mentioned, he gives seven kinds of false teachers and then also names names.

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The first teacher that he puts on there is the heretic. Number one, the heretic.

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And who are among the heretics that we must watch out for? He mentions the

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Jehovah's Witnesses, Marcus Borg, other prominent scholars that deny the virgin birth or the resurrection of Jesus Christ, essential doctrines.

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They are the heretics Mormons. He mentions in that as well. Number two, number two kind of false teacher to look out for the charlatan.

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And among the charlatan, the person who lies and knows they're lying to fatten their pockets with money.

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Among them are Benny Hinn, Creflo Dollar, Robert Tilton, or who is now famously known as the farting preacher, thanks to certain

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YouTube videos. They would be among those who are the charlatans. Then you have the prophet or the false prophet.

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In this case, Joseph Smith being among them, the founder of the Mormon religion who claimed that the angel

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Moroni appeared to him and gave him the Book of Mormon, which is a completely different gospel. And the

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Apostle Paul said in Galatians 189 that if we or an angel from heaven should give you a gospel contrary to the one that you received, let him be accursed.

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Boy, that those two verses right there speak boldly against the entire Mormon faith.

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So Joseph Smith was a false prophet. And among the false prophets, Chalice even includes

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Sarah Young, the author of the book Jesus Calling. And then it's follow up Jesus Always.

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I think that's the name of the new one. She boldly claims that her book contains the very words of Jesus.

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The prophet continues to speak to lead astray, Chalice says. Third kind of false teacher to look out for is the abuser.

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The abuser uses his position of leadership to take advantage of other people. And I don't think that Chalice mentions any names under the abuser, but one of the persons that comes to mind for me is

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Mark Driscoll. Fourth kind of a fourth kind of false teacher is the divider.

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The divider uses false doctrine to disrupt or destroy a church. He quotes from Jude 18 through 21.

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In the last time there will be scoffers following their own ungodly passions. It is these who cause divisions, worldly people devoid of the spirit.

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But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit. Keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our

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Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. That's how to promote unity and stay away from division.

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And the Apostle Paul gives some very strong words concerning those who divide in Titus chapter 3.

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If they do not respond to correction, then they are warped and sinful.

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They are self condemned. The next false teacher to look out for is the tickler.

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And this is a passage that we've read already. The time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears.

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They will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions. And some of the some of the people that Chalies lists among the ticklers are

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Henry Ward Beecher in the 19th century, Norman Vincent Peale and Robert Schuller in the 20th century.

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And today in the 21st century, Joel Esteen, pastor of the largest church in America, would be kind of that quintessential ear tickler.

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The next false teacher to look out for is the speculator. Finally, the speculator is the one obsessed with novelty, originality or speculation.

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The author of Hebrews warned his church of these strange teachings while Paul told

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Timothy to protect the church against any kind of different doctrine. That's the way he started the letter of first Timothy.

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Don't let anyone teach any different doctrine, but only that which flows from the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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Charlie says today, as in every age, the speculator obsesses about the end times and somehow his failed predictions dissuade neither himself nor his followers.

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Recently, we saw him obscuring the clear message of scripture to search for hidden codes in scripture.

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Sometimes he plants himself in academia where one of his recent masterpieces is a reimagined

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God who is unable to see and know the future. Paul labeled the speculator a contradictory, irreverent babbler in first Timothy six, 20 through 21.

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And here is how Charlie's concludes. And I think this is a great conclusion, too, as we finish up what we've been studying this week in second

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Peter chapter two. He says Satan's greatest ambassadors are not pimps, politicians or power brokers, but pastors.

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His priests do not peddle a different religion, but a deadly perversion of the true one.

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His troops do not make a full out frontal assault, but work as agents sneaking into the opposing army.

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Satan's tactics are studied, clever, predictable, effective. Therefore, we must always remain vigilant.

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Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves.

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You will recognize them by their fruits. Matthew seven, 15 through 16 in second

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Timothy chapter two, the apostle Paul said, have nothing to do with foolish, ignorant controversies.

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You know that they breed quarrels and the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome, but kind to everyone able to teach patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness.

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God may perhaps grant them repentance, leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil after being captured by him to do his will.

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So let us pray that the Lord would grant them repentance. But in the meantime, when it comes to correcting these opponents, we do so with gentleness, with the word of God, praying that the

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Lord would turn them from the lie of Satan to the truth of Jesus Christ. Amen.

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You've been listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Gabe will be going through a

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New Testament study. Then on Thursday, we look at an Old Testament book. On Friday, we take questions from the listeners and viewers.