WWUTT 610 Q&A Small Town Disciplinary Heresies?

Small Town Churches Need Sound Teaching and Shepherds

What are some ways that we can help meet the needs in small communities for sound doctrine? If you have a disagreement with a brother in a different church, do Matthew 18 rules still apply? And what is heresy?

The answers to these questions, when we understand the text.

You're listening to When We Understand the Text, a daily Bible teaching podcast to help encourage your time in the Word. Find all our videos, including transcripts for those videos, when you visit our website, www .wutt .com.

Now here's your host, Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky.

You're welcome. Hey, I've got some bad news. Uh-oh. No, no, no. Bad news. No. I don't like bad news. I'm losing weight. Really? Yes. Oh, you've took my scale. That's true. Do you know where I took it?

Do you know where your scale is? Uh-uh. It's at the church. Oh, really? Yes. I took it there not to weigh myself. That's helpful for me. Yes. I took it there to weigh the keyboard, because I was going to sell the keyboard.

Well, I know.

I've been looking around the house for it everywhere, because I didn't know where you put it.

I needed to hoist that thing up on the scale and stand it up, because when I put it on eBay, I need to know how much it's going to weigh.

I was going to compare that to something that we know that weighs that same amount, but I'm not going to. Our daughter? Uh-huh. I don't think she's 95 pounds. She's not. She is. She's 95 pounds now? No way.

Nine-year-old. Uh-huh. Annie is 95 pounds. She's almost my height. Well, I know, but still. I don't believe it. I mean, my sister, all the way through high school, was 90 pounds, and Annie's not even in high school yet.

Of course. But she's the size of your sister. Yeah, I know. Annie was five foot nothing. She's taller than my sister. Annie is, yeah. I think, yeah. I think Annie or, Annie was Annie, she might have been 4 '11".

I don't remember what she was. I remember at one point, I was more than a foot taller than she was, because I was like I think I was 5 '11", and she was 4 '10", or something like that. I don't remember what she was.

We were in high school together. Then I got to be 6 '1", and now I'm shrinking. Now I'm down to six foot. But anyway, so I'm also losing weight. Okay. Do you know why? No. Because You're munching? I went through no, no.

Yeah, because I'm eating. I'm losing weight. Yes. Because throughout all of 2017, what was I not consuming? Soda. Soda. I was not drinking soda at all, which is an appetite suppressant for me. Oh, and now you're drinking it again.

And now I'm drinking it again, so I'm losing weight. I wondered about that. I actually considered that. Yep. So I just didn't want to sound like a doofus. I'm feeling my I'm feeling my pants line loosening again.

Oh, great. Yeah.

Congratulations. You can drink soda and lose weight. No, no, no, no, no. It's a curse. Get this. It's a curse. So in the past, I have been wanting to get in shape, if you will. And we have had these conversations.

And as soon as I have the conversation with him just about me, me wanting to eat healthier and do exercise and yadda, yadda, yadda, he automatically loses weight, okay? Just because Just because I said something about myself.

Not about him, but about me. And then he's like, oh, yeah, ding, and boom, it's gone. Power of positive thinking. Right. You're just not thinking. You don't have enough faith. You're just not thinking positively enough.

Oh, my goodness. There's so many people are going to angry write you emails. Gabe loves Benny Hinn. It's coming.

It's going to happen. No, I meant about you losing weight. Just talking about it. Oh, right, yeah. And drinking soda. I'm going to get angry emails because I'm losing weight, not because I said you don't have enough faith to lose weight.

Yep, because they know you're joking. But they know that that's serious.

All right, so all of our donations just tanked all of a sudden. Yep. And speaking of the power of positive thinking and word of faith and all that. So we actually have a question related to that today.

Oh, interesting.

How's that for a segue? Somehow I know these things without knowing that.

You can submit your questions to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com. And as mentioned last week, we have pre-recorded this program even more in advance than we usually do. Yes, we did. Because we are at G3, the G3 conference in Atlanta.

Two of the questions that we're receiving today, that we're reading today, were actually sent by people who said, hey, looking forward to seeing you at G3. Awesome. So by the time we read these questions, God willing, we've already met these individuals.

That'd be cool. So this first one, it comes from, hang on, oh, this goes back to a question that we answered last week related to satellite campuses. So you have a small town church that wants sound teaching, but there's not a pastor there that can offer them sound teaching.

And nobody wants to even move there, which is a typical problem for small towns. So what if they set up a camera in our church and videoed me and beamed it back into the church where they're gathering in their little small town?

Would that be acceptable? And I said that would be okay with the expectation that eventually you're raising up your own pastor to be able to teach you and shepherd you in that church. Right. Because I'm not shepherding you.

And to take over. Right. Exactly. Take over that responsibility. Right. So I don't personally know you. You don't know me. I can't shepherd you. So you have to want to raise up somebody who would be mature in the faith who would be able to shepherd that flock.

And then the idea that I provided would be that somebody would listen to my sermons or any sound teacher. I was the one that was used in the example. So just going with that. But any sound teacher's teaching, you listen to that sermon and then you go through the scriptures, you labor over it, you pray about it, then you take that message to your congregation and you share it with your congregation.

Right. And I don't think that you're doing anything that would be immoral. It's not like a violation of copyright or you're stealing someone else's stuff. You can quote them. Right. Exactly. If you were to start taking personal ownership of it and be like, hey, this is all my stuff.

Well, then that would be dishonest. And I came up with. Right. But I mean, it's all from the word of God. I would hope that we're all coming to the same answer. Right. If we're mature in our understanding of what the scripture says.

So that would be... And if it's something new that nobody's thought of before, don't do it. Study more. You're wrong.

That's right. That's exactly right. If you're coming up with something nobody else has come up with before, it's wrong. Red flags. So that was the idea that I gave last week on bringing sound teaching to a small town church where you can't find another sound church anywhere in the near vicinity.

Right. But you love the gospel and you want the gospel to be proclaimed in your town. So Deb wrote in and she said, hey, I was just listening to you answering a question about how people in small towns with no biblical pastors can get good teaching.

And I thought your answer was very inventive in a good way. I wonder if Christians in this country are a little stuck in the model that we're used to, expecting that each congregation has a full time pastor, a church building, etc.

In the mission field, wouldn't we expect that many people have come to faith without an established church in sight? I have heard of people without a qualified preacher gathering on the Lord's Day and just reading scripture instead of having a sermon.

It seems the first century churches may have used a similar model when they were getting started. They could sing, pray, and read the Old Testament scriptures and Paul's letters while elders were being raised up.

What do you think? Yeah, I think that's very likely how that would have gone. That's an excellent point. The example that I used last week was from the island of Crete when Titus was sent there to appoint elders in all of the churches.

So they had received the gospel, churches had been planted, but there had not been an apostle that had come to visit those respective churches or somebody that had been sent by one of the apostles to go there and raise up mature men of God to be the elders in those churches.

But those churches still existed, even though they didn't have elders or even a plurality of elders. So what would have been going on? Well, it would have been the body of believers gathering together to sing songs, the songs that had been taught to them probably from or through apostolic preaching.

They had the scriptures, they would have had the Old Testament scriptures, and they knew from the apostolic teaching how those Old Testament scriptures pointed to Christ and still had the promises of God through the Davidic covenant fulfilled in Christ.

They're still end times teaching even within the Old Testament. So they had things related to that. Because they were becoming lazy. Yeah, that's right. They were lazy gluttons on the island of Crete.

So the instruction of labor to do work. You had the law of God, which Paul describes in his letter to the Galatians was a tutor for them. And of course, the Psalms, all of the promises that are there in the Psalms.

So there was a lot. I mean, there's enough material there for that body of believers to be fed, but to grow in maturity even beyond that, they needed elders to be raised up that would shepherd that flock.

So another thing they were doing as they were gathering together was partaking in the Lord's Supper and also doing baptisms. There were probably people getting married and being given in marriage. And so there was rejoicing together as a body whenever you're seeing two families come together and doing that in a way that honors the Lord.

And there were funerals as well, because you had people who were being put to death, martyred because of their faith. And so likewise, you had saints that were coming together to mourn the loss of a brother or sister in Christ by the sword, but also to rejoice in knowing that they have put off this body, but are present forever with the Lord, which is the same anticipation and hope that every single one of us has.

So there certainly were lots of things for the church to do, even if there was not an elder or a plurality of elders that had been raised up among them to continue to shepherd and teach them. So this could very likely be the kind of scenario that we would see happen even in a small town in USA.

That a town that does not have a church where there's sound teaching being practiced, but you have people who love the gospel and they want the gospel to be proclaimed. And so they're gathering together, they're reading the word of God, they're praying and asking that the Lord would provide for them a teacher that might continue to shepherd them and raise them up.

Right. And so Deb actually goes on to talk a little bit more about that. She shares a personal experience. On a related note, I hope that your listener Avery, Avery was the one that asked the question last week, will be encouraged to continue to pray for God to send a pastor, no matter how small their town.

Only a few years ago, no sound biblical teaching could be found in our town of about 20 ,000 people. That's about the size of Junction City. Yeah. A little bit larger than that. Well, twice that size when you throw in Fort Riley.

Where the Unitarian Universalists are the hottest thing going. That was what was going on in her community. Some were driving an hour away to an OPC church, which is an Orthodox Presbyterian church. Okay.

Though this is sometimes impossible in the winter. A small group began gathering to pray that the Lord would bring them a biblical teacher slash pastor. After a year or two of faithful prayer, through a series of unlikely circumstances, our current pastor, who had no plans to be a church planner, found himself called to plant our current church.

That was six years ago. Oh, that's awesome. Two years ago, we acquired an intern who was in training under our pastor with the intent to plant a church in an even smaller town of under 2 ,000 people. That was about the size of the town that I graduated high school in.

I think it was 1 ,200 people or something like that. Harrington. How big is that? Yeah, it's about that. About that. Okay. So Becky and I both graduated high school in small Kansas town. And that was about 40 minutes away from them in that little town.

We prayed diligently that he would find people in the town to help start the church or that some members of our congregation would agree to go with him to this outlying community. However, just a few weeks before his planned move date, nothing had happened.

Then suddenly, a man contacted our pastor out of the blue from halfway across the country to ask for our pastor's help because he wanted to move to that same tiny town to start a church. Turns out that he is a solid man and a very competent teacher.

And he has helped to plant the new church and is now in training to be the second elder at that location. As of now, both men make tents. That's in quotes. That's like the bivocational position that Paul had where he was a tent maker while he was in Ephesus as well as preaching the gospel.

So as of now, both men make tents because the church is not large enough to support them. But we expect the town to be taken by revival any day now. I'm sure you've seen the same thing. When we diligently pray for God's kingdom to come, God is faithful to answer our prayers.

For those who so desire solid teaching that they would consider piping in another pastor's sermon, let them remember that they need more than a preacher. They need a shepherd. And if they ask, God will provide.

So pray, pray, pray. I think that's a great story, Deb, and it is terrific advice. Most definitely. Yes. Amen. I remember a question that we had. This was before you joined us on the Q &A, which is join us, join me on the Q &A.

Well, I did open and close. That's right. You did. Now it's an us.

Before it wasn't. Yeah. It's just the opening and closing part. But I remember a year or so ago that somebody from Canada had written in and said, you know, we live in Timbuktu. Actually, probably closer to Siberia by comparison.

Not Timbuktu, but Siberia. Got it. Anyway, she said, we live up here. We don't have any sound teaching. The closest church is so many miles away. You know, what do we do? And the encouragement to them was be faithful to the word and pray, pray, pray, pray.

Right. That the Lord would send a teacher to you. I remember that. Yeah. Yeah. So hopefully it would be somebody who would be able to accept that position bivocationally. They could shepherd that church, the members of that church congregation, with the personal affection that a shepherd should be showing members of a church, but also have another job.

And the church would be gracious enough to know, hey, this man has to provide for himself and for his family. And so we can't expect him to meet our demands 24 -7. Full-time. Right. Or what we typically expect of a full-time pastor to do.

And I've had a lot of friends who were part-time pastors, and those men tend to convict me more than I end up convicting them. Oh, really? Yeah, right. Because they're just talking about how more plugged into the community they are than I am.

Right. Because they are They do have that advantage. Right. Part-time ministers, but then also work secular jobs. Right. Some other kind of job where they would have to make enough money to be able to provide for their family.

I remember a pastor friend of mine down in Texas, panhandle of Texas, so you're talking way up north into Texas, who was a bivocational minister, and he worked for the school system. And I think he worked both janitorial duties and bus driver.

Wow. So, yeah, he had a lot on his plate doing the stuff that he did. That is a lot. Anyway, let me put a word out there for those young pups who are in seminary. Mm-hmm. I can actually say that now, probably of the age where I'm now addressing.

Oh, shh. I'm not a young pup myself anymore. So, for those who are in seminary, and you're wondering, where am I going to go with this? What's going to happen now? Where am I going to become a pastor?

You probably have dreams and ambitions of being a pastor in a large church, and surely you have in your mind what an ideal church size would be. Mm-hmm. Like three, four, 500 people, that's what I'm looking at for a church.

And that's not necessarily wrong to have those kinds of desires, as long as it's not something that you're seeking to benefit yourself. Right. But surely, you have a model in your mind of the kind of church that you would like to pastor.

I would like to encourage you to find a small town church to be a pastor of, even if it means that by pastoring that church, you would have to be doing that bivocationally. Mm-hmm. The things that you will learn from that will be hugely beneficial, should the Lord call you to a larger ministry down the road.

Mm-hmm. And plus, you might even consider that missionary work in the sense that that community would otherwise not receive a pastor that, or not be blessed enough to have a pastor that teaches sound doctrine, if it wasn't for the fact that the Lord had laid on your heart to go into that smaller community and pastor there.

Right. And I don't want to say this, I also don't want to say this from the approach of, go serve there for a few years and then you can go serve in a larger church. Right. Because I don't think that should be your approach.

You should be fully devoted to that community and that church, however long the Lord would have you there, whether it would be for a few years or you would spend your entire life there. Right. And would even retire in a small town or something like that.

And be grateful for that. Yeah. Serve the Lord with all your heart. Serving heart. Right. Servant's heart. Servant's heart. Servant's heart. Yeah. There we go. I was close. What's the, Tim Hawkins, when he said servant's heart, you're just telling me I have a servant's heart because you want me to stack chairs.

That's what you're telling me. But you know what? It happens. You know what? As a pastor, you may even have to be doing that. You've done worse. I've had to do worse than stacking chairs. Yes.

We have an old building. We'll just leave it at that.

Plenty of things I've had to mop up. I have never thought I would end up having to do that. But all to the glory of God, my brothers and sisters. All the glory of God. So yeah, if you are in seminary and you would desire to pastor a church, let me encourage you to pick a small town and go to that church.

And even when we've got high school students in our church who are going from high school into college and they'll say, what college should I pick? I'll recommend a community college first. Do some classes at a community college.

Easiest way to knock those out. Oh, yeah. You can do that practically debt free. Yeah. And then go to a larger college from there. I took them in high school.

Yeah. Took my core classes. Yeah, that's what I did too.

Yeah. The core classes from a community college while you're in high school. Yeah. Right. I did the same thing. And I just kind of have this mentality of start small. I don't know if that came from graduating high school.

Yeah, right.

And I myself was starting small. I don't know if that's. It takes you on a smaller scale of figuring out how the flow of things go and how to manage what you have in front of you. And then as you pile on things, you can be like, okay, now I need more attention in this area than this area and go from there.

Yeah, you're progressing into it. Right.

Instead of. I mean, there are perks for having small and then growing. And whenever you do start in a small town, don't forget about the people in the country. Yeah. I mean, starting that radio station out in southwest Kansas, there is hardly anybody out there.

Yeah. Rule. Rule USA. Until you figure in all of those farmers and they came together to pull that radio station out there. Yeah. Because the farmers wanted to listen.

They wanted Christian radio on their tractor. All they had in some of those places, all they had was KFRM, which was the AM farm station. Oh. Oh. Yeah. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. And that was the only thing.

Oh. So you're talking early, late 80s, early 1990s on the far western end of the Texas and Oklahoma panhandle. And all they were getting was the farming station on the AM. That was the only thing you could find on the radio anywhere.

Right. And then we planted that Christian radio station there in southwest Kansas.

So they pulled together and got you guys to come out there. And I mean, that's kind of how church works, too. I mean, you start small, but then the people around you from surrounding towns here and countrysides here, and then they come, too.

So it's not that you're going to stay small necessarily. You don't have to look at it that way.

You're looking at it as an evangelism effort. Exactly. Right. Regardless of the size of the church. Exactly. I agree. The word spreads. That's right. It does. Yay. And then you've got the wonderful atmosphere of farmers where ministering around them is going to make the parable of the sower come to life in a way for you.

You're like, wow, this makes so much more sense now. Growing up in the city, I never would have known.

I have so much respect for farmers, but that could be because my grandpa's one. Both your grandpas. Well, kind of.

One is more of a... One's a country farmer. Right. And one kind of lives on the edge of a city, basically.

Right. But he plants his garden and everything. He still grows a lot. Mostly chickens. And has chickens and things like that. Birds of all sorts.

Yeah. Thank you for your email, Deb. Yeah, Deb. Expounding upon that advice a little bit more. Sorry. I kind of rabbit trailed. And Deb is one. She's one of the messages we received today that we're meeting at G3.

Hopefully we have already met her. Exactly.

Matthew 18, 1 Corinthians 6, and Bearing With One Another in Church Disputes

This next one comes from Kevin. Question for the podcast, he says. When a member of one local body sins against a member of a different local body, is Matthew 18 still applicable? I loaned a friend over $1 ,000 last January with an agreement that he'd pay me back $60 a month starting in April.

We're now almost four months behind, and after numerous attempts to contact him, he's just ignoring me. Is this something with which I should approach his fellow church members, I know many of them, in an attempt to square things away?

Or should I just stop at trying to contact him and just dealing with the fact that I may be out several hundred bucks? Well, Kevin, I'm going to give you two answers. Oh. I'm going to give you my answer to this question.

Okay. And then I'm going to answer the way I know Chris Solano would answer this question.

Oh, yes. Because you guys differ on a lot of things. Sometimes we differ on these things.

But I think that both answers are helpful. Okay. And so you can decide yourself through wisdom and prayer what the best course of action will be. So my response to you would be this, just let it go. Right.

Because, you know, as Jesus says in Matthew chapter 5, give to the one who begs from you and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you. It would be better for you to just be defrauded than to raise a stink about it, cause a potential conflict between you and a brother, and maybe even getting two churches involved in that.

So Paul says, 1 Corinthians 6, When one of you has a grievance against another, does he dare go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints? Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world?

And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more than matters pertaining to this life? So if you have such cases, why do you lay them before those who have no standing in the church?

I say this to your shame. Can it be that there is no one among you wise enough to settle a dispute between the brothers? Now I understand that in this particular case, this is not a matter of suing somebody.

Right. Kevin's going about this the right way. He wants to handle this between brothers and between churches, even if possible. But if it can't happen, like this guy's clearly ignoring you, going out of your way to try to grab a hold of him and say, Hey, dude, you owe me some money would just cause a major conflict.

Then I would say the advice is better in verse 7 of that chapter, 1 Corinthians 6, where Paul says to have lawsuits at all with one another is already defeat for you. Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded?

So if it's going to help you prevent a conflict, let the money go. I know it stinks. You're out. We've done that a few times. We've had to do that before, too. Yeah. Becky and I have given money to someone else.

And we observe them using it in the way that was contrary to what they told us they needed the money for. But just having to let it go. It is what it is. We are entrusting ourselves to the Lord. And whether or not they use that money in an honest way is going to be between them and God.

But then there are other times when Becky and I will agree that we're going to give somebody something. And then the two of us are praying together or we're agreeing with each other. It does not matter how they use this money.

Right. So that way we're not disappointed in any way. And we'll even hand it to them and say this is for whatever you want to use this on. Right. So just because we know you could use it. Yeah.

I would answer it that way, too. I would say, you know, if you've tried and it's going to start causing a conflict in your relationship with them, then it's, you know, just let it go. Yes. So that's my answer.

And without bitterness.

Without bitterness. Right. With a cheerful heart. Yes. You are doing this to the joy of the Lord. We do all things to the glory of God. Helped that person. And that's what they needed it for. That's right.

That's right. You just helped a brother. Exactly. Exactly. So be celebratory in Christ over that. God, thank you for this opportunity to have shown love to my brother in this way. And I bless you with that.

I mean, that kind of extra money to be able to. To do that for somebody else. Right.

Right. And I pray you do it again. That this experience doesn't put you off. Right. Helping somebody else in the future. So that's my answer. So how would Chris respond? How would Chris answer this question?

Well, here's what Chris would say. What would Chris do? Just kidding. I'm just kidding. Yes. Chris would say that according to. And by the way, let me add before I get into his answer. If you listen to this past Sunday's sermon on the What Podcast channel.

Right. Whatever. Anyway. So a few weeks ago, I started including the sermons on Sundays because folks had asked that I would do that. Right. And so if you listen to the one this past Sunday, you heard Chris because he preached at the end of that sermon leading us into the Lord's Supper.

And anyway, so he has been on this program. If you listen to that sermon. So Chris would say this. According to Romans 15 verse 1, you who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please yourself, but for his good to build him up.

Therefore, it is your duty as a mature believer in Christ to hold your brother accountable to his word. He said that he was going to pay it back. You need to hold him to that so that you're raising up a man of integrity.

Right. And this is not about the money. It's not about benefiting you. It's about benefiting him so that you are raising him up as a disciplined man of the Lord to be true to his word. And this is holding him to paying back his debts as Christ has instructed us to do.

Right.

Let your yes be yes and your no be no. Precisely. And iron sharpening iron.

Yeah. I get it. I get it. So that's the way Chris would answer that question. Are you feeling convicted suddenly? A little. Yeah. Thanks Chris. He wasn't even here. He's not even here. And yet I know exactly.

I'll have to thank him on Sunday. I know exactly the way he would answer that question. So, Kevin, there's two pieces of advice for you. And if you would follow Chris's advice, it would be at that point I would say that you go to the man who owes you money and you would approach him again and try to find him personally if you can because clearly you're trying to reach out to him and he's ignoring your calls.

Right. But go to him personally and say, hey man, you still owe me money and explain to him at this point this is really not about the money that you owe me. This is as a brother in the Lord, I want to hold you to your word and I want to help you be a man of integrity.

And so maybe you might even say at that point, whatever you're giving back to me, I'm going to give to this charity just to show this is not about me. But this is about holding you to your word or something.

You don't have to do that, but that's just a suggestion that I might offer to you. And then if he still refuses or maybe if he says, well, yeah, man, yeah, OK, I know I need to do that. And yet he still doesn't pay you back.

So you're still holding him to his word. Talk to somebody in his church since you said you know people in his church. Talk to someone who is not necessarily a pastor or an elder, but is certainly somebody of a teaching position that he might respect, like a Sunday school teacher or a Bible study leader.

Yeah. And then also more than just chummy, though.

Yeah. More than just like a friend relationship. Right. But somebody who will take that charge, somebody who has an evidence of maturity in their in their faith. Got it. And they're standing within that church, too.

And then from your own congregation, grab another brother, someone that you would trust. So now you've got the evidence of two or three witnesses and and from two different congregations. So somebody from your church and somebody from his church and then approaching him again and then saying, brother, we've been talking to you about this and you have not yet paid me back.

Now, I would hope then at that point he's now truly convicted over this. And you're right. I need to pay you back. But even if after that, the evidence of two or three witnesses, he's not paying back the money, I would say at that point to let it go, not let it go all the way to the point of church discipline, unless there's been some clear sin that he really does need to repent of.

But it doesn't go to the point of him having to be dragged in front of the church and saying, you haven't paid back this man, you know, two or three hundred bucks. And so we're going to remove you from from membership of the congregation.

I don't know. Maybe his heart is that sinful. I'm not in that situation to know that that personally. But hopefully I've given you enough there that you now have some options. You know where to go and how you should and how you should handle the matter.

And Becky has been truly convicted by this exchange as well. Thanks a lot, Chris. Last question here. This one comes from Caleb in Los Angeles. And here at the beginning of the program, I said we were going to get to a Benny Hinn question.

Oh, yeah, that's right. Here it is. Caleb said, what would be considered a heretic? I feel like I should know this, but I'm confused on the matter, to be honest. For example, what is it exactly that makes Benny Hinn a heretic?

He's kind of the I guess he's kind of the quintessential heretic. It's like every time we end up talking about heresies, somehow his name is it's either him or Joel Osteen. It's always one of those two.

But the where we get the the word heresies from, as far as an English translation of the Bible goes, there's really only one place that heretic is mentioned, and that's in Second Peter two one. So as Peter is giving a warning about the false teachers throughout that whole second chapter of Second Peter, he says, but false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction.

And so Peter equates this with the false teaching of the of the false shepherds in Israel, whom we read about in like the book of Ezekiel or in Jeremiah or someplace like that. The judgment that God says he's going to bring upon those shepherds, the false teachers, because they fattened themselves instead of fed the flock of God, which was what they were supposed to do.