Most of us are probably aware that false teaching exists in the church today. When we think about what false teaching is, we might tend to think about easy to spot forms of false teaching like denying that Jesus is truly God, or claiming that works are required to gain salvation. Then, there are other displays of false teaching: claiming that everyone must speak in tongues to truly be a Christian, requiring certain amounts of money to be given to the church, claiming that it is always God’s will to heal someone. Some practices are just outright ridiculous, like one practiced by the lead pastor of Bethel church: ‘grave sucking’, where people lay on the grave of past saints, believing the dead person’s anointing from God will transfer to them (yes this is real!!). Most people will not fall under the ‘spell’ of these types of false teaching.
The focus of this article though, and the thing that I would like to point to here, is the abundance of false teaching that is much more subtle than these prior examples, and therefore much more likely to ‘take captives’, so to speak. I once heard it said that “the best counterfeit is the one that looks most like the real thing”. This is a powerful statement, one that is certainly true and frequently comes into play when it comes to false teaching in the church. But, how can you be on guard against the counterfeit God, if you don’t know what the ‘real thing’ looks like? It is my belief that a more toned-down alteration of God and His attributes and nature and character is the underlying basis and source for many false ideas that are promoted in the church today. Teaching that mixes truth with error is often employed in order to make God both more believable and simultaneously more popular and palatable. Presenting a God that looks and feels a little more like man himself is sure to appeal to the sensibilities of a people who, according to the direct words of scripture are “following the course of this world, the prince of the power of the air” and living “in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and mind” (Eph 2:2-3). In case you aren’t aware, the “prince of the power of the air” is Satan.
The best way to protect ourselves from this more subtle form of false teaching is to devote ourselves to the pursuit of knowledge of the true biblical nature and character of God. We must be determined to find out, “Who is God, really?”, and to do some serious searching to find out whether or not or own idea of God is consistent with scripture. The sad reality of the ‘god’ of modern Christendom is that the One true God of the Bible is, largely, not the god being taught and promoted by the church today. And MANY have been deceived, most likely without even realizing it.
Thus, again, It is crucial for us to ask ourselves: is my idea of God consistent with who He really is according to scripture? There is only One true God, and he has revealed himself in two ways:
- General Revelation: this would include the natural world, and the internal human conscience/mind which testifies to the existence of a universal moral (God given) standard to govern mankind’s behavior.
- Special Revelation: this is God’s revelation through His Word, the Bible, which contains the divine words of God himself, written through men who were chosen by God to be the authors of his perfect, inerrant, infallible message to the world.
In regard to general revelation, Paul says in Romans 1:19-20 that God has revealed himself to all men “through the things that are made” so that all men are without excuse. Thus, there is no valid reason for which any man ought to deny God’s existence. In this respect, there is no such thing as an atheist, although many, in the futility of their minds, will still claim such.
In regard to special revelation, God’s word is without error, infallible in every respect, and perfect in clarity and sufficiency. This is not to say that there are not passages which are difficult to understand. Even scripture itself recognizes this (2 Peter 3:16). However, we can be sure that God intends for his word to be made clear to all who seek him with a pure heart and proper intentions – love for and obedience to him as Creator and King. Is this your only motivation? Second Timothy 2:7 says that “the Lord will give you understanding in everything”. Thus, we can have confidence that the Spirit will guide us into the understanding of all that God has written in his word. This is not necessarily true though, for everyone. For the ‘natural man’ who does not have the Spirit is therefore not able to understand things which are spiritually discerned (2 Cor 2:14). I believe though, that God uses the power of his Spirit to give understanding to ALL who are truly seeking to come to know him. Unfortunately, there are many who are working out of another motive altogether, and God’s word is being twisted in order to promote many falsehoods which are greatly appealing to the sinful nature of men.
God has given us his word to teach us everything we need to know about himself, mankind, the world, sin, and redemption in Jesus Christ. The problem is not with God’s revelation. The problem is with sinful man and his twisting of God’s intended meaning. Our natural state when we enter into this world is one of depravity and spiritual death. We are inherently sinful and self-interested and this fallen nature of ours loves the things of this world, and will do nearly anything to pursue and obtain the things that we want. The character of God and the statues and commands that proceed from His character, are very much contrary to man’s nature. Furthermore, as humans, we are beings who are naturally inclined to act according to our emotions. Especially in today’s world, where the practice of using truth and logic to guard or direct our ‘feelings’ has been replaced with the practice of elevating our feelings to the status of truth itself, and then denying that any other objective truth or logical reasoning should be considered to be of any higher value than our emotions themselves. The culture today has altogether rejected the idea of the existence of objective truth. Everything has become subjective and emotionally based. This cultural mindset has infiltrated the church. For example, if our emotions tell us that it doesn’t seem fair that a loving God would allow people to be sent to hell, we make the necessary allowances in our doctrine so that we might believe that hell is not a literal place. We recreate God into what we want rather than accepting him as he has revealed himself to be. Maybe we aren’t happy in our marriage, so we make allowances in our mind and try to justify our actions in choosing to divorce our spouse, when these allowances are definitively not made by the God of scripture. Maybe we have a friend who practices homosexuality, and rather than hurt their feelings we decide to tell them that it’s okay for them to continue their sinful lifestyle and that God will still love them. When the Bible makes clear reference to unacceptable sins or lifestyles that are in stark contrast to what our culture loves and embraces, rather than do the difficult work of denying ourselves or risking our own comfort and ease in order to uphold the truth of God’s Word and speak the truth in love, instead we may actually decide that we are content with tweaking the character of God in our own mind and promoting this ‘god’ to others so that we don’t have to uphold such truth as He has affirmed. Each time we do this we sear our consciences a little bit more. Each time we do this we make allowances for a little more sin to be present, and a little less of the one true God to reign in our hearts, minds and lives. It is a slippery slope. Are we willing to do the challenging task of evaluating our ideas about who God is and testing all that we think against the infallible Word, so that we might recognize which ideas are self-created and which are biblical?
“We recreate God into what we want rather than accepting him as he has revealed himself to be.”
What if, in our minds, we are making God out to be someone he really is not? When we decide that we want a God who is a little more love and a little less wrath, a little more grace and little less law, a God who cares more about our happiness and less about our holiness, at some point it must be said that the ‘god’ that we are serving, loving, and trusting isn’t the one true God at all. There is a word for this: idolatry. Making something or someone out to be god who isn’t truly God is a serious offense. So how do we guard ourselves against doing this? How can we be assured that we have a true and correct knowledge of God? How do we teach ourselves to love the one true God, and to deny all other notions of God’s character that are not actually true as affirmed by God’s own revelation of Himself in scripture? Although I may not directly answer all of these questions here in this article, I hope that you will carry these questions will you, and ponder them carefully.
“After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.” John 6:66. These words are recorded just after Jesus speaks a difficult message to a group of his followers. Just prior to this, after hearing this difficult message, the disciples reacted by saying “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” (John 6:60). The NIV rendering is “who can accept it?”. We should not be all that surprised if we or one of our Christian brothers or sisters finds something about God or God’s message difficult to accept. Whether that message comes in the form of God’s commandments as recorded in the Decalogue, or from Christ himself as it does in this example, or from one of the other inspired writers of Scripture, we should foresee that there are going to be times when the message is difficult for us. Maybe difficult to understand. Maybe easy to understand but difficult to accept or obey. We should be even less surprised when the world hates the message. “[The world] hates me because I testify about it that it’s works are evil”, Jesus says in John 7:7. It’s easy to deviate from the hard sayings of Scripture and instead come up with our own ideas about ‘god’ that we know are less controversial sounding and less ‘off-putting’ and attempt to present these ideas to others as a some sort of mode or method of gospel teaching. But Paul tells us that if anyone preaches this type of gospel “let them be accursed”. (Galations 1:8). If we want to guard ourselves against this, we can start by wrapping our minds around the reality that not everyone is going to ‘like’ the God of the Bible. And that is okay. In fact, I might go as far as to say that one of the warning signs of a false gospel is a lack of opposition to it. If Jesus own direct teaching sent people away, why would we expect anything less in the church? If Jesus had gone around preaching “God loves you no matter what” rather than “repent”, he likely would have had more popularity amongst the culture of his time.
I think one of the greatest threats to Christianity is the overwhelming prevalence of churches that have little to no resemblance to the order of worship that is outlined in scripture. For many professing “Christians”, church has become a bit of a free for fall. The ridiculous measures that some churches are willing to go to fill the seats is mind blowing. Millions of dollars are poured into creating entertaining shows that appeal to people’s emotions but display nothing of who Christ is or what please our Lord and King.
Rather than preaching the Bible word by word, verse by verse, chapter by chapter and book by book, most of today’s pastors and preachers opt for a different style of ‘preaching’, whereby they choose a topic that they feel people will find beneficial or interesting and write a ‘sermon’ that may or may not have a few scripture references thrown in to support the point they want to make. This type of preaching makes it easy to slip in some falsehoods. I am not saying that all topical preaching is bad. But there is certain beauty and a even some built in safegaurd in letting scripture decide the topic rather than letting the topic decide the scripture. For one thing, when a pastor preaches fully through the Word of God, he is much less able to leave anything out that may seem offensive or harsh to those hearing. Difficult, unpopular and unappealing subjects must be faced head on. Pastors who are more concerned with filling seats than upholding truth may avoid this method because, well, unpopular subjects don’t draw people in! Even more troubling though is this: the multitude of motivational speeches and feel-good messages present in today’s so called church services are not leading people to Christ. They are leading people to promises of worldly comfort that God does not make. They are leading people to embrace a morphed, impotent form of ‘Christianity’ that is centered on man and not on God. Furthermore, God has not promised to bless any of these types of messages! I repeat, no one should expect God’s blessing to proceed from some pastor’s self-made speech, no matter how wonderfully delivered or powerful and relevant and moving it may seem to the audience. The one and only thing that God has promised to bless is the actual preaching of His Word. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. His Word will not return void. Many messages coming from the mouths of misleading pastors in today’s church will, in fact, return void! Comforting messages that attempt to assure people that God just wants to give them peace, prosperity, and happiness, but neglects to tell them about the law, sin, the curse of spiritual death, the necessity of forsaking one’s sin, and the impending judgement on those who refuse to turn away from their desire for earthly comfort and deny themselves worldly treasures, are false messages giving false hope, false assurance, and undoubtedly creating some ‘false Christians’ (a bit of a misnomer, since technically, there is no such thing as a false Christian – you are either a Christian in the true biblical sense or you are not a Christian at all).
Despite the overwhelming seriousness and pervasiveness of the false teaching epidemic, I know that God’s will is going to be accomplished regardless of the foolishness of many lost churches, false teachers, and the deceived people that are within these churches. Yet I do pray that people would stop being satisfied with the fluffy, feel good, powerless substitutions that are devoid of the Word and of the only gospel that has the power to save. Sadly, as long as there is such high demand for emotionally driven, man-centered churches and messages, there will always be a market to supply them. One of the most basic reasons for the abundance of false teaching and feel-good churches is that this is the exact type of church that fallen people want. The demand drives the supply. We must pray that people will not be content with this twisted form of so-called worship. We must pray that the fear of the Lord will enter into the hearts and minds of many, such that they will seek for biblical churches that are honoring to God. We must pray that their eyes will be opened to the truth. One famous preacher has said that “Sunday morning is the greatest hour of idolatry in the entire week of America, because people are not worshipping the one true God, but are worshipping a god formed out their own heart by their own flesh….they’ve made a god just like themselves”. (Quote from pastor and theologian Paul Washer.) This is a sad but true reality. Many are so well deceived that they go to church week after week and really, truly believe that they are ‘worshipping God’. I see no reason why we should be so lax in our expectation that God is actually pleased with and accepting of whatever worship we feel like offering him. A wise man should understand the importance of making a critical evaluation of whether God is actually pleased with the worship he is offering to a holy and perfect God. A look at Malachi 1:10 affirms the necessity of this.
We who know the Lord are called to be witnesses to the truth. This includes exposing and tearing down falsehoods. Some may disagree with or dislike what I have said here. Bringing darkness to the light is one of the reasons people hated Jesus. “And this is the judgement: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed”, John 3:19-20. Since fallen, wicked people hate the light, many churches are willing to bask their congregation in a false light, making the claim that the evil deeds of the people may be actually be shined upon. “They not only [practice unrighteous things] but give approval to those who practice them”, Romans 1:32. Instead of hiding their evil deeds, sinful men, ignorantly believing themselves to be Christians, are more than happy to continue in their ways because today’s ‘churches’ have provided them with a place that will accept and give approval to their behavior rather than expose it and call for repentance. Obviously, these people will eventually face judgement, condemnation, and the wrath of God. I am particularly afraid for the pastors who promote such evil and lead many astray. It would be better for them to hang a millstone around their necks and be thrown into the sea (Luke 17:2) before they incur even more of God’s wrath.
As sad and disheartening as the prevalence of false teaching is, we who know the word of God are not surprised by it in the least, although we may never cease to be disgusted by it. After all, the number of warnings we find all throughout the Bible on this matter is no small number. Here are just a few:
“My hand will be against the prophets who see false visions and utter lying divinations”, Ezekiel 13:9.
“The prophets are prophesying lies in my name. I have not sent them or appointed them or spoken to them. They are prophesying to you false visions, divinations, idolatries and the delusions of their own minds”, Jeremiah 14:14.
“Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets”, Luke 6:26.
“For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect”, Matthew 24:24
“For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths”, 2 Timothy 4:3-4
Let us not be among those who practice or tolerate such despicable things. We must stand firm, upholding the truth amidst great opposition. I suppose there may come a time when churches that are committed to upholding the truth will become hated by many, called out as unloving and judgmental, rejected by mainstream ‘Christianity’, and may even be a target for persecution. Let those of us who walk in the light be prepared for such a time. We should also anticipate a time though, when many branches will be cut off and thrown into the fire to be burned (John 15:6). But until the time when all of the non-fruit-bearing branches are exposed and cut off, Jesus own words in John 15 should comfort us and help us to persevere: “You are my friends if you do what I command you…..if the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you….if they persecuted me they will also persecute you”, (John 15:14,18-20).
It may be difficult at times to discern the biblical churches from the false ones. Just because a building puts a sign out front that says “CHURCH”, that doesn’t make it a legitimate church. We must carefully discern according to the whole of scripture. We must carefully “discern what is pleasing to the Lord, and take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them” (Eph 5:10-11). Any church that is promoting false doctrine is a false church and should be avoided. I find this definition from Got Questions (www.gotquestions.org). to be useful: “False doctrine is any idea that adds to, takes away from, contradicts, or nullifies the doctrine given in God’s word.” Even if a church is promoting many things that are true in accordance with God’s word, this does not excuse any measure whatsoever of adding to, taking away from, contradicting, or nullifying the true doctrine of the Bible. It is my personal belief that the falsehood of ‘easy-believism’, as it is sometimes called, is one of the most dangerous and prevalent falsehoods in the church today. Any church that denies the necessity of repentance, claiming that all one must do is pray a prayer of acceptance of Jesus and then is permitted to live however one pleases, is promoting the false doctrine of easy- believism. Any church that teaches the tolerance of sins such as these common ones that find relevancy in today’s culture: homosexuality or other sexual sins, unbiblically merited divorce, abortion- any church that does not speak out against these sins or call for repentance to these or any other sins is promoting falsehood.
We must carefully “discern what is pleasing to the Lord, and take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them” (Eph 5:10-11).
What should you do if you find yourself to be in an unbiblical church that is promoting false doctrine, or are suspicious that you may be, but aren’t totally sure? Well, you definitely shouldn’t sweep this issue under the rug and try to avoid dealing with it. Our standard for doctrine must be extremely high. This issue can be admittedly very difficult and sometimes intimidating to confront and deal with. Here are some professional resources from Ligonier Ministries that can help to guide you in this crucial matter: https://learn.ligonier.org/articles/recommended-resources-false-teaching
If you have never read J.I. Packer’s book “Knowing God”, I highly recommend that you do. This is an absolutely excellent work to get you started on a solid path to understanding who the true God of the Bible is. Of course, nothing can substitute for reading God’s word, the Bible. So be sure you are committed to reading scripture each day. Begin by praying and asking God to expose all falsehoods that you may have previously come to believe about him. Ask God to give you a pure and undivided heart that will seek him only with the proper motivation of loving and serving him with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.
As with everything that I write, I pray that this article may be found useful in building up the Lord’s kingdom and bringing glory to the one and only King of Kings. Soli deo Gloria!