BE A BEREAN TO STAND AGAINST

FALSE TEACHERS

Part Three

By Michael K. Farrar, O.D.

© God’s Breath Publications

 

Acts 17:11

“Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.”

 

Luke here commends the Bereans for their dedication to the Holy Scriptures and how they tested all teaching they received by the standard of God’s Word. Berea was located in Greece and in this area of the ancient world people worshipped numerous gods and goddesses. False teachers and worldly philosophies were prolific and very influential. Some things never change for today we still have a plethora of world religions, false teachings, man-made philosophies that attempt to pull us away from the God of the Bible. We should follow in the footsteps of the Bereans and search the scriptures on a regular basis to make sure what we hear and see fall in line with what is in the Holy Bible. We continue now examining the deceptive teaching of the “pretenders” or false teachers

 

Thirdly, they will seek to stress spiritual experience over spiritual knowledge with drastic results.

 

Another habit of false teachers is they will stress spiritual experiences are more important than scriptural knowledge. The last thing these “pretenders” want to do is encourage you to become skilled at interpreting the Bible and growing in knowledge of godly doctrine. They want your emotions to drive your faith. They want you to seek mystical spiritual experiences. They know that when your emotions are the center of your life you will have difficulty discerning truth from error. You will begin to base your relationship with God on how you feel rather than what you know is true from the Holy Scriptures. Our knowledge of God’s Word should guide our thought processes, help us discern right from wrong and give us a firm foundation upon which to live a life in a manner patterned after our Savior. We can and will have spiritual experiences in our lives as Christians that are appropriate and often quite emotional, but they are in response to correctly understanding who God is, what He has done for us and how He is working in our lives through properly understanding His written Word. Below are some quotes from a false teacher that will illustrate the priority they place upon experiences in the life of those who follow their teaching.

 

“I must passionately desire life-changing encounters with God, over and over again.”

 

“In my personal quest for increased power and anointing…God has used my experiences in such places to set me up for life-changing encounters at home.

 

“As we pursue the Extravagant One with reckless abandon, we will discover that our greatest problem is the resistance that comes from between our ears.”

 

In these quotes you can see the driving force behind their teaching is the necessity to seek spiritual encounters and experiences, to pursue spiritual power and anointing, to recklessly disengage the mind and let emotions rule a person’s spiritual life. This can lead to all sorts of spiritual problems and can be a distraction from true spiritual life and fellowship with God. Our emotions can run rampant very often and when we rely upon them instead of our rational mind grounded in God’s Word, we can end up in left field and involved in all sorts of ungodly mystical endeavors.

 

We know from 1 Corinthians 8:1, that “Knowledge puffs up,” so we don’t want to become prideful Pharisees. But we also know there are strong commandments and encouragements in scripture from the apostles to be knowledgeable followers of Christ who rightly divide the Word (2 Timothy 2:15) and who are good students of scripture. This knowledgeable preparation and study enables us to live properly and obediently as a follower of Christ. A strong foundation of knowledge of the Bible is what we use to live by, not our emotions which can flow with every wind of false doctrine (Ephesians 4:11-16). Several scriptures talk about the importance of renewing our mind, increasing in knowledge, being filled with spiritual wisdom and understanding.

 

Romans 12:1-2

“Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God — this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is — his good, pleasing and perfect will.”

 

Philippians 1:9-11

“And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ — to the glory and praise of God.”

 

Colossians 1:9-10

“For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God,”

 

In this last verse we see the reason Paul is encouraging the followers of Christ in Colossae to grow in knowledge, wisdom and understanding. He prays for this increase in knowledge so they can live a life worthy of the Lord, please Him in every way, bear spiritual fruit in their good works and grow even more in the knowledge of God. We have to know what God commands and instructs us to do so that we may live accordingly. We must know more about who God is to grow in our relationship with Him. We must know more about what the Bible says about who we are as children of God so that we can live not just more obediently, but also more abundantly filled with joy, peace, faith and spiritual strength. The emotional experiences that are often encouraged and promoted by false teachers are fleeting and they can be deceptive at times because they often are based on how we feel rather than on what we should know. As we know more accurately who God is and see how he works in our lives as we follow what we learn from scripture, the experiences we have will be Biblical, appropriate, deeply felt, encouraging to our faith and bring greater glory to our Heavenly Father.

 

Fourthly they will pervert God’s provision of salvation.

 

Finally, the false teachers will distort, twist or pervert how God has made provision for our salvation in the sacrifice of His Son, Jesus Christ. One group who has a false doctrinal system of beliefs concerning salvation states as follows:

 

“The material blood of Jesus was no more efficacious to cleanse from sin when it was shed upon the accursed tree than when flowing in his veins as he went daily about his Father’s business.”

 

A scriptural rebuttal of this false teaching can be found in Ephesians 1:7-9 where it says, “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding.”

 

It states quite clearly here that we are redeemed by the blood of Christ on the cross. It is well established in the Christian faith that a perfect, pure and holy blood sacrifice is necessary for the payment for sins. Jesus Christ provided this sacrifice for the sins of men and women by His spilt blood in the crucifixion. He was perfectly holy and sinless and so was the absolutely perfect sacrifice that could pay, in full, the debt owed to God for our sins.

 

Yet another organization which teaches false doctrine states about Jesus:

 

“His perfect human life with all its rights and prospects, was laid down in death, but NOT FOR SIN AND IN PUNISHMENT.”

 

This statement appears to say that Christ served as an example to live by for us who follow Christ, which is true, but it goes too far when it says that Jesus did not die for our sins. Christ lived a life for us to follow as an example, but He also died for our sins so that we could have the opportunity to live as He did. We cannot even attempt to live as a Christian without the forgiveness of our sins. Numerous scriptures refute the false doctrine that Jesus did not die for our sins.

 

Romans 3:25

“God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.”

 

Hebrews 9:26-27

“He has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself.”

1 John 4:10

“This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”

 

The next quote from another religious organization that teaches false doctrine speaks of how we obtain salvation. It is obvious they believe in “salvation by works.”

 

“All who by reason and faith in Jehovah God and in Christ Jesus dedicate themselves to do God’s will and then faithfully carry out their dedication will be rewarded with everlasting life.”

 

We are saved by God’s grace, through faith in Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross and no amount of good works or obedience can pay the debt we owe to God for our sins as Ephesians 2:8-9 states, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.”

 

Our obedience to the commands of God do not save us, but they do demonstrate and are proof that we really do have eternal life and salvation as the following verses substantiate.

 

1 John 2:3

“We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands.”

 

1 John 3:24

“Those who obey his commands live in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.”

 

Another group who teaches falsehood believes everyone goes to heaven. Here’s a statement from them that illustrates their false doctrinal beliefs.

 

“Even the unbeliever, the heathen,…all are redeemed by the Savior’s self-sacrifice from the individual consequences of the Fall.”

 

Contrast this false belief from the teaching of scripture demonstrated by the following verse.

 

John 3:36

“Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on him.”

 

This deceptive doctrine is called “universalism” and it is a belief that when Christ died on the cross it provided salvation for everyone, whether they accept Christ as Savior and Lord or not and whether or not they live their lives according to the Holy Scriptures. The quote from the book of John above tells us that everyone has a choice to believe in Jesus as Savior and Lord and if they don’t believe in Him in this way they remain under God’s wrath.

 

In the next part of this series we’ll cover the “preventions” we can take to protect ourselves from false teachers and their deceptive doctrines.