False teaching, whether that is intentional or not, does not matter because the overall message is in error. So, you might first off be wondering what I mean by false teaching, or what context of false teaching. I am not referring too teaching in the schools, though that to some degree could be considered false depending on the subject, but no I am referring to Christian doctrine. The gospel message. Now false teaching is not simply different interpretations of certain pieces of scripture for instance Revelation as well as the Second coming of Jesus. There are different views on it such as Christians will be raptured before the tribulation, then there is the view that Christians will go through some of the tribulation or all of it and then be raptured. I would not consider having these different views as heretical, because they are simply man’s interpretation of given scripture, of course it could slide into scripture if you were to start adding things that were not there at all. Another similar example is the age of the universe, Genesis does not state when the universe was created, but God has given us general revelation. Some Christians take the beginning as literal, literal seven days, others take it as poetic, either way the book never mentions when the universe was created because only God would have been there. God certainly created the universe but whether that was millions of years ago or thousands of years ago, are just arbitrary numbers that mean very little to us humans, that only live on average up to eighty years. There are Christians who read into the genealogies throughout the bible, but I would refute that because that is simply nothing more than man’s interpretation.
So, the question you might have, if your reading this and you’re not a Christian, or even if you are wondering what is false teaching?
I am going to illustrate this in different ways, through using the bible and scripture, history, the modern church and my own experiences. I will start with the latter.
I have only been a Christian for around five years since 2015, yet in the short time I have encountered many different types of what would be considered unorthodox, heretical, error ridden teachings. In fact, just this past weekend on the 12th of Saturday in September 2020, I was in Manchester city centre with a group of Christians sharing the gospel, all from different churches across the UK. It happens often if you ever have visited Manchester City Centre and there’s a small group of us who are more regular meeting during the week in the afternoon. On the Saturday there was another group preaching and sharing the gospel under a tent, and always the inclination is to listen to what they preach to see if it lines up with the bible and it turns out they preached the message that God became man, Jesus, so that he could understand the human condition and that was it, nothing more to it. That the creator of the universe needed to understand the human condition, which is not what the gospel teaches. Even within our own group, there is an older Christian, who joins regularly, and he is retired, been a Christian for over twenty years and very pleasant. On the face of it he knows and quotes scripture, believes the gospels, believes that Jesus died on the cross for our sins and if we repent and believe, and follow Jesus then we will have eternal life, a gift that no one can earn so that no one can boast. Yes, he believes all that, but he also believes in the idea that the four gospels aren’t for us, and neither are Hebrews, so reading them and preaching them are pointless. He still of course accepts and follows Paul’s writings. A few other people apparently also hold this view as well, mostly among older Christians. This friend and brother in the faith has been challenged or questioned about his views, but he won’t listen. But because of this he doesn’t go to many churches now and believes many of them in the city are in theological error, even though he has fellowship with Christians and studies the word.
The first example is straight up heretical as its downplaying the reason for the cross which is when judgement, sin, death, but also mercy, grace and everything encompasses the gospel come together in that specific moment. The second example, I would say is dangerously in error because it’s a slippery slope, if you start picking and choosing which parts apply to us and which don’t it might send you down a slope, particularly if you end up being stuck with those views and become semi-isolationist which is not in the gospel. There’s other such belief systems that are in abundance at the moment whether it is the Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists, Christadelphians, Hebrew Israelites, that would say that they are believing in the true God of the Bible.
If you were to put a scale, of 1-10, 1 being least obvious to most obvious for being in error, and 10 being most obvious, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses would be a 10. It is important to note that on this scale, whether it’s a 1 or a 10, they’re still in error, it just depends on how obvious it is. The Christadelphians, Hebrew Israelites and Seventh Day Adventists are slightly lower on the scale, maybe a 7 or 8, but still have errors in teaching. To give an example, the 7th Day Adventists believe in most of the core beliefs of the gospel such as God being the supreme being, Jesus born of a virgin and died on the cross but one of the key areas where they differ is salvation. 7th Day Adventists believe that salvation does not just come from repentance and faith in Jesus but also baptism and keeping the commandments (works). So, if you met someone from a Seventh Day Adventist church you might not know what exactly they believe because it almost sounds right but there is a subtle difference which is actually a big difference.
Throughout the course of 2020 through lockdown, my Facebook ads started showing numerous religious posts varying from Christian sounding products, to speakers, self-proclaimed prophets+ teachers, as well as churches. I must have counted around twenty or more, and I checked each one, I’m happy to say that at least the churches that were advertising for the most part turned out to be pretty gospel centred. The rest though, the prophets and speakers, for the overwhelming majority, many come from an independent, self-proclaimed prophet background. An example is a young lady over in the USA, that has her own ministries and generates around 27,000 subscribers, and then there are some that rake in hundreds of thousands from their prophetic word salads using the same old phrases such as ‘acceleration’ ‘movement’ ‘destiny’. Most of them presumably started with some biblical foundation but then went their own way. I know this sounds harsh, but earlier in the year there was the pandemic, there was the riots and protests in the USA, with many of them in the USA, but none of them saw it coming even though they were talking about prophecies for this year and each month.
It is not just recent times where false teaching has become a problem, but it is something that is clear in the bible from the beginning.
Deuteronomy 18: 20 “But a prophet who presumes to speak in my name anything I have not commanded, or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, is to be put to death.”
Matthew 24:24 “For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect.”
2 Peter 2: 1 “But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves. 2 Many will follow their depraved conduct and will bring the way of truth into disrepute.”
There are other scriptures such as Matthew 7:15-20, 1 John 4:1-6, strongly giving out warnings to watch out for false teachers, and false prophets, and stick to the gospel. Therefore, we have to be on guard about false teaching because it is something that causes division and causes people to lead people away from the truth. It can either take away from the gospel such as the Jehovah’s witnesses, or it can add to the gospel, such as the prosperity gospel where people are asking you for money to have blessings from God. Both are wrong but they just do it in different ways, and both will end up in destruction. Because these types of heresies come in all forms, we need to be vigilant and on-guard, particularly when it comes to emotions. The serpent in genesis did not use aggression or force, but used a technique known as obfuscation, and spun a narrative, “Did God really say that?” The moment we start questioning, and double guessing and thinking some of these errors are okay, we may fall into that same trap of falling down the slippery slope. It also means that while we should always welcome new people that come to the church, but we should not just assume they are in the same exact place as us but befriend them, don’t be afraid of bringing up those questions to see where they’re at in their faith. Iron, after all sharpens iron, it is as much as growth for us as it is for the other person in the conversation. Afterall it is all about encouraging one another and building one another up, not tearing others down, but also gently correcting people when they have made mistakes, if we do not now, we could end up becoming isolationists or lone wolves.
Youtube Channels to check out: Fighting for the Faith: https://www.youtube.com/user/Fighting4theFaith One Minute Apologist: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=one+minute+apologist Further Reading: http://www.gii-usa.org/sac/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2015/02/Comparing-Christianity-with-Sects-and-Cults.pdf
https://www.xenos.org/essays/christian-cults-and-sectsFalse teaching is a teaching, whether that is intentional or not, does not matter because the overall message is in error. So, you might first off be wondering what I mean by false teaching, or what context of false teaching. I am not referring too teaching in the schools, though that to some degree could be considered false depending on the subject, but no I am referring to Christian doctrine. The gospel message.
Now false teaching is not simply different interpretations of certain pieces of scripture for instance Revelation as well as the Second coming of Jesus. There are different views on it such as Christians will be raptured before the tribulation, then there is the view that Christians will go through some of the tribulation or all of it and then be raptured. I would not consider having these different views as heretical, because they are simply man’s interpretation of given scripture, of course it could slide into scripture if you were to start adding things that were not there at all. Another similar example is the age of the universe, Genesis does not state when the universe was created, but God has given us general revelation. Some Christians take the beginning as literal, literal seven days, others take it as poetic, either way the book never mentions when the universe was created because only God would have been there. God certainly created the universe but whether that was millions of years ago or thousands of years ago, are just arbitrary numbers that mean very little to us humans, that only live on average up to eighty years. There are Christians who read into the genealogies throughout the bible, but I would refute that because that is simply nothing more than man’s interpretation.
So, the question you might have, if your reading this and you’re not a Christian, or even if you are wondering what is false teaching? I am going to illustrate this in different ways, through using the bible and scripture, history, the modern church and my own experiences. I will start with the latter. I have only been a Christian for around five years since 2015, yet in the short time I have encountered many different types of what would be considered unorthodox, heretical, error ridden teachings. In fact, just this past weekend on the 12th of Saturday in September 2020, I was in Manchester city centre with a group of Christians sharing the gospel, all from different churches across the UK. It happens often if you ever have visited Manchester City Centre and there’s a small group of us who are more regular meeting during the week in the afternoon. On the Saturday there was another group preaching and sharing the gospel under a tent, and always the inclination is to listen to what they preach to see if it lines up with the bible and it turns out they preached the message that God became man, Jesus, so that he could understand the human condition and that was it, nothing more to it. That the creator of the universe needed to understand the human condition, which is not what the gospel teaches. Even within our own group, there is an older Christian, who joins regularly, and he is retired, been a Christian for over twenty years and very pleasant. On the face of it he knows and quotes scripture, believes the gospels, believes that Jesus died on the cross for our sins and if we repent and believe, and follow Jesus then we will have eternal life, a gift that no one can earn so that no one can boast. Yes, he believes all that, but he also believes in the idea that the four gospels aren’t for us, and neither are Hebrews, so reading them and preaching them are pointless. He still of course accepts and follows Paul’s writings. A few other people apparently also hold this view as well, mostly among older Christians. This friend and brother in the faith has been challenged or questioned about his views, but he won’t listen. But because of this he doesn’t go to many churches now and believes many of them in the city are in theological error, even though he has fellowship with Christians and studies the word. The first example is straight up heretical as its downplaying the reason for the cross which is when judgement, sin, death, but also mercy, grace and everything encompasses the gospel come together in that specific moment. The second example, I would say is dangerously in error because it’s a slippery slope, if you start picking and choosing which parts apply to us and which don’t it might send you down a slope, particularly if you end up being stuck with those views and become semi-isolationist which is not in the gospel. There’s other such belief systems that are in abundance at the moment whether it is the Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists, Christadelphians, Hebrew Israelites, that would say that they are believing in the true God of the Bible. If you were to put a scale, of 1-10, 1 being least obvious to most obvious for being in error, and 10 being most obvious, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses would be a 10. It is important to note that on this scale, whether it’s a 1 or a 10, they’re still in error, it just depends on how obvious it is. The Christadelphians, Hebrew Israelites and Seventh Day Adventists are slightly lower on the scale, maybe a 7 or 8, but still have errors in teaching. To give an example, the 7th Day Adventists believe in most of the core beliefs of the gospel such as God being the supreme being, Jesus born of a virgin and died on the cross but one of the key areas where they differ is salvation. 7th Day Adventists believe that salvation does not just come from repentance and faith in Jesus but also baptism and keeping the commandments (works). So, if you met someone from a Seventh Day Adventist church you might not know what exactly they believe because it almost sounds right but there is a subtle difference which is actually a big difference. Throughout the course of 2020 through lockdown, my Facebook ads started showing numerous religious posts varying from Christian sounding products, to speakers, self-proclaimed prophets+ teachers, as well as churches. I must have counted around twenty or more, and I checked each one, I’m happy to say that at least the churches that were advertising for the most part turned out to be pretty gospel centred. The rest though, the prophets and speakers, for the overwhelming majority, many come from an independent, self-proclaimed prophet background. An example is a young lady over in the USA, that has her own ministries and generates around 27,000 subscribers, and then there are some that rake in hundreds of thousands from their prophetic word salads using the same old phrases such as ‘acceleration’ ‘movement’ ‘destiny’. Most of them presumably started with some biblical foundation but then went their own way. I know this sounds harsh, but earlier in the year there was the pandemic, there was the riots and protests in the USA, with many of them in the USA, but none of them saw it coming even though they were talking about prophecies for this year and each month. It is not just recent times where false teaching has become a problem, but it is something that is clear in the bible from the beginning.
Deuteronomy 18: 20 “But a prophet who presumes to speak in my name anything I have not commanded, or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, is to be put to death.”
Matthew 24:24 “For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect.”
2 Peter 2: 1 “But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves. 2 Many will follow their depraved conduct and will bring the way of truth into disrepute.”
There are other scriptures such as Matthew 7:15-20, 1 John 4:1-6, strongly giving out warnings to watch out for false teachers, and false prophets, and stick to the gospel. Therefore, we have to be on guard about false teaching because it is something that causes division and causes people to lead people away from the truth. It can either take away from the gospel such as the Jehovah’s witnesses, or it can add to the gospel, such as the prosperity gospel where people are asking you for money to have blessings from God. Both are wrong but they just do it in different ways, and both will end up in destruction. Because these types of heresies come in all forms, we need to be vigilant and on-guard, particularly when it comes to emotions. The serpent in genesis did not use aggression or force, but used a technique known as obfuscation, and spun a narrative, “Did God really say that?” The moment we start questioning, and double guessing and thinking some of these errors are okay, we may fall into that same trap of falling down the slippery slope. It also means that while we should always welcome new people that come to the church, but we should not just assume they are in the same exact place as us but befriend them, don’t be afraid of bringing up those questions to see where they’re at in their faith. Iron, after all sharpens iron, it is as much as growth for us as it is for the other person in the conversation. Afterall it is all about encouraging one another and building one another up, not tearing others down, but also gently correcting people when they have made mistakes, if we do not now, we could end up becoming isolationists or lone wolves.
Youtube Channels to check out: Fighting for the Faith:
One Minute Apologist:
Further Reading: http://www.gii-usa.org/sac/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2015/02/Comparing-Christianity-with-Sects-and-Cults.pdf