7 Traits of False Teachers

"There were also false prophets among the people,
just as there will be false teachers among you." (2 Peter 2:1)

There are no "ifs, ands, or buts" in Peter's words. It's a clear and definite statement. There were false prophets among the people (of Israel in the Old Testament). That's a matter of history.

False prophets were a constant problem in the Old Testament, and those who falsely claimed to be prophets of God were to be stoned. The people rarely had the will to deal with them, so they multiplied, causing disaster to the spiritual life of God's people.

In the same way Peter says, "There will be false teachers among you." Notice the words "among you." Peter is writing to the church and says, "There will be false prophets among you." So he is not talking about New Age people on television. He is talking about people in the local church, members of a local congregation.

There is no such thing as a pure church this side of heaven. You will never find it. The wheat and the tares grow together. Warren Wiersbe writes:

Satan is the counterfeiter. . . . He has a false gospel (Galatians 1:6-9), preached by false ministers (2 Corinthians 11:13-12), producing false Christians (2 Corinthians 11:26). . . . Satan plants his counterfeits wherever God plants true believers (Matthew 13:38).

Authentic or Counterfeit?

How would you recognize counterfeit Christianity?

In 2 Peter 1 we read about genuine believers. And in 2 Peter 2 we read about counterfeit believers. If you put these chapters side by side you will see the difference between authentic and counterfeit believers.

1. Different Source—Where does the message come from?

Peter says, "We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ" (1:16). And then he says the false teachers exploit you "with stories they have made up" (2:3). So the true teacher sources what he says from the Bible. The false teacher relies on his own creativity. He makes up his own message.    Continue at Colin Smith

Throwing Arthur Pink Under the Bus

Back on January 17 Dan Philips over at Pyromanics posted an article that resembled, to me, a character assassination of Dr. Arthur Pink who died in 1952. Here is the link to the post. I was busy at the time and, to be honest, I really have lost the desire to waste my valuable time over there at TeamPyro since their format changed. When this post came out I was notified of it in our CRN discussion forum, but no one really wanted to tackle it. I mean, who wanted to go defend Arthur Pink? It’s not like Dan Phillips was attacking the Gospel or being postmodern or anything like that. I let it go. However, I have a couple of Pink’s books and one of them was very important to me in the early stages of my understanding of Reformed Theology. It was his book The Sovereignty of God. 

I have always been grateful to God for that book along with those of R.C. Sproul and Dr. James White in explaining that true Reformed Theology was far richer and deeper and broader than the Five Points of Calvinism. From an understanding of the Sovereignty of God and the Depravity of Man comes immense joy when we study divine election because we understand the tremendous gift that is Justification by Grace alone through Faith alone. From that perspective, when we study the blood sacrifice of our Lord to become our propitiation and then we marvel and are humbled and lift up our Heavenly Father in praise and worship for having mercy on us who deserved nothing but his wrath, but that wrath was poured out on his beloved son paying the penalty for our sin.

This evening my other book by Pink, which I have not yet read, caught my eye. At the same time I remembered Dan Phillips diatribe against Pink and wondered where this could possibly go since so many seem to look at Arthur Pink these days as somewhat untouchable. The book I am reading now by Pink is his The Seven Sayings of the Saviour on the Cross. I will review it when I am done. For this post I want to share the two “Forward Introductions.” Perhaps that will assist you in putting Dan Phillips’ article in a different light and question what motivated him to write something like that.

Forward by Warren W. Wiersbe    Continue at Mike Ratliff

Extraordinary Spiritual Awareness and Commitment in the Young

I’ve been casually reading the short biographies of Christian men and women in Warren Wiersbe’s Fifty People Every Christian Should Know: Learning from Spiritual Giants of the Faith.  Each of the biographical sketches are breezy reads rich with encouragement.  One of the encouraging bits in some of the biographies is the Lord’s gracious dealing with some while they are young.  We live in an age where youth is either despised or largely ignored.  We don’t take young people very seriously or challenge them very effectively.  Hence the appropriateness of the rebelution.

But these biographies remind us of the power of God’s word and Spirit to deep, meaningful, lasting work in the lives of the young.  Two examples: Continue Reading>>>

The New Ways of Doing Church

Considering the deficiencies of some of the old ways of doing church, perhaps this is not such a bad standard to bear. Somehow, though, the phrase makes me cringe inside. I wonder whether the leaders of such groups really know enough about the old ways to critique them, and whether they really know enough about their new ways to understand their implications.
I will admit that for the most part I am a pretty traditional fellow. I was raised in a Lutheran congregation that conducted services in German until my father was a young boy, only three decades before I was born. There I was weaned on the pipe organ, liturgical worship and memorization from Luther’s Small Catechism and the King James Version of the Bible.
When I left that system and migrated into fundamentalism more than 25 years ago, I came with little understanding of my new camp’s past history. Yet I had purposed to submit myself to profound changes—in my theology and in just about every way of doing church.
I found many of these changes to bring joy and welcome relief. I will admit, however, that at times through these years I have felt like a fish out of water. On occasion I have even had to bite my tongue when my critiques would not have been “fitly spoken” (Prov. 25:11, NKJV). Read the rest HERE