False Prophets

Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints. For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ (Jude 1:3-4). 

The subject of false prophets and false teachers seems to be an issue many within the Church tend to want to look over these days.  Many say it is too judgmental or too harsh to stick up for the truth of the Bible.  That is unfortunate because it's a subject constantly discussed in the New Testament.  Everyone from Jesus to His half-brother Jude spent some time on this issue.  In the previous verse Jude even says he was making an effort to write about Salvation but he felt it was necessary to fight for the faith because of false converts in the Church (unnoticed) turn the grace of God into licentiousness (lacking legal or moral restraints).  False teachers/coverts come into the Church, and on the surface seem like they are Christians, but they always want to slip in some heresy along the way.  The problem is when no one stands up to them, they slip in more and more and before you know it the Church is filled with false doctrine and ends up not being Christian at all.

Today you can throw a rock in any direction and you will hit some sort of false doctrine.  From all of the so called preachers on television like Benny Hinn and Todd Bentley to the ones who write books like Rob Bell, it's everywhere.  Todd Bentley for instance claims to be a faith healer and he literally beats up people on stage, and laughs about it when he talks about kicking an old woman in the face with his boots to heal her.  I think I missed that verse in the Bible where Jesus was beating people up to heal them.  Guys like Rob Bell become more and more heretical as time goes on.  Now he even claims Hell isn't real. 

The fact that these guys are not publicly pointed out and proven wrong by Church leaders is beyond me.  They deceive millions of people everyday and remind me of what Jesus said about some false teachers from His day: "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you travel around on sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves (Matthew 23:15)."  There is nothing wrong with telling people the truth of the Bible when they are in error and there is nothing wrong with calling out a false teacher by name.  John did it in 3 John with Diotrephes and Paul even called out Peter (Galatians 2:11-21) over Peter's acceptance of some false teachers. 

We have had 2000 years worth of heresy building up since Jesus' time and I can't tell you the number of times I have heard so called Christians standing up for things blatantly condemned in the Bible like homosexuality, fornication, witchcraft, etc because they are not concerned with what the Bible says but with what the world says.  If we, as members of the Church, are afraid or to uncaring to speak the truth of the Bible to people in the Church, then who will?  No one.  We will continue to sit idly by and let the Church be destroyed from the inside.  If the people in the Church had been doing their job and preaching the Gospel and the truth of scripture, our Country (and the Church) may not be in the shape it is now days.