I’m nearing the end (of the New Testament) and I’m seeing something curious. Actually it didn’t occur to me straight out, but more subtly, as I started categorizing everyone in my life as either one who walks in the truth or a false teacher. :-)<\/p>\n
It is very interesting that the last books of the Bible are very concerned with the presence of false teachers in the church. Take 2 Peter<\/strong>, for example. Though the apostle begins with an encouragement about growing in godliness, the heart of his message is false teachers are coming and God will judge them. Jude<\/strong> is similar, though he uses the present tense, indicating that now the false teachers have arrived. Because of them, believers must contend for the faith. <\/p>\n How about 1 John<\/strong>? Though the message is largely positive, it’s against the backdrop of people in the church who had departed. John says that those who left us were not part of us. The whole letter is about distinguishing between those who are true and those who are liars. You, John says, are in the faith because you believe that Jesus is God come in the flesh, you love your brothers, and you obey the Father. Those who don’t do these things are against Christ. In 2 John<\/strong>, the apostle writes a short letter to a friend, telling her to watch out because the false teachers have come. In 3 John<\/strong>, the problem is that one man refuses to welcome true teachers.<\/p>\n This is not only true of the general epistles, but it’s true of Paul’s last letters also. How does 1 Timothy<\/strong> start but with a description of the false teachers. Titus<\/strong>, probably written at the same time to a church leader in another place, begins with instructions to appoint elders because<\/em> there are many false teachers running around. Then, just before Paul’s head was separated from his body, he wrote a second letter to Timothy<\/strong>, stressing how his disciple should respond to the false teachers and how godlessness will increase. <\/p>\n If you read the letters in Revelation<\/strong>, you see that by that time, several decades later, the church had been ravished by false teachers. Only two of the seven churches are commended.<\/p>\n So it doesn’t seem a stretch to me to say that the apostles (Paul, Peter, and John), at the end of their lives, were greatly concerned about false teachers in the church and the damage they could do.<\/p>\n What strikes me today is how the category of false teacher doesn’t seem to exist, at least in some places. We don’t have false teachers, we have different views. I certainly wouldn’t deny that believers can have different interpretations for parts of Scripture. But is there a line over which one can cross in which they become a false teacher?<\/p>\n All I want at this point is a response of “yes.” That, as simple as it seems in light of Scripture, is a monumental step forward, I think.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’m nearing the end (of the New Testament) and I’m seeing something curious. Actually it didn’t occur to me straight out, but more subtly, as I started categorizing everyone in my life as either one who walks in the truth or a false teacher. :-) It is very interesting that the last books of the\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-epistles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1212\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}