A Dream of Two Churches
Years ago, when I was a teenager, I had a dream in which I can remember being taken to two different churches. In the first church, I saw that the congregation was physically very weak. They all seemed to be sick and unable to hold themselves upright. The pastor stood behind the big wooden pulpit. He had to hold on to the edges in order to keep himself standing. I could see that gripping it tightly was the only way he could hold himself upright. Like his congregation, he did not have much strength, but it was enough to steady himself with the help of the sturdy pulpit.
After I saw this, I was taken to a second church. In this church, I saw a bold preacher. He was standing tall and speaking great things. His congregation, however, appeared to be in the same shape as the first. This group was all laying on the floor, without even being given chairs to sit down. As I watched them, I noticed that every so often, one of the people would begin to stand up. Yet, whenever one started to stand, the bold preacher lashed out like a serpent and bit the person who began to stand. Each time this happened, the unsuspecting person was weakened by the venom and sat back down in a daze.
I remember being amazed at what I’d seen. To be honest, I knew that I did not fully understand what it meant, but I felt that one day I would understand it better.
Introduction to the Series
Over the few weeks, I will be releasing several parts in this message series. In it, I’m going to talk a little bit about what it means to be a “false prophet” and how to discern what is good from what isn’t.
Now before we begin, I should tell you that this is a subject that I will be approaching with great fear and respect. I have to be honest with you, like so many of you who are faithful to the desire to Love God and Love others, I have seen a lot of terrible, cruel, and hateful people who make it their sole mission to report on “false prophets” and apostates in the church. In fact, it is often so bad and so prevalent that even reading the words “false prophet” draws a near immediate reaction in my gut. When I hear the term, I usually cringe and feel my stomach twist in knots as I brace myself for the inevitable slurry of vitriol and venom that follows.
The truth is, however, I’ve come to see from reading the Word that the subject of false teachers is one of the most important topics found in the Word. It’s repeated in nearly every book of the Bible, in both the New Testament and the Old Testament. It’s so important, in fact, that Jesus and all of the apostles repeatedly warn us to be on our guard, teaching how to spot them.
So with this being true, why is it that most of what we find out there in the world on this subject is so ugly, and how can we know the truth the Bible wants us to hear?
The bad news is that the enemy is very cunning. In fact, this is an area that is so important, he uses his most effective strategies to destroy and keep the church sitting in a daze, much like that poor churchgoer who tried to stand up in the dream.
The good news, however, is that we are going to investigate and understand that strategy in order to discover and recover the Power of God which the enemy has tried to keep hidden from you.
“Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
John 8:32
Two Sides, Three Traps
The enemy truly is a brilliant strategist. He understands that the best way to poison and destroy the true church is by creating two wicked factions that appear to work against each other, but in reality, he controls both sides. On each side, he perverts truth in opposite ways in order to drive Christians and non-believers away from the truth.
Let me give you a common example. On one side, the enemy will raise up a preacher who craftily perverts the grace of God into lawlessness. At the same time, on the opposite side, he raises up an army of accusers who mock and scoff in derision and speak terrible, hateful things about the preacher and his followers. They do all of this in the Name of the Lord and even go so far as to call it “ministry”.
In cases like these, inevitably, some of the people will fall into the trap laid by the preacher. The people who fall in with him are usually either ignorant of the Scripture – many are new Christians or they’ve not read much of the Bible – or they are people who are aware of what God says but they don’t like it. In other words, these are the types who would rather find someone to tell them that it’s okay to pursue their own passions and desires rather than let the Word of God change them.
These people are like a ship whose captain and crew have left the wheel and their navigation duties to go party instead. They assume that they will simply arrive where they plan to go because the wind will take them there. While it is true that the wind propels the boat, this foolish crew has forgotten that it is their job to steer and adjust the sails in order to direct their course. The crew may have fun for a little while as they drink and unwind. The boat will probably even seem to sail forward on its own for awhile, just as they expected. But, as any wise sailor can tell you, it’s only a short they either run aground or capsize and drown when the weather gets rough.
Now I do have to say that what this charismatic preacher speaks does appear to come from the Bible. Quite often, even the elect are fooled for awhile. Unfortunately, what his followers do not recognize is that the preacher’s words are simply a handful of sentences from completely different areas of the Bible that are cleverly sown together like patches of silk sown onto a pair of old, worn out blue jeans! They obviously don’t belong there, they won’t hold, and they don’t make the old things look any nicer than they were.
Nevertheless, the preacher repeats these verses over and over in order to make them seem normal, twisting these small pieces of the Word into sounding like it supports his message, but a reading of the whole Word would show that it does not stand against the larger message.
As a good example, imagine that I wrote you a ten page letter.
In my letter, I told you all about my life and my dreams. I even told you all about the day I had at work, that day. Because I wrote about so many things, if you wanted, you could take four or five sentences from my letter and put them together to make it seem that I said just about anything that you wanted me to say! Even though I never wrote about it at all. Anyone who read the original letter and who knew me would know that I never intended to write what you put together, but if anyone was too lazy to read the whole letter and they didn’t know me, they might believe you. That is exactly what has happened to the church, today.
It’s time for us to stop memorizing verses and start reading chapters, with the goal of discovering the meaning, intent, and personality of the Author who wrote them.
The Appearance of Evil
There is another very powerful tactic used by the enemy in order to reinforce the delusions of those who fall in with the false teacher. We can call this tactic “optics”. In plain language, he hides away a piece of truth, burying it in evil in order to give the truth the appearance of evil.
You see, the enemy knows that some of the people who listen to the teacher will question what he says, because they know the Word. In many cases, The Holy Spirit makes them feel a little uncomfortable at some things they hear the teacher speak. When this happens, the enemy uses this incredibly powerful weapon to lay any doubt to rest.
When a deceived follower starts to doubt what he’s being taught, all the devil has to do is give the person people a glimpse of all the cruel and awful people on the other side, who endlessly spew hatred at the teacher and his followers. These people seem to even get joy out of condemning people to hell! If the young follower who was questioning wasn’t convinced before, he can now clearly see that the Spirit of God is definitely not in the people slinging hatred in the Name of God. As a result, there is only one conclusion for the follower.
“God definitely isn’t over there, so He must be over here!” With that, they sit back down, dazed.
Unfortunately, this is another situation which could be avoided if only they read their Bibles more than they listened to their favourite teachers. If they had, they would see that this false division happened even in Jesus’s day!
As Jesus walked and taught on earth, there were two warring “holy” factions within the church who fought with and hated one another. No doubt, you’ve read about them! These groups were called the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Both groups appeared to be divided in almost all things. And yet, when it came time to accept the Messiah, who they had all claimed to be waiting for for thousands of years, they put aside their differences and near miraculously joined together in one accord. Yet instead of accepting Him, they murdered Him!
When it came down to what was important, they had only one voice and one agenda – to slay the Truth before the masses could get to know it.
Please hear me. The devil’s army appears to be divided, but they are united. The apparent division is merely a tactic.
The Second Trap
On the other side of this division is the second trap. This is where those who are prideful or those have been hurt by others tend to fall. It’s true that some are simply wicked messengers placed by the enemy, but many were at one point loving and true believers of God who have been deeply injured in various ways. The Christian walk is difficult, and the enemy takes every opportunity he can to injure believers in the hopes that they become wounded and bitter.
These people are often aware that there are many false teachers, and their anger burns against them. Their knowledge of the Bible can prove that what is being taught on the other side of the divide is false, yet without Love, they too are lost and blinded. They do not see the trap that they’ve fallen into or recognize the wolves that are in their own midst, who they now call brothers. As a result, they’re lead astray into hatred and condemnation.
Jesus speaks of this very thing when He says,
Many false prophets will rise up and deceive many. Because lawlessness will multiply, the love of many will grow cold.
Matthew 24:11-12
The sad truth is, those who allow anger to dominate their hearts and thoughts fall into this trap and become bitter. In so doing, many even lose their salvation.
The Lifeless Middle
If you’re still with me, I hope that you are beginning to see that both sides are a trap which lead to death. In this final part of today’s message, we’ll take a look at the most crafty part of this deception, which is the Lifeless Middle.
So far, Wisdom can show you the trap on both sides of this example, which can be summed up simply.
- If our Love grows cold, we’ve become useless and have lost the Light of God in our lives.
- However, if we fall victim to deceit, we run our proverbial ship aground and our lives become useless and lost.
If you’re wise and can see these two traps, you may now be wondering, “What is the third trap?”
To explain this, I need to use two terms that may be unfamiliar, but I promise that they will be easy to understand.
The first is the word “dichotomy”, which means two sides that are opposed to one another. If you’ve ever seen a protest rally, you’ve probably seen that there are often literally two big crowds of people, each one standing behind a guard rail, with an clearing running down the middle. Usually in these situations, Police are seen standing in the middle area to make sure the sides stay separated and that no violence breaks out as the people in the two groups continue shouting, screaming, and pointing at each other across the divide. This is a great visual representation of a dichotomy! On one side of the divide, there is a group who represent one idea shouting at the other side who hold the opposite view.
So far in our teaching, today, you can probably see how the enemy uses these dichotomies, but now we’re going to talk about his plan for the middle.
This division scenario paints a picture which is the perfect setup for our second unfamiliar term. This is called “Hegelian Dialectic”. Now, I know that is a mouthful, and we don’t need to go too deep into the detail on it. All we really need to understand is that Hegelian Dialectic is an idea that comes from philosophy that has been used as a control tactic throughout the years. Very crafty and immoral people (or “amoral”, as they call themselves) use this idea to setup a system of “controlled conflict” which leads a group of people to adopt a new set of views that they would never have accepted before the conflict. This may sound a little difficult to understand, but it’s actually easy when you see an example!
When you understand this idea, you will begin to see it used everywhere, throughout all recorded history and right in front of your eyes, today.
In the media, news, and entertainment that you watch, it’s being played out everywhere you look.
Here’s a good example. Let’s say that I want to make a nation accept abortion, but I know that the people clearly see it as murdering children. I know that they would never permit it, but I also know that one way to get an entire nation to accept something even as barbaric as this is by creating a dichotomy. (Remember: two sides against each other!) I know to make sure that each side is twisted and extreme, but I also know that if I really I want my plan to succeed, I need to make the side which says no to abortion look especially cold and evil.
So I set one side up to say, “Not only should we allow abortion, but mothers should be able to kill a baby even the moment after it’s born! It’s her choice!” Now, when the nation hears this, a few agree, but most see it as shocking.
Then I make the other side rise up and say, “Abortion is wrong!” and that much is true. But I also have them say, “We don’t care if a girl was raped. She probably dressed slutty, and she deserved it.”
Then I’ll make them include, “God will judge them and burn them in hell! If you got pregnant out of wedlock, He hates you and He wants to burn you to death!!!”
For good measure, I will have them stand outside the clinic with picket signs and say, ‘We can’t wait to see you burn in hell,’ all while spitting on the terrified women who walk in.
Now I know that this is a strong example, but it’s exactly the scenario that played out in the USA and many other countries. As it always does, the two sides fill up with evil people shouting evil things, and after years of raging on, otherwise rational people will say, “Look. The people representing the Bible are just awful people, but killing babies after they’re born seems a little extreme. Let’s come together and be rational and show kindness to the mothers by allowing abortion up to so many months, but let’s not go overboard.”
Just like that, in a decade or less, I’ve made a nation think that murdering babies in the womb is a kindness to women, who I also made victims of abuse by the other side I created. I’ve engineered my order out to emerge from the chaos that I created. To make matters worse, no sooner than I achieve my victory, I set to work to push the line even farther for the next generation.
In the USA, to the shock of so many, not only did we follow that very path not long ago, but we’ve just now actually made killing a child after it’s born a legal option.
Why?
Yesterday’s audacity is tomorrow’s middle ground.
Summing it Up
The principle behind Hegelian Dialectic is simple, yet it is powerful. You create a divide with two extremes. Some people fall in line with the extreme sides, but eventually, a “sane” majority arises who want peace. They do not allow themselves to be caught up in the endless emotional back and forth and will come to a compromise in the middle.
In this technique of blasting audacity on both sides, what was obviously utter insanity, yesterday, now sounds like the voice of reason, today.
This is the very foundation of the concept in all occult systems of control. Create controlled chaos and form new order when the fires burn out.
In the context of today’s example of the false teachers and their accusers, we see this danger presented to us in the Lifeless Middle:
If we avoid being captured by the violence of the loveless and we manage to remain free from the recklessness of the lawless, the danger that we face as followers of Jesus, today, is in fearing and avoiding the parts of Truth that were twisted by the false church on both sides.
To put it another way, the compromise that we make in the middle is that we do not want to be mistaken for either of these evil sides. As a result, we fear learning how to identify false teachers and we do not identify their teaching as evil. We also avoid discovering the true power and real Nature of Grace.
I hope you will join me again on Friday, when I release the second part of this series, in which we will explore the Power of God and discover the pieces of Truth that the enemy divided and hid on both sides of the divide.
You will see that when these things are united, they lead to the True Expression of the Power, Presence, and manifest Kingdom of Heaven.
God bless you!