Scripture Part 6: Wolves In Sheep's Clothing

Continuing from Part 5: Why Attack Scripture, this article addresses the third group that attacks scripture, the wolves in sheep's clothing. In Jesus' time the Pharisees and Sadducees were the most powerful of these. They weren't Levites, and therefore ineligible to be priests in Judaism. But they had managed to become more powerful and influential than the actual priests and woven their corruption of the scriptures into Judaism and Israel. When the temple was destroyed in 70 AD this made it impossible to follow true Judaism. The Pharisees replaced true Judaism with Pharisaical Judaism which is still what Judaism is today. The Pharisees and Sadducees were the false preachers of the time, the wolves in sheep's clothing.

When someone mentions false preachers today most Christians think of the prosperity preachers. And those are false preachers who teach a fake gospel. While they are easy to see as frauds by anyone with the slightest Biblical literacy, they are a tiny minority among false preachers, teachers, and prophets. These know they are frauds and are doing it for their own financial benefit. The more common false preacher is better at hiding their deception. This is partly because many of them really believe their false gospel even though they know they are contradicted by the real gospel in scripture. The way they hide their fraud makes it hard for people in their churches to see the truth, especially if their church is also fake. But it isn't hard to see they are false preachers teaching a false religion if we think clearly about it and actually study scripture for ourselves.

The most common sign of a false preacher is they attack scripture. It's usually subtle, but sometimes it's obvious. Either way none of them put it plainly. No one says, "We reject those parts of scripture." The more obvious ones put it in the form of a reasonable argument for why one part of scripture is more important or more relevant. The bigger their following the more likely they are open and obvious about it. Those with a smaller following tend to be more subtle, such as only teaching from the parts they like and making slightly negative comments about the parts that contradict their fake Christianity.

In the first century the fakes were easily called out by the thousands of eyewitnesses who had heard Jesus teaching themselves. They wrote down the gospels and epistles for later generations to be able to tell real from false. And those that were written under the Holy Spirit were accepted as scripture. So today fakes and frauds are still easily called out by comparing them to scripture. This is why the single most common tactic of the fakes and frauds is to try to turn people away from the parts of scripture that show them to be false Christians teaching a fraudulent gospel.

The first hugely successful false preacher in Christianity was Marcion who came to Rome about 144 A.D. intending to win the church there over to his point of view. He was very rich and made a huge donation to the church. But it quickly became apparent that Marcion was teaching a false gospel. So his donation was returned and he was excommunicated. (They didn't call it that back then.) He then founded his own church that rivaled the Christian church in Rome in size and organization. When he died in 160 A.D. his false church dissolved.

Marcion thought he was right like many of the false preachers today. The root problem was and is arrogance. God is so far above us we cannot hope to fully understand Him until we see Him face to face in heaven. But it takes humility to accept that there are some things we just don't understand about God and His scripture now. An arrogant person rejects that. Therefore arrogant people reject anything they can't understand in scripture. The supremely arrogant person rejects anything in scripture they don't agree with. Think about that. How insanely arrogant does a person have to be to judge God and His scripture and decide that some of it doesn't measure up to their own standard? Only God is omniscient, (all knowing,) while we are ignorant. Only God is good, while we are all sinners. God could squish us like a bug and flick us away like a booger. It is only by God's patience and mercy we aren't all wiped out for what we have done. Anyone who tries to judge God is an idiot wrapped up in a moron.

Jesus affirmed that the Old Testament was God's inspired word. What we call the Old Testament is called the TaNaKh in Judaism, which refers to the three divisions of the books. The three division are the Torah, the Nevi'im, and the Ketuvim. The Torah is usually referred to as the law or the Pentateuch and is the first five books of the Old Testament. The Nevi'im consists of the Former Prophets and the Latter Prophets, and includes narrative history books written by the prophets as well as prophetic texts. The Ketuvim contains the writings, which include history narratives, wisdom, poetry, and apocalyptic books. Since Christian literally means follower of Christ, those who call themselves Christians ought to hold the whole of scripture as God's word, including the Old Testament as Christ did. And it should be held higher than the thoughts of man.

The Roman Catholic Church officially maintains that their doctrine is equal to scripture. However, in reality they hold their doctrine above scripture. This is not unusual as many denominations hold their doctrine above scripture. The others are just more subtle about it by claiming their interpretation of scripture shows they are in harmony when they really aren't. Roman Catholics contradict scripture in favor of their doctrine when they disagree. A good example is in their catechism, which is the formal doctrine they teach new converts and children. The Ten Commandments in their catechism is different than scripture. It omits the 2nd Commandment because their worship practices violate that commandment. Then they split the 9th commandment in two to bring the total back up to ten. They don't alter Exodus 20:4-6 in their versions of the Bible. They just ignore it. Scripture is not the authority. The doctrine of their hierarchy is.

The most common and successful way wolves in sheep's clothing operate is to quote a verse out of context to support their unbiblical teaching. Some pastors do this unintentionally. These are either poor scholars or are lazy. Some will have a message they want to teach, but it's from themselves, the secular culture, or some other false source. Then they shop around scripture for verses that appear to support what they want to say in their sermon. They literally take verses out of context and sometimes use them to mean the opposite of what they actually say in context. Those who are knowingly teaching their own false gospel will misuse verses deliberately. And some will even go so far as to "explain" what the "Holy Spirit" meant in a verse, twisting it to agree with their false teaching. By twisting, distorting, and adding to scripture they prove the "spirit" they are referring to is their own spirit or some other false spirit. They put false words in the mouths of the apostles and God.

Some false preachers know they are contradicting scripture, while some are just arrogant, ignorant, and/or lazy. Only God knows the real motivation. We can rightly judge actions, not motivation. So the reason why someone teaches false things doesn't matter. That they do means we shouldn't listen to them. An example is in the footnotes of some Bibles where they assign motives to King Saul that scripture actually contradicts, such as that he wasn't a good person at the beginning. These are adding to scripture what isn't there and even contradicting what is there. 1 Samuel shows that Saul was a humble man who worked hard and worshipped God. And after he became king he was still a good man. It was much later when he feared losing the crown that he showed that he desired being king more than following God. And that was what led him to being a bad king in the end. Saul's sins could be atoned for, but he wouldn't repent. He tried to justify them. That never works. King David did worse sins for which there was no atonement. But because he was humble and acknowledged his sin was sin he remained a man after God's own heart. But some of these footnote writers try to force a black and white, always good or always bad view that isn't in scripture.

Another example is when pastors add their own thoughts to scripture with no basis other than their own mind. One such pastor said that the reason Jesus had to be tempted was He "needed to be leveled up". This is a blatant heresy and denial of the divinity of Christ. Maybe she is lazy, a bad scholar, or just thought she was being clever. But it doesn’t matter, it’s still heresy no matter the reason for saying it. And it demonstrates a deadly dangerous lack of fear and reverence for God. God does not need to be leveled up, even when incarnated as a human. That is in direct contradiction of scripture. Neither did Jesus need to be baptized, which is why John objected to it. But scripture is clear that Jesus did all these things to fulfill and do everything we must do as Christians. No one can claim that God doesn't know what it's like for us after He came down and did it himself.

Real Christian preachers, pastors, and teachers study scripture for what it actually says. They do not pick and choose scripture to justify their own views. The theological term for reading into scripture what isn't really there is eisegesis. The term for studying what is really there and learning what scripture actually says is exegesis. Once we know what scripture actually says, then we can come up with application to our lives. But going from application to scripture is backwards and a sure path to heresy.

A good sign that a pastor is practicing exegesis, teaching what scripture actually says, is if they teach a book of the Bible exegetically, which is the theological term for teaching it verse by verse and without skipping any. There is nothing wrong with doing subject based sermons, a.k.a topical sermons. There is a definite need for that, especially when secular/pagan ideas mislead the church, and what the Bible says about the subject needs to be taught to counter the world's lies. But there should be exegetical study of the Bible by the pastor from the pulpit or stage at the church as well. Here at Michael's Abbey there are topical articles dealing with misunderstandings and important topics, and there are exegetical Bible Studies of books of the Bible.

However, a lot of pastors will claim to be doing a "series" on a book of the Bible, but they skip large sections and only use the parts they want to use. Picking and choosing verses, whether in one book or many books of the Bible is not teaching scripture. It's teaching the thoughts of the pastor inside a fake scriptural wrapper. They may be actually teaching good things, but they aren't teaching the Bible. A good pastor will explain what a verse means in context of the other verses in the book, who it was written to, as well as the historical and cultural context to make the meaning clearer. The historical and cultural context is especially useful for verses where the author is using an analogy that we may be less familiar with today, such as farming.

The other problem with only doing topical sermons is it lets the pastor get away with not talking about things they don't want to. This includes difficult verses and topics, things they don't like, and things that expose their anti-biblical doctrines. Does your church teach sin, hell, judgement, repentance, dying to self, taking up your cross, and surrendering to Christ? These are basic fundamental gospel concepts. If your church doesn’t regularly teach these things, or worse, never teaches these things, then either you’re not listening when they do or it is not a good church. Odds are, it’s not really a Christian church. Using Christian sounding language and pulling out a few verses here and here to give a feel good message or a message about how to live life is the gospel of a daytime talk show, not the Christian gospel. The entire Bible points to Christ. The very term Christian means follower of Christ. A church that does not point to Christ nor follows his teaching is not Christian. That is what a wolf in sheep's clothing does.