Deceivers

2 John 1:7 many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist. 8Watch out that you do not lose what you have worked for, but that you may be rewarded fully. 9Anyone who runs ahead and does not continue in the teaching of Christ does not have God; whoever continues in the teaching has both the Father and the Son. 10If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not take him into your house or welcome him. 11Anyone who welcomes him shares in his wicked work.

In John’s day there were a ton of people pretending to know what they were talking about. They were teaching things that sounded good and right but were very wrong. They presented a teaching that was comfortable and biblically based. Though they sounded god like, they were way off. False teachers and prophets are not something of the past, they are here even today.

I remember this guy came floating into our church one day. He had a long white beard, short gray hair and looked wise, Moses like. The man came in and proclaimed to be a prophet from God. From his looks and speech he was hard to doubt. So, we listed to him for a while. He taught well and seemed to have a genuine heart for God. We allowed him some freedoms within the church but always kept an eye on the man. He seemed to have good things to say and always had a word from God. It wasn’t too long into his stay that he met a 17 year old girl that he developed a friendship with. Everyone thought it was a grandfatherly type of love considering the man was in his late 60’s. However, we were wrong. We knew things went sour when the girl’s parents couldn’t get the girl to come home. The man had fed her so many lies and she bought into them. He had her convinced she was to marry him and that it was gods plan for her life. We knew the man probably wasn’t a prophet when he held the girl hostage in his house while the police tried to take the girl back. Long story short the man ended up marrying this girl when she turned 18 and they have kids together. KIDS!

There are so many false prophets running around. We must be careful what we buy into. Things like the Kabbalah, Christian Science, and Dr. Phil (Oh yeah, Dr. Phil could be the antichrist, who knows) are only the tip of the ice burg. There will be many more things put out there by the devil to lure people away. We must be wise. We must tread with caution. We should not entertain anyone who does not have solid Biblical teachings.

The Message Bible says this, “8-9 And be very careful around them so you don't lose out on what we've worked so diligently in together; I want you to get every reward you have coming to you. Anyone who gets so progressive in his thinking that he walks out on the teaching of Christ, walks out on God. But whoever stays with the teaching, stays faithful to both the Father and the Son.”