DON’T BE LED ASTRAY!
“But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves. Many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of the truth will be maligned; and in their greed they will exploit you with false words; their judgment from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep” (2 Pet. 2:1-3 NASV).
On October 28, 2012 a sermon was delivered that has become the most viewed religious talk in the history of Youtube. Oprah testified that this sermon changed how she viewed her life. As of September 23, 2018, it has been viewed 2,979,499 times. The title of the sermon is “The Power of I Am.”
Now, brethren, as people of the Book and students of the Word and disciples of Christ, I would hope that if you and I heard the phrase “I Am,” we would immediately think of either Moses barefoot before a burning bush from which the voice of God proclaimed “I AM WHO I AM,” OR we would think of Jesus in John 8 stating that “Before Abraham was born, I AM.”
But not once during the ‘most viewed’ Christian sermon was God ever referenced as the “I AM,” or was Jesus linked to the “I AM” statement.
Not only is that poor exegesis, but it’s also unconscionable!
For twenty-seven minutes (the length of the sermon), the “I AM” proclamation was applied solely to what you and I say about ourselves: I am healthy, I am prosperous, I am happy, I am smart, I am attractive, I am powerful!
I’m not saying those things can’t be true or that they’re not true, but before you and I can get our ‘I Am’ straight, we have to get the great “I AM” straight!
The gospel is first and foremost about Jesus Christ and before I can become what I was created to be or become what I have the potential to be, I need to accept the truth that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting our trespasses against us (2 Cor. 5:19).
The only reason I can be something other than what I am is because Jesus emptied Himself of His “I AM-ness” for me. If we don’t get that, then we don’t understand the Christian faith. Yes, He did what He did for you and me, but without Him – ‘I Am’ lost!
The danger that you and I must be aware of is how easy it is to be misdirected by subjective sleight-of-hand into believing what we want…what we really, really want! Our identity, in and out of Christ, is based on what He says about us. Out of Christ, ‘I Am’ a sinner; in Christ, ‘I Am’ a saint!
But we know that only though the Holy Spirit inspired Word recorded by the apostles and prophets.
That’s why we need to know and understand that we are in a spiritual battle for the truth. The truth of who we are with or without Jesus. A truth that is too important to leave to preachers and teachers who are not committed to rightly dividing the Word of God.
And that’s why we’re told to “test the spirits to see whether they are from God because many false prophets have gone out into the world” (1 Jn. 4:1). Jesus told His disciples to “beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves” (Matt. 7:15).
The New Testament writer, Jude, warned the brethren about certain persons who would creep in unnoticed and “turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ” (verse 4).
The Apostle Peter said it like this: “But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves” (2 Pet. 2:1 NASV).
What’s note-worthy is that both Jude and Peter referenced the denying of Jesus.
Jude says the false teacher denies Jesus by turning His grace into a license for immoral living: “Let us sin that grace may abound.” That is a complete and total denial of His nature, character and personality!
Peter says the false teacher denies Jesus by rejecting His prophecy/word that a day of judgment is coming: “Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking following after their own lusts, and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation” (2 Pet. 3:3-4 NASV).
The fact that He hadn’t returned in their lifetime emboldened them to suggest that it would never happen. And without the promise of His coming, they figured they could live anyway they wanted.
We are currently experiencing a religious trend toward eradicating any mention of the return of Jesus in judgment in the Christian message. Why? Because it doesn’t get the views on Youtube; it doesn’t sell books; it’s not what people want to hear.
This past April, the movie “Come Sunday” was released on Netflix. It was based on the true-life story of Carlton Pearson, the former preacher for the Higher Dimensions Evangelistic Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma; a church of over 6,000. According to a news release written by Lyle Weir of ABC News, Pearson came to the belief that the Bible was not written “as the literal word of God, but a book by men about God – primitive men prone to mistranslations, political agendas and human emotions.” His conclusion was that “nobody goes to Hell.” He now preaches for the All Souls Unitarian Church.
Recently, Michael Walrond, Jr. who leads the First Corinthian Baptist Church in Harlem, New York told his congregation that it’s “insanity” to believe that men will go to Hell for rejecting Christ, and claimed that it is “not even what Jesus believes.” (Christiannews.net)
Now, let’s test that against the word of God. In John 5, Jesus Himself said that: “...An hour is coming, in which all who are in the tombs will hear His voice, and will come forth; those who did the good deeds to a resurrection of life, those who committed the evil deeds to a resurrection of judgment” (John 5:29). In John 8:24, Jesus said that “unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins.”
The Apostle Paul said in 2 Corinthians 5:10 that all must appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body. In Acts 17 he told the gentiles that God “has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man who He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead” (Ac. 17:31). The Hebrew writer wrote that it is appointed for men to die once and then come the judgment (Heb. 9:27).
Once again, it comes down to who you want to believe? And so when Peter writes “prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Pet. 1:21 NIV), you have to decide whether or not to accept it as God’s word.
Rob Bell, the founder of Mars Hill Bible Church, one of the fastest growing churches in America, was put on the list of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time Magazine in 2011. Here’s the conclusion he arrived at in his best-selling book "Love Wins": “It’s been clearly communicated to many that this belief (in hell as eternal conscious torment) is a central truth of the Christian faith and to reject it is, in essence, to reject Jesus. This is misguided and toxic and ultimately subverts the contagious spread of Jesus’ message of love, peace, forgiveness and joy that our world desperately needs to hear.”
Sounds pretty good – yes? No! I have only one question: what happens to people like Hitler, Osama Bin Laden, and Mao Zedong? If no one goes to Hell and everyone goes to Heaven, what do you do with evil people? To get the wicked into heaven, you have to make up beliefs that fit your subjective desires. N. T. Wright, in his book "Surprised by Hope," addresses the lengths to which false teachers go with their attempts at universalism. They think like this: “…God will be merciful even to the utterly abhorrent, to mass murderers and child rapists…God will continue, after death, to offer all people the chance of repentance until they finally give in to the offer of his love” (181).
Wow! That’s a sweet deal! But it’s not God’s word. Here’s God’s word through the Apostle Peter: “For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of darkness, reserved for judgment; and did not spare the ancient world…when He brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly; and if He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, having made them an example to those who would live ungodly…then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment” (2 Pet. 2:4-9).
CONCLUSION:
Don’t be led astray!
Be like the Berean believers who examined Scripture daily to see if what people told them squared with the word of God (Ac. 17:11).
Test the spirits to see whether they are from God (1 Jn. 4:1).
Be a student of the word who has trained their senses to discern good and evil (Heb. 5:14).
Be a disciple of Jesus Christ!
