False Prophets and False Teachers

“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits.” (Matthew 7:15,16).

This is the commandment of Jesus. Ignore it at your peril.

Many ministers of the gospel start off well, with a genuine call of God. But somewhere along the line, Satan comes in with an offer, just as he did to Jesus.

The offer usually involves compromising somewhere for the sake of money, influence, power or recognition. Once the ministers falls for this, things may seem to go on alright for a while. However, the deadly virus of sin has corrupted the ministry.

The trend will be for more and more compromises with the truth to be made for the same reasons the first ones were. Ultimately, such preachers end up “deceiving and being deceived”. They teach false doctrines and utter lies in the name of the Lord.

One mark of false prophets and teachers is the tendency they have to prostitute their gifts at the altar of money. They will say and do whatever it takes to get you to give them money. You have to be very careful with people who will tell you that the Spirit of God is telling YOU to write them a generous cheque, or sow a generous seed. How do they know what the Spirit of God is telling YOU to do? It can’t be that all the people they reach through media are really being instructed by God to give to these preachers. No, all it takes is a certain percentage of unthinking gullible people who cannot distinguish between emotion and the voice of the Holy Spirit to ensure that these kind of Christian scam operations continue to prosper.

Don’t be taken in! By giving to false ministries, you become a partaker of their evil deeds! That means you share in the guilt of what they are doing. When you give to a false minister, you are spending God’s money on poisoning the church and the world, and the true ministers and missions you were supposed to support will do without.

It is with some reluctance that I am going to address some of what is happening in the church today. I don’t suppose it will win me many friends, but the most important thing is to be a friend of God. We are exhorted to “contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints”. (Jude 3). This is a command of God, and as a follower of Jesus who has been called to teach, I believe I can no longer avoid it.