I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds anything to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book. And if anyone takes words away from this book of prophecy, God will take away from him his share in the tree of
life. Revelation 22:18,19Fellow Believers,
When the disciples asked Jesus about the sign of His coming, He said, "Watch out that no one deceives you" (Matt. 24:4) and then warned them of the appearance of false Christs and false prophets (vv. 11,24). As we are now living in the end-time period, it behooves us to pay strong attention to that admonition.
How can we know who the false prophets are, especially when many come in sheep's clothing? By relying on the Word of God.
Revelation 22:18, of course, is one important criterion. It decisively identifies as false any preacher or church who derives its authority from the Bible plus something else. That something else can be books added to the Holy Canon, the writings of some church fathers, or information supposedly received from God through dreams, visions or tongues.
But Revelation 22:19 is equally important.
A great number of preachers and churches, for example, do not accept the Biblical account of creation. For all practical purposes, they have removed the early chapters of Genesis from the Bible.
Then, there are those who have conveniently taken away from the Bible commands of God that they don't like, rationalizing that those commands were meant for the culture prevailing at the time when the scripture in question was written.
Perhaps the commands that have been removed by the largest number of churches today are: "As in all the congregations of the saints, women should remain silent in the churches" (I Cor. 14:33b,34); and "I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent" (I Tim. 2:12).
The truth is, God established the line of authority between man and woman way back in the Garden of Eden (Gen. 3:16), and that line is to be kept throughout all ages.
Thankfully, the Lord assures true believers attending such churches that they will not be held accountable as long as they themselves do not agree with such teaching or practices (Rev. 2:24). So, while it's increasingly difficult to find a church that is reasonably faithful to the Word of God, we need not forsake the assembling of the saints if we ourselves hold steadfastly on to the truth until the end.
Third Quarter, 1993