Who is wise and understanding among
you? Let him show it by his good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom.        James 3:13
 
Fellow Believers,

Although some politicians have of late openly maligned Christians with a broad stroke, calling them "right-wing religious extremists", we believers in this country have not really suffered much persecution. Oh yes, people of the world sometimes take advantage of us or step over us, but when we consider the many followers of Christ that were tortured and martyred in other lands and ages, this kind of harassment is really nothing.

Actually, God often uses the unsaved world to test and strengthen the church. Speaking of the pagan nations that the Israelites had failed to drive out of Canaan during Joshua's day, God said in Judges 2:22, "I will use them to test Israel and see whether they will keep the way of the Lord." And the great persecution against the Jerusalem church, according to Acts 8, was that which scattered believers throughout Judea and Samaria, where they then began to preach the word.

Instead of external attacks, what the Lord really wants us to watch out for are "false teachers among you (who) will secretly introduce destructive heresies" (II Peter 2:1). So potentially dangerous is this false-prophet problem that God sees fit to address it in no less than 19 of the New Testament books. Evidently, the "yeast of the Pharisees" is too subtle for most unsuspecting churchgoers to detect.

Unfortunately, not many pastors nowadays like to preach on this topic, lest they are accused of being unloving, intolerant or too judgmental. In a sense, this is perhaps characteristic of the end-time period in which we now live, when people "gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear" (II Tim. 4:3). So, it behooves us individual disciples to heed the Lord's warning all the more.

How can we tell who the false prophets are, especially when they come to us masquerading as ministers of righteousness? "By their fruit you will recognize them," Jesus says. In other words, false preachers may talk and praise God much like the real ones, but they do not and cannot show the fruit of the Spirit in their everyday lives.

For example, the hallmark of every true servant of God is humility. Moses, in fact, is described by God as being more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth. So, whenever a preacher comes and claims that his having a certain spiritual gift renders him superior to Christians without it, beware. For God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.
 
 

Tom Holt, Editor

 
Third Quarter, 1995

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