By Elizabeth Prata
Wolf Week Intro: or, We DO know the heart
Wolf Week # 1: My two “starter false teachers”
Wolf Week # 2: Why Wolves?
Wolf Week # 3: Types of false teachers and their different methods
One way to spot a false teacher is how they respond (or don’t respond) to biblical correction. Denny Burke wrote:
Those who refuse to respond to biblical correction eventually prove themselves to be devoid of the Spirit and taking orders from another master (Jude 1:19). Recalcitrance in the face of correction is dangerous, and it is why the apostles would often apply some of the most bone-chilling descriptors to unrepentant false teachers. ~Denny Burk, How to Deal with False Teachers
The same might be applied to a bystander who enjoys the false teacher and refuses to be corrected away from that false teacher with the scriptures. Worse is their insistence that BECAUSE the teacher ‘helped them,’ the teacher surely can’t be false. But that is the false teacher’s job, to be helpful.
Christian Lady 1: So-and-So is a false teacher.
Christian Lady 2: No way! But she’s helped me in my walk! And she says true things sometimes!
Christian Lady 1: The demon possessed slave girl was ‘helping’ Paul, so why was Paul ‘greatly annoyed’? Because her statement was only partly true, AND it was spiritually ambiguous. Paul exorcised her.
Ladies, we don’t need to allow a false teacher to help along our God. He doesn’t need just any truth. Truth that’s proclaimed must be clearly explained and specifically credited to HIM. Here is what the slave girl was saying-
“These men are bond-servants of the Most High God, who are proclaiming to you a way of salvation.” (Acts 16:17)
The slave girl said, ‘Most High God’. This matters because though Jews would have recognized the phrase, pagans were used to many people saying there was a ‘most high god’, notably, Zeus. And, “a” way of salvation? It is THE way of salvation. See the subtlety with the slave girl’s statement being off the center of truth?
The way of evil is darkness and crooked paths (cf Proverbs 2:13-15).
The final arbiter of whether a teacher is true or false isn’t how much or little he or she has ‘helped’ you. In fact, many times the truth won’t feel like it’s helping at first. Truth hurts, it convicts, it pricks the conscience… and the opposite of that is the problem of false teachers knowing how to tickle ears. Tickling is pleasant. So is he or she REALLY helping you if you always feel tickled and helped, and never feel provoked by the lessons?
Don’t go by your internal feelings, which lie. Go by the sterling truth of God’s word. Compare what the teacher is saying to the Bible. Then do it again, because they are subtle, sneaky, and destructive, and we are less than intelligent sheep after all.
False teachers are dangerous, and part of what makes them so dangerous is that they will affirm so much that is good and true. They will not deny all of the doctrines upon which the Christian faith stands or falls, but only select parts of it. They draw in the unsuspecting with all they affirm and only later destroy them with all they deny. ~Tim Challies, Lessons I’ve learned from False Teachers
Would you buy a pair of new pants that only partly fit? Would you eat a brownie that was only partly filled with cockroaches? Would you drive tires that were only partly covered in rubber? Of course not. We expect the full, working edition of whatever we consume. Since that is true for mundane things, it is even MORE important to ensure that God’s truth we knowingly consume is fully truth, sterling, sparkling, and whole.
You don’t need to listen to someone who speaks some truth, sometimes, from a mouth of lies that oppose Christ. The truth is how we are sanctified- John 17:17. That false teacher is not helping you if you’re absorbing only partial truth, then you get only partial sanctification. What you get from the false teacher’s mouth of lies is polluted truth, and that doesn’t help anyone.
Further Reading
Tim Challies: False Teachers and Deadly Doctrines
Truth2Freedom's Blog 