by Edward Chamberlain
Philologos Religious Online Books
Philologos.org
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by Edward Chamberlain Philologos Religious Online Books |
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How Shall We Tell The Children?
HIDDEN TRAPS Matthew 24:10 The word translated "offended" above is the word from which we get our English word "scandal". The word is "skandalizo," and it originally meant "to trip up, or to trap". The root of the word means the hidden trip point or trigger that springs the trap. Jesus said in Matt. 18:6-9 that hidden traps were going to come to his church but woe unto the one by whom they came, for it would be better for them if they should die in the depths of the sea than that they should suffer the fires of Hell for eternity because they had deliberately laid a trap into which a believer would fall. Therefore, if our hand, or foot, or eye, or if any other part of our body or mind (that is to say, our material nature) would cause us to trip a believer (including ourselves), we should discard it immediately rather than lay that trap. There is no avoiding the sternness of this warning, if even a single soul is tripped up because of intentionally false doctrine it will be better that we should be annihilated than suffer the fate that awaits us. (See Matthew 18:6-9.) But Jesus also said that all kinds of sin and blasphemy (except blasphemy against the Holy Spirit) would be forgiven men (Matt. 12:31) and since he said all, he included the teaching of bad doctrine. It must be, therefore, that Jesus was speaking of intentionally laying a trap for a believer to fall into and not of unintentionally teaching erroneous doctrine. So if our doctrine and our beliefs have been of the sort that would cause a brother or sister to trip out of spirituality and into materialism, we ought to repudiate them at once and seek forgiveness. There is then, herein, an implied requirement that we should continually evaluate what we believe, and what we are being taught, and what we are teaching against the Holy Scriptures as they are opened to us by the Holy Spirit and reject and repent of all that is in error or that would lead astray. In this 10th verse of Matt. 24, Jesus said, that at that time many would be tripped up. There are many doctrines which cause both Christians and unbelievers to stumble today. All of these scandals share a common origin in rationalization. Rationalization is the product of faith in man and ourselves instead of an Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnipresent God. The Bible says that those who trust in man and in their own strength are cursed (Jer. 17:5). There is not a denomination, no matter how large or small, no matter how conservative or liberal, and there is scarcely a believer, who has not compromised some portion of the Old or New Testaments to rationalization. There is an aspect to rationalization that conditions us toward an acceptance of false prophets. Jesus said that at the time of the end there would be many of these false prophets and he said that they would deceive many people. We are so perilously close to apostasy that we do not even recognize the degree to which we have forsaken the spiritual realities of Christianity and received the doctrines of the false prophets of materialism from the reborn "age of enlightenment." In fact we think nothing of requiring every child to spend their first 17 to 24 years being indoctrinated in the principals professed in the philosophies of these false prophets, and then we wonder what has happened to our world. Matthew 24:11 Jesus said one of the things which we should look for is the rise of false prophets in the world. The phrase "false prophets" translates a single compound Greek word, "pseudoprophates." The prefix "pseudo" means something that is false, the root word "prophates" is also a compound word made up from a prefix, "pro", meaning "before," and a root word,"phates," which comes from "phemi" which means "to show" or "make known." It is important to understand the difference between false doctrine and false prophecy. False doctrine means that the teaching is false, false prophecy means the prophet is false. For example, a significant part of main line Protestantism holds the view that a prophet is more someone who "forth tells" something rather than "foretells" it. This is false doctrine, and it originates with the rationalization of the supernatural powers given by the Holy Spirit to certain believers through whom He has chosen to reveal some future time or event. John 16:13 I realize that most serious scholarship will label this opinion concerning continuous prophecy to be the same kind of doctrine that was part of the late second century Phrygian schism called Montanism, but I have to believe in continued prophecy unless I can find where Jesus has said that Holy Spirit would at some point in time cease such revelation. Prophecy does not have to entail the revelation of new scripture, and in fact, it would be false prophecy if it now claimed to do so; however, prophecy should be expected within the church to reveal the future concerning events whereby the church can be "delivered from the evil." The book of Acts records some of the times where these prophets would come and testify to the various churches, for example they often predicted the capture of the Apostle Paul when he returned to Jerusalem. These prophets were mostly unnamed Christians through whom the Holy Spirit revealed some future event. There are two tests given in scripture concerning false prophets: The first test is given in Deuteronomy 13:1-3 below: "If there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder, And the sign or the wonder come to pass, whereof he spake unto thee, saying, Let us go after other gods, which thou hast not known, and let us serve them; Thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams: for the LORD your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul". This passage gives the primary test of a prophet to be his faithfulness to Almighty God and not the fact that his prophecy comes to pass. By this test, most prophets of the enlightenment are brought into question. It does not matter if a prophet sometimes speaks correctly of the future when his claim is that he is empowered to lead you in a direction contrary to the word of God. But in Deuteronomy 18:22 God gives the second test of a prophet to be that his predictions should really come to pass. The second test for prophets is given below: Deuteronomy 18:22 And so the test of a true prophet is that he must speak in accordance with the word of God, and be faithful to God only, and his prophecy must come to pass. By these two tests, all unfulfilled prophecy of Biblical prophets becomes an article of faith concerning their inspiration, however, the fulfilled portions of their prophecies, and the tendencies of civilization toward the fulfillment of those prophecies, and the prophet's commitment to Almighty God are all indicative of that inspiration. There is a scriptural principle concerning true prophets given in 1 Samuel 3:19 where it says that God let none of Samuel's words fall to the ground. True prophets are supernaturally protected from falsely prophesying by God Himself. That is why Jesus said that all must be fulfilled. And that is why I believe that is what he meant when he said it. Before we open our mouths to prophesy, we had better have heard from God about what to say. Jesus said there were going to be many false prophets in the last days before his return, and that they will deceive many people, turning them away from him. Today it is hard to read the newspaper, or listen to or watch the media news without being taken in by false prophets. The most amazing fact concerning them is not how many of them there are, but how many multitudes of people are being deceived by them. Both the church and the general population are still listening to them everyday even though they consistently fail one or both tests for prophecy. The only criteria which must be established today for credibility is not the prophet's test, but the printer's - will it sell? The public keeps buying regardless of how ungodly and untrue the message. False prophets are deceiving many today in: political science, health science, economics, philosophy, geology, biology, psychiatry, psychology, politics, sociology, history, religion, ecology, and so forth. You may not have previously associated many of these fields with prophecy, but if you will think about it for a moment, you can probably see where these types of prophets are having a greater impact upon your life and your beliefs than any thing you know or hear about Jesus. How much more then is their impact upon those who have denied God? Every one of those fields has its prophets who are proclaiming their own good or bad news and predicting their own picture of the future. Most such prophecies are entirely Godless and most have failed to materialize into reality but they keep on prophesying and the world keeps listening and the church becomes more and more apostate. If you believe what these false prophets are saying is not pertinent to Jesus' prediction of the false prophets of the end time, you must believe that Jesus divided life up into unrelated parcels where our politics and our science and our economics were not supposed to be touched by our faith in him. You must believe that Jesus is not concerned with every moment of our lives, but is only concerned about what is going on inside of our church buildings a couple of hours out of each week.
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