BETTER A MILLSTONE

By Akin Ojumu

Alarmingly, the vast majority of contemporary Christians minimize the existential threat false teachers pose to the Church of God. With a shrug of the shoulders, Believers of our day trivialize the grave peril the rapidly burgeoning false teachings represent to the Body of Christ.

In this commentary, I will yet again attempt to blow the trumpet and sound the alarm on the clear and present danger of false teachers and their false teachings. My prayer is that God’s people, when they read this, will be jolted out of the hypnotic spell they are under. It’s my sincere hope they’ll snap out of the bewitching slumber they’ve been put.

Folks, you must understand that false teachers are like disease carrying and transmitting vectors. They are rampaging pestilence laying waste the faith of many who name the name of Christ. The fact that some who worship in the houses of horror where false teachers preside are still hanging on to the faith is actually in spite of, and not because of, the poisonous teachings with which they are fed; they are still spiritually alive only by the grace and mercy of God.

As purveyors of doctrines of demons, false teachers are a menace to the Gospel message. Having yielded their souls to lying spirits, the tongues of wolves of sheep’s clothing are laced with the poison of dissimulation. Just like Satan, the father of lies, the words of these ravaging savages are sweetened with the toxin of prevarication. 

When erroneous teachings infect the Body of Christ, the effect is not immediately obvious. The virus of error burrows deep within the mind and soul where it lays dormant. From its sanctuary sites, it gradually embarks on its destructive work of polluting the minds of the infested.

Eventually, those who tarry long consuming false teachings end up as spiritual zombies. Like irrational animals and creatures of instinct, they suffer harm which is the wages of their wickedness.

“And in them the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled, which says: ‘Hearing you will hear and shall not understand, and seeing you will see and not perceive…” (Matthew 13:14).

In the end, the bubonic plague of false teachings results in the black death of the soul. The faith of those who subscribe to false teachings gradually withers and dies. This is the unavoidable fate of those who accumulate to themselves false teachers who will tell them whatever their itching ears want to hear.

If you want to know how deadly serious God takes the abomination of desolation of false teaching, just take a look at the number of times we are warned about them in the Bible. The danger of false teachers is reflected in the extent to which the subject is emphasized in the New Testament.

The Old Testament is replete with condemnation and renunciation of false prophets. Likewise, of the twenty-seven books in the New Testament, false teachers and false teachings featured prominently in twenty-six. The only New Testament book that doesn’t explicitly address the scourge of false teachings is the letter of Paul to Philemon.

To show how serious the plague of false teaching really is, some have even described it as God’s judgement on an obstinate Church. Brother Paul Washer said as much in one of his messages 15 years ago:

“False teachers are God’s judgment on people who don’t want God but, in the name of religion, plan on getting everything their carnal heart desires. That’s why a Joel Osteen was raised up. Those people who sit under him are not victims of him. He is the judgment of God upon them because they want exactly what he wants and it’s not God. They accumulate him to themselves along with all those other (false) teachers because they teach exactly what they want…”

I couldn’t agree more.

Followers of false teachers are not innocent victims. Consumers of false teachings are getting a fill of their carnal desires from the wellspring of mendacity they themselves dug up. The exponential proliferation of false teachers we experience today is directly correlated to the increased demand for false teachings. 

“For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.” (2 Timothy 4:3-4).

“The heart wants what the heart wants” is a saying that epitomizes the gravitational pull of sensuous souls towards false teachers. Itchy ears are bound to drift in the direction of anyone willing to tell them exactly the things they want to hear. Drawn by their carnal cravings away from godly longings, they get entangled in all kinds of degrading concupiscence.

“But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed. And in their greed they will exploit you with false words. Their condemnation from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep.” (2 Peter 2:1-3).

God’s judgement is upon the false teachers. And they, in turn, are God’s judgement on those who seek after them.