SIGHT & SOUND OF FALSE TEACHERS (PART IV)


“There’s a Sucker Born Every Minute” 

By Akin Ojumu

It was Martin Luther, the man who lit the match that sparked the fire of the Protestant Reformation of 1517, who once said: 

“For, where God built a Church, there the devil would also build a chapel.”

Guess what? The Devil’s chapel is almost always bigger. It is packed with impostors who teach myths and all manners of ear-scratching, people-pleasing, seeker-friendly ponderous platitudes all dressed up as Christian Gospel. The hollowness of this sort of wishy-washy adulterated gospel is manifested in the namby-pamby Christianity that pervades the Church landscape today.

Just like conspiracy theorists, false teachers exploit people’s need for certainty in uncertain times. They capitalize on the human tendency to believe instead of to disbelieve as an initial reaction. And they take advantage of people’s tendency towards confirmation bias, i.e., peoples tendency to see evidence that support their preconception.

False teachers flourish wherever there’s no scrutiny. Because it’s much easier to make people believe what they want to believe than to make them believe what they don’t want to believe, false teachers, as it were, are adept at serving their prey their favorite meal. They reinforce the preconceived notions of their prey by telling them exactly what they want to hear.

The success of false teachers, the reason they are so convincing and are able to make people fall for their cunning has a lot to do with the confidence and bravado they exude. They often come across as charming, sincere, and harmless. Because of their charisma and remarkable personal magnetism, people are easily drawn to them. To add to that, false teachers are almost always eloquent, and they speak with bluster and are known for their bombast.

Apostle Peter had this windbaggery tendency of false teachers and their bloated sense of self-importance in mind when he wrote his second letter to the persecuted Christians who were scattered across Asia Minor provinces of the Roman Empire.

2 Peter 2:18
“For when they speak great swelling words of vanity, they allure through the lusts of the flesh, through much wantonness, those that were clean escaped from them who live in error.”

Today’s continuation of this commentary series is an examination of the seventh and eighth characteristic traits of false teachers.

7) Great Swelling Words of Vanity

2 Peter 2:18
“For, speaking loud boasts of folly, they entice…”

Ostentatious verbosity is the preserve of false teachers. They deceive simple-minded Believers with high-sounding words that masquerade as scholarship and/or profound spiritual insight. Their loud boast of direct revelation from God is a thought-stopping device they employ to pull the wool over the faces of their gullible followers.

In spite of their crafty cunningness, those who pay careful attention to what false teachers teach, and who don’t allow themselves to be distracted by the verbosity with which they talk, often immediately realize that what the false teachers are saying is in direct contradiction to historic teachings of Scripture. 

It doesn’t take a whole lot of biblical scholarship to come to the conclusion that false teachers are serial twisters of Scripture. Any careful observer can see that these self-professed anointed teachers of the Word of God lack adequate training to be teachers of God’s Word. An astute person can tell that these impostors are devoid of the divine wisdom they claim to possess.

8) Entice by Sensual Passions

2 Peter 2:18
“…They entice by sensual passions of the flesh those who are barely escaping from those who live in error.”

In spite of their bombast and loudmouth, false teachers teach nothing genuinely scholarly, they preach nothing particularly spiritual, and they most definitely say nothing especially divinely. Nevertheless, with their empty talk, false teachers tend to be able to entice others to their philosophies by appealing to the natural concupiscence, i.e., the ardent longing of basal human nature.

Seduction, rather than the winsomeness of truth, is the ploy of false teachers. They offer people a kind of religion that accommodates their fleshly desires and sensuality. What false teachers preach inflames what the flesh wants. Their allure is the promise of having all your dreams come true. Beggars in the land of false teachers are able to ride their horses of wishes.

As it’s always the case, vulnerable people are the targets of the false teachers. Wolves in sheep’s clothing tend to aim their deceptive methods at the people susceptible to their techniques. The endangered species amongst us are the ones who get entrapped in the snares of impostors.

People with broken marriages, people struggling with loneliness, people weary of the consequences of sins and are looking for a new start, the poor and impoverished, the frail and the feeble, the debilitated and the invalid, the desperate and the hopeless, all are easy preys for the exploitation by false teachers.

Next time, we’ll examine the false promises of freedom that false teachers make to their victims.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

BECAUSE JOB DIDN’T TITHE, HIS LIFE BECAME TIGHT

GOD’S GENERALS DEMYSTIFIED (PART II)

FACT CHECK: DID BOLA TINUBU CALL FOR REDUCTION OF NIGERIANS’ PURCHASING POWER?