Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. (1 John 4:1)

The Missing Power

Truthfully–if I might be allowed that term–the only way we will have any effect on any of those around us in pagan postmodern America, and in helping our young people see through the smokescreen of relativism, is to ask the Lord to help us to develop a deeper prayer life. Frankly nothing else we do will be of much use without seeking God in prayer because we cannot convert anyone no matter how brilliant we think we are, and no matter how much we personally believe with all our heart that our cherished opinions are true. This lack of Biblical understanding is exactly what is missing in the pragmatism of the whole seeker sensitive Church Growth movement, and particularly in the warped philosophy underlying the Emerging Church. And the Purpose Driven Church and the Emergent Church have been allowed by Christ into His Church as judgments for our being content to attempt do a spiritual job by our own natural means.

Anyone who reads the Gospels and the Book of Acts should come away with the incontrovertible fact that it is God the Holy Spirit Who is the One Who convicts of sin, and being the Source of power for the supernatural life of the Christian, it is also God the Holy Spirit Who is actually the One to convert someone to Christ. Our text undoubtedly tells us do not believe every spirit, which is why as a Christian I must then test the spirits, whether I want to do this or not. Which brings us to the other thing we had best be doing as this apostasy grows, and that is to really learn how to handle the Sword of the Spirit–which is the Word of God. Just like our Master Christ Jesus did, we need to let those around us know what God has said. Men and women, just as we hear our Lord say in Matthew 4:4, now it is our time to tell others – “It is written.” And more importantly the time has arrived where we ourselves must do what is written.

You have probably seen me refer to the current “apostasy” we are in, so let me quickly say that this idea of the Evangelical church being in the midst of a wide-spread apostasy was first brought to my attention by the late Dr. Walter Martin back in the late 1970’s. Dr. Martin was hardly considered a radical, in fact the extremely benign Billy Graham even called him “the most articulate spokesman for Evangelical Christianity I know.” Here is our text once again – Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This verse appears pretty straight forward; do not believe everyone who claims to speak from God, be wary, and test them out–check out their teachings, because there are many false “prophets,” those who will proclaim what God has supposedly said–both past and future–are out in the world.

Don’t Believe Everything You Hear

First, we have to ask ourselves: “Is this only a historic fact, or could this also continue to happen today?” We do know from history that the Apostle John was speaking about first century Gnostic teachers, and what is not generally taken into consideration here is that these men claimed to be Christians with the “true” interpretation of the teachings of Christ, exactly as Brian McLaren and the Emergent Church is doing now. I don’t have space to get into specifics here, I just want to bring to the reader’s attention the fact that there were also various “factions” considering themselves Christians even during the time of the early Church. Taking this verse at face value, we can clearly see that the Bible is saying–or more correctly God Himself is saying: “Everyone who claims to teach something about Me has not necessarily been sent from Me, ‘many’ of these ‘prophets’ are false.”

Notice here many false prophets were loose back then. Now let’s think about something John would have heard Christ Jesus Himself teach – “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves” (Matthew 7:15). After all, John had walked with the Master for three years, he left everything to follow Him, and it is clear that he was in an “inner circle” that is often highlighted in the Gospels. Notice how many times when some important event was to happen in Christ’s earthly life where our Lord involves “Peter, James and John.” For instance, the night Jesus was to be arrested we read from the historical account from Matthew, in chapter 26 and verse 37 – He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with Him. Peter’s assistant Mark, tells us that Peter remembers that when they went to a place called Gethsemane, in addition to himself, Jesus also took James and John along with Him.

There really is no doubt from the Gospel accounts of the life of Jesus of Nazareth that these three men were closer to Him than the others–not loved any more–just closer in relationship. There is another lesson in that, but we might explore that another time. The point relevant to our study of 1 John 4:1 is that the Apostle who wrote this letter–under the direct inspiration of God the Holy Spirit–would be in a very good position to recall our Lord talking about those false prophets [who] come to you in sheep’s clothing. This would seem a good place for me to let you know in no uncertain terms that I personally do not happen to like this particular idea of counterfeit teachers. But no one who reads the New Testament can possibly come away without seeing numerous warnings within concerning false teachers. And this is to let alone the Old Testament, which itself is also full of false prophets.

False Teachers Insure Division

The fact of the matter is that God did decide to allow many false prophets to go out into the world, but at least He told us they would many times come as wolves in sheep’s clothing. And by that He means they are going to appear as true believers. Now I can tell you that I would rather not have to be trying to alert people as to just who these false prophets claiming to be Christians might be. Believe it or not, I really do not like doing this type of work. Well I don’t; I was quite pleased to be involved in apologetics to people who were professed unbelievers, and with doing counter-cult evangelism in an attempt to free those trapped in Satan’s kingdom of the cults. However in His infinite wisdom, God did not choose to consult me about whether or not I liked the idea that He chose to allow many spirits to be sent into the world that would claim to be Christian and then try to devour the flock of Christ as wolves sent by the Devil.

The hugely mistaken–and eternally damning idea–that is growing in this whimsical generation is: “Everything is going to just work out fine if we’d all just put aside our differences and be willing to learn from each other’s religions.” This is what is behind the idea in the Emergent Church, which they refer to as being “missional,” and what they also are talking about when they talk about being “followers of Jesus in the Kingdom of God.” The right idea, but it is quite backward in approach. One cannot get into the kingdom of God (synonymous with Kingdom of Heaven) until he is “born again” and regenerated by God the Holy Spirit. The other falsehood put forth by this highly schismatic group is that orthodox Christianity hasn’t been concerned with the social aspect of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Though these initially Christian schools would be killed spiritually by the very liberal theology these parasites of the Emerging Church movement wish to drag back into our Lord’s Church, the fact remains that virtually every Ivy League University that is now dead was established by orthodox “Bible-believing” Christians who held the very same doctrine that I–and many others like me–have been, and are teaching. It is so unfortunate, but if these Emergents would only willing to listen, they would see that this whole “pie in the sky” musing that people will all live together in harmony is actually destroyed right here in this text alone. Think about it a moment, if it had been God’s intention for life here on His earth to be one where all people would come to a complete understanding of Who He is, then why would He have even allowed that – Many false prophets are gone out into the world.

The Way Back

You see, the Cult of Liberal Theology–so labeled by Dr. Martin– has already tried the foolishness of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man; but the only way they could try to make that pabulum fly is to cast doubt on the Scriptures, because the Bible is replete with references such as that in our text, and the one I have cited from Christ Himself, as cited by an eyewitness account of what the Master said. Now the reason that what I preach and teach falls right in line with men like Calvin and Edwards and Spurgeon is because this correct concept of the true Christian faith is derived from what the Bible actually says; and since the Holy Scripture was written by God Himself, then men who base their doctrine on the Word of God will always agree with each other in the essential doctrines.

And the serious problem, which then becomes immediately evident with all false teaching, is that for it to be successful, it will simply have to first attempt to circumvent the Bible. Oddly enough, since I am teaching what the Bible says, my detractors who have intimated that I am “cult-like” in my teachings would then also have to include in that assessment men that I very much have modeled myself after men such as Dr. Walter Martin, John MacArthur, D.L. Moody, A.W. Tozer, etc., I think I could enjoy being placed in their neighborhood. What makes me a bit different from many writing on these subjects is that I am also conscious in my work of something Martin and Tozer often stressed, “A large part of the pastor’s job is to for-tell what God is saying now, as well as to forth-tell what God has said in the past.”

This is one of the main reasons that the Evangelical church in this nation is so riddled with false teaching right now, a real failure on the part of more pastors to speak in their prophetic role and to tell people what the Lord is saying now. The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia correctly defines “prophet” as “a speaker of or for God,” and it is in this sense that Tozer, Martin and myself have used the term. After all, we say we pray for God to “to give Your Words to our pastor, to speak through our pastor, to use our pastor as Your vessel,” the question you will face in this generation is; do you really believe this or not. For this is the test our Lord is giving this generation, and it is not going to be easy for our independent American culture, but here is the only way we will see Christ send power into His Church once again:

Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that confess his name. And do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased. Obey your leaders and submit to their authority. They keep watch over you as men who must give an account. Obey them so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no advantage to you. Pray for us. We are sure that we have a clear conscience and desire to live honorably in every way. (Hebrews 13:15-18)

…he who has an ear to hear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the Church…and obey Him…to obey is better than sacrifice…