The Theological Impact of the Church’s Faulty Teaching on Believers and Unbelievers

The Theological Impact of the Church’s Faulty Teaching on Believers and Unbelievers

Why do Atheists have more love and passion for studying Christian theology then most Christians do?

By: andrew travis pantazi

(All Bible Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible unless otherwise noted)

Isaiah 30:10 says, "Who say to the seers, “You must not see visions”; And to the prophets, “You must not prophesy to us what is right, Speak to us pleasant words, Prophesy illusions." (Isaiah 30:10) This was in a time where prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah were preaching of the wrath of God coming to Israel, (Jer. 4:19) however they were the only prophets prophesying this because all of the other prophets were preaching that peace was going to come to Israel.(Jer. 6:14, 8:11) Throughout all of the Old Testament prophets’ lives, they were confronted by false teachers. The false teachers would preach what Israel wanted to hear, that they would prosper and their enemies would be crushed. However, never were the false prophets correct and the true prophets proven erroneous. In 2 Peter 2, after talking of the holy men in the Old Testament, Peter now talks about the false teaching in the Old Testament. "But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves. Many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of the truth will be maligned; and in their greed they will exploit you with false words; their judgment from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep. For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of darkness, reserved for judgment; and did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven others, when He brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly; and if He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, having made them an example to those who would live ungodly lives thereafter; and if He rescued righteous Lot, oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men (for by what he saw and heard that righteous man, while living among them, felt his righteous soul tormented day after day by their lawless deeds), then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment," (2 Peter 2:1-9) This passage’s purpose was to show the punishment of false teachers and false prophets, while also showing how sinners can be saved. That punishment would be eternal gnashing of teeth and burning in Hades until the day of judgment comes. God did not and does not take faulty doctrine lightly. The Bible clearly states that all teachers will be held at a higher standard (1 Timothy 3). All of 1 Corinthians 2 shows the essence of proper teaching. Paul is telling the church at Corinth that all he preached was Christ and Him crucified, " And when I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God. For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling, and my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God. Yet we do speak wisdom among those who are mature; a wisdom, however, not of this age nor of the rulers of this age, who are passing away; but we speak God’s wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God predestined before the ages to our glory;" (1 Corinthians 2:1-7) So, in order for us to discern true teaching from faulty doctrine, we need to be able to look and see if these leaders are presenting Christ and Him crucified. We also need to remember analogia Scriptura, the Latin phrase used by the Reformers. The literal meaning of the phrase is “the resemblance or agreement of things in Scripture” or as John MacArthur, Jr. explains it extremely clearly, “ It means that the Bible doesn’t contradict itself. If we arrive at an interpretation of a passage that contradicts a truth taught elsewhere in the Scriptures, our interpretation cannot be correct. Scripture must be compared with Scripture to discover its full meaning.”^[1] So if you hear Robert Schuller and Billy Graham stating that salvation is possible outside of faith that Jesus lived a perfect life, died, and was resurrected so that we can believe in Him, make Him the Lord over all aspects of our life, and repent our sins, then you can know they are false. Because this is obviously contrary to John 14:6 and since all Scripture is in agreement that means Graham and Schuller must have a distorted view of mercy, Romans 9 even states that God has mercy on some but not others. Not all were pre-destined. (For more information on Billy Graham claiming truths outside of the Gospel see the transcript of Robert Schuller’s interview with Billy Graham on May 31, 1997).

However, when unbelievers see our current teaching, even they can see that the faulty doctrine does not match up to the standard which was set for true teaching. Matthew Henry stated that, “Christ, in his person and offices, is the sum and substance of the gospel, and ought to be the great subject of a gospel minister’s preaching.”^[2] Is Christ the sum and substance of the gospel that preachers like Benny Hinn are teaching? To answer my own question, no. These preachers are prosperity gospel ministers, their sum and substance is that Jesus came to shepherd us to health and wealth not as a way for us to be saved from our sin for the purpose to worship God forever whether we are rich or not. The teachers of this gospel are merely motivational speakers who are great speakers. A true teacher does not need to be a great speaker, he merely needs to be a holy man of God who is preaching Christ and Him crucified. He must be reflecting God and following His word remembering that it is not him who is great but God using him, Paul would have been nothing without the Holy Spirit. He must also be called by the Holy Spirit, without this calling he is doing it only of his own accord and not the Lord’s. Matthew Henry talked about the Church of England in this respect when he stated, “This is the question proposed to those who offer themselves to the ministry of the church of England: "Do you think you are moved by the Holy Ghost to take upon you this office?’’^[3] William Tyndale talked more on the qualifications of leadership, “The problem was not with desiring to be a leader. It was with being qualified to be a leader. Leadership is not something a person gets just because he wants it.”^[4]

So we have identified that there is false teaching and false prophesying which is basically any teaching that is contrary to Christ and Him crucified. But then there are false leaders which are merely any leaders who do not meet all of the qualifications of leadership. It is no wonder that Christians are called hypocrites when most of our leaders don’t meet the requirements and because of this we can be sure that on the day of judgment they will be dealt with harshly. With all that has been going on with preachers like Ted Haggard, Jesus, Himself, talked about these wolves pretending to be sheep. “Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they?” (Matthew 7:15-16) So how do we determine a true preacher from a false one? The preacher who is true will be living a life of God and bearing fruits of God. Any preacher who is living a life that is consistently dwelling in sin without repenting will not be living the life that God has demanded he live. Matthew Henry explains this well in his commentary on 1 Timothy 3, “He must be of good reputation among his neighbours, and under no reproach from former conversation; for the devil will make use of that to ensnare others, and work in them an aversion to the doctrine of Christ preached by those who have not had a good report.” ^[5] If a preacher is not living the life that is necessary than the devil can use that to put doubt in both believers and unbelievers. "For we are a fragrance of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing; to the one an aroma from death to death, to the other an aroma from life to life. And who is adequate for these things? For we are not like many, peddling the word of God, but as from sincerity, but as from God, we speak in Christ in the sight of God." (2 Corinthians 2:15-17) Every Christian and especially every teacher or prophet needs to ask themselves, “What kind of aroma am I? Am I an aroma from death to death or life to life?” We need to remember that “we are not like many, peddling the word of God, but as from sincerity, but as from God, we speak in Christ in the sight of God.” "But what I am doing I will continue to do, so that I may cut off opportunity from those who desire an opportunity to be regarded just as we are in the matter about which they are boasting. For such men are false apostles, deceitful workers, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. No wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. Therefore it is not surprising if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness, whose end will be according to their deeds." (2 Corinthians 11:12-15) Satan comes as an “angel of light” and his servants disguise themselves as “servants of righteousness”. We should not be fooled by these peddlers who take three offerings before every sermon, who claim that it is God’s will that they are blessed with a new jet but that it will require everyone to give them an abundance of money. They have turned God’s house into a den of thieves. (Matthew 21:12-13) For them this is just a business, a means to an ends, and the end is wealth. "“From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from My statutes and have not kept them. Return to Me, and I will return to you,” says the Lord of hosts. “But you say, ‘How shall we return?’ “Will a man rob God? Yet you are robbing Me! But you say, ‘How have we robbed You?’ In tithes and offerings." (Malachi 3:7-8) In this case the Lord punished them for not paying tithes and offering because they neglected to maintain temple-worship. Nowadays, the problem isn’t that we aren’t paying tithes and offering but it is the priests who collect the tithes and offerings are using the money for their own personal gain they use it to buy whatever luxury that they want. "“Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in My house, and test Me now in this,” says the Lord of hosts, “if I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you a blessing until it overflows." (Malachi 3:10) This tells us what we are supposed to do with the tithes and offering, we are to put it in the storehouse for the Lord. Not for our own personal gain so that we can live in a sickening manner. However, just because a teacher is living a life that is pleasing only to Satan and himself doesn’t mean that we can say that is the reason we don’t obey the Word. " Then Jesus spoke to the crowds and to His disciples, saying: “The scribes and the Pharisees have seated themselves in the chair of Moses; therefore all that they tell you, do and observe, but do not do according to their deeds; for they say things and do not do them." (Matthew 23:1-3) We should not live the lives of these preachers who live contrary to the Gospel, but if these preachers are still preaching a Christ-centric Gospel. If they are still preaching Christ and Him crucified then we should still obey the Word, just don’t live their life. However, this does not mean that just because someone is an ordained minister, bishop, preacher, priest, pastor, chaplain, or any other type of teacher of the Word does not mean that they actually are a qualified prophet or teacher. The bottom line of true shepherds is that they must be using the Bible as their basis of teaching for us to heed their teaching.

We can obviously see how this impacts the church, it causes confusion, disarray, disobedience, and meandering away from God’s divine purpose for everything, which is to worship Him. However, this doesn’t just impact the Body of believers. This impacts unbelievers and probably hurts them even more. Unbelievers study the Word because they are generally seeking answers and are trying to prove to themselves that Christianity is false, when they see that most our doctrine is contradictory because we are not focusing on the Bible. Even unscholarly (scholarly does not mean intellectual but rather anyone who is continually studying with the purpose of understanding the world better) unbelievers think that believers are false simply because of all of the strife within faulty believers. As Francis Schaeffer said, the final apologetic of Christians is the love and unity in the church.[6] When atheists see lukewarm and fake Christians who do not have any love and unity because they do not have Jesus they believe that the Gospel must be false if we are not living the life that the Bible says we should. This can be a stumbling block for any atheist who knows what the Gospel says. The Great News Network filmed a famous interview with an atheist. In this interview, the atheist knew more theology than most Christians do. He used scriptural references throughout the interview and he explained that Christians know that unbelievers are going to Hades and Hell yet the majority of them do not do anything about it. They see people all around them dying and by their beliefs they think they will suffer a horrible punishment in Hades and Hell, yet they sit idly on their couches. For him, this lifestyle that was contrary to the Great Commission and all of the Gospel was a hindrance for him to come to Christ. This shows us that our teachings, our teachers, and our lifestyles have an immense theological impact on both believers and unbelievers.

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[1] MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (2006) How to Enjoy Bible Study. Grace to You.

^[2]Henry, M. (1996, c1991). Matthew Henry's commentary on the whole Bible : Complete and unabridged in one volume (1 Co 2:1). Peabody: Hendrickson.

^[3]Henry, M. (1996, c1991). Matthew Henry's commentary on the whole Bible : Complete and unabridged in one volume (1 Ti 3:1). Peabody: Hendrickson.

^[4]Hughes, R. B., Laney, J. C., & Hughes, R. B. (2001). Tyndale concise Bible commentary. Rev. ed. of: New Bible companion. 1990.; Includes index. The Tyndale reference library (638). Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House Publishers.

^[5]Henry, M. (1996, c1991). Matthew Henry's commentary on the whole Bible : Complete and unabridged in one volume (1 Ti 3:1). Peabody: Hendrickson.

[6] Schaeffer, F. A., The Mark of the Christian, 1976.

[7] New American Standard Bible : 1995 update. 1995. LaHabra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.