Jesus is “the way, THE TRUTH and the life” (Jn. 14:6) and his disciples know the truth and are set free by the truth (Jn. 8:31-32). Satan is the father of lies (Jn. 8:44), the deceiver (Rev. 12:9; 2 Cor. 11:3) and disguises himself as an angel of light (2 Cor. 11:14). What better way to deceive people than through those that are supposed to teach the truth as Bible teachers. Here are five simple ways to increase the probability of being deceived by a Bible teacher.
- Keep Your Bible Closed
If your reading this then it means you have access to a bible. Whatever you do, don’t make the most of that privilege. Keep your Bible closed. If you do open it, then to some degree you will be without excuse if you get deceived. God has given you a mind, given you His Spirit as your helper and teacher and given you His Word. If you wish to be deceived then it’s probably best to not make use of these. The more familiar you are with Gods Word the more likely you are to apply discernment to what you hear taught.
If you are going to read it then I suggest reading only one or two verses at a time. Don’t go reading through whole books of the Bible, don’t read things in context, and don’t engage in personal Bible study. Keep your Bible closed.
- Keep Your Mouth Shut
Don’t ask questions. Just accept whatever you hear. When someone teaches something that seems different to what you read a week earlier. Come to the conclusion that you must simply be a Bible rookie. Don’t seek truth. Don’t go deep. Don’t explore understanding. Stay quiet. Don’t go following up from the Sunday sermon by reading over the texts and seeing what the Bible teaches across the board. Make sure you don’t surround yourself with other truth seekers either. You just wanna stay humble and teachable and keep your mouth shut.
- Keep Feeling Rather Than Thinking
Whatever makes you feel good about yourself is probably bang on. If you’ve gotta open up your bible to do some theological work it’s probably a little off. After all, no one enjoys doing work. However if your church experience whips you into an emotional frenzy and causes you to believe that you can do and be all you dream and imagine that’s more like it. Switch off you brain; switch on your ego. Remember doctrine is bad. It gets in the way of love. If it feels good it’s gotta be right. So go with your feelings cause let’s be honest you can trust your holy sanctified emotions. God gave them to you so that you could feel empowered to be all you can be. You are awesome and Gods mission in life is to make sure you feel awesome and continue move from awesome to more awesome. Far out you’re awesome!!!!
So try your best not to be skeptical or at the very least don’t try to be discerning. This just makes you a hater and no one likes a hater. Turn off your brain, look at all the results and just get excited about what God is doing. Chase an experience which lasts a moment rather than truth which lasts an eternity. Keep feeling rather than thinking.
- Keep Elevating The Bible Teacher
The guy up the front is definitely way better than you at understanding the Bible. After all he’s been called and anointed by God and you haven’t. He’s popular, he’s cool and sure knows what he’s doing. God gives him special revelation and you know this cause he tells you “God told me…”. No matter what he does with that verse or text you can be sure God definitely gave him that word. So go with it and don’t criticize or question anything he may teach you. Give honour, give praise and even give money if you want because that’ll mean God will bless you. Above all, desire to be like him because he’s living the glorious Christian celebrity life, setting an example of all you could do and be if you just live like him. He’s got this thing called the Christian life all sorted, he knows the Bible and you don’t. You’re a Bible rookie and he’s the Bible guru remember. So keep elevating the Bible teacher.
- Keep A Narrow Learning Stream.
What you want to do is just listen to your favourites and stick to them because they’ve got it sorted. Don’t go out of your stream. That’ll help you stay on the straight and narrow, make sure you’re not opened up to any false teaching and will save you having to do any comparitive work. That’s perfect. Comparison is only a negative way of living anyway. Likewise don’t learn from those from the past. Don’t study church history to get a broader understanding how the church has landed theologically over the decades, centuries and millenia. Don’t read dead guys, church fathers or past thinkers and teachers. The more you filter what you are learning through theological history the more chances there are that you’ll pick up on falsities. You don’t want to have a broad and solid filter, you want to keep a narrow learning stream.
If you follow these five steps you can be assured your chances of being deceived by a Bible teacher will greatly increase. And since Jesus promised that more and more false teachers would arise in the last days (Matt 24 – don’t check this out btw) you can be assured you’re not at any risk of encountering any false teaching in anyway.
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