One of my favorite pastors in America is no surprise....its James MacDonald, Harvest Bible Chapel. Today he wrote a blog entry on his "Straight Up Blog" that was above excellent!!! John MacArthur has been turning the light on for years. Now James!! Praise God for these brave and bold men of God!
The Public Rebuke of False Teachers
By James MacDonald on April 2, 2009
What an incredibly difficult thing it is to think and act like a Christian when we are so incredibly immersed in our culture. The job of thinking biblically, while the deafening noise of societal norms rings in our ears and our own personality biases our convictions, can seem impossible.
I receive some interesting comments on this blog, not all of which get posted. Especially pointed were several recent comments related to my post about Brian McLaren. I didn’t specify McLaren’s denials of the orthodox teaching on Hell (see note 1 below), or penal substitution (see note 2), or Scripture (see note 3) because the main audience for this blog is immensely familiar with McLaren’s writing. Another reason I did not detail his errors is because that has been done extensively in such helpful books as D. A. Carson’s Becoming Conversant with Emergent, and Why We’re Not Emergent by DeYoung and Kluck. (Tim Challies and Doug Wilson also have helpful reviews of McLaren’s Generous Orthodoxy.)
I do not view Brian as an ‘erring weaker brother,’ worthy of sympathy or olive branches, but rather as a dangerous false teacher who repackages mainline liberal theology. (Have the past 50 years not been adequate to see how liberal theology empties churches and damns souls?)
More dangerous still is that McLaren packages his false teaching and denials of Scripture as solutions to some of the excesses currently plaguing evangelicalism—the danger being his winning over of young people who have legitimate complaints about the current church, but who lack the discernment to see that his solutions are often unbiblical even when his critiques are fair.
Bottom line: my article was making the point that all denials of orthodox Christianity end up in a theological dumpster, not bearing fruit or winning souls to Christ. “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my word will not pass away” (Matthew 24:35).
What was amazing about some of the comments I received was that they were not put off by the critique, but by the naming of the specific person who promulgates these deceptions. Several comments stated in the strongest of terms that it is unbiblical and unwise, even unloving, to name the names of false teachers and opponents of the biblical gospel. Is that true? Is it wrong to publicly call out those who attack the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ? Even when their denials are much more public? Let’s see what Jesus, Paul, Peter, and John have to say about how to deal with false teachers. Do they confront it? Do they, in many instances, actually name the people involved?
Jesus:
Matthew 7:15 “Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves.”
Matthew 23:31, 35 “So you testify against yourselves, that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. . . so that upon you may fall the guilt of all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.” [In this instance Jesus did not need to name the false teachers as He was face to face with them and calling them out publicly in the temple square.]
Paul:
2 Corinthians 11:13 “For such men are false apostles, deceitful workers, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ.”
2 Timothy 2:17-18 “And their word will eat as doth a canker: of whom is Hymeneus and Philetus; Who concerning the truth have erred, saying that the resurrection is past already; and overthrow the faith of some.”
2 Timothy 4:14 “Alexander the coppersmith did me much harm; the Lord will repay him according to his deeds.”
Peter:
2 Peter 2:1 “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.”
2 Peter 2:15-16a “Forsaking the right way, they have gone astray, having followed the way of Balaam, the son of Beor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness; but he received a rebuke for his own transgression…”
John:
1 John 4:1 “Beloved, 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.”
3 John:9-10 “I wrote something to the church; but Diotrephes, who loves to be first among them, does not accept what we say. For this reason, if I come, I will call attention to his deeds which he does, unjustly accusing us with wicked words; and not satisfied with this, he himself does not receive the brethren, either, and he forbids those who desire to do so and puts them out of the church.”
Likewise, the early church Fathers were so committed to the public rebuke of false teachers that they actually named heresies after the false teachers who promoted them (i.e., “Arianism” after Arius, “Pelagianism” after Pelagius, etc.).
Let those who complain about naming false teachers state how Jesus and the apostles were wrong to confront those in error, personally and publicly, in their time. If they cannot do so, let them show that what we name as false teaching is, in fact, the truth. If they cannot do either, then let their mouths be stopped.
And let us all live under the authority of the Word of God, rather than embrace a sentimental, unbiblical approach for dealing with error in the church of Jesus Christ.
“Mark them which cause divisions and offenses contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them” (Romans 16:17).
Notes
(1) See his New Kind of Christian, 126. See also The Story We Find Ourselves In, 167. Here McLaren, through a fictional character, rejects the question of Hell outright as inappropriate. See also his The Last Word and the Word After That, which discusses the doctrine of Hell at length. In both latter works, McLaren caricatures and subsequently rejects the traditional doctrine of Hell.
(2) See The Story We Find Ourselves In, 102, where McLaren, again through a fictional character, equates substitutionary atonement with divine child abuse. See also thisonline interview where McLaren caricatures penal substitutionary atonement as “God is incapable of forgiving unless he kicks somebody else.”
(3) See A New Kind of Christian, 45-59, as well as his Generous Orthodoxy (all of chapter 10, but especially 164). In both places, McLaren denies the relevance of words such as inerrant, authoritative, or infallible when referencing Scripture. See also Generous Orthodoxy 293, where McLaren denies that Scripture presents clear propositional truth claims that can be defended and known with certainty.