Truth Magazine

By Mike Willis

We have been examining “what is a false teacher?” for the last several issues. In this issue, we will bring the series to a close. This article raises the question, “Does it make any difference what God has said?” That may sound irrelevant to a discussion of what is a false teacher, but really it is not.

Is Sincerity Sufficient?

We have been told that describing a good, honest and sincere brother who teaches something that is wrong as a “false teacher” is a misuse of the term. The conclusion follows as certainly as night follows day that a good, honest and sincere brother can never under any circumstances be a false teacher. Will our brethren invent a new term to describe the good, honest and sincere brother whose teaching is false?

This reduces one’s service to God to being sincere. So long as a per-son is good, honest, and sincere, he is approved of God. If not, why not? I recognize that not everyone who states that the “false teacher” of the Bible is dishonest, insincere, covetous, and lascivious accepts this conclusion. I am not charging them with believing this conclusion, only that this is the logical conclusion to the premises that are being preached.

There are a number of Scriptures that emphasize that being sincere is not enough to make one approved in the sight of God. We could learn this lesson from the conversion of Saul of Tarsus. Indeed, we formerly used the conversion of Saul to teach this lesson to our denominational neighbors who believe that so long as one is good, honest, and sincere he will be saved. Saul thought that he should do many things contrary to Jesus of Nazareth (Acts 26:9). Consequently, he persecuted Christians. He was sincere and zealous in his service to God, but while he was so living he was the “chief of sinners” (1 Tim. 1:12-15). His being sincere did not make him acceptable before God. Furthermore, unsaved Saul was teaching what he believed to others. Was he a “false teacher” when he was doing that?

There is no different rule that applies to the good, honest, and sincere non-Christian than applies to the good, honest, and sincere Christian. I know this is true based on the number of warnings for Christians to “be-ware” of false teachers. What danger would a good, honest, and sincere Christian face from a false teacher, if being good, honest, and sincere was enough to guarantee his standing acceptably before God? The only thing that would jeopardize his relationship would be high-handed rebel-lion against God. When Jesus warns, “Beware of false prophets,” he implies that being good, honest and sincere are not enough (Matt. 7:15). When he spoke about the “blind guides,” he warned, “Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch” (Matt. 15:14). The good, honest, and sincere Christian who follows a false teacher (and perhaps unintentionally be-comes a false teacher) falls into the ditch just as certainly as the non-Christian who follows the blind guide.

Roy E. Cogdill On Sincerity

Brother Cogdill analyzed the doctrine that “sincerity saves” correctly in Faith and the Faith. He wrote,

But a great many people who readily agree that faith is essential and faith is important will deny the essentiality and importance of it by saying that it does not matter what a man believes, just so he is sincere. Their conception of the truth is that there is not any fixed, definite truth. It isall relative, and it does not matter what you believe about any given thing, if you are honest, earnest and sincere.

This means, first of all, that truth cannot be determined, that it has not been revealed, and that there is no way to learn what the truth is. In such a view, it would be impossible for a man to exercise faith in truth  faith prescribed by it, faith founded it. If the truth is relative, there is not any fixed standard by which we are to learn what is right and what is wrong in the sight of God. If there is no medium by which truth an be ascertained, by which it can be tested and by which it can be tried, then certainly there is not any way that a man can determine what to believe. And if it is not important what we believe, then it is not important whether or not we do believe.

If believing one thing is just as good as believing some-thing else, if it does not matter today what a man believes, it cannot and could not ever matter what a man believed. And it could not matter therefore, whether a man believed the Bible. Whatever the Bible said about anything would be of no importance, because it would not matter whether or not one believed. If one honestly disbelieved what the Bible teaches on any point, he would be just as well off as to honestly believe what the Bible teaches. Therefore what the Bible teaches would be of no importance.

Just so a man is honest and sincere, in this view it cannot matter what he believes  whether or not he believes this or that or anything. That is equivalent to saying it does not matter whether or not he believes what God says, and that is equivalent to saying that it does not matter what God says! So, you can throw your Bible on the junk pile and forget about it, go your way and do as you please, walk after the vanity of your mind, and be just as well off as if you learned and believed everything the Bible records (39-40).

Brother Cogdill has correctly analyzed the “good, honest, and sincere” issue.

Conclusion

We have shown the following in this series: (a) The concept that “false teacher” does not describe the content of what is preached but the character of the teacher is a fundamental part of the unity-in-diversity movement; (b) Some among us have accepted this new definition of “false teacher”; (c) The New Testament description of a “false teacher” describes the content of what is preached without regard to the moral character of the one teaching it; (d) Denying that the content of the message is what makes a man a false teacher leads to the conclusion that no good, honest, and sincere teacher could ever be described as a false teacher regardless of what he taught; (d) Shown that if this is the case, what God speaks does not matter.

A concept that leads to this last conclusion is fundamentally flawed and is dangerous. For this reason, we reject the concept that “false teacher” is used to describe the moral character of a man and not the content of what he teaches.

How better to conclude this series than to remind our-selves of the exhortation that Paul gave Timothy: “Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in them: for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee” (1 Tim. 4:16). By implication, the person who does not take heed to himself and his doctrine will lose his own soul and lead others into damnation with him, regardless of how good, honest and sincere he may be.

Guardian of Truth XL: No. 18, p. 2
September 19, 1996

By Randy Blackaby

Religion and politics  the two subjects you’ve always been advised never to discuss with your friends  are in great upheaval in America. .

And, despite the fact we’ve always been warned not to mix politics and religion, the upheavals in the two are occurring simultaneously.

There also are some parallels in the types of changes occurring in these two controversial and emotional realms.

In politics there is less and less distinction between the two predominate parties. Fewer people identify as Re-publican or Democrat and more and more declare themselves “independents.” And, more people simply have dropped out of the political process. Voter turnout is embarrassingly small for the leading democratic nation of the world.

Turning our attention to religion, we see the parallels. There is less and less difference between the major Catholic and Protestant faiths. Fewer people identify with any “church” and if they do, they are attracted to new churches that claim to be undenominational and free of doctrinal positions. Also, as in politics, fewer and fewer people actually go to worship  about 20% of Protestants and 28% of Catholics.

What do these trends and statistics mean? Do they mean Americans have lost interest in politics and religion? Some have so suggested.

But this hardly seems the case. The topics of the radio and TV talk shows, as well as the debates around the nation’s coffee tables suggest politics is alive and well.

The same is true of religion. While fewer and fewer people go to houses of worship, polls show 94% of Americans say they believe in God and 84% believe in a personal God with whom they can communicate via prayer.

The media finally seems to be taking some interest in religion, other than to ridicule and demean it. Psychiatry seems to be recognizing the positive role of religion in sound mental heath and more and more writing is dealing with the “spiritual” aspect of life.

Again, what does this all mean?

I don’t know all the answers, for sure. But Americans seem to be saying that traditional political parties have failed to convey public expectations to and through government. Discussions of third parties abound. And, the two major parties, fearing they may join the dinosaurs, are trying to revamp their positions and images.

Many of the mainline denominations which left the spiritual realm in past decades to address perceived social needs are finding their members going elsewhere to fill the spiritual void. Old denominations, losing members by the tens of thousands, are trying to survive by copying the tactics of the newer denominations.

What still seems unclear in both politics and religion, however, is whether we know what we are looking for. Both arenas seem more driven by emotion than reason. There is an absence of standards in both realms.

The Constitution and the law no longer are sacred in politics. They are deemed subject to constant change at the whim or fancy of politicians and public. And the same is true in religion. The Bible no longer is the standard of authority to most of the religions and there is no fear among most church-goers about changing God’s law to suit their own desires.

What the immediate results of these turbulent times will be is unclear. What politics and religion will look like as a new millennium dawns is yet unknown.

What should be clear to Christians is that teaching the doctrine and gospel of Christ is as needed as ever. Our mission is clear (Mark 16:15-16). A world is searching for truth, but doesn’t seem to know where to find it.

Guardian of Truth XL: No. 18, p. 1
September 19, 1996

By Ralph Joiner

The tour bus stopped in front of a huge, impressive office building, dominating everything else around it. Responses were immediate from the tour group. “Isn’t it magnificent,” whispered one man, spellbound. “Ugliest thing I ever saw,” opined another. “It’s simply beautiful,” one lady commented to her husband.

The tour guide raised his hand for silence, and began the spiel he had given hundreds of times. “This building was designed and its erection supervised by the great architect, Harold Lloyd Wright, and is representative of his work in the later years of his life.”

Every accolade was a tribute to Wright; every criticism an insult and offence to the man’s work and his memory. Those few who had no opinion of the building had no opinion of Wright. Other than his work of architectural design there was little about Wright to distinguish him from others millions who were his contemporary.

This is, if it is not already clear, intended to be analogous to Christ and his great work. A comparison that suffers through necessity, but an analogy nonetheless. When I first began preaching the gospel a third of a century ago, one of the most common criticisms I heard about the church was that we preached too much about the church and baptism. “Why don’t you just preach Jesus?” we were asked. “Preach the man, not the plan.” Little has changed. How truly did the wise man speak when he said, “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun” (Eccl 1:9). Now, however, some of our preaching “brethren” have joined the sectarians in pleading a moratorium on preaching the “plan.” Like our denominational friends, they believe that “preaching the man, not the plan” is the answer to every problem hindering unity among “believers.” “If we just preach Jesus,” they contend, “there would not be so much division in the religious world.”

Now, an analogy is just an illustrative comparison. It doesn’t necessarily prove anything. But it should be apparent to anyone with a modicum of common sense that we cannot preach “the man”  we cannot preach Jesus  without drawing attention to that which gives us the motivation to preach him: our salvation. Jesus is declared to be “the author and finisher of our faith” (Heb.12:2), or the “architect and perfecter of our faith” as it might be accurately translated. How can you “preach” the “architect” without praising his work? It is impossible. The “architectural design” of Jesus did not consist in just his existence; nor even of his earthly teaching, though, even if you allowed that to be your limit, you must, of necessity “preach the plan” for that was what Jesus personal minis-try was all about. “Preaching the man” involves not only preaching about Jesus  his virgin birth, his Deity, the miracles he worked, the prophecies he gave, the sin he rebuked, his death on the cross for our salvation  it includes preaching about the church he purchased with his own blood (Acts 20:28) to which the saved are added upon their obedience to the gospel (Acts 2:47), of which he is the Savior (Eph. 5:23), and which he will one day deliver up to God (1 Cor. 15:24). It includes telling lost sinners not only what Jesus has done but what they must do to have forgiveness for their sins, happiness in this life, and more in that eternal home that awaits the faithful. Did not Peter imply that the “plan” was available only through the “man” (2 Pet. 1:3)? In the same way, when “the plan” is preached, Jesus must be taught as the “author and finisher” of that plan. If Jesus is not everything the word of God declares him to be not only was he the greatest charlatan the world has ever seen, but “the plan” is useless and its teaching and application are exercises in futility. Paul aptly described such when he wrote, “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable” (1 Cor 15:19). As a building draws attention to its designer, so the “plan” of salvation, and all it encompasses, draws attention to Christ who accomplished it.

Brethren, it is not an either/or situation. The “man” and the “plan” are not mutually exclusive; they are complements to one another. One does not obviate the other. The “plan” without the “man” would leave us with a gospel that is impotent, not “God’s power unto salvation” (Rom. 1:16). The “man” without the “plan” would leave us in a spiritual maze, not knowing which way to turn to get the prize at the end.

Sunday morning, when I preached a lesson on marriage, I preached the “man” and the “plan.” Sunday evening when I extolled the all sufficiency of the Scriptures, I taught the “man” and the “plan.” May God give me the courage, the wisdom, and the strength to always preach both, for one is powerless without the other. May I always be able to say with Paul, “. . . I am pure from the blood of all men. For I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God” (Acts 20:26-27). Only then may I, with all the exuberance of that faithful saint proclaim, “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day” (2 Tim. 4:7-8).

Guardian of Truth XL: No. 17, p. 19-20
September 5, 1996

By Randy Blackaby

More and more young Christians are going to dances. Fewer parents stop them from doing so. And despite sex education that begins in kindergarten, nearly everyone feigns ignorance about what’s wrong with dancing.

Are parents and children really this lacking in under-standing? Do we really fail to see the impact of males and females moving together in close embrace or gyrating be-fore one another to the beat of seductive music? Are we blind to how some dance movements imitate the motions of the sex act itself?

Impudent or offended voices demand, “Show me in the Bible where it says not to dance!” Does the Bible say all dancing is sinful? Well, actually, no it doesn’t. Jephthah’s daughter danced alone (Judg. 11:34). You fmd Jewish women dancing alone in celebration (Exod. 15:20-21). More women are mentioned dancing alone in Judges 21:19. There are women recorded as dancing in celebration of King David’s victory (1 Sam. 18:6). David himself danced before the ark of God (2 Sam. 30:16). The Bible mentions a group of soldiers dancing (1 Sam. 30:16). Solomon recognized a time for dancing, in contrast with a time for mourning (Eccl. 3:4). The prophet foretells a time when joyous dancing will be the result of God’s work (Jer. 31:13). Dancing even appears to have been a form of praise to God in Old Testament times (Pss. 149:3; 150:4). Dancing was part of the celebration upon the return of the prodigal son (Luke 15:25).

So, if women want to dance with one another in celebration, we probably ought to be silent about it. If male soldiers gleefully dance and shout over a victory, no condemnation likely is needed.

But notice in all the Bible’s condoned accounts of dancing that males and females didn’t dance together. The purpose of the dancing was celebration or praise or even worship of God. In these dances, as contrasted with the dance of Herodias’ daughter (Matt. 14:6), there was no sexual element.

It is true that the Bible doesn’t say “thou shalt not dance.” But in Galatians 5:19-21 licentiousness or lasciviousness is condemned. These words describe behavior of any sort that exhibits a lack of restraint, indecency, unchastity, lewdness, or shameless behavior.

The same verses also condemn “revelry,” or partying accompanied by drinking, a common addendum at places of dancing.

Is it really that difficult to see that most of today’s dancing is designed to arouse emotions and physical reactions which God tells us to control and utilize only within the circle of marriage?

Ask yourself, what really is the purpose of men and women, boys and girls dancing together?

Curt Sachs, writing in World History of Dance, describes dancing as an art form to ex-press love-malting. For this reason the steps and positions are designed to bring into physical contact those parts of a man and woman which are most sexually sensitive. Movements are de-signed to be visually stimulating sexually.

The Bible doesn’t condemn a man dancing with his wife in the privacy of their home. But it does condemn “lusting” after a woman. It forbids committing fornication or adultery. So, it would seem ludicrous to participate in an act with someone not your spouse that would arouse the very feelings that lead to all three of these sins.

Can a person go to a dance if he or she doesn’t dance? Answer this question by deciding whether Jesus would show up there for any purpose other than giving a stern condemnation. Whether it is righteous to dance or not is an issue, like smoking, drug use, or playing the lottery, that must be decided on general principles of righteous conduct enumerated in Scripture.

Guardian of Truth XL: No. 17, p. 15
September 5, 1996