by Steve McCranie | Mar 15, 2014
Good question. What does happen? What does it mean when false prophets actually do what they claim they can do? What does that mean?
What happens when “signs and wonders”— no, real signs and wonders accompany the preaching of a false prophet? What are we to think? What does that say about what they are saying? The implications are mind-boggling.
For example, does it mean that maybe, just maybe, they aren’t false prophets anymore? Maybe they’ve repented and finally seen the light and God is confirming their ministry with “ooo la la” kind of stuff. Or maybe we were too judgmental towards them in the first place and had them all wrong. Worldly logic would conclude, “If God weren’t blessing what they say, then their churches wouldn’t grow so large and they wouldn’t be so popular.”
So, maybe the problem is with us, and not them. After all, as the mantra of false prophets go: “Touch not the Lord’s anointed!” Maybe we’re just too blind and deceived and misguided and don’t recognize that God is moving and doing a new thing in our generation. Or possibly God just lowered His standard of truth so as not to offend the post-modern culture in which we live. Remember the enlightened by-line of most false prophets, “Doctrine divides, but love unites.” Maybe the Scriptures are not the standard of truth today and God is using these men to teach us that He is not the same “yesterday, today and forever” but actually changes with the times and adapts, like a divine chameleon, to whatever culture He finds Himself in. Maybe the false prophets are right. Maybe God is nothing more than a cosmic genie in a bottle waiting to serve us, bless us, prosper us and make us the “head and not the tail.” And maybe, just maybe, these men the Scriptures define as false prophets are really God’s pied pipers to the New, and better, 21st Century Christian.
Maybe. Then again, maybe not.
So, if a false prophet delivers the goods, does it mean that we slide them into the category of “Former False Prophets” or rename them as “Prophets formerly known as False”?
I think not.
Have you ever read the following words from Moses?
“If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder comes true, concerning which he spoke to you, saying, ‘Let us go after other gods whom you have not known and let us serve them,’ you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams; for the Lord your God is testing you to find out if you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.” *
Oh, so it could be a test— a testing from the Lord to see if we love Him more than we love the cool things the false prophets are saying about us, our finances and our future. Looks like another classic battle against our flesh, doesn’t it?
Are you prepared for that battle? Are you prepared to win? Because the age of false prophets is upon us.
by Steve McCranie | Jan 10, 2014
The following is from RC Sproul, Jr. It is sobering picture of what is happening within the wide defines of Christianity regarding our relationship, acceptance and partnership with Catholics, Mormons, the Emerging Church, etc. Read and carefully consider the truth proclaimed.
Well Meaning Nazis
Do you think it possible that there were during World War II Nazi’s that were Christians? Do you think there were Nazi’s that were committed to the rule of law, even that hoped that the Allies would defeat Germany? Isn’t it likely that there were men in uniform, in the party, that found themselves there because of sundry social pressures, and not a small amount of confusion and ignorance about what Nazi’s believed? I would argue that such a truth is self-evident. Given the size of the party, given the confusion of the times, given the propaganda skill of the Nazi leadership there surely must have been at least one genuinely born again Christian that was a Nazi. And I think, had I been an Allied soldier during that time it would have been my duty to kill him. Why? Because he’s a Nazi, a servant and soldier of a regime that declared war against these United States.
If such a view shocks you, you might want to thank Rousseau. Rousseau was the great engine of romanticism, that worldview that drives us today to believe that forms, oaths, uniforms, formal loyalties mean nothing at all, that all that matters is the invisible recesses of our hearts. What a man feels is sacrosanct. What he says means nothing, except insofar as he is speaking about his feelings. Thus the Nazi can tell us, “I know I am dressed in a Nazi uniform. I know I have fought for the Nazi cause. I know I have sworn fealty to the Fuehrer. But I didn’t really know what I was doing. I didn’t really know what I was thinking. Besides, that was then, and this is now.”
Before I shoot the man, I would want to ask him one more question- “Do you disavow your loyalty to the Reich? Will you now take off that uniform? Will you come and join the Allies?” If so, what a cause for celebration. A brother has been rescued from an evil system. Kill the fatted calf, bring a robe and a ring. But what do I do if he replies, “Well, no. I was raised in the Nazi’s. And I happen to know there are a lot of people like me, people like you, who believe what we believe, in the Nazi’s. Why can’t we, Nazis and Allies, work together for the greater good?” What if he meant every word he was saying? He is speaking out of both sides of his mouth, and my duty is to believe the solemn oath, the uniform, the salute, not his self-report on his subjective feelings. One truth, the uniform, will get him shot. The other truth, his faith, will take him straight to heaven.
Of course this is all moot, because that war is over. But there are other uniforms, other loyalties, other solemn oaths. Rome solemnly and irrevocably asked, in the sixth session of the Council of Trent, during the counter-Reformation, that God would damn all those who say a man is justified by faith, apart from the works of the law. They have not changed that dogma, whether anyone inside the institution actually believes it or not. And when we enter the Roman fold we swear an oath to uphold and believe all Roman dogma. When we come to the mass we solemnly salute their system. When we receive her baptism we put on her uniform.
I am not, of course, equating Roman Catholicism with Nazism. The Nazi’s, after all, sent six million Jews to their deaths. Rome, on the other hand, has no concentration camps, no gas chambers. All she has is a false, damning gospel that sends billions to a lake of fire. That, not our feelings, not even our friendships, is what matters.
