The Church Must Not Abide Any False Teachings

When most people think false prophets, their minds most typically go to one of two places: people like Joel Osteen, Kenneth Copeland, and Steven Furtick or Jezebel and the prophets of Baal, Balaak, Balam, or the prophets among the kings and judges who lied to leaders to falsely proclaim God’s blessings over them. And these are all accurate descriptions of false prophets, assuredly. They are people who lied to God’s people about the truth of God’s words.

And I know I also lost half of my readership with the Furtick comment, but I’ll stand by that until the day I die or he changes his ways and preaches the Truth. That notwithstanding, I want to look at some groups/people/situations that we don’t give enough thought toward, specifically worship music. If you read my blog in the olden days (5 years ago) you’d know I have a deep love for music. I enjoy an excellent song and, because they have words, picking them apart for their meaning. So I’m always looking for songs to be not only glorifying to God but one-hundred-percent truthful because it’s important that our songs accurately praise God and speak truthfully of our condition. No sense in giving praise to a God who doesn’t exist because we got some aspect of His character wrong, after all (looking at you, Reckless Love).

Yes, Your Worship Music is Teaching You

Churches that make music are not strictly a new thing, but the scale of the music making that occurs today is unprecedented, especially in the bigger churches like Bethel and Elevation. These songs are written, produced, and performed inside the church, and the theology of the church, and, therefore, the preacher, absolutely informs the theology that goes into that music. What you are taught is what you teach, which is why the Bible lets teachers know they will be judged more harshly (James 3:1) because it is their responsibility to ensure the truth reaches their disciples because it would be the teacher’s fault if he taught wrongly.

Art imitates life as goes the saying, and it is one of the easiest things to recognize about literature, which music might also be called. Each piece of art, each song, comes from the heart, mind, and life of the writer. Besides, who’s going to write a song about something they don’t believe? It is inevitable that belief plants itself within the creations of its owner. I say all this to say that churches like Bethel and Elevation are putting their beliefs in the worship music sung throughout a large portion of the Body. And we’re slowly believing it, too.

Why Are We Rehashing This Debate?

I am fully and painfully aware that this has been a debated topic for years now among certain groups and parts of the Body of Christ, but as far as I can see from my own vantage point, nothing has ever really been done about it. Maybe one or two churches here and there have stopped using songs from these places after the insane spectacles some of them have had, but there hasn’t been a very significant change. My goal is not really to rehash the “should we use Bethel and Elevation songs” thing. I’m not even going to argue whether Elevation and Bethel have false teachers because it should be obvious by now that they do. My goal is to point out the danger of not completely crushing out false beliefs.

What Happens When False Teachings Enter the Church?

Revelation contains seven letters to seven churches, and three of them deal directly with false teachings infecting the local body. Without wasting hundreds of words on how this is applicable, my appeal to you is to research the expert scholars on how these letters can be applied across Church history. Our focus will be on the letters to Pergamum and Thyatira because they give us two very clear pictures of what happens when false teaching infiltrates.

In Pergamum, the teachings of Balaak and Balam had only caused some to stumble. Revelation 2:14 says, “But I have a few things against you. You have some there who hold to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to place a stumbling block in front of the Israelites: to eat meat sacrificed to idols and to commit sexual immorality.” Here is the false teaching and what it caused: believers who were sinning by lust, idolatry, and, perhaps, gluttony. They were proclaimed believers who looked no different to the world. Furthermore, as Paul pointed out in 1 Corinthians 8, doing these things affected their witness and disciple to other members of their church, ruining weaker brothers and sisters by their knowledge. A modern day example is the hypocrite Christian who, knowing Christ’s love, boldly speaks in hatred toward a gay person, ruining a new believer’s faith by their own boldness in Christ’s grace that forgives their own sin a la “It’s okay to sin because God will forgive me.”

The church in Pergamum is offered a response to this: repent. Revelation 2:16 says, “So repent! Otherwise, I will come to you quickly and fight against them with the sword of my mouth.” This sword is referenced in verse 12 and likely related to the double-edged sword of Hebrews 4:12, that being the Word of God. This is not something we want, but it will occur if we do not root out false teaching in the Body. If we do not take care to eliminate every stumbling block as faithfully as we can manage, Christ will come and remove it for us.

And if you doubt that, read on to the letter to Thyatira. This church not only had some who practiced sexual immorality, but those who didn’t tolerated it (2:20). If Pergamum is the warning, Thyatira is the execution, for Revelation 2:21-23 says, “I gave her time to repent, but she does not want to repent of her sexual immorality. Look, I will throw her into a sickbed and those who commit adultery with her into great affliction. Unless they repent of her works, I will strike her children dead. Then all the churches will know that I am the one who examines minds and hearts, and I will give to each of you according to your works.” Christ is no longer warning of His coming; His people failed to obey, and now He will do what they should have done already far more painfully and judiciously than they might have.

This is what might very well happen to us as we allow patently false teaching to propagate within the Body, inflicted by folks who believe something close to Christianity that is just far enough away to not be the Way, Truth, and Life.

But How Can We Judge?

I hear the argument that someone might be saying in their head, or out loud, right now: “You can’t judge these churches, and, in fact, they might even lead some people to Christ. They can’t be that bad.” Well, I hear your argument and reject it. I can, in fact, judge those churches so long as I accept I’ll be judged by that same standard (Matthew 7:1-2), and I don’t care if they lead one or two people to Christ, or even one or two hundred. They mislead hundreds, thousands, or millions more away from Him every year, with half their songs, and with almost all their preaching. They are a danger to the Body and to nonbelievers.

I mean this in all seriousness: don’t be afraid to judge the fruits of any person, especially teachers (and that does include worship music). If a church or Christian puts it out there, analyze it for its complicity with the Bible. Revelation 2:23, in pair with Matthew 15:18, gives us evidence for this very practice. In Revelation 2:23, Christ says He will ensure all know that He examines hearts and minds and gives according to our works. Matthew 15:18 says, “But what comes out of the mouth comes from the heart, and this defiles a person.” Actions reveal the state of the mind, whether renewed and transformed by Christ or still living in darkness. It is so much better for us to judge the actions of a person than for Christ to judge the heart and mind and repay the actions of a person, and this goes doubly for when there are multiple people actively defiling themselves.

So I have two cautions: One, be aware of what you’re putting into your heart and mind. Whether that be song, word, preaching, or evangelism, be constantly aware of what you’re learning and ensure you cast out the things that aren’t proven true by Scripture. Two, don’t be afraid to speak out against the actions of a mouth or body because if they’re acting wrongly, something inside is still believing wrongly. And it is far better to be judged by a person than by the holy, righteous, perfect, all-powerful and all-knowing God of the universe. Let your rebuke come with love if you notice an evil action, but rebuke that the soul of the person might be saved.