From … and the world hears them

Numerous New Testament passages warn believers of false teachers who are already in the church or who are yet to come.  We would be wise to review their characteristics:

*False teachers will come in the name of Christ and mislead many.”  (Matt. 24:4-5,11)

*They will arrive after Jesus departs, being savage wolves among Christians, speaking perverse things in order to draw us away.”  (Acts 20:29-30)

*Present a different, distorted gospel.” (Gal. 1:6-7)

*Paul calls them “dogs” and “evil workers” who teach a”false circumcision“.  (Philippians 3:2)

*They will attempt to “delude you with persuasive arguments” captivating us “‘through philosophy and empty deception according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.”  (Col. 2:4,8)

*Some will “defraud you of your prize by delighting in self-abasement and the worship of angels, taking his stand of visions he has seen….” (Col. 2:18)

*These people will want you to “submit yourself to decrees, such as, ‘Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!‘”  (Col. 2:20-21)

*They will try to teach strange doctrines, myths, and endless geneologies.”  (1Tim. 1:3-4)

*Some may pay “attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons;” will “forbid marriage and advocate abstaining from foods…”  (1Tim. 4:3)

*”Lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding a form of godliness, although they have denied its power.”  (2Tim.3:2-5)

*These people are “always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth,” and also ”oppose the truth .”(2Tim. 3:7,8)

*In the last hours, these false teachers “went out from us, but they were not really of us.”  (1John 2:19)

*They are liars denying that Jesus is the Christ making them an antichrist.”  (1 John 2:22)

*There will be “many deceivers” who “have gone out into the world, those who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh.” (2John 7)

*These “certain persons have crept in unnoticed…ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.” (Jude 4)

“Watch yourselves, that you do not lose what we have accomplished, but that you may receive a full reward.  Anyone who goes too far and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God; the one who abides in the teaching, he has both the Father and the Son.  If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house, and do not give him a greeting; for the one who gives him a greeting participates in his evil deeds.”  (2 John 8-11) (Online source, emphasis theirs)

See also:

THE ELEPHANT ROOM, T.D. JAKES & CINDY TRIMM

TIM KELLER RECOMMENDED PETER SCAZZERO SPREADING SPURIOUS CENTERING PRAYER

TEACHINGS OF DEMONS ON CHURCH GROWTH