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acts church human

The Fact of False Teachers

For years, Christian writers forced pens to bleed ink on the subject of false teachers. They warned, they begged people to be ready, they called out the false teachers, and they repeated the whole thing. We often nod, hum a hymn, and don’t give it much thought.

Let me put some meat on those bones.

At church, we are rightly warned about those wool-wearing wolves but we never think of them as already here, among us, teeth bared. We mention them in a nebulous sort of way, waving our arms in that direction over yonder, but most of us never stop and wonder if they’re sitting next to us, smiling and saying “amen” during the sermon. Or maybe, arms raised, leading the singing. Or possibly, speaking, behind the pulpit.

For most of us Christians, false teachers are a distant threat reserved for tele-evangelists.

Categories
israel

A Bird’s Eye View and Numbers 20-25

One of the funniest, and oddest, perspectives is the bird’s eye view. I personally don’t like getting to that perspective—shooting down the runaway until it almost ends, catapulting into the air, and praying that nothing happens. But the perspective is extremely helpful—in criminal cases, for example.

You know, there goes the criminal, driving down the road and slamming into a telephone pole. Out he comes, running; between garbage cans, through a yard with a barking dog, over another fence. He really thinks he can get away!

Except we’re seeing all of this from the vantage point of a police chopper that has the entire view of the man’s progress and end where the cops have set up their net. If the criminal had this view he’d probably not run as hard to escape. And the cops, oh the cops with the benefit of that point of view do their work confidently.

Let’s take off then, shooting down the runaway of the text and getting some details as we take off and see this perspective.