Categories
apologetics church personal

How People Are Allured By False Teaching

Here is an old joke that I vaguely remember my Father using: People tell me that on every public bus there is always one nut-job. A complete wacko. An absolute loon. Look around, they’d say, and you’ll always find one. So I keep riding the bus to find out, constantly looking for the one nut-job. I could never find him.

I’m going to be honest here. Just like the joke about being the one nut-job, I’m afraid of being the false teacher Scripture warns about. It is a creeping fear crowding behind me right up until I walk towards the pulpit.  Then, even when I open my mouth, I can feel the fear behind me whispering a warning: don’t fall into the false teacher’s trap.

Now, don’t start telling everyone “Rey says he’s a false teacher.” Hear me out.

The reason for my fear is that false teaching has an attractive pull in (at least) two directions. It not only draws hearers but it’s attractive to those who are handling the truth. And because it’s strong allure, I think it’s more pervasive than we think.

Categories
eschatology romans

A Dawning Future and Romans 7

Romans 7 has a long, messy history of interpretative clashes. Some interpreters say that although the Believer struggles with Sin nature in the present, Romans 7 isn’t addressing the issue at all. Another view says that the Believer has no sin nature and the struggle is with habits. Yet another view dictates that the entire experience in Romans 7 is pre-conversion: dealing with the struggles of a person that is coming to enlightenment and finally conversion. Another view likes to split the chapter in two so that the first half deals with pre-conversion and the following section deals with a post-conversion hypothetical without the empowering of the Holy Spirit; essentially a rhetorical hypothetical to establish Paul’s point.