Mix one part itching ears with one part false prophets and what do you get? Disaster, delusion, deception and degeneracy compounded. The Bible warns from cover to cover that there will be many who will want to hear only what they want to hear instead of the truth.
And it also tells us that there will be plenty of false prophets, false teachers and false shepherds who will be more than happy to comply. These two groups feed off each other, and both have a mutual blood-sucking relationship to each other.
It is as remarkable as it is tragic when Biblical truth is rejected and lies, falsehoods and deceptions are instead accepted. And I am talking about God’s people here. We expect non-believers to reject truth and swallow myth. But sadly plenty of those who call themselves Christians are up to their ears in this substitution of truth for error.
As I said, the Bible warns about this time and time again. Let me just offer three passages of Paul from his pastoral epistles. In 2 Timothy 4:3-4 we read this: “For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.”
In 1Timothy 4:1-3 we read that “in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils”. And in 2 Timothy 3:13 it says that “evil men and deceivers shall wax worse, deceiving and being deceived”.
“Deceiving and being deceived” – that pretty well sums it up all right. But there are also some amazingly accurate descriptions of all this found in the Old Testament as well. Let me just mention two. In Jeremiah 5:31 we find these incredible words: “The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means; and my people love to have it so: and what will ye do in the end thereof?”
Perhaps even more remarkable and incriminating are the words of Isaiah as found in Is. 30:9-11:
For these are rebellious people, deceitful children,
children unwilling to listen to the LORD’s instruction.
They say to the seers,
“See no more visions!”
and to the prophets,
“Give us no more visions of what is right!
Tell us pleasant things,
prophesy illusions.
Leave this way,
get off this path,
and stop confronting us
with the Holy One of Israel!”
“Tell us pleasant things, prophesy illusions”! “Stop confronting us with the Holy One of Israel!” How up-to-date and totally relevant this is. We have so-called Christians and so-called Christian leaders selling out on one biblical doctrine after another today, and no one seems to bat an eyelash. Yet ‘my people love it this way’!
For example, on so many hot potato social issues the church is caving in big time. Compromise, abandonment of clear biblical teaching, and downright deception characterise so much of contemporary Christianity. Simply take the issue of homosexuality and same-sex marriage. One church after another is falling into deception and deceit here.
I document this all the time on my site. But consider yet one more mind-boggling example of this. It is about as idiotic and nonsensical as it comes. And it certainly comes straight out of the pit of hell. But leave it to religious academics and trendy theologians to come up with such heretical imbecility.
I refer to a story which just broke a few days ago concerning an English theologian who now informs us that Jesus was likely not a male. Yep, you heard me right. He may have been AC-DC or some such thing. Here is how one newspaper has covered the story:
“A feminist theologian has stoked controversy by publishing a paper arguing that Jesus might have been a hermaphrodite. Dr Susannah Cornwall claimed that it is ‘simply a best guess’ that Jesus was male. Her comments, which are bound to provoke fury in some quarters, were published in response to the ongoing debate about women bishops in the Church of England.
“Dr Cornwall, of Manchester University’s Lincoln Theological Institute, describes herself on her blog as specialising in: ‘Research and writing in feminist theology, sexuality, gender, embodiment, ethics and other fun things like that.’ In her paper ‘Intersex & Ontology, A Response to The Church, Women Bishops and Provision’, she argues that it is not possible to know ‘with any certainty’ that Jesus did not suffer from an intersex condition, with both male and female organs.
“In an extraordinary paper she says: ‘It is not possible to assert with any degree of certainty that Jesus was male as we now define maleness. There is no way of knowing for sure that Jesus did not have one of the intersex conditions which would give him a body which appeared externally to be unremarkably male, but which might nonetheless have had some “hidden” female physical features.’
“Dr Cornwall argues that the fact that Jesus is not recorded to have had children made his gender status ‘even more uncertain’. She continues: ‘We cannot know for sure that Jesus was male – since we do not have a body to examine and analyse – it can only be that Jesus’ masculine gender role, rather than his male sex, is having to bear the weight of all this authority’.”
Hey, sounds good to me Susannah. Who am I to judge anyway? And while we are at it, let’s go the whole hog here. Surely we need to stop mucking around, and spill all the beans: Jesus was also most likely a Communist lesbian nuclear-free whale from Neptune. And why not? All things are possible. This sounds just as plausible as what the good professor is telling us.
Talk about deception running rampant. Talk about open academic minds which really need to be closed for repairs. Talk about theologians who are as orthodox and helpful as Judas. This is just another example of demonic deception running rampant in our churches and theological institutions. And the really scary thing is the number of “believers” who will likely lap all this stuff up.
In Luke 18:8 Jesus asks this penetrating question: “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” Apparently not at the Lincoln Theological Institute at least.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/9116974/Jesus-may-have-been-a-hermaphrodite-claims-academic.html
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