Obviously everything I post here is personal opinion, but with each post I try to come up with some kind of thought regarding the scripture of the day. This post deviates slightly from what I normally, but it comes in response to Paul's words in 2 Timothy 2 regarding the false teachings of Hymenaeus and Philetus. Essentially, Paul was exposing some fairly serious false doctrine regarding the resurrection of the dead. Based on the cultural beliefs of the day, these two were attempting to rid scripture of some "uncomfortable" teachings to the Greek culture – namely that a bodily resurrection of believers will take place in the future. The point I'm making is that Paul points out these individuals to Timothy as a warning to him about a very serious teaching error they were guilty of making.
With the advent of the Internet, I think Christians (maybe even well-meaning Christians) have taken opportunities to expose "false" teaching to a bit of an extreme and perhaps to the detriment of the Church. What you readers don't know is that I have access to various statistics about this blog, such as search words individuals use that bring them to this site. It's pretty interesting information sometimes, and today there was a search for "john doe false teacher" (***SEE EXPLANATION BELOW***). On another occassion recently someone sent a message to me via facebook trashing a different pastor. I agree that false teaching should be exposed, but I think we need to be careful before pulling the trigger on information that we may not completely know. I have no doubt that Paul knew the things of which he was speaking. These other people, however, have a lot of speculations on what they think people teach and believe, but much of it is nothing more than speculation. We need to be careful about how we handle such information, and we have to use wisdom in sharing it (or not sharing it) with others. And when we're not careful, I believe it's dishonoring to God. There are doctrines and ideologies that are being taught today that do concern me, but that's nothing new – as evidenced by Paul's' statement. God's Truth will stand for itself, however, and it will last through time just as it has up to this point. And just because I might quote a person or read his or her book doesn't mean I agree with and promote everything he or she teaches. I believe that God's Truth is true no matter where it comes from… a discussion for another post another time. Let's hold each other to God's standard of confronting one other with issues rather than blasting the person in cyberspace where he or she doesn't even have an opportunity to respond. I hope you'll do the same with me if you ever have a concern with anything I say. My goal is to teach God's Word in an honorable way to the best of my ability.
***EXPLANATION: I kept the search name hidden so as not to stir up any more controversy for him… it was for the name of an individual I have mentioned in a post on this blog who, to my knowledge, has not made false teachings. When someone searches in Google for words and does not put quotations around the search term, Google looks for any combination of those words anywhere on the site. For example, other search words that have brought people to his blog include: "chuck swindoll aw tozer quotes", "song of solomon do not awaken love", and "philip keller quotes sheepdog."
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