Marked

The reason we fight to preserve anything is because someone else is doing their best to destroy it. If no opposition existed, if no enemy were to be present, there would be no need to fight, to contend, or to defend. It is because men attempt to pervert the faith and distort the truth that we must stand in stark opposition to their plans and machinations. It is because men speak lies that we must boldly proclaim the truth.

Jude said he found it necessary to exhort us to contend earnestly for the faith because the enemy was carrying out his plans, having snuck certain men in unnoticed whose purpose was as nefarious as their master. The church body may not have noticed that these men had crept in, but God did, and via the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, used Jude to send up the warning flares.

I always find it odd that after such men get exposed and their kingdoms are turned to dust, those left to pick up the pieces of their lives, dazed, confused, and discombobulated, insist that there were no warning signs that they weren’t the wholesome, caring, spiritual individual they claimed to be.

The guy said he was Jesus incarnate. That should have been a warning sign. He claimed such spiritual superiority and was so indispensable to the plan of God for the world that he got a special dispensation to do things God found abhorrent and unacceptable. That, too, should have been a warning sign.

Whenever anyone places themselves above the authority of the Bible and insists they are no longer accountable to Scripture but have grown past it, it’s a lie, and the individual in question is not to be believed. I know that’s what the Bible says, but God showed me something different should never be uttered by a true disciple of Christ, no matter the context. God does not contradict His word, either through prophecy, revelation, dreams, or visions. He is not the author of confusion and hasn’t changed His mind regarding repentance, holiness, sanctification, or obedience.

The reason men are able to creep in unnoticed is because their heresy is always shrouded in some amount of truth. If someone tried to poison you and handed you a vile of poison, you’d reject it outright. If they baked an apple pie, snuck the poison inside, and insisted you eat the whole thing, it would be harder to discern. Because it’s poison, the first bite should tell you something is off. Perhaps even the smell it gives off is not entirely as it should be, but the first bite is sure to set off alarms.

If it tastes funny, don’t take a second bite hoping the flavor profile changes. Put the fork down, push the plate away, and go spit it out. I’ve known people who’ve gotten horribly sick from eating bad meat, who, in hindsight, admitted that something tasted off, but they were really hungry and ignored it.

There is a caveat to what I just said: for you to know that the apple pie tasted off, you must be aware of what apple pie without the poison additive should taste like. Stop speaking in riddles, fat man; I don’t have that kind of time; Creflo Dollar’s about to come on. For you to discern deception, you must know what the word of God says! Concise enough?

If you never read your Bible, when a pompadour with gleaming teeth insists that the Good Book says an apple a day keeps the doctor away, you just shrug your shoulders and think to yourself, that’s a pretty good saying. Maybe I should go buy some apples.

If you do read your Bible and someone says that, you know they’re a fool, and you stop listening.

Reading your Bible makes you less likely to be deceived, discouraged, defeated, and disenchanted. If all you do is listen to men tell you what they believe the Bible means, confusion will be a constant companion, and what you believe may not align with the Word of God.

The enemy knows that a bit of leaven leavens the lump. So he’s not about to sneak his minions into a congregation where they start drawing pentagrams on the wall and insisting that Anton Lavey is the thirteenth apostle.

If the enemy went through the trouble of infiltrating a congregation, he would employ consistent subtlety to circumvent and undermine the truth. He will do as the serpent did in the garden and begin with a question: ‘Has God indeed said?’

If nobody is bold enough to stand in the congregation of the saints and declare, ‘Yes, God has indeed said,’ then the subterfuge begins, and ever so slowly, individuals are drawn away from the person of Jesus, the Lordship of Jesus, and the salvific power of faith, to pointless inanities.

When they’re called out, such individuals play the innocent, insisting that they were just asking an honest question and wondering out loud, usually in full few of many, why we’re so afraid of questions or if we don’t believe the Bible can stand up to scrutiny.

Even when they acknowledge that’s what God said, the next question is usually, “But are you sure that’s what He meant?” Oddly enough, whenever that question is asked, the individual never tries to err on the side of purity, righteousness, self-control, or virtue. It’s always something their flesh wants to do that the Bible tells them they can’t do, and they want to find a way around the written word.

I have long held to the belief that those who would pervert grace and deny the Lordship of Christ are not innocent or harmless but dangerous and cruel, not because I am spoiling for a fight but because the Bible tells me they are.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.