The Ultimate Test

A few weeks ago I attended a meeting at Anderson University where Brian McLaren was the featured speaker. Knowing that Mr. McLaren is the most visible proponent of the Emergent Church movement, I didn’t expect to hear anything of any biblical substance. A lot of things Mr. McLaren said to those young adults that day were very disturbing to me. He used various Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox teachings that do not live up with the Word of God. He freely admitted that he took the things he was teaching from these false religions. One of the Scriptures that the Lord Jesus kept bringing back to my memory was this one: Isaiah 8:20 - To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.

I recently read this devotional by D. Martyn Lloyd- Jones; I believe that it speaks to Brian McLaren and many others that are outside of true scriptural teaching. We are living in the last days; we need to be discerning when it comes to the false doctrine that these false teachers are selling. May the word of God and His precious Holy Spirit be our guide. Let us be like the Bereans of the first century: Acts 17:11 - These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.

Bro. Pat

THE ULTIMATE TEST - by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God. 1 John 4:2

The most important test is conformity to scriptural teaching। “Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God.” How do I know that this is a spiritual test? All I know about Him, I put up to the test of Scripture. Indeed, you get exactly the same thing in the sixth verse of 1 John 4 where John says, speaking of himself and the other apostles, “We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us. Hereby know we the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error.” The first thing to ask about a man which claims to be filled with the Spirit and to be an unusual teacher is, does his teaching conform to Scripture? Is it in conformity with apostolic message? Does he base it all upon this Word? Is he willing to submit to it? That is the great test.

Another test is the readiness to listen to scriptural teaching; to abide by it is always a characteristic of the true prophet. You will find that the other man rather tends to dismiss it. “Ah yes,” he says, “but you are legalistic, you are just a theologian, I have experience, have felt, and I have produced this and that.” The tendency is not to abide by the teaching of Scripture but to be almost contemptuous of it; that has always been the characteristic of those who have tended to go astray. Read the history of the Quakers, and you will find that such an attitude became a prominent feature--the inner light rather than the objective teaching of Scripture itself.

Amen!