“But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the snake’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ. For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the Spirit you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough.”
2 Corinthians 11:3-4 NIVUK
The human mind can be easily deceived by arguments and propositions that sound right but are not true. The situation with Eve is the classic example. God gave Adam a specific instruction: “And the Lord God commanded the man, ‘You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die’” (Genesis 2:16-17). But along came the serpent, saying, “… Did God really say, “You must not eat from any tree in the garden””? (Genesis 3:1b). Eve initially made the right response, “The woman said to the snake, ‘We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, “You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die” ’” (Genesis 3:2-3), although she failed to identify the specific tree to be avoided. Then, in the next two verses, came the serpent’s lie, “‘You will not certainly die,’ the snake said to the woman. ‘For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil’”. Then came the very verse that sealed their’s, and mankind’s ever since, doom: “When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it”. Yes, neither Adam nor Eve physically died because of that act, but spiritually, mankind has been dead ever since. God’s design and order were destroyed through a single piece of fruit, but thankfully, He didn’t give up at that point and decide to let Adam and the human race get on with their sinful lives, instead creating another planet somewhere and starting again. As we read the Bible, we find a love story of God wooing back His rebellious and sin-ridden creation, even to the extent of sending His Son, Jesus, to be the ultimate Saviour.
Paul was concerned that the Corinthians had let down their guard and had allowed any random person with a seemingly plausible message to occupy their pulpit. It didn’t matter what “Jesus” they preached as long as the message sounded plausible. The same with the Holy Spirit they claimed to know. Perhaps the Gospel message being preached by these men was also plausible, as they, with the serpent’s cunning, twisted it, even subtly, to appear and sound plausible to the Corinthian ears. Paul warned Timothy about such a thing as well, as we read in 2 Timothy 4:3-4, “For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather round 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”. I heard of a funeral service that took place in a crematorium in Glasgow some years ago, where the officiating Presbyterian minister used as his text John 3:16. Somehow, he managed to distort this verse to become a platform for Universalism, by saying that Jesus said that everyone would get to Heaven, including, by extension, the people gathered for the service and the unbelieving lady who occupied the coffin before them. The phenomenon of men and women preaching a false Jesus and a false Gospel wasn’t just a problem in Paul’s day.
How do we pilgrims guard ourselves from such aberrations? As the wars in different parts of the world rumble on, and as different global events continue to disturb the world order, it is easy to find preachers who deliver a message that sounds right but is instead of the wrong spirit. Just open YouTube and all sorts of strange and fictitious messages will appear if searched for. The same with other social media platforms. And before we know it distortions will creep into society in the form of ideologies and theories that will lure away even people of faith, even reaching new forms of social policies. There is only one remedy for such lies, and that is to recognise them for what they are. We pilgrims know that when faced with the Eve syndrome, we turn to our Heavenly Father and His Word where we will find the truth. We turn to the Words of Jesus because we know that He is “the way the truth and the life” (John. 14:6). Through prayer and the armour that Paul taught about (Ephesians 6), we stand firm, recognising that someone preaching a different Jesus from the one in the bible, or promoting a different spirit to the Holy Spirit, or encouraging us to accept a different Gospel to the one we find in the Bible, are all ploys of the devil. And if we find a false preacher in our pulpits, we immediately find somewhere else where the purity of the Word is sacrosanct.
Heavenly Father. Please “lead us not into temptation and deliver us from evil” we pray. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Being a Pilgrim 