As Jesus concluded His Sermon on the Mount, He focused on false prophets (teachers, preachers) and false teaching. In Matthew 7:15, He underscored the importance and danger of false teachers: “Beware of false teachers.”
Because Jesus warned us about false teachers, they must be present — then and now. In fact, false teachers are predicted to increase as we move toward the end of the age (Matthew 24:11). If there is false teaching, there must also be correct or truthful teaching, and there must also be an objective standard for measuring truth and error. Our Baptist Faith and Message 2000 says the Bible is “truth without any mixture of error.” The Bible is the authority for the follower of Christ as He or she encounters false teaching.
Jesus called false teachers ravenous wolves in sheep’s clothing. James M. Boice said that the greatest danger is not the presence of wolves, but wolves who disguise themselves as sheep. Ravenous can also mean “swindler.” False teachers are greedy for riches, honor and power. The orbit of their lives is not around Christ but squarely centered in themselves and empowered by the devil.
False teachers attempt to substitute God’s truth for man’s opinions by using questionable academic and intellectual arguments. They attempt to mix truth and error, and thereby create a message and a lifestyle that has no ultimate meaning or purpose beyond man himself. In describing apostates, Jude 10 says, “These men revile the things which they do not understand; and the things which they know by instinct, like unreasoning animals, by these things they are destroyed” (NASB).
We can know false teachers by their fruits. In the New Testament, there was a buckhorn bush whose black berries could be mistaken for grapes at a distance. There was also a thistle bush that bore flowers resembling figs from a distance. However, upon close examination, no one was fooled by the mere appearance of things. The sad truth is that too many people are blinded by the charisma or persuasion of a false teacher. Too many times, the disciples of a false teacher do not want to know the truth because they are almost hypnotized by the false teacher and his teaching. D.A. Carson said that false prophets “are often accepted at face value — they appear in the church and gather a following.”
A false prophet is lost. That is clear in Matthew 7:15-20. A preacher or teacher of God’s truth may not always be right, but those truly called of God always have the Holy Spirit and attempt to feed God’s people the truth of God. A false teacher does not advocate the narrow gate and the narrow way, but advances the broad way that leads to destruction — a way filled with wrong doctrine and lax morals.
John R.W. Stott has pointed out that Old Testament false prophets preached a message of optimism — denying that God was a god of judgment — even when God’s true prophets had already announced God’s coming judgment.
The outcome of false teachers is obvious (Matthew 7:19). As they move forward on their own path to destruction, they convince far too many people to follow them. False prophets can be intelligent, well connected, popular and persuasive. Yet we must remember that behind their entire pretense is Satan himself (2 Corinthians 11:11-15).
False teachers are dangerous, but we would miss the point if we began to focus on false teachers instead of seeking first Jesus and His righteousness continually in our lives (Matthew 6:33). As Henry Blackaby pointed out years ago, the best way to recognize the counterfeit is to become so familiar with the truth that what is counterfeit will be obvious.