551. A Warning from the Ancients

Women World Leaders' Podcast

There’s a reason the New Testament has so many warnings against false teaching. Join host Julie Harwick for a comparison between the church we see in Acts and the church we know today that shows how quickly we can get off base.

****

Welcome to Women World Leaders podcast. I’m your host, Julie Harwick. Thank you for joining me today as we celebrate God’s grace in our lives, in this ministry and around the world.

I recently had the opportunity to visit three of my bucket list places and God used it to teach me some valuable spiritual lessons in a way I hadn’t anticipated. History has always fascinated me and especially as it pertains to the bible, so when I found a good deal on an Eastern Mediterranean cruise, I jumped at the chance to visit Athens, Rome and Ephesus. Israel is at the very top of my bucket list and I had hoped to go back in 2021, but thanks to Covid that never came to be. And since October 7th, the prospect of visiting any time soon doesn’t seem very good either. But there are plenty of important biblical events that took place in the three ancient cities our cruise visited.

I was especially eager to see Ephesus since I had heard that it held some of the best-preserved ancient ruins in the world. We were to see where the Apostle John was believed to be buried and where Mary, the mother of Jesus had lived under John’s care. We would see the temple of Artemis where the book Acts details a near riot that broke out because of Paul’s preaching in Ephesus. When John wrote the book of Revelation, he praised the church at Ephesus for standing firm in their faith despite false teachers and many hardships. But he also admonished them for forsaking the love for Christ that they had once had.

We walked for hours among the ruins of homes, government buildings, temples, baths, the second largest library of the ancient world and a massive amphitheater. I was awed to think that I was walking the very path that John and Mary had probably walked together a thousand times and I was seeing what they saw. But my spirit was uneasy when I entered the small stone house believed to be where Mary lived and I was encouraged to light a candle and pray to her. After walking through her home we came to a spigot of water coming out of a stone wall which was believed to have healing properties because of its location near her home. I have tremendous respect for the woman chosen by God to bear and raise His son. That honor sets her apart as an example for all women to emulate, but it doesn’t make her divine or worthy of our worship. When we reached the tomb where the disciple Jesus loved was thought to be buried, it was surrounded by the remains of what had once been an extremely ornate, costly shrine. Somehow, it didn’t seem like the appropriate resting place for the simple fisherman who had stood at the foot of the cross when all the other disciples were in hiding and had given the next 70 years of his life to spreading the gospel to anyone who would listen.

In Rome we visited the catacombs, a series of underground tombs where early Christians were buried and believed to have hidden during times of persecution. Our guide was well-educated but made it clear that he saw no difference between the faith of these early believers and the pagans that preceded them. To him, their beliefs seemed equally rooted in nothing but fantasy. He theorized that the early Christians who suffered persecution under tyrants like Nero were the first to be buried in these tombs. Because they were martyrs, they were considered to be particularly special to God and therefore would be among the first to be resurrected. Christians who came after them wanted to be buried near them to improve their chances of being among the first to be resurrected. I’m not sure if that’s actually true, but if it is, it smacks of pagan superstition, not solid biblical teaching. At the Vatican, we were told about the holy doors. Every 25 years, the Vatican declares a Jubilee in which 4 holy doors located in four different basilicas in Rome are opened to symbolize that God is calling people to repentance and to a new life of grace. They represent His mercy which is available to all. So far, I like this idea, but here’s where it goes off the rails. Pilgrims from all over the world come to walk through these doors because they will be granted a plenary indulgence – also known as a free pass to heaven. The Vatican still teaches that repentance and forgiveness will assure anyone a place in heaven, but walking through the holy doors will eliminate any time required in purgatory where the forgiven are theoretically still required to pay for their sins. Please don’t interpret this as an attack on the Catholic Church. I was born into a Catholic family, made my first communion and attended five years of catechism, but when I learned to read the bible for myself, I could find nothing in it supporting the ideas of purgatory or indulgences. The biblical account of the thief crucified next to Jesus who repented of his sins and acknowledged Jesus’ divinity from his place on the cross proves otherwise. Jesus responded to him saying, “today you will be with me in paradise.” The thief freely admitted that he had led a sinful life and yet Jesus assured him that only paradise at His side awaited him immediately after death.

So where did the Christian faith get some of these extrabiblical ideas? Our trip to Athens shed some light on it. The Acropolis is the number one site to visit in Athens and it is impressive. Set high on a hill, it contains the remains of multiple temples: the Parthenon, built to honor Athena, the city’s namesake, another for Nike, now known as the goddess of running shoes, the Erechtheion which celebrates Athena’s victory over Poseidon and the temple of Zeus. The Apostle Paul noticed the same thing when he visited the city noting that Athens was full of idols including an object of worship dedicated to the “unknown god.” He used this fact in his conversation with the local philosophers and great thinkers to introduce them to their “unknown god” who was actually the one true God. So much of the New Testament deals with issues surrounding idol worship and points out the foolishness of worshipping something that had to be fashioned by human hands. Because we don’t really see people worshipping idols of wood or stone, my attitude has always been, “well duh – that seems pretty obvious.” But when you consider how prevalent it was to worship multiple gods represented as marble, stone or wooden figures in Greek, Roman and other cultures of that time, you realize that they were as blind to it as we are to the worship of material possessions, personal luxuries, leisure time and status.

It seems that no matter where or when you live, Satan works hard to influence the culture to embrace idols and eagerly adopt false teaching.

The New Testament is full of examples showing how easily false teaching and pagan ideas could infiltrate the early church. When the Apostle John wrote 1st, 2nd and 3rd John, his purpose was to combat the false teaching of Greek philosophers that had made its way into the local church. Gnosticism was a widely practiced and accepted theology at the time. Its focus was on the root word, gnosis, or knowledge and the thinking was that knowledge was the key to everything. Certain people could attain “special knowledge,” that others didn’t have and attaining that knowledge was far more important than anything else. They believed that the body and the spirit were two separate things, so what you did with your body had no impact on your spirit or your relationship with God. Many in the church were buying into these ideas, embracing every kind of sin and seeking a mystical, emotional experience. John addressed the heresy directly in 1 John chapter 3 saying, “ Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. The one who does what is right is righteous, just as He is righteous. The one who does what is sinful is of the devil.” His closing words in chapter 5 reminded the church what kind of knowledge was really important, and how it would impact their actions. “We know that we are the children of God and the whole world is under the control of the evil one. We know also that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know Him Who is true. And we are in Him Who is true by being in His Son, Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life. Dear children, keep yourselves from idols.”

Warnings about false teaching was a pervasive theme in Peter’s second letter to the church. He reminded them that just as there were many false prophets among the prophets of the Old Testament, they could expect to experience the same thing, explaining, “They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Sovereign Lord who bought them – bringing swift destruction on themselves. Many will follow their depraved conduct and will bring the way of truth into disrepute.”

Peter was in a unique position to understand the dangers of false teaching, having been accused of it himself. This is one of the things I love about the bible – it makes no effort to conceal or gloss over the failings or controversies of its’ subjects. I’m referring to a dispute between Peter and Paul. Paul’s ministry was focused toward the Gentiles, but Peter worked among Jews who recognized Jesus as the Messiah. They never stopped being Jews, they just believed that Jesus was the final Passover lamb meant to not just cover, but actually remove the stain of mankind’s sin. As a Jew himself, Peter was accustomed to following the Law, but God gave him a vision showing him that he no longer needed to worry about keeping the Law in regard to what he ate or with whom he associated. God made it clear that all who received Christ’s payment for their sins were justified by that alone, not by keeping the Law. He immediately sent a Gentile, Cornelius, to invite Peter to his home to preach the gospel. Previously, Peter would not have been free to enter a Gentile’s home, but now that he was, he did it frequently, eating with Gentiles and teaching them. As time went by, many of the Jews who followed Jesus became uncomfortable with this new freedom and began adhering to traditional Jewish dietary restrictions and even preaching that Gentile converts needed to be circumcised. Peter didn’t speak against this teaching and began distancing himself from the Gentiles. The Apostle Paul called him out on it and relates the story in Galatians chapter 2. “When Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him in public because he was clearly wrong. Before some men who had been sent by James arrived there, Peter had been eating with the Gentile believers. But after these men arrived, he drew back and would not eat with the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who were in favor of circumcising them. The other Jewish believers also started acting like cowards along with Peter. When I saw that they were not walking a straight path in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter in front of them all, ‘You are a Jew and yet you have been living like a Gentile, not like a Jew. How then, can you force Gentiles to live like Jews? Indeed we are Jews by birth and not ‘Gentile sinners,’ as they are called. Yet we know that a person is put right with God only through faith in Jesus Christ, never by doing what the Law requires.’” Ouch! That had to be hard for Peter to hear. Who could’ve imagined that Paul, the former persecutor of the church, would have to rebuke Peter, who had dropped his fishing nets, left his boat and followed Jesus without a moment’s hesitation. The one who’d had his name changed by Jesus to Peter, because his recognition of Who Jesus really was would serve as the foundation for the entire church. The only disciple brave enough to step out of the boat and actually walk on water with Jesus! If Peter could fall victim to false teaching how much more susceptible are we? It’s no wonder that the current Church of Jesus Christ bears so little resemblance to the Church described in the book of Acts. And even those early believers who may have even had the privilege of walking with Jesus Himself, had to be educated and corrected time and time again. The New Testament is full of such examples and no doubt God inspired the Apostles to address false teaching so much, knowing how important it would be for all believers, from the Church’s beginnings to the day of His return. So many New Testament authors caution us to “beware.” But Timothy, who trained under Paul, gave us some of the best advice in 2 Timothy 2:15. “Study and be eager and do your utmost to present yourself to God as an approved workman, who has no cause to be ashamed, correctly analyzing and accurately handling the Word of Truth.” We need to be in God’s Word daily, not just reading words, but studying them, analyzing them, asking the Holy Spirit to enable us to accurately interpret and apply them. In addition to the spiritual armor God gave us that’s described in Ephesians 6, He gave us a single offensive weapon: the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. We live in a spiritually dangerous world, so let’s make sure we’re always ready to use the only weapon we’ll ever need.

Thanks for listening to Women World Leaders podcast! Join us each week as we explore together God’s extravagant love and your courageous purpose. Visit our website at womenworldleaders.com to submit a prayer request, register for an upcoming event, and support the ministry. From His heart to yours, we are Women World Leaders . All content is copyrighted by Women World Leaders and cannot be used without written consent.