Tonight I experienced something that I had hoped that I wouldn’t face on this race, or perhaps in my lifetime. I met a false teacher. His name, for the spiritual safety of the Zambian people who may read this blog, remains unchanged. He is Gordon the guitar player staying at the Kalulu Backpackers Hostel.
We met him in the kitchen when we were making dinner for our team. Well, I was sitting outside at a table. I overheard him talking to a few of my teammates, Dillon, Tara, and Carly. I heard him referencing a verse over and over, which was Hebrews 10:26-27 “For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.” This man went on to say something along these lines: “If you sin knowingly, after you have been saved there is no place for you in heaven, and are bound to hell.” But he failed to recognize the difference between sinning willfully and sinning knowingly. He based his definition on another verse: “And Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’ And they cast lots to divide his garments.” (Luke 23:34) Gordon said that, along with the verse where Paul talks about sinning in ignorance, we see that the only “forgivable” sin is the sin done unknowingly.
Obviously, my teammates and I admitted to sinning knowingly since we became saved. Once we told him this, he continued to try to make his point, but never got around to making a solid statement. We tried to argue that, if what he said is true, then NO ONE will ever be in heaven and the Gospel of Christ is for nothing, meaningless. Except of course, for Gordon, because he hasn’t sinned in the past year of his “Christianity”. We continued to pry into his theology, trying to find the basis of his arguments, and where they originate from. When we asked about his past, he said that he would not tell us unless we accepted his “truth”. We asked what church he was a part of, so maybe we could research it further. He said he had none. We asked him who his teacher was, and we got the same answer, no one. We gave him many many verses that showed what he said wasn’t true, but he kept going back to his few verses out of context, claiming truth.
I have never gone through a spiritual battle that intense. The four of us racers in the kitchen could feel it. There was nothing natural going on in that kitchen aside from the soup cooking in our pot and someone’s milk spoiling in the fridge. I was on edge. Everything was off. I felt as though I was being attacked, but also as though I was being defended.
Brothers and sisters, this man is a false teacher. Gordon built his theology on one verse.
“The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Certain persons, by swerving from these, have wandered away into vain discussion, desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions.”
1 Timothy 1:5-7
Gordon could make this same argument about us. But there is a difference. He has only studied several verses and not gone deeper. Had he gone deeper, he would have soon realized that the purpose of the letter to the Hebrews was to encourage them, and explain that the old covenant, which required sacrifice for sins, was perfectly and eternally covered by Christ’s death on the cross. Had he gone deeper, he would have read Romans 7:13-20 and discovered that it is the sin living in us, our fleshly desires that make us to sin.
My team and I experienced an attack meant to discourage us and instill doubt in our minds. But that is good news. It means we are close to something that the devil does not want us near, and we have our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ on our side.
Blessings from Zambia
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