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The Little Red Riding Hood Church …

• Has abandoned the travelled path of absolute truth for the dangerous forest of feelings and experiences.
• Increasing interest in strange online voices peddling unfamiliar ideas in competition with the familiar and accountable voices of those bringing expositional truth.
  
  

False Teaching is teaching that opposes or contradicts anything the Scriptures assert as truth.

False Teacher (2 Peter 2:1) is by definition someone occupying a Christian teaching office whose teachings intentionally and consistently misinterpret, confuse or contradict Scripture and is therefore masquerading as an official in Christ’s kingdom but is really a fraud – a “pseudodidaskalos.”   
 

6 common characteristics of a false teacher …

1. Look very much like a sheep (2 Cor. 11:13-15; 2 Tim 4:3; 2 Pet. 2:1).

Listen carefully to what they are saying
-undermine true faith
- deny God’s authority (challenge God to an intellectual duel)

2. They are popular – their message even welcomed by unbelievers (2 Pet. 2:2; 1 Jn. 4:4-6).

• The mission is around the popularity of a person
• Particularly dangerous are “broken wolves” who use their brokenness to lead sheep away to a broken gospel without divine power
• Wolves and wolf-loving sheep make Christ (Christianity) look shameful

3. They are greedy (2 Pet. 2:3, 15-16; 1 Tim. 6:5)

Like Balaam (Num. 22), for fame and fortune they will say whatever customers want to hear

- the “God” spiritual customers really want is only loving, never judgmental and a prosperity dispensing machine.

4. They are dishonest (2 Pet. 2:3, 14; Jer. 23:16-18, 25-29)

• Exploiting people by making up stories about their personal audiences with God Almighty and therefore right to prophesy and grace the church with extra-biblical revelation
• Sanitizing self-centredness by twisting Scripture (“you have to love yourself before you can love your neighbour”) making self and pain relief the ultimate Christian quest.
• Leading people to idolatry (destruction) instead of the worship of Christ (salvation)

5. They are arrogant (2 Pet. 2:10; 1 Jn. 4:6; Jude 8, 9).

• Scoffing at the idea that sinning or a careless connection to sins can put someone in the crosshairs of supernatural wickedness
• Willfully ignorant about what they assert (Jas 3:1) and thinking with their glands and not with their minds; as do their followers (brute beasts)
• Will not receive correction from God’s appointed teachers

6. They are all about sensuality (2 Pet. 2:13-16; Jer. 23:11, 14).

• Shamelessly parading illicit pleasures in the open
• Blotted / blemished rather than spotless / blameless
• Eye every woman as a potential score; baiting the vulnerable

Be on your guard …

• False teaching always leads first to moral failure (false living) and then to personal eternal destruction.
• True teachers are gifts to the church (Eph. 4:11); false teachers are a test or a sign of judgment (Jer. 5:20-31; Ezk. 13:1a; 2 Thes. 2:9-12; 1 Tim. 3:3-4; Titus 1:11).
• Reaffirm your commitment to Jesus as the way, truth, life (Jn. 14:6) and to all Scripture being God-breathed (2 Tim. 3:16).