Spotting False Teachers and Scrubbing Old Blogs
By Elizabeth Prata
SYNOPSIS
I discuss the importance of discernment for Christians and the need for training to distinguish between good and evil. I reflect on instances of well-known figures like Billy Graham and Aimee Byrd, who initially appeared sound but later showed false teachings. I emphasize the necessity for ongoing vigilance in spiritual matters.
Discernment is a delicate business. Firstly, all Christians are supposed to train themselves up in discernment. Hebrews 5:14 makes this plain. The writer takes for granted that of course the mature Christian will have done trained constantly:
But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to distinguish between good and evil.
In addition to normal training in discernment, the Lord gave to the church some with a special sense of discernment. These people have received the Spiritual Gift of distinguishing between good and evil. Usually it means being able to detect “something off” in a certain teacher’s teaching, or a blossoming movement, earlier than the mature Christians. Eventually we all see the issue, it’s just that the people with the gift of discernment have earlier detection capabilities. We are the smoke alarm for the body.
Thirdly, discernment means making judgment calls after prayer, study, comparing to the Bible, looking at the obvious fruit, then warning fellow Christians. This is tricky. Some false teachers hide their false ways better than others.
There is a famous story about two friends, Charles Templeton and Billy Graham. In the 1940s the friends both came forward as evangelists. It was Templeton that everyone thought would ‘turn the world upside down’ with his preaching and fervor. Sadly, he soon apostatized, rejected God completely, and cemented this with his book “Farewell to God.” He started in the 1940s and was gone from the faith by 1957.
Templeton’s apostasy seed blossomed right away. However, Graham was also a false teacher who slowly, incrementally, rejected Christ, but not overtly like Templeton did. Graham remained in the wider sphere of Christendom’s good graces until his end. However, Graham was also false. He just hid his false ideas and thoughts well throughout his public life.
Francis Chan was trained at The Master’s Seminary, the gold standard of seminaries and the most doctrinally solid in the world. However, soon after Chan graduated, he made some questionable statements…started aligning with false teachers…and gravitated to Catholicism. Chan’s drift from orthodoxy was easy to spot, but at first he seemed good.
So did Aimee Byrd. She was even co-host on the podcast Mortification of Spin with the super-solid Carl Trueman and Todd Pruitt. She was THE “Housewife Theologian”. She was touted, her books were promoted, and she was a cause célèbre for female theologians. Until she suddenly rejected foundational gender roles, became unteachble, lacked humility, and switched to a female-led “church”. Her slide only took about 7 years. But initially, she was recommended, even by me.
I’ve been in the discernment sphere on the blog for almost 17 years. It’s probable that someone I might have recommended early on turns out to be a false teacher. I go back and scrub those recommendations. Like when Josh Buice was outed as a lying hypocrite, I deleted my G3 recommendations of his essays and sermons. A reader today found an old blog with a recommendation for Jen Wilkin. Jen Wilkin had a good book in 2014. Then she started teaching men, twisting God’s word, and became (as they say) “gyno-centric”. and I was glad she let me know about the old recommendation. I went back and deleted that one I’d overlooked when scrubbing her off the ‘good list’.
It’s sad to see the fall of these teachers. I was never surprised by Billy Graham, but I was fooled by Josh Buice. Steve Lawson was a nasty surprise. I’m sure there are still one or two positive mentions of him on the blog here and there. But his adultery and years-long lying to one and all, especially his family, means I am not positive on him any more.
I was high on Aimee Byrd, until she rejected female roles and switched to a church with a female preacher. Seventeen years is a long time to be blogging regularly, but it is not a long time in Christian life. It’s shocking to see that once I add them up, how many ‘Christian teachers’ or pastors have fallen below reproach. Be killing sin or sin be killing you, said Puritan John Owen.
But we should not be surprised. Jesus told us onver and over that wolves will come in sheeo’s clothing. Some we may be able to detect early, some later, others not at all until the judgment.
Demas is one example. Of course, Judas is another. Demas fell out early, but Judas fooled everyone (except Jesus) until the end. Years ago, some discerners used to make lists of teachers to avoid due to their unbiblical lifestyles or doctrine. But the acceleration of false teachers made such lists impossible to keep up with. Jesus asked rhetorically, when the Son of Man comes back, will He find faith upon the earth? He urges individual perseverance, yet promises to keep His own.
Our task, then, is always to keep ourselves growing in His faith with discernment, and to keep comparing what any teachers we submit to or follow, are rightly dividing the Word.
If you see an older essay of mine with a suspicious recommendation, let me know. It is more than likely it escaped my scrubbing when they fell. It really is amazing how many fall. But more amazing that Jesus keeps His own, despite our faults and stumbles!
