The Risk of Tolerating False Prophets in the Church
By Elizabeth Prata
SYNOPSIS
In Thyatira, a woman identified as a false prophetess, referred to as “Jezebel,” was leading the church into sin and idolatry, which Jesus condemned. Despite the church’s loving deeds, it tolerated her harmful teachings, risking its spiritual purity. This ultimately contributed to the church’s decline by the second century, and gives us in this century lessons to learn.
There was an actual woman Jesus designated as a false prophetess who was corrupting the church at Thyatira. He also condemned the church for tolerating her! We know from the previous Bible examples that there will be again a type of false prophetess who corrupts the church.
You can read this in Revelation 2:18-29.
Jesus’s letter regarding Thyatira was the longest of the seven. It enumerates a number of issues with that church. I’ll focus on the teachings of the false prophetess who was corrupting the sheep.
This Thyatiran church was tolerating sin and idolatry (also sexual immorality). Worse, it was tolerating a woman teacher who was promoting idolatry and not only were they tolerating it, but she had risen to such a point of prominence so that Jesus called her “Jezebel” (who was a queen who led the people into idolatry and immorality, and an eternal emblem of embodied rebellion). She was also prophesying in His name- falsely!
Now, it should be noted that this corruption was coming from a woman inside the church who was teaching the brethren, not from an outside influence. She was regarded as a sister in the faith. A prominent sister. So much so that she was given to teach and had gathered quite a few around her who were followers of her false teaching. The rest were tolerating it.
Also notice the verse says that ‘she calls herself a prophetess’. Prophets must be called by Jesus, but this woman just launched in and uttered things that Jesus did not say or tell her to say. He hates that.
God wants a pure church. He wants Jesus to have a holy and virginal bride, and toleration of idolatry and false teaching is the opposite of that. This church at Thyatira was mightily besmirched.
However, to complicate matters, the verse in Rev. 2:19 says “as for your works, the last are more than the first.” They were loving, working and doing more that they had at the first. This makes it incredibly hard to separate the sinful idolatry from the loving works. They were not loveless, but they were tolerating sin, which is loveless. The unaddressed sin would eventually eat them up. By the second century there was no church at Thyatira any more. It had died. So obviously loving works alone are not enough to carry a church through. There must be solid doctrine and discerning elders properly identifying false doctrine and rooting it out.
In Thyatira, they were tolerating a false teaching and false propheying. They were accepting of a woman who had taken a place of leadership in teaching, she was preaching and prophesying which is forbidden to women in the church. The church congregation was tolerating these evils. Though the verse above calls them out for eating foods sacrificed to idols, nowadays, we do not sacrifice food to idols. However the notion there was of spiritual adultery, and spiritual adultery is certainly an issue today.
Lifestyle purity and doctrinal purity are both important. Paul wrote to Timothy about this, that as a leader he should monitor himself on both those spheres, but it’s good advice for the non-leader/layman too. 1 Timothy 4:16 says, Pay close attention to yourself and to the teaching; persevere in these things, for as you do this you will save both yourself and those who hear you.
