The apostle Paul gave a prediction that has proved true over and over again. He said, “The time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.” (2 Timothy 4:3-4)
We are living in such a time. The world is full of false teachers who try to infiltrate churches. Many are successful and those who don’t disrupt churches internally, often start new churches that allow them to invent new ways to mislead people.
The need for discernment is great because now politicians are cutting in on the false teaching.
They are seeking to use God’s holy word to convince people to support their causes. It doesn’t matter if the causes are abhorrent and completely opposed to the teaching of Scripture. If they can find a verse and pull it out of context, then their hope is there will be some people who will be fooled by the veneer of spirituality and vote to support their “religious” cause.
One verse that has been ripped from it’s original context is Luke 12:48. This passage takes place at the Sermon on the Mount, when Jesus was talking to the crowds about the Kingdom of Heaven, not about the need to raise taxes. But that doesn’t stop some politicians from quoting the following words to justify the need for a tax increase, “Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required.” The original context is not referring to sacrificing for the local government. It is referring to sacrificing spiritually for God!
At the root of this problem, there seems to be the belief that governments can replace God’s influence in the world. While living in Albania I learned that one of the strategies of Enver Hoxha’s brutal regime was to replace the Ten Commandments of the Bible with the 10 Commandments of Communism. I talked to a pastor who remembered going to a room in a government building where he had to agree with the newly invented moral code. This type of false teaching is easy to discern for those who know Scripture, but for the generations that grew up in the atheistic society, they would have had nothing to compare it to.
Our society is becoming less moral and people are not only becoming less literate, but more importantly, they are becoming less Biblically literate. Once this happens their ability to discern between truth and error is considerably weakened. I believe this is one reason why we are seeing more politicians trying to use Scripture because they know less people understand it is being used out of context.
An example of this was when Nancy Pelosi tried to use Matthew 25:35 to support a massive $40 billion aid bill that included billions of dollars in weapons and security costs. She said, “So when you are home thinking, ‘What is what this is all about?’ – just think about ‘when I was hungry, you fed me’ in the Gospel of Matthew.” If people had actually stopped to find the quote and read what Jesus said, they would realize what a twisted use of Scripture that was.
More recently, the governor has decided to venture into the detestable practice of misusing Scripture for political gain. One of the political ads for his 2022 campaign for governor tries to use Mark 12:31 to support his view on abortion, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no greater commandment than these.”
The ad doesn’t even include the first commandment which states, “‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
It is clear from the context that love is not defined by men or women in the passage. It is defined by God! How is someone supposed to love God? With all their heart and with all their soul and with all their mind and with all their strength. If someone is not doing the first part of the command, they will not be able to do the second, which is about loving others.
The context of the campaign ad is completely opposed to the message of Scripture because it implies that someone can love others by supporting abortion. Excuse me? How is it possible to
take a quote from a book that teaches that life begins at conception and use it to support abortion? Just read Psalm 139:13-16 the next time there is any confusion about the abortion debate, “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.”
To the discerning Christian, using any Scripture to support abortion immediately signals the existence of false teaching. Not only that, it signals the need to pray for those who are misusing Scripture. In Matthew 18:5-6 Jesus gave a stern warning to those who would seek to mislead the children of God. It says, “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.” Jesus’ harshest words were saved for those who knew the teaching of Scripture and yet chose to use it for personal gain. My prayer is that all who read this will recognize that we have been warned and if we must be honest with ourselves. If we have sinned, may we seek repentance and forgiveness. God is able to forgive. 1 John 1:9-10 says, “If we confess our sins he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
