Colossians 2: 16-19:
Therefore, do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ. Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you. Such a person also goes into great detail about what they have seen; they are puffed up with idle notions by their unspiritual mind. They have lost connection with the head, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow.
The internet, air and radio waves are drowning in false teachers and false prophets. Go to your favorite social media site and search for prophesy and you will find enough material to waste a month. Go to your nearest Christian bookstore, or even a general bookstore for that matter, and you are sure to find hundreds or even thousands of “spiritual” books espousing every prophetic, theological and eschatological flavor under the sun. There is a lot of money to be made through the writing, publishing and selling of books. There is also a lot of money to be made through having some podcast or other form of internet forum if you can get enough people and businesses to sponsor you. It seems like everyone wants a piece of the action! Nobody wants to work anymore, especially the younger generation. They all want to have a podcast and sit in front of a computer with a camera and be “influencers”. If the entire next generation all want to be “influencers” there will be no one trained to fix our cars, HVAC systems, plumbing and all the things required for a functioning society when they break down. And I don’t know if you have noticed this, but stuff breaks. We all depend on stuff, and it breaks. If the entire generation all want to be “influencers” who will grow the crops? Maybe they all need to be “influenced” to get off their rear ends and go to work!
With all this cacophony, we must learn to spot the phonies, and not be distracted and led astray by them. Our attention seems to be captivated by the desire to know hidden things. It makes us feel superior. It makes us feel like we understand things on a deeper level than most people. We are all capable of falling prey to this because of our intellectual pride. There is some weird stuff being taught under the guise of Christianity. The old fashion word for this is simply heresy. Heresy has always existed since the inception of Christianity. It hasn’t really changed that much, it is just rebranded and repackaged as something “new and innovative”, but most of it is just the same garbage being spouted by the most recent class of charlatans. This is what Paul had to contend with, and we must contend with it as well.
One of the things we need to keep in mind as we read the letters of the apostle Paul is that Paul and the rest of Jesus’s disciples background was in Judaism. The Church of Jesus Christ was birthed out of a Jewish religious and cultural backdrop. Because this was so, Paul often had to battle against Jewish rituals and customs infiltrating the Church and needlessly distracting believers from the simplicity of their faith in Jesus Christ as Savior of the world. There are many laws in the Old Testament about things that can and can’t be eaten. Most of this had to do with ritual cleanliness. There were, and still are, in current day Judaism, the practice of observing and celebrating certain days representing acknowledgment of things that happened in Israel’s history. These serve as reminders of things God had done for, and through the nation of Israel. While we can appreciate their significance and use them as reminders of history, Paul did not want the new Christians getting caught up in the legality of all these things and getting distracted from the central tenets of the Christian faith regarding the lordship of Jesus Christ, and the universal truth of Christ being the Savior of mankind from our sin. This helps us understand what Paul is saying to the people of Colossae and how it relates to us.
Paul says that these were a shadow of the things that were to come. In other words, they were preparatory. They were sign posts pointing to the revelation to come. Road signs are important for getting us to our destination, but once that destination has been reached, we don’t need to go into reverse to go back and look at the signs again. They have served their purpose. Paul is not negating the significance of these things, he is simply saying they are no longer needed, so they should not now serve as a distraction. The destination is Christ. They had reached the time of Christ.
Next, what Paul has to say is very important, and it can certainly apply to us today. “Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you. Such a person also goes into great detail about what they have seen; they are puffed up with idle notions by their unspiritual mind.” So, what does he mean by “false humility”? In today’s vernacular, that can be compared to what we refer to as “virtue signaling”. To put it simply, virtue signaling is when you pretend to care about some social issue for the purpose of impressing others. Take for example a person who posts on social media about social injustice. They can go on long tirades about the evils of social injustice, but when you examine their life, they may be doing absolutely nothing to improve social justice in their practical, day to day life among those around them that they interact with. It’s all for show. A politician will say everything he thinks his audience wants to hear to win their votes, but once elected, do nothing to accomplish all the things he has promised. His goal is not to, for example, “fix the educational system”. Even though “fixing the educational system” may be the goal of the voters, the goal of the politician is to get the votes of those who want the educational system to be fixed. Once he gets the vote, he has accomplished his goal.
“The worship of angels”… I have seen so many videos on YouTube of so-called prophets of God who claim to have had encounters with angels and been given revelations from angels. I believe that this is demonic deception of the highest sort. Study the history of false religions: Most of them claim some kind of angelic revelation. True evil is not obvious. Satan masquerades as an angel of light, as the scripture says. There is no end to false prophets on the internet today. Many people within the modern day “prophetic renewal” camp claim that the criteria for judging the validity of the modern day “prophet” is not as strict as it was in the Old Testament. Some of the modern-day prophetic teachers state that a new prophet can, in fact, get it wrong some of the time. This is hogwash. The Old Testament test of the prophet still stands. If he or she gets it wrong, they are a false prophet, plain and simple. Nothing has changed.
Just because a person experiences something supernatural does not mean it came from God. The Bible is full of instances of the supernatural. Sometimes, but not often, it is instigated by God. Whenever God initiates something supernatural, it is for the accomplishing of His purpose. Many times supernatural occurrences are initiated by Satan, or demons for the purpose of creating deception, evil and chaos, or simply for the purpose of distracting people from God’s real truth.
Over the last several decades there have occurred many so-called revivals, such as Brownsville, Toronto, etc., where, supposedly, through the outpouring of the spirit, (what spirit?) people have done all kinds of bizarre things such as uncontrollable laughter, barking like dogs, rolling around in the floor, ( “ being slain in the spirit” as it is called.) People have said things like they feel like liquid fire is being poured through them, rivers are flowing through them, tingely feelings in their skin, and on and on it goes. There are even some people now who claim that, through the spirit, they can transcend space and time, Time travel in other words, like a Christianized version of Dr. Who. There is nothing scriptural to substantiate these bizarre claims and occurrences. There is nothing in these situations where Jesus Christ is exalted as Lord and Savior. There is no move of repentance. It is all sensationalistic “experience”. An over-emphasis on the supernatural, and “experiences” should be a serious red flag for any sound minded Christian who wants to understand the truth
“Experience” must never be the basis for determining the validity of the spiritual. Experiences happen in the flesh. The flesh can be manipulated by demonic forces. The Word of God must be the measure for all things. These strange occurrences described in many of these meetings are like the ecstatic experiences people have in Hinduism and the occult, not church. There is nothing of this nature described in Scripture. Read of Isaiah’s encounter with the living God. He was initially terrified because his own sin was naked in the eyes of the holy God. Most of the time when people experience God directly, it produces fear, not giddiness and goose bumps! And it certainly does not produce dog like barking and out of control hysterical laughter. That sounds like the product of too much mushroom consumption, not an encounter with the living God!
Paul warns us of such nonsense. He says people who fall prey to this behavior are “puffed up with idle notions by their unspiritual mind. They have lost connection with the head, (CHRIST) from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow.” God’s purpose for us is holiness and righteousness, not bizarre esoteric experience. Anything that does not move to accomplish that is heresy of the highest order. We assess the validity of our own character, and the character of others by the evidence of the fruit of the spirit, not by displays of supernatural power (which can be demonic), or the manifestation of ecstatic experiences.
Paul has more to say about the influx of false prophesies and heretical teachings that were a problem in his day and have continued until today. Let’s look at 2 Thessalonians chapter 2:9-12:
The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie, and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.
Scripture makes in clear in many places that as we near the end of the age, supernatural occurrences will increase. To the misguided zeal of the hyper-charismatic, this will be interpreted as proof of the power of God and His Church increasing, when, in fact it is the exact opposite. It is rather the manifestation of the increase of demonic activity. We need to understand this so we will not be lead astray and led into heresy and apostacy. What appears to be miraculous may just be fake, or it may be actual demonic activity. The fruit of the Spirit can’t be faked. That is how we assess truth. May God grant you understanding in these things and guard your heart and mind until the coming of Christ and the restoration of all things.
Danny's Stump 