Who among this list is a false teacher

icedragon101 said:

none of those guy are false teacher, in the sense that they are not christian, they may be wrong on a point here or there but not inherently false

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Truth and falsehood can be relatively slippery things. I see it as a continuum in regard to individuals. At one end is the Lord Jesus Christ, who could not speak anything but truth and at the other end is Satan, who is the father of lies. In between are people, none of whom are capable of speaking truth all of the time and few of whom intentionally lie and deceive all of the time. The standard by which spiritual truth and falsehood are discerned is the Bible.

iLearn said:

Do they act like ravenous wolves?
Seeking after what you have? your hard-earned income?
Tithing is compulsory?
Those who are after money are false teachers.

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good questions friend.

Blaise N said:

Hi everyone,

I’d like to ask the community a theological question.So I remember in scripture it speaks of apostasy in two different ways,it speaks of the variant where someone abandons faith and the other is falling away into believing false teachers,gospels,and pastors

Now for awhile now I’ve read advice from many sources,but I occasionally come across some accusing others of false teachings and what not.Some calling out others on their teachings.My main concern and worry is that I may have committed apostasy by accepting advice from a false teacher.and my concern is can someone who previously followed a false teacher repent? Here is a list of people in question:

-John MacArthur
-John Piper
-RC Sproul
-Billy Graham
-James Dobson
-David Jeremiah


Could someone help?

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The best source is the Bible. This is God's words directly to you.

2 Timothy 3:16-17
16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Hebrews 4:12
For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.

What could better or truer than that?

To know if they are true you would need to know everything they believed and compare it back to-the Bible. To do this means you need to know the Bible first.

Some ways of spotting false teaching
7 Traits of False Teachers
The best way to spot false teaching is to know your Bible then you will hear the false teaching as it leaves their mouths. This does not mean every teacher is perfect, they will make mistakes, we all do. But making a mistake over something is different to a list of red flags like this.

coffee4u said:

The best source is the Bible. This is God's words directly to you.

2 Timothy 3:16-17
16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Hebrews 4:12
For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.

What could better or truer than that?

To know if they are true you would need to know everything they believed and compare it back to-the Bible. To do this means you need to know the Bible first.

Some ways of spotting false teaching
7 Traits of False Teachers
The best way to spot false teaching is to know your Bible then you will hear the false teaching as it leaves their mouths. This does not mean every teacher is perfect, they will make mistakes, we all do. But making a mistake over something is different to a list of red flags like this.

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bbbbbbb said:

Quite true. The means by which we can discern falsehood from truth is the Bible, the Word of God. Thus, it is essential that a believer be deeply engaged in knowing the Word in order to sort out good from bad teachers. We must be like the Bereans - searching the Word daily to see if these things are true.

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It's one of the great weaknesses of modern Christianity. Once it was intellectual and sterile, but it was truth without life. Now the emphasis in on experiences. Emotional hype has replaced intellect but there is still little life. It's more deceptive as a result. People can feel good and mistake that for the Holy Spirit. The problem is that they go home from a meeting as empty as they came in. Ice cream is nice but you can't live on it. Many places are not even dishing up milk. So the people are suffering spiritual malnutrition and they don't realise it.

Albion said:

Do you not have a church/congregation to which you belong and which teaches from the Bible?

The idea of shopping around among a list of TV preachers and trying to decide between what's said by one of them on any given day and what's said by another in a different telecast seems guaranteed to cause anxiety.

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If you live in Australia, Christ centred and Bible based churches are like hen's teeth. I listen to one or two TV preachers, Bayless Conley being top of my list. He's the pastor of Cottonwood, Los Angeles. I like to watch Derek Prince also. He passed away a long time ago but he is very sound.

Blaise N said:

Hi everyone,

I’d like to ask the community a theological question.So I remember in scripture it speaks of apostasy in two different ways,it speaks of the variant where someone abandons faith and the other is falling away into believing false teachers,gospels,and pastors

Now for awhile now I’ve read advice from many sources,but I occasionally come across some accusing others of false teachings and what not.Some calling out others on their teachings.My main concern and worry is that I may have committed apostasy by accepting advice from a false teacher.and my concern is can someone who previously followed a false teacher repent? Here is a list of people in question:

-John MacArthur
-John Piper
-RC Sproul
-Billy Graham
-James Dobson
-David Jeremiah


Could someone help?

Click to expand...

On a positive note, you may find this helpful. If you live in Australia, Christ centred and Bible based churches are like hen's teeth. I listen to a couple of TV preachers, Bayless Conley being top of my list. He's the pastor of Cottonwood, Los Angeles. I like to watch Derek Prince also. He passed away a long time ago but he is very sound. His organisation is still going and his teaching still available.

Aussie Pete said:

It's one of the great weaknesses of modern Christianity. Once it was intellectual and sterile, but it was truth without life. Now the emphasis in on experiences. Emotional hype has replaced intellect but there is still little life. It's more deceptive as a result. People can feel good and mistake that for the Holy Spirit. The problem is that they go home from a meeting as empty as they came in. Ice cream is nice but you can't live on it. Many places are not even dishing up milk. So the people are suffering spiritual malnutrition and they don't realise it.

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Quite true. Thank you.

Benny Hinn and Kenneth Copeland

Blaise N said:

Hi everyone,

I’d like to ask the community a theological question.So I remember in scripture it speaks of apostasy in two different ways,it speaks of the variant where someone abandons faith and the other is falling away into believing false teachers,gospels,and pastors

Now for awhile now I’ve read advice from many sources,but I occasionally come across some accusing others of false teachings and what not.Some calling out others on their teachings.My main concern and worry is that I may have committed apostasy by accepting advice from a false teacher.and my concern is can someone who previously followed a false teacher repent? Here is a list of people in question:

-John MacArthur
-John Piper
-RC Sproul
-Billy Graham
-James Dobson
-David Jeremiah


Could someone help?

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To be honest, I wouldn't include Dobson in that list insofar as he really isn't by intent a Bible teacher. (Full disclosure: not a fan...) That said, you're really not in danger of apostasy by listening to him.

The other five guys are pretty sound. As a Wesleyan, I'd have some doctrinal disagreements with Piper, MacArthur, and Sproul while at the same time recognizing that these men are sound in the Scriptures and the basics of the Christian faith. I'd be happy to listen to them, as the areas where I'd disagree with them are secondary doctrines and thus not a doctrinal hill to die on.

I don't think I have ever heard of James Dobson nor David Jeremiah, but the rest of them are well respected.

I think they are all wonderful pastors. The ones I would look out for are people like Joel Osteen who obviously twist scripture for personal gain.

And also honestly there are times when I go overboard with thinking every word from a pastors mouth has to align with my way of thinking. There are times when I'm guilty of overdoing it. A pastor once said something about not liking cats and I had to repent of judging him solely on that. ( I am a cat lover). My point is there is always something we disagree with because Pastors are people, but is it a doctrine issue clearly addressed in the Bible we disagree with or small views on something maybe not important.

Aussie Pete said:

On a positive note, you may find this helpful. If you live in Australia, Christ centred and Bible based churches are like hen's teeth. I listen to a couple of TV preachers, Bayless Conley being top of my list. He's the pastor of Cottonwood, Los Angeles. I like to watch Derek Prince also. He passed away a long time ago but he is very sound. His organisation is still going and his teaching still available.

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I have been blessed by going to Cottonwood.

PloverWing said:

I disagree fiercely with some of the beliefs of a couple of people on that list, but I wouldn't label any of them as "apostate" or a "false teacher". As far as I can tell, they all intend to be following Jesus and to be preaching the message of Jesus as best as they understand it. Where I disagree with them, I would prefer to label them as "a Christian with whom I disagree" or "a Christian who is mistaken about some things".

If at one point you thought they were correct, and now you have come to disagree with them, I don't think there's any need for repentance. Simply acknowledge that you have changed your mind in light of new information, and be grateful for the opportunity to have learned new things.

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Recently it has become clear that of the people on that list, John MacArthur is clearly a Nestorian, so I feel compelled to withdraw my endorsement of him. I was already troubled by how he treated Hank Haanegraaf when he converted to Eastern Orthodoxy with his family while battling cancer, with MacArthur accusing him of apostasy, which is absurd, and now with John MacArthur teaching full-on Nestorianism, that’s kind of beyond the pale of what I would regard as theologically acceptable.

On the other hand, Billy Graham was much loved by everyone, including the Russian Orthodox Church. During the Soviet Union, the ROC was severely restricted in its ability to preach or engage in Sunday School or other catechetical activities, but Billy Graham, by virtue of his international reputation, was able to travel to the Soviet Union to preach, with a formal blessing to do so from the Moscow Patriarchate, and indeed they were so grateful that Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, a brilliant composer of classical and sacred music and the former director of external church relations, who was removed from that post due to his pacifism last year and reassigned to be the Metropolitan of Budapest and Hungary*, was at Billy Graham’s bedside when he reposed in the Lord.

*In Hungary there is a large expat Russian community as well as some Hungarian converts from the Hungarian Greek Catholic Church (a Byzantine Rite church that uses the Eastern Orthodox liturgy, in full communion with Rome, similar to the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, the Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church, and the Italo-Albanian Greek Catholic Church (which operates mainly in Siciliy and caters to persons of mixed Italian-Albanian descent, but is also interesting in that it is the heir to Byzantine Rite churches that have always operated in Sicily due to the island’s status as a Greek colony in antiquity, and also as part of the Byzantine Empire intermittently, like Ravenna). The Hungarian Greek Catholic Church, like the Italo-Albanian Greek Catholic Church, and the Croatian Greek Catholic Church, is interesting in that it operates in a country which does not have an indigenous Eastern Orthodox church, but nonetheless celebrates the Eastern Orthodox liturgy with all of the usual features, even the veneration of important Orthodox saints not venerated in Latin Rite Catholicism, for example, the second sunday in Lent in both the Eastern Orthodox and Greek Catholic / Byzantine-Rite Catholic churches the second sunday is the Sunday of St. Gregory Palamas.

Speaking of which I would endorse St. Gregory Palamas over several of the names on that list, but his writings are notoriously technical and challenging to read. So probably the best bet would be someone like Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, memory eternal, or Archpriest Andrew S. Damick if you want to find a contemporary Orthodox theologian who is accessible and reiterates the historical teachings of the church.

And for general purpose catechesis, one cannot go wrong with CS Lewis, for example, his excellent work Mere Christianity. I also enjoy the writing of Pope Benedict XVI and the homiletics of Dr. James Kennedy, may their memories be eternal. NT Wright is very popular among contemporary audiences but I haven’t been particularly intrigued to examine his work, but I have heard it is quite good - as contemporary Anglican scholars go I am more interested in the theological studies of the retired Archbishop of Canterbury Dr. Rowan Williams, who I greatly preferred to the current guy whose name escapes me for the moment.

John Mullally said:

I have been blessed by going to Cottonwood.

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I can’t handle their form of worship. Even among churches which are not strictly speaking liturgical, I really can’t handle megachurches and their characteristic trappings. In general I am unwilling to attend any church where an electric guitar or drum kit can be found on the premises and where the pastor does not wear vestments (since this is a violation of the canons of the Second Council of Constantinople, an Ecumenical Council held by the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches, and later accepted by the Maronite church, and also a council which on all questions of doctrine the Oriental Orthodox and the Church of the East agreed with, which in 787 AD specifically forbade clergy from wearing fashionable attire and mandated the use of proper vesture during liturgies.

Blaise N said:

Hi everyone,

I’d like to ask the community a theological question.So I remember in scripture it speaks of apostasy in two different ways,it speaks of the variant where someone abandons faith and the other is falling away into believing false teachers,gospels,and pastors

Now for awhile now I’ve read advice from many sources,but I occasionally come across some accusing others of false teachings and what not.Some calling out others on their teachings.My main concern and worry is that I may have committed apostasy by accepting advice from a false teacher.and my concern is can someone who previously followed a false teacher repent? Here is a list of people in question:

-John MacArthur
-John Piper
-RC Sproul
-Billy Graham
-James Dobson
-David Jeremiah


Could someone help?

Click to expand...

Well i have not researched all of these teachers but i know a few like Billy Graham, John MacArthur teach and believe a lordship salvation (which is a works type of salvation).

That is they believe it actually takes more than belief in Jesus to receive God's free gift of Eternal Life salvation. They state a person must also commit their life to following Jesus, they also include that one must repent of sin or sins.

d taylor said:

Well i have not researched all of these teachers but i know a few like Billy Graham, John MacArthur teach and believe a lordship salvation (which is a works type of salvation).

That is they believe it actually takes more than belief in Jesus to receive God's free gift of Eternal Life salvation. They state a person must also commit their life to following Jesus, they also include that one must repent of sin or sins.

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I must disagree with you concerning Billy Graham. As a well-churched non-believer I attended a Bible study where it became quite evident to the leader that I was not a believer. He graciously took me aside after one study and shared Billy Graham's gospel tract with me. I was shocked and horrified to discover that all that was required was faith in order to be a Christian. That was far too simple for me. I told the leader that I would never believe that. However, God, the Holy Spirit, graciously humbled me the following day and in the evening I put my complete trust and confidence in Jesus Christ, without any form of works.