By THIS Gospel you are saved! Not a word about prosperity and word faith. No hyper grace ignoring sin. Otherwise you have believed in vain! This is not about money. It is not about being motivated. It is about Christ dying for our sins!
The key verses conclude with Paul getting even more personal. He warns them and us today that some will come from amongst our own group and distort the truth in order to draw a following. How many millions follow Osteen's motivational gospel? How many millions follow Prince's hyper-grace gospel? How many millions follow the prosperity gospel? They call it the broad path for a reason - there are a lot of people on it. Where are those millions of people going? How many will have to say, "Lord Lord?" The end result of this all is that the fastest growing mission field is in the pews across America. Millions of people sold a false god by a false teacher. Millions of people told they are saved by a three sentence prayer devoid of sin and repentance.
Millions of people and we stand around debating whether or not to call false teaching what it is. We are not all on the same team beloved. I think we can take the personalities out of it by focusing on the teaching. I can believe that Osteen and Prince are sincere but as my pastor likes to say - you can be sincere and sincerely wrong. This is not about people I differ with. This is about people whose teachings differ from the Bible. This is also not about non-essential doctrinal differences. Those arguments just poison the well and muddy the waters. Reasonable people can disagree reasonably. But unreasonable teaching that deviates from Scripture and has the potential of leading people away from the path to life - that cannot be negotiated. The eternal destination of men lies in the balance. Errors can be corrected. False teaching must be exposed. We should be unified in doing so.
Reverend Anthony Wade - October 30, 2013