October, 1934
T H E K I N G ' S B U S I N E S S
348
False Crists and False Prophets B y LOUIS S. £AUMAN Long Beach, California
for the first time into the ears of man: “Ye shall not surely d ie: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3:4, 5). That prophecy wrecked the world, doomed the human race to death, and sent the Son of God to Calvary! That prophecy, like every other false, prophecy, was an interfusion of truth and false hood : “In the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, . . . knowing good and ewi\”-^that was truth! “Ye shall not surely die . . . ye shall be as gods”— that was falsehood! F alse P rophets from A dam to C hrist Satan, the serpent, thus beginning his terrestrial work in Eden, continues to this day to be the supreme head of a long line of “ false Christs and false prophets,” a line that will end only when he and all his sons shall plunge to their endless doom in “the lake of fire and brimstone” (Rev. 20:10). The divine record of human struggle ever relates the same sad, sad story of lying prophets continu ally seeking to destroy the true children of the living God by leading them astray “in the way of Cain” (Jude 11). In vain did Seth and Enoch and Noah protest against the false prophets of the antediluvian world. At the last, the righteous God came within eight souls of destroying •man from the earth. It was not without good reason that Jehovah made this demand of the children of Israel: “If there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder, . . . saying, Let us go after other gods . . . that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, shall be put to death . . . thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die; because he hath sought to thrust thee away from the Lord thy God” (Deut. 13:1, 2, 5, 10). To the unbeliever, God’s decree may seem severe. But that is because he knows not the enormity of the crime that thrusts a soul away from its God! Time and time and time again, God solemnly warned Israel against “the prophet [that] is a fool, the spiritual man [that] is mad” .... . the prophet that caused “Ephraim . . . [to] bring forth his children to the murderer” (Hos. 9:7, 13). Hear the lament of Jeremiah: “Mine heart within me is broken be cause of the prophets; . . . I have seen folly in the prophets of Samaria; they prophesied in Baal, and caused my people Israel to err. . . . They strengthen also the
“Many false proph ets shall rise, and shall deceive many” (Matt. 24:11). “There shall arise false Christs, and false prophets” (Matt. 24:24). “B ew a re of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly th e y are ra v en in g wolves” (Matt. 7:15). N ow a “prophet” was not merely a foreteller o f even ts.
He was the forthteller of all divine revelation. Any foretell ing or forthtelling contrary to that which “God . . . hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son” (Heb. 1 :1, 2), or by “the apostles whom he had chosen” (Acts 1 :2), must immediately place the preacher in the category of “false prophets.” Nor will calling a “prophet” a Methodist, or a Baptist, or a Presbyterian, or a Brethren, necessarily set him apart from that company that God Himself has de nominated “false prophets.” Naturally, “ false prophets” resent being thus christened. The unbeliever who candidly accepts the title, “infidel,” or “agnostic,” or “atheist,” or “ free-thinker,” cannot be properly characterized as a “false prophet,” for “ false prophets . . . come to you in sheep’s clothing.” Infinitely more dangerous and vile is the wolf that comes to you “in sheep’s clothing,” than the wolf that approaches you in his own honest-to-goodness skin! F alse P rophecy B efore the W orld B egan The prince of false prophets began his work before ever primeval light flashed across our mundane sphere. Somewhere back in the ages before man was, Lucifer said: “I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation! in the sides of the north . . . I will be like the Most High” (Isa. 14:13, 14). He had his gulls; for, “his tail drew the third part of the stars [angels, cf. Rev. 1 :20] of heaven, and did cast them to the earth” (Rev. 12:4). “The angels that sinned” and now lie in “chains of darkness” in Tartarus, are doubt less the angels that believed this antemundane prophesying of Lucifer. T he F alse P rophet E nters E den No sooner did God provide a “help meet” for Adam, than this same Lucifer transferred his nefarious activities to Eden : “He said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent, . . . of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.” Thereupon this prince of liars breathed false prophecy [This message, the second of a series of three articles dealing with an important aspect of. fulfilled prophecy, is brought to K ing ’ s B usiness readers by the pastor of the First Brethren Church, Long Beach, Calif.— E ditor .]
hands of evildoers, that none doth return from his wicked ness : . , . Thus saith the Lord of hosts, Hearken not unto the words of the proph ets that prophesy unto you; . . . they speak a vision of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of the Lord. They say still unto them that despise me, The Lord hath said, Ye shall have peace; and they say unto every one that walketh after the imagination of his own heart, No evil shall come upon you. For who
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