Spot the Fake

This week I have seen several news reports about a Church that is, amongst other things, blessing homosexual couples, having baptisms at the church which are not in the name of the "Father, Son and Holy Ghost", and distributing a book that claims Jesus is not the son of God.

Matthew 24:11 says that in the last days, there will be "many false prophets will appear and deceive many people." The Bible also talks about false teachers appearing to preach in the name of Christ, but are leading people away from God.

There are a lot of speakers out there today claiming to be preaching the Good News. Some of them are successful, sound great and are certainly convincing. But how can we tell if they are teaching truth or deception?

How do we spot the fake? We spot the fake the same way scotland yard does:

"You must spend a lot of time handling counterfeit money to know what it looks like," said Ruth Bell Graham to a man from Scotland Yard, who was in charge of identifying counterfeit money.



"No," he replied. "We never touch the stuff. All day long, we just handle the real thing: genuine currency. And when a counterfeit bill comes our way—we can quickly detect it."

How do we spot the fake? We become very intimate with the real thing.. the genuine currency.

This morning, Ps Andrew Staggs encouraged us to be intellectually fit. He said we should invest time in getting our minds skilled up in the things of God, understanding God and knowing the word of God.

The more time we invest in God's word and in prayer, the quicker we'll be able to spot the fake ... and flee.