Was the article I wrote last Wednesday unbiblical?

One person who contacted me this weekend adamantly believes it was.

Of course, she initially objected to my harsh tone in the article. And I agree that I sinned in that regard. I admitted it to her, and I wrote an article yesterday dealing with that regard specific sin. As I see it, my harshness indeed did violate God’s Word tremendously, but my sin in that particular area didn’t seem to trouble her all that much.

With that issue resolved, she continued asserting that I had been unbiblical. She insisted my greatest infraction lay in stating that repeating the same old indictments against Beth Moore was unnecessary.

She correctly argued that the Bible contains many warnings against false teachers. John the Baptist, Jesus, Paul, John, Peter and Jude all warned against false teachers, she explained. Therefore, she reasoned, Scripture teaches by example that we should have a mighty chorus of bloggers all pointing to the same problems with Beth Moore.

Yes and no.

Certainly, there should be some corroborating testimony that Beth Moore claims personal revelation, that she preaches to men, and that she reads herself into Scripture. If only a couple people said these things, Beth Moore’s followers could easily dismiss us as crackpots who have no idea what we’re talking about. I understand that point.

By the same token, however, if we simply parrot each other in showing the many evidences that Beth Moore is  a false teacher, we also undermine our message. Beth Moore’s supporters, precisely because they desperately want an  excuse to discredit us, jump on the slightest opportunity to say that we just mindlessly repeat each other without personally investigating the matter for ourselves. So again, they find grounds to dismiss us.

Getting back to the variety of people in the New Testament who warned against false teachers, let’s look at their approach. Although the confines of this blog post don’t allow me to quote all the passages in which these men called out false teachers and/or warned against them, this compilation of 54 Bible Verses about False Teachings gives us a helpful glimpse into how the various writers worked in harmony with each other. Please, oh please stop and examine these Scriptures before you read the remainder of this article.

As you can see, the verses in  this compilation consistently warn against false teachers. Yet very few of them repeat each other word for word. Even within Paul’s epistles, he covers different aspects of false teachers. With the exception of 2 Peter and Jude, then, the New Testament writers didn’t repeat each other. Rather, they complimented each other to provide a fully developed defense against false teachers.

If we intend to appeal to John the Baptist, Jesus, Paul, John, Peter and Jude as models for calling out false teachers — and we certainly ought to appeal to them — let’s follow their example of dealing with different aspects of a teacher. For instance, you and I might both raise concerns about Beth Moore’s supposed personal revelations from God, but you might do so in connection with her mysticism while I point out that she uses her claims to deflect questioning.

Solid Christian friends that I highly respect believe that we’ve exhausted the topic of Beth Moore. They suggest that further posts on her serve as little more than clickbait. And while there’s an element of truth in their position, I do contend that far too many women (and men, for that matter) still need to be warned against her. But let’s follow the  Biblical pattern of complimenting each other rather than creating an echo chamber.

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