COVID-19 Exposes False Teachers
Img courtesy of Know Your Meme
“For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires.” - 2 Timothy 4:3
That time is now. Unfortunately, many who claim to follow Jesus are not following the real Jesus. What they follow is a “demonic genie” that promises to grant them their every wish; a false idol and imposter. This false idol is being sold in mass quantities to the masses by con-artists like Joel Osteen, Kenneth Copeland, Todd White, Creflo Dollar, Paula White, Joyce Meyer, T.D. Jakes, Bill Johnson, Benny Hinn, and T.B. Joshua, just to name a few. However, this is not a new con. This deception, by Satan, has been recorded in Scripture various times with various kinds of idols.
Do you know the name of the golden calf the Israelites worshiped after God rescued them from Egypt?
Yahweh.
Exodus 32:4-5 tells us, “He took this from their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool and made it into a molten calf; and they said, ‘This is your god, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt.’ When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it; he proclaimed, ‘Tomorrow shall be a feast to the LORD.’
The Hebrew word for “Lord” used here, is Yahweh. The man-made golden calf was credited for leading the Israelites out of Egypt and was given the very name of God. But as we know, this idol was not God at all. The Israelites worshiped a counterfeit God, which to them seemed like the real deal. Remember, they spent the last 400 years in Egypt surrounded by idol worship, and they paid for that ignorance with their lives (for more on what it means to know the true God and be known by Him, check out my sermon on Matthew 7:21-23 titled “Are You Known?,” here).
Many people are worshipping a modern-day golden calf named Jesus. He is nothing like the Jesus in the Bible and this counterfeit messiah is taught by many a false teacher, often preaching the prosperity gospel which focuses on material abundance and the claim to have special “anointings” to heal people. With the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic which continues to claim the lives of people all over the world every day, many who claim to have the “gift of healing” are nowhere in sight.
Somehow, the “gift of healing” which is so desperately needed at this time in hospitals, has been made impotent by COVID-19 without much of any explanation. Bethel Church, the mega-church with mega-hit after mega-hit on Christian radio, suspended its faith healing work at hospitals (to learn more about Bethel’s unorthodox and demonic practices, check out my article here).
Many of these false prophets claim God speaks directly to them and many declared the end and the defeat of the coronavirus. Prosperity Gospel preacher, Kenneth Copeland, claims to have already defeated the virus and even had a bizarre outburst as he summoned the “wind of God” to defeat the virus and claimed to heal viewers through their TV screens. T.B. Joshua, a false prophet from Nigeria, claimed the virus would end by March 27.
As time passed and their outlandish prophecies turned out to be as reliable as a typical weatherman’s forecast, many made excuses for why they got these “divine predictions” wrong. The Scriptures are clear that those who claim to listen to God’s but get caught in a lie are not to be trusted, as they have exposed themselves as false prophets (Deuteronomy 18:20-22).
As COVID-19 has exposed false prophet after false prophet, I pray that hearts will be softened and that there will be a desire for true and sound biblical doctrine. May we remember the words of John Calvin, “If true religion is to beam upon us, our principle must be, that it is necessary to begin with heavenly teaching, and that it is impossible for any man to obtain even the minutest portion of right and sound doctrine without being a disciple of Scripture.”
