He and the elders are entrusted to “guard the flock†from false teachers creeping in or arising from within (Acts 20:28-30). To my knowledge, no, there had not been but his role as a pastor is about much more than just teaching. My friend asked me if there has been anything in his own teaching that is questionable or unbiblical. The speaker, it turned out, is a friend and seminary professor of one of the church staff – there is the fraternity angle. I emailed him, and I noted a bit of a chill in his response. When I first was made aware of a questionable guest speaker, I wanted to let it go by but I had a problem—Proverbs 6 kept haunting me:įaithful are the wounds of a friend profuse are the kisses of an enemy.ĭo I care enough about truth, or about him, to speak up or should I just look the other way for fear of offending my friend and, perhaps, even losing his friendship? It is true that we can overlook many flaws in our friends such as their egregious choice of ties or chronic lateness, for example but there are truths that are much too important to compromise. Sadly, though, I have noticed some issues in the last couple of years concerning who is invited to speak in the pulpit when he is absent. He has been a faithful leader, solid Bible teacher, and servant of the Lord for a very long time. I have a friend—a pastor whom I care about deeply. Because of the friendship, they are no longer willing to hold them accountable for what they are teaching out of fear of harming or even losing the friendship. They are nice, perhaps funny, maybe happily married with great children and fabulously cute grandchildren. They meet and begin working with popular false teachers and find them engaging. We think a similar thing happens with so many celebrity teachers, celebrity authors, and celebrity pastors and even local pastors. They couldn’t imagine their friend would hold a heretical view so rather than admit the problem and lovingly correct him, they defended him. Geisler said that Stanley replied, “It’s fraternity over orthodoxy.†Murray Harris was their friend. Charles Stanley at the time and wondered why Harris had so many defenders with so few willing to address the real issue at hand. Norman Geisler discussed this issue with Dr. He essentially took the same view on the Resurrection as the Jehovah’s Witnesses! Dr. We were solely concerned with his teaching that the Resurrection was not physical. Our focus did not encompass his personality or scholarship. Unfortunately, nice men and women, faithful spouses, and brilliant scholars can slip into heresy the same as nasty guys, cheaters, and dim bulbs. All of those things may have been true, but none of them addressed the problem at all. “He is a brilliant scholar on the original languages,†it was claimed. “He is a faithful husband,†we were told. Harris’s false teaching on the Resurrection, nearly all of the professors at Trinity College defended Harris, and many outside of the institution defended him as well. It may boost their ego to speak to large crowds of 25-50,000, or it may boost their personal wealth when they can sell books well into the seven-digit range.Īnother reason is most likely because of personal friendship between pastor and celebrity. It could be they seek to maintain or add to their own personal popularity. After I spoke at a church this past weekend, I was asked, “How is it that so many celebrity preachers, celebrity Christian authors, and celebrity pastors take the stage with known (and popular) false teachers?†There are, of course, many possible reasons.
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