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Naming Names

December 12, 2006

I woke up one morning, and as has become a habitual routine for me, after my prayer I turned on my computer to check my e-mail.  After sifting through what seemed like an impossible amount of junk mail, offering me everything from low interest loans, to free snow boots, to the unique opportunity of being a secret shopper in my area, I happened upon an e-mail from a brother in Boston who was not at all happy with me.  

Although the brother had many positive things to say about our website, and he enjoyed the fact that we are willing to speak the truth even when it is uncomfortable, he took issue with the fact that I have never named names.  

"It sure is easy to generalize about the hirelings and the wolves, the deceivers and the false teachers," he wrote, "when you don't name them by name.  Why don't you name names?  Are you afraid?  Do you just talk a good game but really don't want the confrontation or aftereffects of calling them out individually?"

Although I answered his e-mail privately, I felt it was also appropriate to broach this subject, and once and for all clear up this issue.  

The false doctrines and teachings concerning which God leads me to write, are long reaching, and have spread to an incalculable number of souls, being promoted and promulgated, not by one or two individuals but rather hundreds upon hundreds of men.  

If you remove one branch from a tree, or pluck one rose from a rosebush, both the tree, and the rosebush continue to survive.  If however you go to the root of said tree, and pull it from its roots, if you take the rosebush and pluck it from the earth, they no longer have any hope of survival.  

It is the same with manmade doctrines, and twisted scripture.  My duty before God is to expose the root of the matter, and the core of the problem, not to single out any one man, for if one man is brought low, if one man is exposed, five others will take his place, younger more energetic, and with more impeccable syntax.  

If we know what deception is, then we will no longer look upon the face of the man who is speaking it, but merely judge the substance of his words.  This is where I believe the body of Christ has failed in large part, for rather than attack the doctrine of a man most often we choose to attack the man himself.  That man quickly fades into obscurity is soon forgotten, but like mushrooms after a spring rain, a dozen more rise up in his place, having plagiarized his teaching, spouting the same regurgitated unscriptural doctrines.  A piece of coal is still a piece of coal, no matter how pretty a box you put it in.  

I was at a prayer meeting some months ago, when a brother stood up and began to quote something he had read, which had been written by a man he considered a luminary of Christendom, but that also happened to be wholly unscriptural.  When I voiced my objection to what he was saying, the brother's response was, 'but don't you want to know who wrote it?'

"I haven't the slightest bit of interest" I answered, "it's not scriptural, it has no Biblical foundation, and that's all I need to know."

In order to avoid deception, we the children of God must know the truth.  We know the truth by continually going to the Word, by being infused with the teachings of Christ and with the Scripture.  Once the Word of God has taken root in our hearts, it becomes a doctrinal and spiritual lie, and deception detector, sounding the alarm every time it hears something that does not echo the Bible, or that is contradictory to the scriptures.  

It would be far easier for me to name names, and deconstruct the teaching or doctrine of a certain individual, far easier than exposing the doctrine itself and pointing out the perils thereof.  Pointing out one individual however, would be a futile endeavor, a waste of time, in light of the fact that it is the doctrine of a man that is the danger, and not necessarily the man himself.  

The best way I can describe what I feel is my calling when it comes to modern day false teachings, is to help the individual believer to discern for himself, or herself what is truth, and what is deception, to once and for all due away with the idea of the individual and rightly judge based on his doctrine.  

As I pointed out to brother James from Boston, whenever Christ had a rebuke to one of the seven churches in Revelation, it was the doctrine that He rebuked, whether the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, or the doctrine of Balaam.  If we know the symptoms we can diagnose the disease, and being able to diagnose the disease, we can go to the word of God to find the cure, and thus be restored to good spiritual health.  

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr.

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