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**I am a HERETIC!**

That’s what most pastors, evangelists, and dyed-in-the-wool Christians think of me.

The Church is not as open as it assumes.

Prophets with Truth are not accepted!

There are many false teachings in the Church, spawned by evil spirits to confuse God’s people. But you don’t hear the popular pastors, evangelists and Bible teachers warning much about this great handicap. That’s because a deceived person doesn’t know they are deceived. So when a prophet is ‘sent’ by God to iron out age-long heresies, he is the one regarded as the heretic!

Just as Isaiah prophesied long ago, black is made to look white and white appears black to the duped mind:

Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter (Is 5:20).

You need to realise that when God pronounces a WOE, it is much more than we complacent westerners imagine. It expresses a very DIRE situation that brings uncountable horrors and tragedies in its wake.

So serious is deception in the Church that it will drag MANY to hell! Probably half of all who profess to be Christians will not be saved, according to the parable of the Ten Virgins (Matt 25), and as Jesus said:

The sons of the kingdom will be cast out into outer darkness. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matt 8:12).

• How many believers really take these warnings seriously?!

• How many believers really care for pure Truth?

• How many believers are really taking up a cross and dying to self?

• How many are open to the prophetic voice God has raised up now?

You know, the warnings about false ministers, false teachings and apostasy in the NT are many. But you don’t hear much about that from the pulpit or elevated stage where a lot of preachers are primarily concerned about their following, and NOT the holiness God is looking for.

Almost NONE of them realistically considers that any of their views and teachings could be SERIOUSLY in error! A deceived person doesn’t know he’s deceived, and dismisses input that chafes. People don’t accept correction. Very religious people often ‘spit’ at the prophet’s suggestion.

Apostate Teachings Are Widespread

Paul agonised over the departure from the straight and narrow in the apostolic church, fuelled by preachers’ selfish impurities in motive:

For I KNOW THIS, that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. Also from among yourselves men will rise up speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples AFTER THEMSELVES (Acts 20:29,30).

And that’s what happened. There was a massive falling away, as he also prophesied in 2 Thessalonians 2. So we inherited an apostate church from the outset and have the difficult task of climbing out of such a pit. The Protestant Reformation ‘cured’ some of the ills, but by no means all. Still, some very pernicious false teachings grip most believers’ minds.

It is very hard to come out (Rev 18:4) of inherited traditions.

Who dares to question the tradition of Sunday observance? None of the big evangelists. “Why would that tradition need questioning?” they would object, “it’s been here since the birth of the NT Church.”

No it hasn’t! That’s one deception. Jesus never changed anything in God’s Word concerning the Ten Commandments. He didn’t water it down; He charged it up; He made obedience more incumbent upon us, not less. Hence the exposition and increased spirituality in Matthew 5-7. Grace doesn’t give licence for disobedience. But the subtelty of grace teaching today does just that: it spurns obedience to Commandments, especially the fourth Commandment. Yet it’s engraven in stone – fixed!

The evil minds who invaded the first century Church after the death of Paul did dastardly things. They changed the Commandment. Subtly, they introduced a Sunday substitute for the 7th day Sabbath, in order to obviate or deflect persecution. The assault against Jews and Christians after the fall of Jerusalem reached fever pitch. Thousands were martyred. Anti-Semitism was the politically correct message at that time, and church ‘fathers’ succumbed to compromise to save their necks – many of them. Thankfully not all, but the majority apostatised for fleshly reasons and the face of the church changed. And that is what today’s Christendom accepts as the norm, NOT God’s fourth Commandment.

John’s letters recorded in the NT conceal that apostasy. Yet what John was warning his readers to beware was this huge change, and the ones tuned into the Spirit knew what He was talking about. He said he wasn’t giving any new commandment (1 Jn 2:7), but those heretics were! That is the hidden inference. I explain this ‘secret’ message in John’s letters in other articles (see Moved By The Spirit Volume 2, pp 30-32).

It is time for the Church to understand these ‘secrets’.

The anointing which was on Paul to write a major part of the Sacred Canon (through his letters to the various churches) ‘evaporated’ at his death, allowing heretics to infect minds with their more attractive heresies. Sunday keeping to replace the Sabbath, and later, other substitute festivals derived from paganism to replace those which God gave Israel, became widely accepted as ‘Christian’. Such traditions seem unchallengeable to this day. Unbiblical they are, but they dominate the minds of believers from east to west and north to south. And if you raise an objection to them, defending purity of Scripture, YOU are the heretic!

This is the inviolable nature of human tradition. It is sacrosanct; to the average believer, it should never be questioned. And so heresy is protected. But you can worship God in vain by adhering to the traditions and commandments of men, so said Jesus (Matt 15:9). And Jesus said if you want to enter into life KEEP THE COMMANDMENTS (Matt 19:17). But so brainwashed are today’s Sunday adherents to this false dogma, they will even question which commandments Jesus was referring to, as if one of them could be questionable! How bent can you get?!

David knew better! He declared:

All Your Commandments are righteousness (Ps 119:172b.)

Christian tradition has warped unquestioning minds to a contrary view. Although David wrote under God’s inspiration that God’s Word is perfect and without fault, church traditions disagree.

The law of the Lord is perfect converting the soul... (Ps 19:7).

‘Converted’ there can mean restored. Well, there are an awful lot of Christians today who are not converted, not restored. The Word of God when properly expounded will purify motives, purify minds, get rid of demons and demonic concepts, pull down strongholds such as defending Sunday-keeping as if it is scriptural and right – IF you submit to the Spirit. And to submit to the Spirit means to OBEY what He says in the Word, to submit your will to His. But that’s the problem. Most Christians and preachers are still self-willed when it comes to such issues. They prefer the tradition than the truth. They choose man’s tradition and reject God’s Truth! God calls His Sabbaths MY Sabbaths (Ex 31:13). Jesus made the Sabbath; He instituted it as Creator in His pre-incarnate Form as God. He is Lord of the Sabbath (Mark 2:28), not Lord of a substitute Sunday. The Lord’s day is not Sunday. That’s a lie. The Lord’s day is the biblical one set apart in Genesis 2:3, sanctified again in Exodus 20:8-10, and given as a blessing to those who lay down their lives to let the Lord of the Sabbath enter in each week at such a time. Jesus ‘recharges’ you at holy times!

There is the equal abomination in the Church called Easter. It was never commanded by God. Ishtar (pronounced like our ‘easter’) was the pagan goddess of fertility who was worshipped by the pagans in spring. God’s command is for Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread which are full of spiritual meaning in cleansing from sin. But the Church doesn’t really care about that. It prefers heresy to harmony.

I exhorted a young church leader, who preaches on TV, to dismiss his unbiblical adherence to Easter and accept what Jesus kept – Passover (Luke 22:15) – and what Paul kept with the apostolic church (1 Cor 5:8). He didn’t want to see that he was not in harmony with Scripture. He dismissed my call to reform as an alien thing. To question the celebration of Easter was an utterly heretical suggestion!

And so it is across the board. Wherever you go in Christendom these deeply held dogmas, entrenched since the time of Constantine and later apostates in the fourth and fifth centuries AD, hold minds captive. So believers live in prison houses, as Isaiah prophesied so aptly:

This is a people robbed and plundered, ALL of them are snared in holes, and they are hidden in prison houses [churches devoid of pure biblical Truth]; they are for prey and no one delivers; for plunder and no one says “RESTORE!” (Is 42:22.)

Well, true prophets shout RESTORE! But who heeds?! Few. Because people prefer to follow the guides who lead them astray, just as Isaiah prophesied (Is 3:12). They are peddling falsity, and rule over God’s people, and foolishly those people love it this way (Jer 5:31). But Jeremiah asks what will be their end? (Jer 5:31.)

I wrote to one of the ‘biggest names’ in evangelism about his wrong concept about church government. He refused to see that hierarchic domination is a corrupt form. He just would not accept that it is unbiblical and satanic. He regarded me as the heretic. Yet the proof of ‘my’ stand on the matter is all laid out in the extensive treatise on the matter of biblical authority in the Church – God’s Church: Whose Authority?

Did he care? No. It’s very sad that men of God who have been used so powerfully in the past prefer to drift back into apostasy than to strive with the new truths presented. The power of deception is HUGE! Yet the Church completely underestimates its pull. Read Apostasy Throughout The Church! in Moved By The Spirit Volume 2, page 77.

We have all got to STRIVE to enter through the narrow gate – the restrictive way of obediently holding onto Truth above all else (Lk 13:24). We’ve got to champion the cause of returning to the Faith Once Delivered To The Saints. We’ve got to CONTEND for it (Jude 3). No wonder! The church is so asleep, so blind, so dull of mind and spirit, that it thinks when you stand up for such alien Truth, YOU are the heretic!

Malcolm B Heap

Bible quotations are from the New King James Version (NKJV).

Midnight Ministries,

PO Box 29, Aylesbury, HP17 8TL , UK