Even An Angel
If a prophet or even an “angel from heaven” contradicts the original gospel, run for your life! Recently, a well-known “prophet” prophesied that soon “Angelic visitations will
increase as I release My messengers with destiny messages. Revelation, understanding, and enlightenment will
accelerate in My sons and daughters as My DNA will be revealed inside of them.”
I’m not sure what a “destiny message” is, but the idea of angels
being dispatched to bring new “revelations” to God’s people does not exactly
harmonize with certain warnings and statements from the New Testament.
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| [Angels Photo by Gavin Allanwood on Unsplash] |
I am not disputing the fact that angels exist, or that they do a great many beneficial things on behalf of Christians. What does concern me is the growing claim in some Christian circles that God is about to reveal truths never heard before by the church or anyone else. I am not talking about new scientific or historical discoveries, but the idea that the Almighty is going to reveal things about Himself and His plans beyond what has been revealed already in Jesus and preserved in the apostolic tradition.
When Paul wrote to the
Galatians to confront false teachers, he “marveled that you are so quickly transferred from him that called you in the grace of Christ to
a different gospel… there are some that trouble you who would pervert the gospel of
Christ.”
His immediate reaction was to the situation was to point the Galatians
to the “gospel” they originally received from Paul and his co-workers,
the truth of which was so important that if anyone, “even an angel
from heaven, should preach to you any gospel other than that which we preached to you, let him be accursed (anathema)!” Just to make sure they
got his point, Paul repeated it – “As
we have said before, so say I now again, if anyone preaches to
you any gospel other than
that which you received, let him be anathema.”
Do we hear what the Apostle is saying? Anything that
deviates from the original gospel is to be rejected out of hand. That it comes
from a powerful “angel from heaven” makes no difference whatsoever. Paul
made strong and uncompromising statements that point to the absolute authority
of the received apostolic tradition.
And to be clear, by “traditions,” I am NOT
talking about later church creeds, councils, or other institutional traditions,
but instead, I am referring to the original teachings of Jesus and his apostles.
That is the benchmark, the gold standard for measuring the validity of any teaching,
prophecy, vision, dream, “download from heaven,” or angelic revelation about
God, Jesus, etc. And whether the prophet, apostle, or angel can work mighty
supernatural wonders is not relevant to the issue.
After warning the Thessalonians about the coming “man
of lawlessness” who would deceive all those who did not have the “love
of the truth,” Paul exhorted them to “stand
fast and hold the traditions you were taught, whether by word or epistle
from us.” That was their safety net, the anchor that
would hold them in the coming storm. And in the concluding section of the same
epistle, he commanded the Thessalonians “in the name of Jesus” to withdraw
from every “brother that walks disorderly and
not after the tradition which they received of us.”
Paul
used the Greek term ‘paradosis’ for “tradition,”
which simply means “transmission,” that is, something that has been passed on
to others. Likewise, he urged the Corinthians to become “imitators of me”
and to hold
fast the “traditions, even as I delivered them to you.”
And what were those “traditions”? There is
only one collection of source documents that reveals what Jesus and the
apostles taught, and that is the New Testament. All other claims and sources
are later, and therefore, secondary at best, and all other sources and voices must
be measured against the original. Any teaching, message, or “revelation” that deviates
from the apostolic tradition, whether from a prophecy, vision, dream, or even an
“angel from heaven” is to be rejected. It is “accursed!”
So, where does that leave us? We must know the
apostolic “tradition” and make it our own, and that means spending time
learning and loving the original source documents preserved in the New
Testament. And there is no shortcut, no way of getting around this necessity.
