SPEAK UNTO US SMOOTH THINGS

Friday Church News Notes, June 5, 2015

Source:  Way of Life Literature, David Cloud

“Which say to the seers, See not; and to the prophets, Prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits: Get you out of the way, turn aside out of the path, cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from before us” (Isaiah 30:10-11).

In Isaiah’s day, Israel rejected God’s Word and tried to corrupt the prophets. The people professed to love God and they participated in the temple rituals, but they despised God’s holy laws. They wanted to live as they pleased. They wanted preaching, but not right preaching. They didn’t want to hear reproof of sin and sound doctrine. They wanted to hear “smooth things” that encouraged them regardless of how they lived and that did not interfere with their plans. They wanted God, but not “the Holy One.” They would rather hear “deceits” than the truth. Israel has continued in this terrible condition until today.

She rejected the greatest Prophet and Preacher, Jesus, her own Messiah. The Isaiah 30 passage is also an apt description of apostate Christianity as Paul prophesied in 2 Timothy 4:3-4. They profess to love Christ and the Bible, but in reality they love their own lusts.

They flock to hear teachers who downplay repentance and conversion and holy living, who preach smooth things and invent fables such as gibberish tongues, spirit slaying, laughing revivals, non-judgmentalism, self-esteemism, positive confession, the veneration of Mary, contemplative prayer, rock & roll worship, theistic evolution, ecumenism, non-essential doctrine, and universalism.

“For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables” (2 Timothy 4:3-4).