“See to it that no one misleads you….. Many false prophets will arise and will mislead many” (Matthew 24:4,11).
Our Lord knew His people. He knew that there was something about their makeup which would make them susceptible to being misled. By “being misled,” we mean being conned, scammed, hoodwinked, deceived, tricked, lied to, fooled, and abused.
In Old Testament days false prophets came through the land, preaching half-truths and whole lies and filling God’s people with false expectations and pagan ways. The New Testament church, just beginning to find its way and choose its methods, quickly became the target of these scammers and con-artists.
In Matthew 24, our Lord cautions His people to keep their guard up concerning prophecies about end times: His return, signs of the end, fulfilment of certain prophecies, apostasies, portents and omens.
And yet, the false teachers keep arising and God’s people go right on swallowing their poison. Now, I have little confidence in those who build their ministries around interpretations of prophecy. Generations of these teachers have published their books, drawn their charts, persuaded entire segments of the church, and taken no prisoners from those who disagreed with them, only to be shown by time as false teachers (that is, when their interpretations proved wrong). And then, a few minutes later a new generation of prophecy experts steps up to fill the gap left by the departure of the last group.