I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel" not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed. - Galatians 1:6-9 (ESV)
The proliferation of social media has allowed for an explosion of the gospel across the world that the apostles could have only dreamt about. The problem is man is inherently evil and as such, the true explosion is often measured in terms of false teaching. Anyone with a camera and some editing skills can produce quality content but what remains paramount is that you are being taught correctly and unfortunately lies will always sell better than the truth to a sinful world. We want to hear about how great we are, not God. We want to hear that this is our best life now and how a nine-word prayer can change your eternal destination without one significant change in your life. The cross? The blood? Repentance? That's for those suckers who get up early on Sundays. Why go to all that trouble when you can roll out of bed when you want and go to your favorite Facebook preacher/prophet or just load up YouTube to hear what your itching ears are dying to hear that day. Sound like hyperbole? Let us consider the case of Marcus Rogers today, false teacher extraordinaire - who has over 700,000 subscribers on YouTube. Now that's hardly the big time of Joel Osteen and his 3 million followers but considering no one would know Rogers if NOT for YouTube, 700K is nothing to sneeze at. A reader asked me to take a look at him so the first video I found is linked above on the subject of tongues. Now Rogers appears to have an endless amount of false teachings but let's start here and reason together once more. I will be responding in relative order, to the statements that jumped out at me. The overall premise Rogers teaches is the traditional Charismatic false teaching about how the gibberish manifestation of tongues, is evidence of being baptized in the Holy Spirit.
"I don't care what anyone tells you. If they are saying you don't need to speak in tongues, they are teaching the opposite of what the apostles taught. Look at Acts 7:51 - stiff necked, always resist the holy ghost as your father did." - Marcus Rogers
This is the recurring focus of this video. That anyone telling you that you don't need tongues is not teaching what the apostles taught. This is of course a red herring and absurd. No one I have ever heard says you do not need tongues. The point Marcus misses here is that the teaching is wrong. That is what discernment ministries rail against. This element of snobbery and superiority. Anyone who has spent ten minutes in a Charismatic church knows exactly what I am speaking about. The super spirituals are those who can apparently move in and out of gibberish tongues and English within the same sentence! As opposed to the rest of us shleps who either suffer from "faith issues" or are "overthinking" it. Look however, at his scripture reference:
"You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, whom you have now betrayed and murdered, you who received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it." - Acts 7:51-53 (ESV)
This is a rebuke to the teachers of law from the first martyr Stephen. This is not a reference to being filled with the Holy Ghost upon baptism. It is a direct reference to how the Israelites resisted what God said even to the point of killing His prophets! The irony is delicious. Be wary of tricks like this by Rogers and his ilk. If someone throws out a scripture reference, check it! More often than not they are focused on a fragment and ignoring the context.
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