A Good Word by Prophet C. Alan Martin on

The Heresy Hunters

God has given you a reborn spirit that can do some wonderful things! The most important thing it can do is to lead you in the correct path. If we listen to the Spirit of Christ that God has given birth into us, and learn to trust its [His] leadings; then we will not go wrong. Natural spirituality means to trust the inner leadings of the inner man.

Sometimes we feel like we need to produce. Natural spirituality approaches life and ministry differently. We give when we have something to give. We let the spirit in us lead us. We don't just do things because we are afraid of not doing them. Fear is not of the inner man. Fear is of you know who. We don't do things out of desperation or fear. This is not faith. It is not love.

Today (especially in the prophetic) there are many ministries who are moved by fear or desperation. The "move" is not coming from the inner man. They feel something great and terrible is about to happen, and so think that ".. someone has got to do something...!!!"

The fruit of such motivation and ministry is very often fear, hysteria, and hopelessness. This fruit takes form in some very scary religions and very scary religious people.

But this spirit takes another even scarier form: the heresy hunter. These are self appointed protectors of doctrine and the faith. They go about searching out any sort of error or anything that could be construed as error.

This is very bad news because so many believers are very susceptible to this kind of activity. Purity in doctrine and the faith is important, and we should all strive to be as free from error as we can. And of course we all do!

If I put out the question: "Do you knowingly have any error in your doctrine?" 100% of those reading this would say "no."

What the heresy hunter misses is that the Holy Spirit, and not some human tribunal, is in charge of the disemination of truth. It is the Holy Spirit who will convince you and persuade you. You cannot do this yourself if you wanted to. You cannot change your beliefs by an act of will (try it! you can't do it).

You cannot get up one morning and decide what you will or will not believe. The Holy Spirit comes to you and reveals truth to you. You can mentally assent to truth on a soul level, but spiritual belief is quite out of your hands. 

So what is the use of attacking fellow believers for what they sincerely believe. The heresy hunter is accomplishing absolutely nothing other then dividing the body, and creating hard feelings between people about issues and beliefs that they are powerless (in themselves) to change.

Am I saying we should ignore gross error? No. We need to call sin sin. We need to stand up for the gospel without compromise. But many of the issues that are being picked at by the heresy hunter really are (relatively) insignificant. Things such as "the rapture," "the pre-adamic earth," "being slain in the spirit," and just to name a few.

These are all very interesting to discuss and learn about. But none of them are worth separating with a brother over. They are certainly not worth division. We need to have as much sense in the household of God as we do in our family lives and at our jobs.

Would you separate with your wife because she like a different ball team than you do? Would you quit your job because you did not like a co-worker? Why would we act  more mature and responsible outside the body than we do inside it? We should be more compassionate in the household of God because Jesus died for all of us.

Bottom line is this, dear friend. Even though we all honestly try to be 100% correct in our doctrine, we ALL have a certain degree of error (this is easily proven using simple logic). Not bad error, but error none-the-less.

We all need to pray for each other and be open to the Holy Spirit to lead us into the exact truth in all things. In the meantime, we need to have compassion toward each other, seeing that we are all in the same boat. Don't throw anyone overboard, and be careful not to tip the whole thing over!

Blessings,

C. Alan Martin