This transcript was taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program originally aired on March 10, 2021. To listen to the program, please click HERE.

Isaac Crockett: Have you ever seen a commercial on TV and it looked too good to be true, but you wanted it so badly that you went ahead and you ordered it and the item came to you and sure enough, it wasn’t what it really proclaimed to be. And maybe somebody told you, “You know what, it’s not just them trying to trick you, you tricked yourself into thinking about that.” Well, today on Stand in the Gap, we want to talk about false ministers. We want to talk about false teaching, but we want to see that it comes not always just from without. The false teachings that we’re standing against don’t always come from other parts of the world, but they come from even within the church and from even within our own hearts. 

Thanks again for listening. I’m Isaac Crockett, joined by the honorable Sam Rohrer. And today we will have a special guest with us as we talk about the stand against false teaching from within. Now, Sam, real quickly before we get into the rest of this program and invite our special guests on. As we talk about standing up against falsehood, when you left your role after a long time as a Christian civil leader and you started the American Pastors Network, why did you think that it was so important to have a media outreach like what we have here on the radio with Stand in the Gap? And why did you in having a media outreach for the Pastors Network, feel like the title Stand in the Gap was so appropriate?

Sam Rohrer: Well, you’ve asked a couple of different questions there Isaac. But I’ll go to the heart of this. Why Stand in the Gap? That was because God used that verse, Ezekiel 22:30, in my life, in thinking about where I was in this age, as compared to when God posed that question to the nation of Israel in the days of Ezekiel when they had walked away from truth. All of the authority positions that have been established, the prophets, the princes, the priests, and the people, the nation as a whole had walked away from the truth of God and brought them to the point of God’s judgment. And God said, “Is there anybody willing to stand in the gap for truth for me, or I will judge the land.”

And I said, “You know, that’s the same circumstance we have here today.” A nation founded on biblical principles and truth, but walked away from it. And I’m going to say, we’ve all walked away from it. The people, the church, the civil government, the families, we’ve walked away from truth. I’m saying, if we are going to perhaps enter the days of revival again, how’s that going to happen? It’s going to be returned to the truth of God’s word. And my sense was, who does the Bible say is the primary duty and responsibility to lead in the proclamation and the teaching of truth? It is the pulpits. The pulpits are the ones that are commanded to preach the word. 

The church is the pillar and the ground of truth. We must preach the whole counsel of God. And out of that came the American Pastors Network. So we are a pastor-led entity for the purpose of proclaiming biblical truth, a biblical worldview into the public square. And that is the radio and the TV and what we’re focusing on here right now, but not everybody believes the truth. And part of the responsibility of those in positions of their truth is to identify those who walk away and proclaim false hood in place of the truth. 

Isaac Crockett: Amen. That is well stated. Well, we want to keep talking about truth about biblical truth, not just, oh, well you have your truth. And I have mine. No, God is truth. Jesus Christ is the way the truth and the life. And so we must come through him and we don’t want to just focus on all the evil things going on in the government or the government schools or big media or big tech platforms. There’s something much closer oftentimes lurking right at home. And so we want to discuss that today as we look at dealing with false teaching from within.

So our special guests today to help us handle this topic biblically is Dr. Arthur Belanger. Dr. Belanger, is an author speaker, a teacher, a preacher. He’s currently serving as the College Chancellor of College of the Open Bible and the Theological Seminary there as well. So, Dr. Belanger, thank you so much for taking the time to be on the radio program with us today to Stand in the Gap.

Dr. Arthur Bela…: Well, thank you. And it’s an honor to be with you as well, and God bless you.

Isaac Crockett: Dr. Belanger, before we get into the rest of the program talking about false teaching, looking at false ministers, those who proclaim to be ministering for God, but really they’re not. I recently read an article that you wrote. And you in that article, you identified characteristics of God’s preachers, of the true preachers. Could you maybe highlight some of the key characteristics of a biblical preacher that we should be looking for?

Dr. Arthur Bela…: Absolutely. And I think when we answer a great question, such as that is, we always have to start with the presupposition that, that answer comes from the word of God. And it is God’s perspective that we must be in possession of, or rather we should be possessed by His perspective as to God’s definition of His ministers, His preachers. When we take that presupposition about the Bible, we understand the Bible… The Bible is not a book of advice. It’s absolute. It’s not theology or rather it is theology not theatrics. We don’t look at God’s word in a way that it’s fictional, it’s factual. It’s not an alternative, it’s the ultimatum. And if we ignore the preeminence of the Bible as the authority, not just the final authority, the only authority, then we’re going to be as fit for ministry as a snake is for shoulder pads. It’s just not going to work. 

When we look in God’s word, there are highlights that demonstrate that God’s ministers are, from his perspective, identifiable. And there are two paramounts to consider. I mean, there are academics about things that identify God’s preachers, but there are two things that become distinctly observable and obvious to those who look upon God’s preachers. And I think first and foremost, God’s preachers, they value above all else, their conscience. And I think it’s well displayed. Even the apostle Paul said to the believers in Rome, he said, “I say the truth in Christ, I lie not. My conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost.”

So there is this value of their conscience. And if their conscience is seared, it’s going to be very frustrating in every aspect of their ministry and it will show. But they not only value their conscience, I think at the core of this, they value the convicting influence of the Holy Spirit. The apostle Paul said, “As believers, let us not grieve the Holy Spirit.” And often I think the greatest grieve a minister gives to the Holy Spirit is their good intentions.

Many Christians and ministers in particular who espouse this, we must accept the fact the Holy Spirit is not looking for ministers to be available. He wants them to be accessible. And this is what the apostle Paul said to the believers in Ephesus, “Be filled. Literally be accessible with the in dwelling, the influence, the [infusesiveness 00:07:25] of the Holy Spirit to guide us into all truth.” Amen?

Isaac Crockett: Amen. Wow. Thank you. That is very helpful and very concise the way you wrap that up. And that’s what we need to be looking for. Of course that is our highest priority is the word of God and following someone who has a conscience that is saturated in the word of God. Well, we have so much more to talk about after we take this brief time out to hear from our partners. We want to come back and get right into this topic of the danger of false ministers. We’ll do that right after this brief timeout. 

Welcome back to the program. This is Isaac Crockett and Sam Rohrer, the President of the American Pastors Network is my co-host today. And those of you who are regular listeners, you are very familiar with his voice and most of you recognize mine. Our guests today, who you probably don’t recognize because he’s a first time guest is Dr. Arthur Belanger, from the College of the Open Bible.

And so, Dr. Belanger, we started talking in the beginning of this program about looking at false teaching and such, and seeing that it comes from even within the supposedly group of people that claim to be called Christians, claim to be followers of Christ. And so we said we’re going to get into that. This is what you do. I mean, your position at the College of the Open Bible, you are teaching training and mentoring thousands of current and future preachers, Bible teachers, just people who want to know the Bible.

How concerned are you with what you see going on in the church today and with the people… I guess, how concerned are you about the impact of those out there who are claiming to be Christians, claiming to be, “Ministers of God” but they’re really not. How big of a concern is that to you within our own churches that are claiming to be biblical churches?

Dr. Arthur Bela…: Well, it’s a priority. It is a cheap concern. Even for the apostle Paul, it was one of his greatest source of aggravation only second to carnality or carnal Christians. False ministers are those who claim to be ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ or the word of God, is not uncommon. This happened all the way back into the early churches. There are 29 churches mentioned in the New Testament. 27 of them were ultimately severely or fatally damaged due to false ministers. So the danger with false ministers is… First of all, we should not underestimate their ability to infuse such corruption and heretical teaching, but ultimately the real danger with false ministers that have influence with the church. They have a subtle fashion of introducing competition to the word of God. Literally, seeking to not remove God’s word, but to reduce God’s word to a nonessential.

And as I mentioned, there are 29 churches mentioned in the New Testament and there’s two of them that really stick out. One of them was, of course the church at Corinth. This church was severely beguiled, or if you will, they were hypnotized to a state of self gratification. But there was also the church at Galatia. And this is the one that the Apostle Paul really struggled with, because it was a church that was severely bewitched. It was a church that was seduced to self glorification. Somehow trying to match the grace of God with their obedience to the laws of God, which you and I know that’s… The only way to live the Christian life is the way it begins, by grace through faith.

I think the great danger is, is the subtlety of false teachers that somehow breathe into the churches. The unfortunate toleration of false or heretical teaching. And the bottom line is, it is true. The old saying, you can’t change what you tolerate. Even Christians are powerless to escape what they tolerate. So we must not underestimate the danger and the power of false teachers, but not there should we underestimate the leading of the Holy Spirit to help us make correction along the way, when we are confronted with false teachers.

Sam Rohrer: And Dr. Belanger, that really goes in very well with the next question I want to pose to you on this regard, because you’re talking about false teachers. Scripture often uses the context, the description of false prophets, and you’re talking about things that they are saying that are not true, though they pretend they are true. And the result is that, it moves us away from the authority of scripture and ultimately it’s a matter of life and death. I mean, literally is what it comes down to, eternal life or eternal death, depending on how someone relates to them. 

Now, I think on Matthew 24, the Lord told the disciples, “Deception is going to be a mark of the age.” We talk it on this program here a lot. Deception is prevalent, and then he says, “False prophets, be aware of them.” But within the context of that, I want you to comment on this, is that, deception and error, as it comes to truth, can be things that we are stating that are not true, commission of error. But then it also comes along and you use the phrase silent preachers. Those who don’t say truth when they should say truth, as an example. Talk to me and with our listeners about silent preachers, those who perhaps know the truth, but with hold it at the right time and therefore ends in deception.

Dr. Arthur Bela…: Very good question. Unfortunately, even that is not unusual in churches where there is silence in reference to the essentials and the emphasis that are portrayed in God’s word by God himself. But silent preachers, I mean, obviously they speak, they try to make themselves relevant as far as the teaching of God’s word, but there is a silence in reference to the essentials of God’s word. I like to liken in a silent preacher in a portrait of the walking dead. The real danger of silent preachers, it’s their propensity to litter the church with doubt and mangle the relevance of faith in God’s word.

The core of silent preachers, I would suggest that it’s a battle with insecurity and insecure preachers are easily discouraged from proclaiming boldly, with confidence and contentment and conviction, the thus sayeth the Lord. And thus, they have a tendency to infuse… Literally, they vomit a preoccupation with survival. The apostle Paul mentioned in Romans that we are not to be conformed to this world because once we’re conformed to this world, we’re going to go silent. And the hallmark of conforming to this world is a preoccupation with survival. When survival is challenged by the authority of God’s word, ministers tend to go silent and not to interrupt their preoccupation with surviving.

Isaac Crockett: Dr. Belanger, what you’re saying there, it’s reminding me of a conversation we just had right before we went on air where you and Sam were talking about ministers of God. So you have the minister who’s in the pulpit who is preaching the word of God, but you have ministers called to follow God’s law that are our governmental leaders. I think both of you and Sam would probably both agree that this idea of this need for survival, you have preachers and pastors who are like that. And you have politicians who are like that. They claim to know Christ, but they are afraid to speak up. So sometimes they will go along with bad stuff because they’re false teachers. But there are others who are afraid to stand up for what is right or stand against it because they want survival.

So I guess that brings me to a question here. Dr. Belanger, as we’ve talked about this, maybe you could kind of help us look at what kind of motivates these different ones. What motivates a godly preacher or a godly minister versus a false teacher versus a silent preacher?

Dr. Arthur Bela…: Again, a great question. And I can think of three things, speaking personally from my own experience and being impressed by the Lord through the teaching of His word. I think ultimately there’s three things. Number one, a God ordained, God called, God equipped, God educated minister of His word, he puts at the top of His list, the glory of God. He’ll do everything he can. He’ll void every angle that would compete against the glory of God.

Competing against God is essentially doing two things. And we see this throughout the scriptures, even the apostle Paul for a brief time in his life was guilty of it. But there’s two things that we find ourselves competing against. Number one, we compete against the glory of God by running from God due to God not agreeing with us. Of course, Jonah, perfect example. He was so disappointed with God’s lack of agreement with him that he ran from God, but ultimately we all know no one can run from God. They can only run into God. Not only competing by running from God, but then there are those who want to run things for God.

And one thing we must learn from God’s word, He’s never going to ask for our assistance. He’s never going to ask for our help. He’s always going to proclaim that His grace, as He did with the apostle Paul, “My grace is sufficient for thee.” God will never need our help because He has no needs. And so I think God’s glory is at the top of the list. We don’t want compete with God. 

And secondly, there’s the grace of God. We avoid it all costs, underestimating the sufficiency of God’s grace. If you really think about it, God’s grace is the only reason why we are not hopeless. And then I think ultimately for the minister that motivates him, it is the greatness of Jesus Christ. If there’s one thing I hope sticks out with your audience today is this, Jesus Christ, He can never be less than who He is. He is Lord. Period.

Isaac Crockett: Amen. If we weren’t on radio, I think I would just say, let’s just take a few seconds just to remember that. But with radio, you don’t want it to go silent, but He is Lord. And that’s the problem with all of these false teachers out there who are trying to compete. And I like what you said earlier, you said, “They won’t just say, ‘Oh, we need to remove the word of God.'” But they tried to reduce it. And this is false ministers in the pulpit. And this is false ministers in government.

They try to say, “Yeah, I’m a Christian. Oh, I believe in God.” But you know what? And they start to doubt things that they start to cast out and try to make black and white into gray and we need to be on guard. And we need to stand against that, even from those who claim to be Christians, even from those who claim to be pastors and preachers and Christian teachers. We need to compare what they’re saying to the word of God and make sure that we give Jesus Christ all the glory and allow him to work in us.

We have a lot more to talk about, and we have a lot more to talk about looking out for deception from within and false teaching from within. But right now we’re going to take a brief timeout after this timeout, we’ll come back with you right here on Stand in the Gap. Please don’t go away. We’ll be right back. 

Yes. Welcome back to the program. I’m Isaac Crockett, joined with Sam Rohrer, and we have our special guest today is Dr. Arthur Belanger, from the College of the Open Bible. Before we get back into grilling Dr. Belanger, which I’ve really enjoyed this interview. We were just talking between the break about just how excellent this is and how neat it is for us to have that focus on drawing closer to the Lord at all times and standing up against the false teaching. Before we get into more of this though, I want to see if our producer, the guy who is always behind the scenes and kind of behind the microphone, if Tim Schneider, if he’s available to come and maybe give us some of the updates of things that are going on in our ministry or on our website, Tim are you there?

Tim Schneider: I am, Isaac. I am behind the microphone. Actually it’s radio. So we are technically all behind the microphone, but I’m here with you, especially behind the board to making sure that everything’s coming so that you can hear us every day without any flaws, hopefully. We do have lots of things going on here at the American Pastors Network behind the scenes. If all you do is listen to our radio program or check out our TV program, you’re missing an awful lot that we have to offer around here. And I want to you to look at a couple of extra things that we do have to offer. 

We are on social media. If you do Facebook, if you’re on Twitter, go ahead and check us out. We have the American Pastors Network Stand in the Gap Radio. Just like us on Facebook by looking up those terms or go ahead and follow us on Twitter. At those same hashtags. You can find lots of information that we post about the program every day. And just other things that are related to our ministry here, right there on Facebook and Twitter. 

Also, we are on YouTube. We have three great YouTube channels. We have the American Pastors Network Stand in the Gap Radio and Stand in the Gap TV. We have those three great YouTube channels. Right now, over on Stand in the Gap TV, we have the latest Stand in the Gap TV program, which is called America Mission Field. If you have not gotten a chance to check the program out, you can always check us out on the television networks that carry us, but we also are there on YouTube. We have those three great channels. You can check out the TV program and radio related stuff and other lots of great things.

So go, search and subscribe for those three YouTube channels, American Pastors Network, Stand in the Gap Radio and Stand in the Gap TV. And if you subscribe to us, you’ll be notified every time new content is posted. Also, we want to encourage you to please pray for this ministry. Nothing gets done effectively without prayer, and we know prayer is powerful. So we covet your prayers and we ask that you would pray for us here in this ministry with the various things that we have going on. And we asked for the Lord’s favor and we ask for your prayers. 

Also, if the Lord has blessed you and you would like to give to us, you appreciate what we’re doing and the Lord has put it on your heart, we would ask you to give to us financially. No amount too big or no amount too small is too much, just whatever the Lord would put on your heart. So we encourage you to consider giving financially and praying for us. So I want to listen to you to continue to grill our guests today, Isaac. So I will go ahead back to you. Thanks.

Isaac Crockett: All right. Thank you very much, Tim. Well, Sam and Dr. Belanger, recently on this program, we were talking about some of the problems facing our nation. We’re looking at things outside of the church. And I remember our co-hosts, Dr. Gary Dahl, was on with us that day. And one of the things he did is, he kind of turned it back around and reminded us that we can’t just blame all of the faults of what’s going on, on outside sources. But that we need to take a close look at our own hearts. And of course the prophet Jeremiah reminds us that our human hearts, our human desires are deceitful and desperately wicked. And if we think that everybody is really, really good, we’re mistaken because our hearts are really, really evil.

And so, Dr. Belanger, we’ve looked at that there are many false teachers, false ministers that are hurting our churches. People who claim to be speaking for God and they are not. But there are many Christians who are struggling and they’re living less than victorious lives for Christ, really because in some way or another, they have deceived themselves about their own sense. Maybe they can see everybody else’s sin, but they don’t see their sense as being that bad. When we look at this idea of self-deception, false teaching coming from our own heart, what really is the root of self-deception?

Dr. Arthur Bela…: Again, that’s a very, very important, relevant question that should always be considered. And when we consider the answer to that, obviously we need to pay close attention to what God’s word says about the whole reality, the whole economy of sin. And as you already stated, in Jeremiah 17, we are told that the heart, the human heart is deceitful. There’s no debating that. This is not to be disputed. We may justify our actions by whatever perceptions we may have, but the heart is deceitful above all things. There’s no competition when it comes to deceitfulness to the heart or of the heart. But it’s also desperately wicked so much so that the question is asked, “Who can know it.” 

And I think at the very heart of self-deception, well, let me just back it up and say this, our self-deception is always teased by, what I believe to be unrealistic expectations. And this has always been Satan’s choice bait. It’s stirring a vain expectation of oneself. We must accept the fact however, self-deception is sin. And at the very core of self-deception is a pattern of justifying why we should sin. There’s a classic example of it in God’s word, when Jesus Christ was in the wilderness fasting 40 days, 40 nights, He was then tempted by the devil himself.

Now, Jesus Christ is not only the Son of God, He’s God, the Son. He’s the only person that when He was ever born or was born or conceived in the womb of a virgin, was born, He was the only person that can honestly and genuinely say that He was older than His mother and the same age as His father. 

Now He was tempted. And the question or the proposal by Satan was, “If dial will be the son of God, turn these stones into bread.” And therefore He was being compelled to justify by His own ability to rely upon Himself and not God to satisfy His human needs. And so at the very core of self-deception is a form of justification. Why we make excuses to sin comes all the way back to the deceitfulness of the human heart. But self-deception is not only sin, it is sinfulness as well. I think all of us can probably identify with this. When we are self deceived, we begin to show a pattern of double mindedness. We’re given to change. We lack consistency.

And when that begins to happen, yes, we’ll always believe in the goodness of God. A Christian will never be without faith in God. They may be without faithfulness to God, but they’ll never be without faith in God, because that faith was given by God. But ultimately, yes, we believe, but in the pattern of self-deception, when it comes to sinfulness, we are no longer believable. And that’s the danger that we fall into due to self-deception.

Sam Rohrer: Superb. All I can say is superb in the answering of that. Justifying of sin leads to self-deception. You put that very kind of clear there, it makes me think of unreasonable expectations. That’s what the devil said to Eve in the garden. “You want to be like God? Has God said.” An unreasonable expectation to be like God, but it happened. And there was a consequence to that. My question to you here in a practical sense today, I mean, the fall happened from that interaction back in the garden, but what are the results of self-deception today? Average, person’s listening, if they’re self deceived, what’s the impact? What’s the consequence?

Dr. Arthur Bela…: Okay. Well, in light of the context that we’re in, we’re speaking of Christians who are either aware of their self-deception, or may even be ignoring it. And of course ignoring is not, or I should say ignorance is not a sin. But it is a sin to ignore one’s ignorance. I think that the greatest subtle result of self-deception is when a believer begins that process of trying to either regain or earn God’s favor. And as you and I know, grace is not something that is earned. Grace is merely God providing for us what we do not deserve. And that is His presence, His promises realized, His glory always at the pinnacle of life. And I think the great result of self-deception is, we try to gain or earn God’s favor as a result. And when we do that, we’re always going to have the Holy Spirit challenging us.

There’s never anybody as staunch, stallworth, as far as challenging craziness in the mind that is born from self-deception. And that is, we are going to constantly be reminder we can not pay God back. He said on the cross, “It is finished.” A Christian must accept the fact that they are not in debt to God. They are debt-free because of God. Thus, they can walk with God. They can walk with the Lord Christ. They can fellowship with them unhindered. But not only is there that danger of trying to pay God back. There are many Christians due to the result of self-deception trying to prove themselves to God.

You and I know that God knows us, and yet he will love us always. We don’t need to try to make Jesus Lord of our lives. He already is Lord. And I think one of the greatest vocal results is, we begin to make promises to God. God is not looking for promise keepers. He’s looking for promise reapers. Those are just some of the things from the perspective of the self-deception and the result of it. We want fellowship with God, but because we have deceived ourselves, and tolerated that deception, we go on the path of trying to impress God. It’s always going to fail.

Isaac Crockett: And if you’re listening today, and that’s what you’ve been trying to do, you’ve been trying to find a way to impress God, we’re going to talk more about this in the final segment about how we can come out of self-deception. But we need to accept Jesus Christ as savior. It’s through God’s grace. We’ve put our faith in His grace. We’re going to talk a little more about this when we come back. We have a little bit of time left to wrap everything up. I hope you’re listening and I hope that you’re praying for the Holy Spirit to work in you, if you are a child of God. That you will be open to see if you have self-deception going on in your own life and that you will also be watching for false teaching. We’re going to take this brief time out. We’ll be right back on, Stand in the Gap.

Welcome back to our final segment of Stand in the Gap today. I’m Isaac Crockett, joined by Sam Rohrer, and our special guest today is Dr. Arthur Belanger, from the College of the Open Bible. Dr. Belanger, we’ve been talking about false teaching and then falsehoods that come from our own heart, self-deception. And you did a really nice job of explaining the dangers and the results of self-deception as we just finished the last segment. What if somebody listening for us talking together right now, if we say, “You know, I see where I’ve been self deceived. I see where I’ve been doing these things.” How do we go from that self-deception and come and humble ourselves before God and make things right, so that we can come out of that self-deception and start walking with the Lord as we should again?

Dr. Arthur Bela…: Again, that’s a very powerful question only because that is ongoing for many Christians. They’re constantly being challenged by the indwelling Holy Spirit to recognize their state of mind, and to ultimately understand the sufficiency of grace. It comes down to one word, trust. If you can trust, and you do trust, we do trust the Lord Jesus Christ. Once you’ve trusted Him, you will always trust Him. Now, whether or not you’ll always be trustworthy yourself is another matter. But instinctively, we trust the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s not our idea to trust Him. It is because God Himself is trustworthy. And it’s only instinctive that we trust Him.

Christians desire fellowship with God. They want to walk with God. They don’t want to just walk with him. They want to walk like the Lord Jesus Christ. And yet it seems they feel forgiveness evades them. Therefore, we need to come back to the authority, the authenticity of the word of God. 1 John 1:9 says, “If we,” that is we as born again, believers. “If we confess our sins and we should, then He, that is Christ, He is faithful, He is just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

Now, forgiveness is instant, whether or not we are instantly inclined to acknowledge that forgiveness. Perhaps we still struggle with the thought of the weight and the consequences and the parasite of guilt due to sin. But nevertheless, in God’s economy, in His mind, forgiveness is immediate. It is instant. Now, cleansing is another matter. While forgiveness is instant, cleansing is constant. God is always working to help us to grow in the likeness of Jesus Christ. But ultimately there simply just two things, a Christian need to acknowledge under that one term, trust. First and foremost, just be honest. It comes down to honesty.

There’s only one thing you and I can be perfect at in life. And that’s just be perfectly honest. When we are honest with God, we must accept the assurance that God gives to us. We will not meet with condemnation. God will not condemn you. Christ has resolved that matter for us. But not only should we be honest about ourselves before God, but most importantly, and I think significantly, we need to honor God’s willingness to forgive us. God doesn’t nor should… This is very important, listen to this carefully. God will never debate with himself about His eagerness, His willingness, His fortitude to forgive us and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. He’s not going to dispute this matter. His forgiveness will always be immediate. So therefore if we honor God’s forgiveness, then we must avoid at all costs underestimating God’s willingness to forgive us why? God is love.

Isaac Crockett: Well, thank you for that. We hear today, we have so many false teachers out there that are damaging the church. And as we have this constant battle of our heart, that is deceitful and desperately wicked, the message that we’ve heard from you today has been so biblically based and so on spot that this is very, very helpful. Just lastly, before we close, I didn’t know if you have any final thoughts but also maybe a website where folks can go to either learn more about your ministry there at the College of the Open Bible, or maybe a personal website so that people can maybe read more of your writings or hear more of your teaching and things. But, any final thoughts or place we could go to hear more?

Dr. Arthur Bela…: Yes, absolutely. And I appreciate that Isaac and Sam, thank you for being so… making me feel very comfortable with you. It is true. I believe that whatever we hear, whether it’s in church or listening to the radio, a broadcast such as this, most people are only going to remember 1.5% of what was said. And so I just want to repeat the most important thing I said of all, I believe in this broadcast, and that is simply this, Jesus Christ, He can never, will never be less than who He is. He is Lord. Period. 

And if someone wants to learn more about the College of the Open Bible they can always just go to collegeoftheopenbible.com. We’d be happy to honor them and trust that the Lord will guide them into knowing the word of God, growing in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Praise the Lord.

Isaac Crockett: Praise the Lord. Amen. Dr. Belanger, Thank you for all that you’ve shared with us today. Sam, I’m going to go to you here as we close to have you close us in prayer, but before you close this program out in prayer, any final thoughts, any final comments and encouragement to kind of go with this theme that we’ve been talking about, standing against false ministers. Of course, ministers who claim to be God’s people behind the pulpit, but even ministers who claim to be God’s leaders in civil government and then also watching out for the falsehoods of our own heart.

Sam Rohrer: Absolutely, Isaac. And I think I would encourage you all to who are listening, go to our website, standinthegapradio.com. This is a program to listen to. Again, there were so many quotable things that are of benefit to you. I’d encourage you to go there. But Isaac, as I’m listening, as I’m summarizing from my perspective, we talked about false prophets. We’ve talked about deception. We’ve talked about being silent on truth. And we talked about how can all be a part of this deception by being either let astray or self deceived. I came down to two things. I’m saying, in the stay of COVID we’re talking about vaccinations. I’m thinking about, is there an inoculation against deception? I think it is. One, I think of a reality. That’s all about truth. We’ve talked about truth.

God is the author of truth. Jesus Christ is the life and the way and the truth, and the Holy Spirit is the discerner of truth. It’s an all about God who is truth. And when we get off of that, we deceive ourselves. And the second part I’d put before people is that, you don’t blindly walk into deception. It’s a choice, we are commanded in scripture to pursue the truth. And when we pursue it, as Proverbs talks about, we have to embrace it and then we need to witness of it.And then the last we have to resist everything that opposes it. And that is kind of like lays out, if we do that, we’ll be able to discern the wolves and the deceivers and look in the mirror and we can better see it in our own selves. 

Heavenly father, we’re thankful that we can come to you as the God of all truth, the author of truth, the definer of truth and the provider of truth and the person of Jesus Christ, who can redeem us from all of our inequities and put us into your family, give us an identity that is worth living as a son of God, as an ambassador of Jesus Christ, a purpose for living. Lord it’s all there.

And I pray those who are listening right now would understand and grasped that and would make you submit themselves to you as Lord of their lives. We thank you, Lord. We ask that you guard all of those who are listening today, may they stand in the gap for truth themselves in Jesus name. Amen

Isaac Crockett: Amen. Thank you, Sam. Thank you, Dr. Belanger. Thank  you for listening. From all of us here, Tim and everyone behind the scenes, myself, Isaac, we want to thank you for listening and invite you to stand in the gap for truth today.