One of my favorite reading areas is the early church fathers. They lived in the first 100 years of the church and were often disciples of the apostles themselves, so they heard much of what Jesus taught the disciples firsthand. They wrote Epistles and sermons to various churches and people. Reading the various early church fathers, I noticed they all had common themes or topics in their writing. A major one dealt with various false teachings that crept into the church from the beginning. Paul said in 1 Timothy 4:1, “But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons.” A significant way that the devil wants to destroy the church is by introducing false teachings into the church. A second area of emphasis that all of the early church fathers repeated often was the importance of unity in the church. They emphasized that unity and love for one another validated the gospel’s truth. False teaching not only caused people to believe in a false gospel but also caused much infighting over what was true and what was false. The trick is to stand for and teach the truth without causing conflict.
What was true in the early church is still very true today. What was a problem in the early church is still a problem today. There is so much garbage proclaimed over the internet as truth, and there are so many “doctrines of demons” being taught as truth. Let me leave you with four guidelines in this area.

1. Attend a church where God’s Word is taught accurately. Pray for your pastor that God will keep him focused on the Word of God, and doesn’t get led astray by strange teachings.
2. Read and study the Bible daily so you will know if you are hearing some false teaching. Satan introduces false teaching in small doses, so we don’t notice.
3. There are a lot of variations of view on certain doctrines among denominations that don’t matter that much. Don’t sweat the small stuff. Is Jesus coming for us before the Tribulation, in the middle, or at the end? I know what I believe and I believe it firmly, but I will not fight with someone with a different view. We will all find out soon enough.
4. In defending the faith and the essential doctrines of the Bible, do so graciously. You are not more convincing because you are mean-spirited. Being a defender of truth and causing conflict in the process is not a good trade off, and is exactly what the devil wants to happen, don’t be his pawn.