Elijah Versus The False Prophets Much Like Today’s False Teachers

Standing up for Jesus means you obey God and do what He tells us to do in the Bible even when everyone around is not. Have you ever had to stand up for God? Elijah stood up boldly for God in a time when idolatry had swept his land. In fact, his name means “My God is Yah(weh).” The false god he opposed was Baal, the favorite deity of Jezebel, wife of King Ahab of Israel. To please Jezebel, Ahab had altars erected to Baal, and the queen murdered God’s prophets.

In Elijah’s day, the god Baal supposedly granted its worshipers success, fame and prosperity. Those who kissed the idol’s feet sought fulfillment in every area of materialism and sensuality. Who were these Baal worshipers? They were God’s chosen people, backslidden worshipers of Yahweh. Like me, you may wonder how God’s people could be drawn to such blatant idolatry. They saw Baal’s followers being blessed materially. And they reasoned, “We had plenty of food back in Jerusalem, when we bowed to our idols. We were blessed and successful then, with no suffering. But ever since we stopped worshiping those idols, we’ve faced only hardship. Let’s go back to burning incense and making drink offerings to the queen of heaven. Then maybe we’ll get the things we want again” (see Jeremiah 44:16-19).

God’s people had fallen under the powerful seduction of a “success gospel.” A spirit of greed and covetousness had gripped them, so that their lives now centered around wealth and recognition. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with succeeding, if you do things God’s way: clinging to Christ, tithing faithfully, submitting to his will. But in Israel, there was an unholy mixture: the people bowed to Yahweh because they feared his judgment, yet they also coveted material things. Right now, the same spirit of Baal is raging in our nation. On Wall Street, in front of the U.S. Stock Exchange, we see the very image of this pagan god. It’s a bronze statue of a huge bull, representing a “bull market”: ever-increasing prosperity, great wealth and fame, human achievement. These are the gods our nation bows to. We have “prosperity preachers” that preach if you follow God you will have health, wealth and your best life now. Preachers such as Joel Osteen, Joyce Meyer, Creflo Dollar and many more. They twist the Scriptures and pervert God’s word. Jude tells us – Jude 1:4...”For there are certain men who crept in unawares,who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ.”  Not only do they tell the people that if you follow God you will have everything you want, they often deny that Jesus is the only way to heaven.

Paul writes to Timothy in 2 Timothy 4:2-5 Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long suffering and doctrine. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables. But watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry.This Perverted Concept of Success Has Crept Into the Church.

In churches throughout America, the same seductive Baal spirit is at work. Multitudes of believers are driven by the urgent need to make it big. As a result, they’re being swept into lavish living and bottomless pits of debt. This doctrine is especially seductive as our nation is in the deepest pit of debt it has ever seen with an economy that is hardly surviving. This spirit has also produced a cockeyed view of success similar to the world’s. When a Pentecostal movement in Canada recently held a seminar for “successful pastors,” it stipulated that only ministers with congregations of at least 1,000 people could come. Apparently, large numbers was their only criterion for success.

Jesus describes how such believers become lukewarm: “These are they which…hear the word, and the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering in, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful” (Mark 4:18-19). Simply put, anything that interferes with our walk with Jesus is sin. If we allow something to press into our hearts — a drive for success, money or acclaim — it will put us on our knees before Baal. Our spiritual eyes will be blinded. And our hearts will grow cold, no longer zealous for Jesus.

The Israelites flocked to Baal’s church of success and prosperity. And soon this backslidden church was rife with unspeakable corruption. Elijah faced 850 false prophets in a life-or-death showdown over whose God would prevail. Some 450 of these prophets served the pagan god Baal; the other 400 were priests of the idolatrous groves built by wicked Queen Jezebel. Now, in a demonic ritual, the Baal prophets began dancing and wailing, trying to awaken their god. When the frenzy finally ended, the prophets lay bleeding profusely, totally exhausted. The idolaters sacrificed a bull and cried out to Baal from morning until nightfall, even slashing their skin until blood flowed, but nothing happened.

Elijah cried out to them, “How long will you waver between two opinions? Either the Lord is God, or Baal. You need to choose who the true God that you will follow is.” (1 Kings 18:21)

Then Elijah stepped up for his turn. He simply called on the Lord, and instantly supernatural fire fell from heaven. The engulfing blast of heat consumed both the prophet’s sacrifice and the twelve barrelfuls of water he’d poured around it. It even consumed the rocks on the altar.  What an awesome display of God’s almighty power. The people fell on their faces, shouting, “The Lord, He is God; the Lord, He is God.”

1 Kings 18:36-39
At the time of sacrifice, the prophet Elijah stepped forward and prayed: “O LORD, God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, let it be known today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant and have done all these things at your command. Answer me, O LORD, answer me, so these people will know that you, O LORD, are God, and that you are turning their hearts back again.” Then the fire of the LORD fell and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones and the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench. When all the people saw this, they fell prostrate and cried, “The LORD-He is God! The LORD-He is God!”

Elijah ordered the people to slay the 850 false prophets. Elijah then slew every one of those 850 false prophets. Suddenly, revival was back in Israel. The awakening Elijah had prayed for had finally come — or so he thought: “This is God’s hour. It’s the beginning of the renewal I’ve preached about for so long.”

The Lord our God has always had this problem with prosperity preachers that entice God’s people to doctrines of demons. From 900 B.C. til today.  Peter warns us in 2 Peter 2:

 But there were also false prophets among the people, even as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them, and bring on themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their destructive ways, because of whom the way of truth will be blasphemed. By covetousness they will exploit you with deceptive words; for a long time their judgment has not been idle, and their destruction does not slumber. 

Doom of False Teachers

For if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them down to hell and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved for judgment; and did not spare the ancient world, but saved Noah, one of eight people, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood on the world of the ungodly; and turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes, condemned them to destruction, making them an example to those who afterward would live ungodly; and delivered righteous Lot, who was oppressed by the filthy conduct of the wicked (for that righteous man, dwelling among them, tormented his righteous soul from day to day by seeing and hearing their lawless deeds)— then the Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptations and to reserve the unjust under punishment for the day of judgment, and especially those who walk according to the flesh in the lust of uncleanness and despise authority. They are presumptuous, self-willed. They are not afraid to speak evil of dignitaries, whereas angels, who are greater in power and might, do not bring a reviling accusation against them before the Lord. 

Deceptions of False Teachers

 For when they speak great swelling words of emptiness, they allure through the lusts of the flesh, through lewdness, the ones who have actually escaped from those who live in error. While they promise them liberty, they themselves are slaves of corruption; for by whom a person is overcome, by him also he is brought into bondage. For if, after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the latter end is worse for them than the beginning. For it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered to them. But it has happened to them according to the true proverb: “A dog returns to his own vomit,” and, “a sow, having washed, to her wallowing in the mire.”

We must not follow these preachers who turn us to fornication with other gods than the one true God and our Lord and Savior Jesus. We must expose these false prophets for who they are. I have two video below of some of these prosperity preachers and false teachers. I will keep updating with more videos in time. Blessings and love in Jesus name.