There were two great heresies that threatened the life of the infant church. The first was Judaism and the second Gnosticism. Many of the New Testament epistles were written to combat these two heresies. Judaism threatened to confine the Christian Faith to sectarianism, by making it a mere Jewish sect, nothing more than an appendage of Judaism itself. If successful, this heresy would have halted the Christian Faith from getting off the ground as God’s universal call to all men everywhere to come to His Son, Jesus Christ, for their salvation.
The second heresy threatening the fledgling church of the New Testament was Gnosticism, which was a counterfeit cult of Christianity that threatened to undermine the infallible truths of God’s Word with the false teachings and writings of the Gnostics. If successful in superseding the true Gospel of Jesus Christ with their false gospel, the Gnostics would have corrupted the Christian Faith right out of the blocks. Therefore, in defense of the faith, which was once and for all delivered to the saints (Jude 1:3), some New Testament epistles, such as Paul’s letter to the Colossians and the first epistle of John, were written to combat this heinous heresy.
Gnostic heretics taught that they themselves were the sole possessors of “gnosis”; that is, they alone were “in the know.” As the self-proclaimed possessors of superior enlightenment and intelligence, Gnostics looked down their noses at all dissenters as unenlightened ignoramuses. According to them, anyone disagreeing with their dictates was just simply too dumb to understand their brilliance.
In order to become like them, a “knowing one” or “enlightened one,” Gnostics taught that one had to ascend a ladder of spiritual entities, contact with which brought more and more enlightenment the higher one climbed. Ultimately, if one climbed high enough, he or she would achieve “gnosis,” becoming one with God.
When it came to their heretical teaching about God, Gnostics taught that God was all, and all was God. They also taught that all matter (the physical) was evil and that all spirit (the spiritual) was good. Consequently, Gnostics denied the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, since they erroneously believed that God could have no contact with evil matter. Instead of teaching what the Bible teaches, that God became a man, the Gnostics taught that the Christ-Spirit came on Jesus at His baptism and left Him right before His crucifixion. This explains why the Apostle John, in his defense of the Christian Faith against Gnosticism, warned his fellow first-century Christians that anyone denying “that Jesus Christ [came] in the flesh is not of God” (1 John 1:3).
In 1 John 4:1-3, John not only declares all Gnostics to be apostates, but Gnosticism to be possessed with “the spirit of antichrist,” which John predicts will continue to rise in our Christ-rejecting world until it finally crest and breaks over the entire earth at the end of time. According to John, the same manipulative and coercive spirit of supposed superior enlightenment and intelligence, which existed in his day, will reach its crescendo in the last days, when the whole world is indoctrinated by it and possessed with it.
Like John, the Apostle Paul also issued a very critical warning to us in 1 Timothy 6:20-21. According to Paul, we should "avoid godless, foolish discussions with those who oppose [us] with their so-called knowledge" (NLT). In the King James Version, the phrase “those who oppose [us] with their so-called knowledge" is translated "oppositions of science falsely so called.” As Paul warns, it is possible for us, especially in the last days, as John points out in his first epistle, to be deceived into erring from the Christian Faith, not only by those who will profess to possess superior knowledge, but also by what will falsely be called science.
Have you ever stopped to think about how similar many, if not most, modern-day scientists are to the ancient Gnostics? Do they not also profess to posses an intellectual superiority, which leads them to peer down their noses at all who refuse indoctrination into their “infallible” creed as intellectual inferiors. For instance, anyone who professes to believe in the “fanciful” Genesis account of creation rather than in the scientifically “proven fact” of evolution is readily and roundly ridiculed today as intellectually impaired. In addition, anyone daring to question medical science, when it comes to a pandemic, or environmental science, when it comes to climate change, is instantaneously renounced and reprimanded today as a numbskull and nemesis to public safety and planetary survival.
With the manipulative and coercive spirit of antichrist now sweeping our planet under the guises of “knowledge” and “science,” our world is increasing spurning the Lordship of Jesus Christ and subjugating itself to the lordship of its new science czars. Instead of following Scripture—living by the Word of God—today’s end-time world is following science—living by the words of men. Tragically, as time runs out on this Christ-rejecting planet, our world has no idea that it is sealing its fate by swapping infallible Scripture for imperfect science, divine revelation for human reason, Jesus Christ, our Creator and Great Physician, for climatologists and human physicians, and our omnipotent God for our own impotent government.
