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About Jesus - Steve (Stephen) Sweetman
Satan's
So-called Montanism
was a heretical, pagan influenced, mystical movement that inflicted the
second-century church. Adherents
to this ultra-spiritualized movement claimed to receive secret
revelations from God through dreams, visions, and prophetic messages.
Christians were prey to Montanism because they believed in a
spirituality, albeit, based on Biblical truth, not on paganism.
We are
all born with differing character traits that influence how we express
our Christian faith. There
is nothing inherently wrong with these traits, but taken to an extreme,
they can be problematic. Some
people, for example, are predisposed to being spiritually orientated by
nature, and thus, tend to express their faith in spiritual terms.
This can present the possibility of being susceptible to an
unbiblical, excessive mysticism. In
some cases, it can open the door to what Jesus calls "Satan's
so-called deep secrets." Revelation
2:24 in the NIV reads: "
Now I say to the rest of you in Thyatira, to you who do not hold to her
[Jezebel] teaching and have not learned Satan's so-called deep secrets
..." Although
Montanism was a second-century movement, unbiblical mystics existed when
John penned Revelation around 95 A. D..
Similar mystical movements have infiltrated the church over the
centuries. One such movement
re-emerged in the 1990's when some claimed to have uncovered secret
encoded prophetic messages within the Hebrew text of the Old Testament,
distracting them from the clear meaning of Scripture.
A New
Age style mysticism is sneaking its way into the church today.
Adherents to this modern Montanism claim to see visions, dream
dreams, and receive secret prophetic messages from God that rival
Biblical authority. That
alone should cause us to question this movement, but instead of raising
the questions, so-called prophetic ministries mentor visionaries,
dreamers, prophets, and prophetesses in search of secrets.
Revelation 2:18 to 29 tells us that Jesus has no tolerance for a church's forgiving attitude towards such adulteration of true Biblical spirituality. "Satan's so-called deep secrets," as Jesus called them, are just as heretical today as they were when Jesus scolded the church at Thyatira for its tolerance of heresy.
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