Beware these false prophets who deny Christ’s teaching on marriage
by Julian Mann, TCW:
JESUS’S warning against false prophets in the Book of Common Prayer Gospel reading for today challenges the tendency in the Western Church to compromise with the secular ideology of diversity and inclusion.
The reading for the 8th Sunday after Trinity is from Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s Gospel:
‘Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them. Not every one that saith unto me, “Lord, Lord” shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven’ (Matthew 7v15-21 – King James Version).
Prophets in the Old Testament proclaimed the word of the Lord to his chosen people in what they foretold and in what they told forth. True prophets spoke God’s truth about the present and the future; false ones told lies. They did not prophesy truly or falsely apart from their membership of the people of Israel.
The false prophets against whom Jesus Christ as Israel’s Messiah warns his disciples here are therefore part of the visible people of God, the Church. They are professing Christians; they call Jesus ‘Lord’. Yet more than merely professing the Christian faith these wolves in sheep’s clothing are public teachers in the visible Church.
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