On the Way to the Black Hole

Good morning!

The majority of the book of Jude, his letter to an unnamed local church, is devoted to admonition and correction.

The situation he's addressing in that day is this:  the local church has been infiltrated by people who are teaching error.  (Peter, in chapter 2 of his second letter, similarly condemns false teachers.)  According to Jude, here are the errors the false teachers are spreading:
1.  Denying that Jesus Christ is God (vs. 4)
2.  Practicing sexual immorality and perversion (vs. 4, 8)
3.  Advocating an attitude of the individual as god; selfish (vs. 8)
4.  Sowing dissension and division among the brothers and sisters in Christ (vs. 16)
In The Message version, vs. 13, the translator describes these people as "lost stars in outer space, on their way to the black hole".

Friends, this type of error is still around today.  For example, there are religious sects that call themselves Christian.  Yet, they do not preach/teach that Jesus Christ is God.  Instead, they teach that He was created by God, or that He was a highly-exalted human, or some other error.  By His own words, Jesus proclaimed Himself to be "the Alpha and the Omega".  Alpha is the first letter of the Greek alphabet, and Omega is the last letter.  By saying this, He was proclaiming His eternal existence, in Revelation 22:13.  In Revelation 1:18 and Isaiah 44:6, we see God the Father making the same statement of His deity.  When you hear a religious zealot deny the deity of Jesus Christ, you know you are in the presence of heresy.  Flee it!

Another characteristic of these folks Jude describes is that they practice sexual license:  "Whatever I choose to do sexually is permissible," they say.  Sex outside of biblical marriage is becoming the norm today - - - couples getting pregnant and then deciding to get married, or not getting married at all. People cheating on their spouses.  We also see homosexuality prevalent in our day, as it was in the days of the towns of Sodom and Gomorrah, where the men of the town begged to have sexual relations with Lot's male guests.
If all that were not sin enough....combining sexual immorality with religious worship was a characteristic of pagan religions down through the centuries, and this belief too had infiltrated this congregation of the early church of Jesus Christ.  Jude was pointing this out.  While we do not see this type of religious practice as flagrant today within the walls of our Christian churches, we see and hear people who call themselves Christian excusing it in their daily lives.  Jude is telling these Christians "straight" that ALL sexual immorality was to be condemned.

You see, at the root of the heresy described by Jude is the belief that "I am my own god."  It is spiritual rebellion against the one true God.  The selfishness, the immorality, the dissension - - - all of these were and are manifestations of this rejection of the spiritual authority of God and His laws for living.

Jude points out in verse 6 that a great many of the angels God created fell into this same trap.  We are told elsewhere, in Genesis 6, that the fallen "sons of God" (angels) made the willful decision to rebel against God by mating with human women, defiling both themselves and polluting the human race as well. Jude uses this example to the early Christians as a horrible warning of the trap they were walking into.  Jude then quotes from the pseudepigraphal Book of Enoch (1 Enoch 1:9), where Enoch prophesied that these fallen angels will be severely judged by God Himself.

Sobering.  So, what should be our response to false teachers and false doctrine?  We will look at Jude's admonitions regarding that, in tomorrow's post.

Great God our Father!  You provide for us many cautionary examples in Your Holy Word.  It is sobering to read how rebellion touched even Your created angels.  It is even more frightening to see error penetrating Your holy Church in our world today.  Evil is at work around us.  May we never let our guard down.  Deliver us from evil, O Lord!  Open our eyes to recognize it and to take the proper steps when we inevitably encounter it.  In Jesus' name I pray, amen.