False teachers speak the world’s language. They promise bodily pleasure and satisfaction. They promise riches, beauty, and material gain. And they promise that by following their teaching you will win the approval of others and increase your status in this world. False teachers are absorbed in what is transitory and they speak to people whose hearts love the world and its lusts rather than God. They are in it for the money, for the status, for the pleasures they crave, and they promise their hearers that they will enjoy the same by following them and their message.

As history moves closer to the return of our Lord Jesus Christ, we should expect a rise in false teachers, false prophets, and false messiahs. Jesus prophesied about the increase of such deceivers in Matthew 24:5, 11, 23, and 24. The Apostle Paul echoed our Lord’s warning in 2 Timothy 3:13, reminding Timothy that imposters will proceed from bad to worse in the last days. Why does the number of false teachers increase as we move closer to the second coming of Christ, and how can believers identify those the New Testament cautions us against following? As we conclude our series on identifying false teachers, I want to consider how one of the final books written in the New Testament helps us understand why false teachers come and how to identify them.
The Apostle John lived longer than any of the Twelve Apostles, with many scholars dating his death near the end of the first century. He composed the letter we call 1 John some time in the 80s. He was writing to a church that had just experienced a significant split, with some in the church departing over the doctrine of Christ. These factious people taught a defective view of the Son of God. While scholars debate the specific nature of their heresy, it seems evident that they did not believe that the Son of God had come in the flesh, which also led them to deny that the Son of God had shed His blood for the forgiveness of the sins of the world. Their false teaching was essentially a denial that Jesus was the Messiah (1 John 2:22). From John’s description of these false teachers and their departure from the church, it seems that some of them wielded significant influence over members of the congregation, so John wrote to equip these believers to mark and avoid such deceptive false brothers. In so doing, John also explained where these false teachers come from.
False teachers, according to 1 John, are a clear sign that we are living in the last hour because false teachers are aligned with the spirit of antichrist. In 1 John 4:3, John says, “And every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world.” John’s point is that false teachers arise because they are motivated by the same spirit that ultimately will motivate and empower the final antichrist at the end of the age. That spirit is the spirit that works in those who belong to this present world (1 John 4:6). In 1 John 5:19, the Apostle makes clear that the world is under the power of the evil one, the devil himself. The spirit of antichrist, therefore, is the evil one who exalts himself as god and opposes God and His truth. During the last hour, the activity of the spirit of antichrist will increase so that many arise who corrupt the truth about Christ and seek to keep the world in its deceptions and under Satan’s power.
False teachers come as a clear signal to Christians that we are living in the last hour and that Satan is making his final attempt to destroy Christ and His blood-bought people.
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The founders of the PCA viewed ruling elders as a reliable, commonsense bulwark against doctrinal and denominational decline. The founders were not insensible to the fact that teaching elder professors and influential large-church pastors had presided over the liberalization of the old Southern mainline church from whence the PCA came.

The recently-concluded 50th Presbyterian Church in America General Assembly in Memphis, TN was the second-largest ever with (unofficially) 2250 elders in attendance; only the previous year’s assembly was larger with 2385 in attendance. More significantly, this year’s meeting solidified a trend of greater ruling elder (RE) participation in the courts of the PCA.
The parity of the two classes of elder (ruling and teaching) in the PCA is a notable feature of PCA polity. Most committees are structured so that equal numbers for ruling and teaching elders are possible if fully attended. The principle of parity is baked in; the reality of parity has been harder to achieve. Various reasons for this difficulty are given, but most agree that the high cost of attendance and/or the need for a week off of work for REs (most of whom work outside the church for a living) are at least partially to blame. Most teaching elders are paid their salary and expenses to attend both presbytery and GA meetings.
The first PCA General Assembly in 1973 saw more ruling elders than teaching elders (pastors) in its ranks, but a downward trend in lay attendance began after the fourth general assembly. Ruling elders comprising something like 50% of assembly attendance became a thing of the past, and RE participation bottomed out between 2009 and 2018—averaging only 23% of commissioners at those assemblies.
Things began to change in 2018 in Dallas with REs making up 25% of commissioners. Part of the reason for greater RE numbers there may have been the sheer size of the North (everything-is-bigger-in) Texas Presbytery, which hosted the assembly. But the next year in St. Louis there were 25% again, then more than 30% of the commissioners at the last two assemblies (Birmingham and Memphis) were REs. Something is changing; ruling elders are showing up…but why? Here are several possible reasons. 
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Written by Scott R. Swain |
Saturday, September 25, 2021
We will behold God’s glory, not by means of his created, intermediary luminaries, but in the unveiled purity of God’s own transcendent light (Rev 21:23; 22:4-5). Those who have been redeemed by the precious blood of Christ, who are being sanctified by the Holy Spirit for a holiness without which no one will see the Lord (Heb 12:14), are being prepared for the conjugal vision of the divine king in his unmediated light. This is our “blessed hope” (Titus 2:13). 

Psalm 104 celebrates God’s work of creation. It begins with a description of God’s work in creating the heavens and their inhabitants (vv. 1-4). It then moves to an extended discussion of God’s work of creating the earth and its inhabitants, including human beings, who have a special vocation as co-laborers with God in producing the varied fruits that bring joy and satisfaction to the human family (vv. 5-24). The psalm then briefly discusses the sea and its inhabitants (vv. 25-26), concluding with a description of creation’s utter dependence on divine benefaction for its continued existence (vv. 27-30) and a prayer that God would be glorified in and pleased with his works forever and ever (vv. 31-35). What caught my eye today while studying this psalm was its description of heaven’s supreme inhabitant (cf. v. 3: “his chambers”) in verses 1-2: “You are clothed with splendor and majesty, covering yourself with light as with a garment.” What is happening here?
Psalm 104 comes toward the end of Book Four of the Psalms, a section of the biblical canon devoted to theme of divine kingship: Yhwh mlk–“the Lord is king/the Lord reigns” (Pss 93:1; 96:10; 97:1; 99:1; cf. Pss 102:12; 103:19). These psalms proclaim the name of the Lord by means of a “royal metaphor,” describing God in terms common to human kingship. Drawing upon a broad field of images associated with Ancient Near Eastern kings, Scripture portrays God by means of royal appellations (e.g., king, shepherd, etc.), royal qualities (e.g., long life, strength, etc.), and royal trappings (e.g., throne, clothing, etc.) (see Marc Zvi Brettler, God is King: Understanding an Israelite Metaphor). The latter are especially relevant to grasping Psalm 104:1-2, which speaks of the divine king’s clothing.
The Bible is remarkably reticent in describing God’s appearance because, strictly speaking, God has no visible form or likeness (Deut 4:12, 15-19). Strictly speaking, the divine king is invisible (Rom 1:20; 1 Tim 1:17). Nevertheless, the Bible, on occasion, does describe God’s appearance in metaphorical terms. One thinks of Isaiah’s vision of the divine king in Isaiah 6, of Ezekiel’s vision of the divine likeness in Ezekiel 1, and of Daniel’s vision of the Ancient of Days in Daniel 7. In each instance, Scripture describes God in terms of “royal trappings” (Brettler): as one seated on a throne, as one clothed in royal garb. Psalm 104:1-2 is an instance of this kind of metaphorical description.
According to Psalm 104:1-2, the Lord is “clothed” in splendor, majesty, and light. These “articles” of clothing emphasize the divine king’s transcendent glory, the awesome, awe-inspiring nature of his divine being, rule, and worth. In order to appreciate more fully the significance of God’s radiant royal attire, we must further consider Scripture’s broader association of divine glory with created and uncreated light. We must follow Scripture as it leads us up the ladder of heavenly lights to their divine luminous source (James 1:17).
We begin with the lowest heavens, which are the visible heavens that you and I perceive anytime we walk outside. Psalm 19 tells us that the visible heavens are in the business of proclaiming “the glory of God” (Ps 19:1). Though they have no words to speak (Ps 19:3), the regular cycle of the sun and the moon in their daily and nightly rotations declares the divine king’s faithfulness. The universal scope of the sun’s illuminating power declares the divine king’s universal sovereignty (Ps 19:2, 4-6). The sheer joy that the sun exhibits in running its divinely ordained course proclaims the divine king’s goodness (Ps 19:5). Without words, these visible lights serve as royal ambassadors, announcing the invisible glory of the divine king (Rom 1:20).
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