Horrors Of False Testimony In Ministry As Set Against True Testimony.

Horrors Of False Testimony In Ministry As Set Against True Testimony.


False testimony in essence, is marked with exaggerations and distortions of truth.

Even where Christ is preached but not according to the truth as it is in the scriptures of truth, there you have false testimony of Christ and those bearing or preaching such a testimony are thus false witnesses.

In 1st Corinthians 15:14-15, the apostle says: "but if Christ is not raised, then, indeed, our preaching is vain, and your faith also is vain. And we are found also false witnesses of God; for we have witnessed concerning God that he raised Christ, whom he has not raised if indeed those that are dead are not raised."

If in preaching Christ, we make exaggerations in a bid to promote the cause of christianity upon the earth, making it appealing, attractive and acceptable to men, we are preaching a false testimony and are false witnesses of God. False testimony is thus never to the honour or glory of God but to his dishonour.

If this is so even with those who preach Christ, then it's unspeakably worse with ministers who preach themselves; promoting & projecting themselves in ministry (2nd Corinthians 4:5).

The horrors of false testimony is such that it is not only marked with exaggerations and distortions of truth to promote a religious cause, or a man & his ministry, it also projects the earthen vessel as not subject to like passions but super human, highly anointed & carrying an uncommon grace/heavy unction.

It is that which exalts & glorifies man before men, for the flesh can glory in the presence of men as before men but not in the presence of God..."no flesh can glory in his presence"

Where two or three are gathered unto a man & in the name of his ministry and under his anointing or so called spiritual headship/covering, the Lord is not there even if signs & wonders are wrought there in his name. There, flesh can glory in man/men, and what is of man/men can be exalted & glorified for the Lord is not there.

The marks of true testimony are undeniable: The emptying & abasement of the earthen vessel, that the excellency of the power may be realized to be of God and not of man...His strength perfected in weakness, so that the weakness itself may be gloried in, and in the consciousness of such weakness one may find true strength.

The church today, caught up in much publicity & advertisement of ministry, has lost true testimony.
We have ministries today where both the preachers & the people are found glorying in signs, wonders & amazing feats wrought through an earthen vessel/minister as though they were wrought by his own power or anointing.

The apostle in 2nd Corinthians 11:30-33
says if I must glory or if it is needful to boast, I will glory/boast in the things which concern my infirmity.

Then he goes on to testify how he escaped from Damascus, a testimony which shows his infirmity/weakness & not that which magnifies him in the eyes of the Corinthian church/assembly 👇🏼

"The God and Father of the Lord Jesus knows--he who is blessed for ever--that I do not lie. In Damascus the ethnarch of Aretas the king kept the city of the Damascenes shut up, wishing to take me; and through a window in a basket I was let down by the wall, and escaped his hands."

Here he's clearly glorying in what shows him to be the helpless creature that he was, cared for of God as such, but still left to the realization of this helplessness.

He mentions but one point here, the ignominious way in which he had to take flight from Damascus, the city being shut up with a garrison to apprehend him, he himself let down from a window in the wall, in a basket, to escape his persecutors, -no miracle intervening for him, as we see, no dignity imparted by such a manner of escape as this; an apostle mighty in word & deed yet escaping from those who sought to kill him in the city, through a window in a wall, hiding in a basket.
What a testimony!

In this he would rather glory & in doing so, clearly states that he's not lying or trying to make the testimony sound more abasing than the actual reality of what he passed through.

How careful was the apostle not to distort truth even in a testimony of his infirmity. May this same carefulness be wrought in us in ministry, by the power of the Holy Spirit who dwells in us.

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