The Bible says in 2 Peter chapter 2 verse 1,
But there were false prophets also among the people,
even as there shall be false teachers among you.
Does it say that there might be?
It says, There shall be false teachers among you,
who privily shall bring in damnable heresies,
even denying the Lord that bought them,
and bring upon themselves swift destruction.
And many shall follow their pernicious ways,
by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of,
and through covetousness...
Now what did Judas do? He stole. He coveted that money.
Through covetousness shall they, with fainted words,
make merchandise of you,
whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not,
and their damnation slumbereth not.
Go back to Mark 14.
You know, we could read the whole chapter of 2 Peter 2,
also the book of Jude.
He says, These are spots in your feasts of charity,
when they feast with you, feeding themselves without fear.
So that means that when we get together as a church,
and eat a meal together,
when we have food after the service,
when we have a barbecue,
the Bible says people like Judas,
people that are false prophets,
people that are evil, wicked adulterers,
people who defile the flesh,
as Sodom it says in Jude verse 7,
people who bring in heresies and false doctrine,
they will certainly be eating among us.
And he didn't say they might.
They will be there.
There will always be a Judas Iscariot among us.
And if there's not one among us now,
there will be one tomorrow.
You know, constantly there are infiltrators and bad people.
This is why you should not just implicitly trust everyone
because they come to church here.
And a lot of people, they just think,
Oh, you're from church.
And they'll trust them financially.
And people will lose thousands of dollars
because they just assume that everybody from church
is trustworthy and they make that mistake.
But not only that,
but people will trust other people
with something much more valuable than their money,
which is their children,
and just drop their kids off with someone to babysit
because they're from church.
I've gone to churches where they wanted us
to go on some overnight couples retreat, okay,
for our marriage and betterment of our marriage.
And they wanted us to drop our kids off with people
to babysit them overnight.
And I didn't even know who these people are.
I'd never even laid eyes on these people,
never even met them.
And people were just like,
Oh, no, don't worry about it.
They're from church.
Oh, okay, in that case.
I mean, think about how crazy that is
in the day that we live in,
in the world that we live,
to drop off your little kids at someone
that you've never even met because they go to church.
You know, we live in perilous times.
And we need to guard our children
and not let them out of our sight and not sit there
and allow our children to just be babysat
by any person that just is from church.
You know, we need to use some discernment and not do it.
I don't let anybody from church watch my kids
when I'm not around.
You know, we don't just turn them over to people,
spend the night at so-and-so's house.
Look, there are way too many people getting abused
and molested to just take that kind of a chance.
And plus, churches often attract predators
because they like the trusting atmosphere
where they can be trusted.
Also, people will come here
and try to commit fraud business-wise
because they think, you know,
I can find some suckers down at the church
that are just going to trust everybody
because we're all Christians.
And as long as I say praise the Lord and hallelujah,
they're going to sign on the dotted line
and think everything is fine.
And there are all kinds of stories about finance.
There was a financial advisor that was a deacon
from First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana
under Jack Scopp.
And Jack Scopp was teaching all this voodoo,
squirrely financial stuff.
And he sent his deacon around as an apostle
of, you know, financial freedom and wealth
and laying up treasures on earth.
He sent around this deacon, Thomas Kimmel,
as an apostle of Scopp's financial program.
And it turned out this guy was going around
and telling people to take their retirement
and take their money
and to put it into this wonderful investment.
And this wonderful investment is going to return,
you know, 10 or 12% a year
and it's totally safe investment.
Does that sound legit?
No way.
Turned out it was a used car dealership
that they were investing in.
But they gave it some fancy name
to make it sound like it was some,
you know, legitimate investment.
And it was some car dealership
that was just totally underwater financially,
totally messed up.
And this guy would go around and say,
you know what?
Before you make a decision like this,
you should talk to the man of God, you know.
Get godly counsel from the man of God.
Talk to your pastor.
And if he tells you not to do it,
then don't do it, you know.
But if he says that it's a good idea,
if he looks at it and thinks it's good,
then go ahead and do it.
Turned out he was giving the pastors commission.
Think about the conflict of interest
of getting up and acting like you're just a neutral.
He would act like he was preaching
a Bible sermon on finances.
It was a Bible-based financial thing.
And then he'd just throw in,
oh, by the way, I know these good investments.
You know, ask your pastor.
Ask the man of God.
Get godly counsel.
The pastor is getting commission.
So you think he thinks it's a good idea?
Yeah, it's a great investment.
Yeah.
Cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching.
Okay, these are the type of things
that people go into.
And by the way, now that deacon is going to prison
because he defrauded people of about $4 million,
I think it was, huge amount of money.
People lost $4 million investing in this fraud.
And now he's going to prison.
But he says, well, I thought it was a good investment.
You know, liar.
Paying off, and paying off the pastors and everything,
that's all highly illegal, by the way.
But these kind of people are out there.
They are predators.
And by the way, the guy who did that,
I've met the guy.
I've shooken his hand and talked to him,
the deacon that did that.
And I didn't think there was anything wrong with him.
You know, I thought he seemed like a nice guy to me.
But he's stealing from people.
He's lying to people.
There are a lot of bad people that you never would suspect.
And a lot of the people that have turned out
to be evil infiltrators of this church,
I was blown away.
And I'm like, what in the world?
You've got to be kidding.
I never would have suspected.
But hindsight's 20-20.
You know, you've got to be careful.
Now my motto is this, suspect no one, trust no one.