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 were.
I had 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 just -- 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, there was a financial advisor that was a deacon
from First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana under Jack Scop and Jack Scop was teaching
all this voodoo, squirrely financial stuff and he sent his deacon around as an apostle
of financial freedom and wealth and laying up treasures on earth.
He sent around this deacon, Thomas Kimmel, as an apostle of Scop'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 10 or 12 percent 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 pastor's 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, good 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 in, 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.
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 shook in his hand and talked
to him.
The deacon that did that, and I didn't think there was anything wrong with him.
You know, 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 got to be kidding."
I never would have suspected.
But hindsight's 20/20.
You got to be careful.
Now, my motto is this, "Suspect no one, trust no one."