The more things change, the more they remain the same. Human nature, being what it is, doesn’t change. That which was true in ancient Israel among the writers of Scripture, is true today. Jude, the half-brother of Jesus, wanted to write his letter about the salvation common among believers. However, the Holy Spirit convicted him that he had a more pressing need to convey. He describes this in Jude 4 (there is only one chapter in Jude so only verses are referenced):
For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.
The church had been infiltrated and invaded by men who were instruments of Satan. In their ungodliness, they caused people to accept sexual immorality as normal Christianity, as they changed the meaning of what it was to be a follower of Christ. What was true then, is true today.
The facade – or the wrapping – that ungodly men and women place around true Christianity to pervert it changes with the times, but there is no difference between these blasphemous people from olden times to today.
Their sin is as old as the earth and even prior to the creation of the earth. Jude draws an analogy to the rebellious sons of God (bene Elohim) – calling them angels as is the New Testament practice – to these immoral people who pervert the truth of Jesus Christ. He says in Jude 5-7:
Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe. And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day— just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.
First notice that Jude attributes the Exodus to Jesus. He is God and is fully acknowledged in this statement. He was the One who interacted with Moses and the wayward Israelites. It was He who caused them to wander in the wilderness for forty years because of their disobedience and die as a new generation came along.
The angels were the divine beings who – just like the serpent, Satan, in the Garden – elevated themselves through pride to do that which was forbidden by God. They committed rebellious, disobedient acts in their desire to be like God and to ultimately replace Him. These spiritual entities transgressed the boundaries that God had set for them. We see this in the account of Genesis 6:1-4:
When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.” The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.
The bene Elohim committed a sexual transgression by consorting with human women, something God never intended. It led to the complete corruption of the blood of men, altering their DNA so that they were no longer human and redeemable. This particular group of God’s sons earned His judgment, whereby He punished them by relegating them to the deepest depths of the pit of hell known as Tartarus. This is confirmed in 2 Peter 2:4:
For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment…
This sin of divine-human intermarrying was indeed a sexual transgression. We know that because Jude compares it to the sexual immorality that consumed Sodom and Gomorrah, and for which its people were likewise punished through eternal fire.
This is the sin and the extent of its perversion which Jude accused the ungodly men of who came into and corrupted the church. Let’s bring our discussion into today’s situation in God’s house.
Jude 8 says:
Yet in like manner these people also, relying on their dreams, defile the flesh, reject authority, and blaspheme the glorious ones.
In other words, the church has those people in it who lead people astray by proclaiming they are prophets of God by the fact that He has given them dreams and visions. They are elevated to positions of authority and use that for their own sexual pleasures with those in the church who fall under their spell. They assume an authority that isn’t theirs by declaring that pastors – who should be leading their churches – must be in submission to them. In their teaching, they call upon angels to do their bidding rather than bowing before Christ, thereby raising these spiritual beings to positions above Him. If this sounds to you like a description of those who belong to the group we call the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), then we’re on the same page.
What does Jude 11 say regarding such men (and women)?
Woe to them! For they walked in the way of Cain and abandoned themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam’s error and perished in Korah’s rebellion.
What these ungodly people do – for the text clearly says they are ungodly despite their proclamations of being servants of the Lord – is pursue unrighteous money and unwarranted authority. How did the people die in Korah’s Rebellion as shown in Numbers 16:32-33?
And the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up, with their households and sall the people who belonged to Korah and all their goods. So they and all that belonged to them went down alive into Sheol, and the earth closed over them, and they perished from the midst of the assembly.
They went down alive to hell. Can you imagine the horror they experienced in that? A similar fate is promised to those who come into the church and pervert the Word Of God.
Now, it’s not right for me to paint by such a broad brush that says everyone of those in the NAR movement fits the description that Jude gives and earns the awful end result. Surely there are those who themselves were led astray into this camp of prophets and apostles. However, they could very likely be treading on proverbial thin ice. God does not take kindly to leaders who rise up in pride and mislead His people.
This is serious business, and Jude 17-19 explains it this way:
But you must remember, beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. They said to you, “In the last time there will be scoffers, following their own knowing this first, that in the last days mockers shall come with mockery, walking after their own lusts,” It is these who cause divisions, worldly people, devoid of the Spirit.
All this was predicted long ago. Many in the church mock Bible prophecy. It is just as the apostle reiterates in 2 Peter 3:3:
… knowing this first, that in the last days mockers shall come with mockery, walking after their own lusts…
Scoffing and mocking God’s Word causes schism in the church and leads many people to a wrong understanding of God’s intentions for mankind in this world. We must beware of those who say the Lord won’t return despite His having said He will. We must be wary of those who question the inerrancy and infallibility of the Bible. We must flee from those who preach a different Gospel.
God sees all and knows all. He is the righteous judge who will make all things right. Our task as true believers is to read God’s Word and heed it. When we obediently follow Him in all that He commands, we should have no real concerns. He will keep us until that glorious day when He returns for His beloved.