Open Letter to Bereans

They will know we are Christians by our love, by our love, they will know we are Christians by our love…

I have this heaviness on my spirit about our brethren who call themselves Bereans…

I do not mean those who know what it actually is to be Berean, but rather those ‘brothers’ who call themselves Berean and think that it is their mission in life to be Holy Spirit police and ‘expose heresy in the church’…

In Acts 17, we find this passage, from whence the term comes:

In Berea

^{¹⁰ As soon as it was night, the believers sent Paul and Silas away to Berea. On arriving there, they went to the Jewish synagogue. ¹¹ Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. ¹² As a result, many of them believed, as did also a number of prominent Greek women and many Greek men.}

The Bereans were Noble in character and received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if it was true…

These beloved brethren weren’t spending their lives trying to prove Paul wrong! They were GLAD to receive such a wonderful message, and they were making sure that it matched up with the Word so that they could receive it! As a result, MANY of them BELIEVED! These were fellow Jews (Paul went to the synagogue to preach…) who came to believe in a deeper message, that of Christ. And as a result of them being won over, Greeks were also won over! Wow! So the message was so powerful that it not only set fellow believers on fire, but it also won non-believers over too! What a message!

How and when did the understanding of ‘being Berean’ get so twisted? Why are fellow believers hearing a message of some sort and scouring the scriptures to prove that it is NOT true…? What is going on?

What is it that triggers such behaviour in people? I even know of a few people and websites that PRIDE themselves in ‘exposing heresy’ …

A-Ha! I think we may have hit on it.

Pride themselves!

Perhaps the issue is not, as they say, ‘genuine concern that others may be deceived’…

Perhaps the issue stems from pride and arrogance… perhaps completely unseen, under the blinkers of religion and legalism…

Oh dear… Christians attacking each other for differences of opinion, using the ‘word of God’ to create arguments against new teachings that could very well be the next move of God!

In a song by Reliant K, they have this line: “We eat our own, bones and all…” This is Christian cannibalism!

Why would a Christian do that to another Christian? Why would they publicly attack someone, over a difference of opinion or interpretation?

Did not Jesus send Holy Spirit to lead and guide us into all truth? Do we really need human Holy Spirit police, twisting the word of God to ‘disprove’ new doctrines as they arise? Are we not just spouting our opinions as ‘the only truth’ when we do that? What about the scripture that says that we we all ‘only know in part’?

I note that most of what gets attacked is often an amazing move of God in signs and wonders and miracles… albeit in new ways that are quite ‘out there’ compared to ‘what has always been’…

Should we be so bold as to assert out opinion publicly to others, dismissing our fellow brethren’s revelations as ‘heresy’… I mean what if we are calling good evil and evil good? What if in trying to ‘disprove’ these new things of God, this class of Berean is calling Holy Spirt of the devil… Man! I would fear and tremble before God over that one and beg for forgiveness, because the Word tells us that calling Holy Spirit such as this is the ‘unforgivable sin’!

I beg you my ‘Berean’ brothers! Please! Fear God not man! Fear God and throw yourselves on the mercy of the Most High and ask for forgiveness! Please! Stop! Take down your hate sites! You are not showing the world that we are Christians! You are showing them that we are religious crackpots, arrogant and opionated! You are putting the world OFF of Jesus!

Please, brothers… stop… and just let it go…

The bible tells us, in what I’ve heard called the Gamaliel principle from Acts 5: “I advise you: Leave these men alone! Let them go! For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. ³⁹ But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God.”

Let go and let God… Go be proper Berean about something that fires you up for Jesus, that others may be encouraged and non believers may be lead to Christ. Use your talents for scouring the Word for good.

Bless you, Brothers. I love you. And He loves you with an everlasting love. Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called children of God.