How Truth Gets Twisted

"See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ." — Colossians 2:8 

How does false teaching take root?

In the early church, their focus was on the blood of Christ shed for the forgiveness of sins to cover them. Their focus was not to believe nor to teach that you must take communion in order to have the full forgiveness of God. Likewise, they did not believe that you needed to be baptized in order to make sure you go to heaven.

But as the church began to progress, the early church fathers began to write and institutionalize the concept of identifying the Eucharist with the actual body and blood of Christ. It became more acceptable as time went on, and it became ingrained in the early church around the Fourth and Fifth Centuries.

Do you see what happened? Error didn't storm in overnight. It crept in gradually. Someone wrote something that sounded spiritual. Then someone else built on it. Then it became tradition. Then it became doctrine. Then it became unquestionable.

Within a few centuries, the church was teaching something completely different from what the apostles taught. They added requirements to the Gospel. They made rituals necessary for salvation. They twisted simple truth into complex tradition.

This is how false teaching always works. It doesn't announce itself as heresy. It comes disguised as deeper understanding, as spiritual insight, as tradition worth preserving.
Things changed in the 1500s when one of the church reformers, Zwingli, began to say, "No, no, no, this is only symbolic. These elements are important, but they are just symbolic of what Jesus was saying to us."

Reformation happens when someone is brave enough to say, "Wait—what does Scripture actually teach?" Not "What have we always done?" Not "What do the church fathers say?" What does the Bible say?

This is why you must always go back to Scripture. Tradition can be helpful, but it's not authoritative. Church history can be informative, but it's not infallible. Only God's Word is truth.

Test everything against Scripture. Don't accept teaching just because it's old or popular or widespread. Ask, "Does this align with the Word of God?"

Error creeps in when we stop asking that question. Truth stands strong when we keep asking it.