Guarding Against Deception

A screen capture from The Theology Program video series.

The Bible warns that many professing Christians will be deceived in the end times. So how can you safeguard your faith?

For one thing, you can study theology.

Don’t be scared away by this statement. Theology has become a bad word in many of today’s churches. It’s often equated with “dry, dead religion” and mere “head knowledge.” And, sometimes, there’s truth to this. Someone can know theology backward and forward and not have a close walk with God.

But it’s also true that someone can’t have a close walk with God if he or she doesn’t know theology. Let me explain.

Theology, simply put, is “the study of God” — who He is, what He’s like and how we can relate to Him. It’s how we know God.

Saying theology isn’t important is like saying it doesn’t matter if you know your spouse or not. You can’t have a meaningful relationship with a person you don’t know on a deep level. The same is true of our relationship with God.

To have an experiential relationship Him, we must know Him deeply, including what He thinks about things, His likes, His dislikes and the things we can do to please Him. It’s our main defense against the false prophets who will try to seduce us away from our faith.

To help more Christians learn theology, a tremendous resource has been made available called The Theology Program. Learn more about it here. It’s an online video series, and it provides the same theological training seminary students receive. It doesn’t dumb down the information, but it’s also not too difficult for laypeople to understand. The best part is it’s free. The program also makes DVDs available for purchase.

It will take time and commitment to watch the entire series, which is approximately 75 hours in length. For those who can’t watch the full-length program, a condensed version is also available, which breaks the program into 258 theology questions and answers.

Consider completing the program or sharing it with a Sunday School class or home group. It will be 75 hours well spent.

— Holly Pivec
02/16/10