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“Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints,” Jude 1:3.

This is a verse with which I have beeb acquainted from my earliest days as a Christian. It was frequently quoted and expounded from the pulpit of Ravenhill Free Presbyterian Church but the minister, Ian R K Paisley.

I have often employed it to expose the dangers facing the people of God from the agents of the devil who creep in to the assembly of the saints surreptitiously in order to destroy the gospel and wreck the work of God.

In recent days I have seen that there is another implication set forth by these words and it is that the people to whom Jude was writing were in need of being warned for they obviously were unaware of the dangers these ‘creepers’ presented! It was not just the wickedness of the creepers that concerned Jude, but the naivety of the saints!

I suppose we can all recall responding to the revelation of a deception wrought upon someone who believed a fraudster with the words, ‘How did they not see that it was a deception?’

We likely have reacted to some newspaper story of how a swindler had obtained from some person a large sum of money by using deceitful words that ought to have been obvious to the one deceived! That has happened and will continue to happen despite the warnings issued and the reports of others being duped!

Why is that so?

Christians, for it is them we want to think of in particular, are likened unto sheep and rightly so for they are easily deceived and led astray. They are in constant need of guidance and guarding.

“But made his own people to go forth like sheep, and guided them in the wilderness like a flock,” Psalm 78:52.

Being sheep and gullible, God’s people have often been brought into captivity. “But if ye will not hear it, my soul shall weep in secret places for your pride; and mine eye shall weep sore, and run down with tears, because the LORD’S flock is carried away captive,” Jeremiah 13:17. (more…)