Lessons from Jude Pt. 4: The Dreams of False Teachers

As we continue our way through the book of Jude, we run across four significant details regarding the false teachers Jude is referencing. Notably, Jude lays three charges at their feet: defiling the flesh, rejecting authority, and blaspheming glorious ones. More significantly, however, he lists the action to which these charges are attributed: “dreaming.”

The word “dreaming” here is translated from the Greek word enupniazomai. There is only one other location in Scripture where this is used: when Peter, during his sermon at Pentecost, is quoting from the prophet Joel to indicate fulfillment of that prophecy: “‘And it shall be in the last days,’ God says, ‘That I will pour out My Spirit on all mankind; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams’” (Acts 2:17). This dreaming, however, represents a God-given dreaming, in which God communicates revelation and which does not lead to the defilement of the flesh, rejection of authority, and blasphemy of glorious ones. The dreams Jude references, on the other hand, lead to these consequences. Therefore what Jude has in mind are dreams that are not from God.


The charlatans mentioned in Jude may not have actually had any dreams. False teachers commonly say they received a vision or dream from God when they did not receive a vision or dream at all. These charlatans spouted nonsense to the Christian assembly and, when questioned, they appealed to divine authority and stated they sourced the information from a dream or a vision sent by God. Given that deception is a key tactic of Satan and false teachers, these charlatans may have received dreams from a demonic source. In any case, the point that we should not miss is that the source of these dreams, whether real or fake, was not God.


This discussion does naturally raise the question of whether dreams or visions can be used at all for theological truth. My intention is not to provide a discussion on the merits or demerits of cessationism and continuationism. However, we can discuss whether dreams have any place at all for Christians today. We have multiple texts to which we could turn, but let us recall when Moses reminds the Israelites of how God commanded them to test the spirits (1 John 4:1). Moses tells them that more prophets will come after him, but he gives the Israelites a guide for how to distinguish between prophets who are actually commissioned by God compared to those who merely claim to be divinely inspired: “But the prophet who speaks a word presumptuously in My name which I have not commanded him to speak, or which he speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die. Now you may say in your heart, ‘How will we know the word which Yahweh has not spoken?’ When a prophet speaks in the name of Yahweh, if the thing does not come about or come true, that is the thing which Yahweh has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of him” (Deut. 18:20-22).

First, look at the punishment for false prophets. If a person claimed to receive a revelation from God and that word was not actually from God, they did not receive a swat on the hand and isolation from Israel for a week. They were actually killed. If someone falsely claimed to receive direct revelation from God, then the punishment was death. This immediately illustrates the seriousness of this offense. To claim to speak for Almighty God is probably the weightiest claim you can make because you are saying that your words are the words of God, who is omniscient, omnipotent, sovereign, and holy. That is why preaching is so serious and weighty. Based on the punishment for lying about receiving revelation from God, we can see that lying in this manner is a serious issue.

How do we know that someone lied about receiving revelation from God? The first clue, in flashing neon letters, is that what they prophesy does not actually occur. Notice that Moses does not provide an error rate, as if they are only false prophets if 50% of what they prophesy does not come to pass, or if 75% does not come to pass. They are false prophets if just one claim does not come to pass.

I have heard some people try to get out of this conundrum by saying that the prophecy was correctly received but wrongly interpreted They may instead say that they only need to be more in tune with the Spirit to help ensure their interpretations of their prophecies are correct.

Yet that is not what Moses says. He draws no distinction between the prophecy someone receives and their interpretation of that prophecy. Both are the same. How do we know this? Because of what the apostle Peter says: “Know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes by one’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever made by the will of man, but men being moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God” (2 Pet. 1:20-21). God does not leave the accuracy of His revelation to human interpretation of that revelation. What the prophets said was directly what God had told them. God does not make mistakes. He was not only sovereign over the revelation that He provided, but He was also sovereign over the communication and proclamation of that revelation. Therefore, if what an alleged prophet says does not come to pass, then they are a false prophet, without question or qualification.

The next test should be fairly obvious: what an alleged prophet says must be consistent with prior revelation. “I bear witness to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues which are written in this book. And if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his part from the tree of life and from the holy city, which are written in this book” (Rev. 22:18-19). We know that God is truth, and that truth cannot contradict itself. As such, God cannot contradict His own Self. Due to His very nature, He cannot be contradictory, and so anything that contradicts Biblical truth is false.

Yet this means that in order for us to know whether someone is a false teacher, we must know our Bible. If we do not know our Bible, then we are doomed, because we have no measuring rod and are left with no way of knowing what is true or false. You cannot know what you do not study, and you cannot study what you do not read. You must be digging into the Scriptures not every Sunday, but every day. You must master the Word of Truth.

One must wonder if the people to whom Jude is writing applied these tests to the false teachers in their midst. If they did, then why did they not do anything about these false teachers? They had prior examples of false teachers from Scripture. We see false prophets in the days of Jeremiah: “Then Yahweh said to me, ‘The prophets are prophesying lies in My name. I have neither sent them nor commanded them nor spoken to them; they are prophesying to you a vision of lies, divination, futility, and the deception of their own hearts.’ Therefore thus says Yahweh concerning the prophets who are prophesying in My name, although it was not I who sent them—yet they keep saying, ‘There will be no sword or famine in this land’—by that sword and famine those prophets shall meet their end!” (Jer. 14:14-15).

Subsequently, God says in the ministry of Jeremiah: “Do not listen to the words of the prophets who are prophesying to you. They are leading you into vanity; they speak a vision of their own heart, not from the mouth of Yahweh” (Jer. 23:16).

Visions from their own mind certainly sounds like how Jude is describing the false teachers in his epistle. Zechariah also speaks of false prophets who attribute their revelation to dreams: “For the teraphim speak wickedness, and the diviners behold false visions and speak worthless dreams; they comfort in vain. Therefore the people journey like sheep; they are afflicted because there is no shepherd” (Zech. 10:2).

These individuals to whom Jude is writing certainly had knowledge of false teachers, how to identify them, and how to deal with them. They had an abundance of examples at their disposal, and unfortunately, that makes them even more culpable for allowing nonsense to still proliferate among themselves. May that not ever be said of us.

LESSONS FROM JUDE PT.1: WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE “CALLED” BY GOD?
LESSONS FROM JUDE PT.2: GOSPEL CENTRALITY IN THEOLOGICAL TEACHING
LESSONS FROM JUDE PT.3: THE SUBTLETY OF FALSE TEACHERS

ELIJAH CISNEROS
1689 Covenantalism | Historic Premillennialism
Elijah is a member of Faith Baptist Church in Longview, Texas, where he teaches Sunday school. He and his wife, Taylor, have two sons, Ezra and Owen, and two cats, Calvin and Luther. Elijah graduated summa cum laude from Liberty School of Divinity with a Bachelor of Science in Biblical Studies and Theology with a minor in psychology. He currently works in the mortgage industry and has a passion for systematic theology and historical theology.