Jude v 8 - 9

Jude attacks the people to whom he has been referring as false prophets, dreamers of false dreams who must be treated in ways consistent with Old Testament teaching. Their false teaching resulted in two things: 1. It made them defile the flesh, in that their teaching encouraged their listeners to sin more, so that the grace of God could more fully abound. If the Prodigal son had not spent all his inheritance on wild living before his father had died- there argument would have gone- there would have been no opportunity for the father to have exhibited such love for him!! 2. They despised angels. Remember the abuse of angels in Sodom and Gomorrah? These false prophets spoke evil of angelic beings in all their celestial ranks. It is important to say at this point that Jude quotes freely from Old Testament Apocryphal books and here he is citing a passage in 'the Assumption of Moses'. We can read about his strange death in Deuteronomy 34 v 1-6 and apparently responsibility for his burial was assigned to the archangel Michael. The devil argued with Michael about possession of the body on the grounds that the body was matter and (according to these false prophets) matter is evil and therefore it belonged to him. Secondly, that Moses had murdered an Egyptian. Jude is making the point here that if the greatest of the good angels refused to speak evil of the worst of the evil angels when protecting the body of Moses, then surely no human can speak evil of angels? Although this passage means little to us today, it reminds the reader that men like Jude were extremely well versed in Scripture and we notice that with Jesus, who more than once used Scripture to silence his critics. All which tempts church fellowships to stray from orthodoxy has been done before and we should never assume that we are on safe ground when well-lauded Christian leaders such as Jean Vanier and Ravi Zacharias stray so badly!