If you're someone who goes against the grain in Christianity, if you're someone who doesn't follow popular teachers or popular teachings and find yourself in debates with other professing Christians who do follow them, you'll likely be called a Pharisee. If you haven't yet, you will be. When I say "going against the grain" I mean you stick with what Scripture teaches and not with what's popular or who's popular where Scripture gets spun, twisted and distorted to suit itching ears. Following the herd may be beneficial in the animal kingdom, but it spells death for a professing Christian in a sinful world where Satan has dominion.
Let's call it as it is...calling someone a "Pharisee" is a character assassination attempt to get the opposition to simply shut up and to have others ignore them. Those guilty of using this word as an insult, use it as a means to call another "legalistic". If you study scriptures and start taking a stand against the rampant heresy in modern American Christianity, you are viewed as legalistic.
Without getting in depth on Pharisees, I want to point something out to professing Christians who throw this word around whenever they're faced with opposition to a popular teacher or teaching... The Pharisees were extremely popular in their day. They were highly esteemed by the Jews and their teachings were followed by the masses.
"Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for that is how their fathers treated the false prophets." Luke 6:26
What Jesus taught was not popular and it still isn't. He was not followed by the masses and anytime He was they were looking for materialistic provisions and quickly deserted Him. Only a very small few followed Him after being healed. It was His message that led people to salvation. Everything Christ did was offensive because He pointed out the truth. The truth is never popular. It never has been. The truth got Christ crucified. It got Isaiah sawed in half with a wooden saw. It got Peter's wife crucified while Peter was forced to watch and then he was crucified upside down. It got John the Baptist beheaded. It got Stephen stoned. All of the Apostles except John were murdered for the truth. Most of the Prophets were murdered for the truth...all of them for an unpopular message. The truth has a high cost. If you're following a teacher or message because it's popular you're on very dangerous ground.
The Pharisees totally rejected Christ's message that lined up with everything the Pharisees spent their lives learning and taught yet never came to an understanding of any of it. They should have known it. They should have known Him and they didn't. They had the Scriptures. They had absolutely no excuse, yet they still rejected Him and got their masses of followers to reject Him as well and demand His blood. All the while totally believing they were on the path of godliness and serving God, skipping along happily behind the ever popular Pharisees.
If you don't study your Bible, if you follow someone simply because they call themselves "Christian" or it makes you "feel good" while calling others "Pharisees"...I know of no other way to put this then to say "STOP IT!" You don't know what you're talking about.
You should know it. You should know Him. You should know and have a relationship with this God of yours! Not any old kind of relationship or whatever suits you and your lifestyle...the one He requires based in and on Scripture. You have the Scriptures and if, still, you don't study for yourself and willingly allow some popular "Christian" teacher with their popular messages to lead you by a hook through the nose then you have no excuse.
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