Jude, Dreamers

Jude 8 Likewise also these dreamers defile the flesh, reject authority, and speak evil of dignitaries.

In verses 5 through 7, Jude stirs up reminders for the congregation he’s writing to, warning them not only of the false teachers in their midst, but of the consequences of those who rebelled in former times and suffered the consequences for it. Now, in verse 8, Jude reaches something of a summary of the prior three verses.

The verse begins with “likewise.” A simple synonym for the word would be, “similarly.” Rebellious Israel, fallen angels, and the Sodomites are held up as examples whose historical fates portend toward the conduct and its ensuing outcome of these false teachers. Moreover, he summarizes the teachers themselves, first calling them dreamers. God addresses such dreamers in the book of Jeremiah, saying, “The prophet who has a dream, let him tell a dream; and he who has My word, let him speak My word faithfully. What is chaff to the wheat?” says the Lord,” Jeremiah 23:28. The false prophets of Jeremiah’s time always spoke peace to the people, and an easy reconciliation with the Lord. They whitewashed the wounds of the people, putting them at ease when their lives were in the most peril. They claimed inspiration through dreams, but when dreams controvert the clear revelation of Scripture, we may safely know that such dreams are not inspired by God, but the enemy or our own imagination.

God contrasts dreamers in Jeremiah with those who faithfully speak God’s word. Those who speak His word do so reverently, treating it not as man’s conjectures but as God’s truth, see 1 Thessalonians 2:13. Dreams are not to be considered an outlet for divine revelation. God’s revelatory masterpiece has already been completed and gone out throughout the entire world, and is in the homes and hands of billions. Those who claim to add to it, or contradict it, are just that: dreamers. God’s word is settled and sure, the bedrock upon which the Christian may found their life temporally and eternally, Psalm 119:89. The false teacher wants to undermine this bedrock by supplanting it with their own doctrines and ideas. This is the very spirit of Antichrist who opposes Jesus the Lord by attempting to usurp His rightful place in the hearts and minds of believers.

Jude says of these dreamers, that they defile the flesh (through lewdness), reject authority, and speak evil of dignitaries (literally glories). Peter, in his second epistle, says that God will punish such men, “especially those who walk according to the flesh in the lust of uncleanness and despise authority. They are presumptuous, self-willed. They are not afraid to speak evil of dignitaries,” 2 Peter 2:10. Peter contributes to Jude’s description of these men, adding that they are both presumptuous and self-willed. The sin of presumption rears its head in Scripture periodically. We presume to know the will of the Lord without actually discerning what that is, and then act accordingly, not according to His will, but our own. Self-will is simply the human will controlled by the throne of self. The Christian is to submit to the Holy Spirit, and thus be led by the Spirit of God. Now I will freely admit that this is not always me. The flesh wars with the Spirit, oftentimes preventing us from walking in the manner prescribed. But the intention and desire is to be humbled and led, rather than to forsake and do the leading. Because if we deviate and depart from the Lord to lead, He does not follow; He waits. He waits right at our departure point for us to realize our error, confess it, and return to reconcile. Only then may our genuine walk rightly resume. But these false teachers, not having the Spirit, do not have that ability. They are entirely self-willed. Self is always enthroned, and so they submit to whatever carnal interests it poses.

First, they defile the flesh. Peter writes further, saying that these men have, “eyes full of adultery and that cannot cease from sin, enticing unstable souls…For when they speak great swelling words of emptiness, they allure through the lusts of the flesh, through lewdness, the ones who have actually escaped from those who live in error,” 2 Peter 2:14, 18. Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, is an excellent example of a man led by his will, lust and self to create a religion in which he could indulge his most wanton sexual fantasies. As documented in numerous books about Mormonism’s very sordid history, such as Ed Decker and Dave Hunt’s book, The God Makers, Smith’s life of lies and profligacy is demonstrated elegantly. Smith was a false teacher, whose domineering will led many to follow him, despite the patent absurdity of the claims made about Mormonism’s origins. He mingled just enough Scriptural truth in from his plagiarism of the King James Bible, allegedly adding a generous helping of Solomon Spalding’s fictional work, to captivate people.

Another sign of such false teachers is that they reject authority. Of course, the greatest authority a Christian has is Scripture. When the Bereans were confronted with the truth claims Paul presented to them, they did not consult dreams or conjecture; they searched the Old Testament Scriptures to find the validity about what he said concerning Jesus, Acts 17:11. The hallmark of a false teacher is to reject some portion of Scripture as inaccurate, untrue, or in need of special revelation or supplementation, provided of course by them. Charles Taze Russell is another famous false teacher in this vein. He rejected the gospel of grace, rejected the immortality of the soul, the reality of Hell, the trinity, Christ being God, and the Holy Spirit being God to name just a few gross heresies espoused by the early Russellites. His human mind could not wrap around the concepts the Bible presented about God and man’s fate so he rejected them, elevating human reason above Scripture as the determiner of truth; and of course no one else's reason was as sound as his own.

Finally, Jude says that these false teachers speak evil of dignitaries, or angels. Verse 9 (which we will address in due time fully) demonstrates this. Michael and Satan are both named, and Michael does not rail against the Devil, but entrusts the matter to God. A fair amount is said about angels, both holy and fallen, but the truth of the matter is that the Bible does not say nearly enough about the angelic host for us to make grandiose proclamations regarding them. We know holy angels are ministers for those who will inherit salvation, Hebrews 1:14. Angels serve as messengers, such as Gabriel in the case of both Daniel and Mary. Fallen angels serve the Devil, and religions, such as certain factions of Satanism exalt the Devil to an inordinate position without having any knowledge of him apart from what Scripture relates. Angelology is a slightly perilous study, because the angels want to direct our attention to the Lord, as John learned when twice he tried to worship them to their horror, Revelation 19:10, 22:8, 9.