Is your pastor feeding you to demons and Hell?

Update: I believe that I ought to have written more clearly here that Christ insists people must keep His commandments and other words for salvation, which quite certainly refers to the words attributed to Christ and not the other words in the Bible. There is great value in learning the other words of the Bible, I believe, but all the while keeping a distinction between the authority of Christ and the authority of all other words in the Bible.

I also wish to clarify that I no longer believe that Christ permits human hierarchies in churches, given the commandments in Matthew 23 and John 21.

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The first step to safety: Heed Almighty God's Word.

"Amen amen I say to you that the one listening to the Word of Mine and trusting the One who sent Me has eternal life and does not come into judgement but has passed over from the death into the life." (John 5:24, CFB)

If you are heeding God's Word, then a pastor will have a tough time misleading you into sins that invite demons and end in hellfire.

Consider:

Knowing God's Word properly is how Jesus withstood Satan (Luke 4).

Not heeding God's Word is how Eve and Adam fell into slavery to sin, death and the Devil, dragging their family down too (Genesis 3-6).

How can you properly heed God's Word?

Don't make the mistake of confusing the Old Covenants with the New Covenant.

Focus on keeping Christ's words and commandments.

The New Testament is the covenant that Almighty God offers to people who repent from sin. So you need to heed that above all: what the New Testament says about the New Covenant.

The Old Testament is necessary too, but it needs to be interpreted spiritually, not physically:

The necessary circumcision is spiritual not physical (Colossians 2:11)

Human beings need to overcome spiritual dark powers not other people (Ephesians 6:12)

If you are heeding Christ's words and commandments, you will be strongly immune to really bad Bible mistranslations too.

So when a mistranslation tells you that adultery is looking at a person with lust (and therefore almost all people are adulterers), you will be skeptical, because you know that adulterers do not inherit the Kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 6:9-10).

Many of the most damaging mistranslations are highlighted in A Guide to Misleading Bible Quotes.