What about those preachers that got it wrong, those good hearted, loving individuals who failed to really “prove all things” of a spiritual nature and, hence, preached and taught false doctrine. After all if the Baptist preacher teaches “once saved, always saved,” and the Pentecostal preacher across the way teaches you can most certainly fall away and lose your salvation, then one of them is dead wrong. But what if the one who got it wrong is basically a good man, a giving individual, what one might even call a “righteous” man or a keeper of God’s commandments, then what is his fate? Actually, there a couple verses of scripture that answer that question. Here they are: “Therefore to him that knows to do good, and does it not, to him it is sin” (James 4:17) and “Jesus said unto them, ‘If ye were blind, ye should have no sin'” (John 9:41).
So, there really is a saving element in being sincere yet being wrong. One’s acts of wrong, evil, sin, and the like, are not counted against that person as sin by God unless and until that person KNOWS better, knows they are wrong, knows they are now teaching error. They cross the line from innocent to guilty once their mind is opened to the truth and yet they still continue preaching or teaching error. But the issue is not fully settled at that point, for although their error is not regarded as sin by God, still they are charged with folly and have angered God. Notice what God says to Job’s three friends, who appointed themselves as instructors of the truth: “The Lord said to Eliphaz the Temanite, ‘My wrath is kindled against thee and against thy two friends, FOR YE HAVE NOT SPOKEN OF ME THE THING THAT IS RIGHT,'” and accuses them of folly in doing so. (See Job 42:7-8).
Know this, there will be a lot of preachers and teachers at the Judgment who will find they indeed do possess eternal life, but whose rewards will be minimal due to their having failed to prove their doctrine and, hence, continued to preach and teach error to their congregations.
Christ’s Aged Servant (Galatians 1:10-12),
Donald Wiley