Read with Me
2 Peter 2:1-3 (HCSB)
But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, and will bring swift destruction on themselves. Many will follow their unrestrained ways, and the way of truth will be blasphemed because of them. They will exploit you in their greed with deceptive words. Their condemnation, pronounced long ago, is not idle, and their destruction does not sleep.
Listen with Me
In his exposition about the true nature of prophecy and of Scripture itself (2 Peter 1:19-21), Peter was reminded of an important truth: there have always been false prophets working alongside the true, and there always will be.
One might believe that, with the coming of the Messiah and the fulfillment of all the messianic prophecies, the false prophets would be out of work. But Peter warns that that is not the case. It wasn’t true in his day, and it’s not true in ours either.
The role of the false prophet, aside from a very few who actually claim to be God or Jesus in the flesh and thus speak new words of revelation, is more subtle. They twist the words of Scripture, reinterpreting them to shift the meaning away from what those words clearly say toward a “new understanding”. Some claimed to have rediscovered a lost key to the “true meaning” of the Scriptures. But what they preach is not a new truth, but old lies in a new suit.
As Peter warned, many of those false prophets and false teachers are charismatic enough to persuade many people of their teachings. Some of them have swayed whole congregations to follow their “new truths” or “updated morality”, and some have persuaded whole denominations to turn away from their biblical doctrines and moral standards to embrace the ways of the world as the “new truth of God”. Some have even begun whole new religions, pulling people away from the gospel to follow after false gods and false truth.
But then and now, these false teachers have a powerful judgment hanging over their heads. God does not sit idly by while people are drawn away from the true path into the wide way that leads to destruction (Matthew 7:13). As James warns, teachers will be judged more strictly because they have such potential to lead people astray (James 3:1).
Pray with Me
Father, it is a wonderful thing to be able to possess and read Your complete revelation in our Bible, a revelation which You have made clear to those with eyes to see, and alongside which you have given the Holy Spirit to open our eyes and quicken our souls so that we can understand what You are saying to us. And it is sad, tragic, that so many do get dragged off the path by false teachers, even today. Lord, implant in our hearts such a powerful thirst for Your word, such desire to read it constantly, that Your truth pushes aside all who would try to lure us away with their “secret interpretations” or “scholarly understanding”. Make us wise in Your word, so that we can stand firm even in this. Amen.