False teachers

Have you ever heard the adage about the dog and the pig? The saying about the dog is from the proverbs. The one about the pig is from an unknown source. But Peter puts them together to make a graphic point.

False teachers are a dime a dozen. They stand tall with stage presence. Their presentation is engaging. Their message is wrapped in an attractive package. But at the end of the day, the attractive package is empty, like “waterless springs.” The stage presence is backed by pride, and the message engages hearers by appealing to the “sensual passions of the flesh.”

False teachers always have an angle that slants in their favor. And the teachers Peter warned his readers about were coming into town for personal profit.

Since the beginning of time, they have been around. They come from every race. They have lived in every century. They have penetrated every culture. They have whispered their message behind closed doors and shouted it from the street corners. They have spread their poison one-on-one and before groups of thousands. They have used tablets, scrolls, books, radio, television, and the Internet to mislead anyone who will listen. False teachers have been and always will be among us.

The early church was saturated with false teachers. To gain a hearing, they devised clever stories that would appeal to their listeners. To the intellectuals, they philosophized. To the emotional, they told stories that grabbed the heart. To the spiritually naive and immature, well, anything worked with them. False teachers always skipped a significant doctrine (or two), but they could sure draw a crowd, so Peter made it clear that his message about Jesus was as an eyewitness.