“But there were also false prophets in Israel, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will cleverly teach destructive heresies and even deny the Master who bought them. In this way, they will bring sudden destruction on themselves.”
2 Peter 2:1 NLT
In this, the second chapter of 2 Peter, the old disciple warned his readers about false teachers and false prophets. He wasn’t the only one who could see a problem coming down the tracks. Jesus Himself warned about such people. We read in Matthew 24:23-25, “Then if anyone tells you, ‘Look, here is the Messiah,’ or ‘There he is,’ don’t believe it. For false messiahs and false prophets will rise up and perform great signs and wonders so as to deceive, if possible, even God’s chosen ones. See, I have warned you about this ahead of time.” Jesus’ warning came in the middle of His discourse on the End Times, but this wasn’t going to be the only time for falsities. They can happen at anytime. The Book of Jude, just a short letter, is almost exclusively devoted to “The Danger of False Teachers”. In Jude 1:3-4 we read, “Dear friends, I had been eagerly planning to write to you about the salvation we all share. But now I find that I must write about something else, urging you to defend the faith that God has entrusted once for all time to his holy people. I say this because some ungodly people have wormed their way into your churches, saying that God’s marvellous grace allows us to live immoral lives. The condemnation of such people was recorded long ago, for they have denied our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.”
So what are the false teachings, the heresies, that can trip up a believer? Peter called them “destructive”, and they were delivered in a clever way to deceive true believers. Early heresies on record include ones like Docetism, which maintained that Jesus did not really have a human body. Instead He was Spirit, and only appeared to have a physical body. But the Gospels clearly recorded that Jesus ate with His disciples after His resurrection. We read in Luke 24:38-43, ““Why are you frightened?” he asked. “Why are your hearts filled with doubt? Look at my hands. Look at my feet. You can see that it’s really me. Touch me and make sure that I am not a ghost, because ghosts don’t have bodies, as you see that I do.” As he spoke, he showed them his hands and his feet. Still they stood there in disbelief, filled with joy and wonder. Then he asked them, “Do you have anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he ate it as they watched.” A clear confirmation that Jesus did in fact experience a bodily resurrection.
Another heresy was Gnosticism, adherents of which believed that they had to have access to a higher truth known only to a favoured few, and salvation came from finding this divine knowledge, freeing them from the consequences of sin. Paul wrote about being saved by God’s grace alone. Ephesians 2:8-9, “God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it“.
We pilgrims know that the only source of infallible truth is the Bible. I meet people from time to time who maintain that the Bible is out of date and needs re-writing to bring it up to date. But they miss the whole point, which is, the Bible, and only the Bible, is the inspired and true Word of God. Sadly, sects emerge who try and rewrite parts of the Bible to fit in with their own particular doctrines. In this respect, the Jehovah’s Witnesses come to mind.
So we pilgrims have a responsibility to maintain the purity of our faith. And the only way in which this can happen is through a knowledge of the Bible. If we are told something new, or in a way that we do not recognise, we must check it out. If there is a falseness in what we hear, then it will not sit easily with the truth that we know through the Holy Spirit within us. We need to emulate the people of Berea. Acts 17:11, “And the people of Berea were more open-minded than those in Thessalonica, and they listened eagerly to Paul’s message. They searched the Scriptures day after day to see if Paul and Silas were teaching the truth“. One way that error can creep into the church is through social media and channels such as YouTube. It is easy to find a video about something in the Bible that extrapolates what we know in Scripture to fill in any gaps in our knowledge. I recently started to watch a video about Noah’s Ark which tried to determine how big it was, where it ended up and so on. Many scientific and archaeological facts were included. It all looked very plausible and may have been harmless enough, but it is through such channels that subtle “facts” can be introduced into our thinking that aren’t in the Bible. In another example, I recently heard a sermon in which the preacher proposed a theory as to why Jesus didn’t heal all the sick people lying under the colonnades around the Pool of Bethesda (the story is in John 5). It was a perfectly plausible and harmless part of the message but what was said wasn’t actually backed up by Scripture.
We pilgrims must also be careful about taking Bible verses out of context or in isolation. I recently watched a well-known Christian author saying that the 1 Thessalonian 4 story of what we call the Rapture will happen before Christians experience the worst of the End Times, and so world events just now, with all the wars and atrocities being committed, shouldn’t be of concern. A great encouraging message, but such a teaching doesn’t really fit in so well with the End Times account in Revelation, and the part believers will experience.
Peter warned his readers to beware of heresies, a warning that we pilgrims would do well to listen to and act upon. And in the process, we must be careful what we say to others because the life of a false teacher will not end well.
Dear Father God. Teach us, we pray, only the truth that You want us to hear, and we pray for protection from error. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Being a Pilgrim 