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The Second Epistle of Peter Chapter 2:1–22 False Prophets 2:1 But false prophets arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. These false teachers will infiltrate your midst with destructive heresies, even to the point of denying the Master who bought them. As a result, they will bring swift destruction on themselves. When God gave the laws and commandments to Moses he gave the warning to His people Israel that false prophets would arise and He tells them how to recognize (Deut. and deal with them (Deut. 13:1 - 5). Throughout the Old Testament we come across these false prophets always opposing God and His true prophets. Peter warns his readers that as it was in those days so false prophets will arise among them. They will be wolves disguised as sheep that will infiltrate the church Jesus told His disciples (Matthew 7:15): in other words to all outward appearances they will seem to be Christians professing to be so but inwardly they are agents of the devil seeking to deceive the church and lead it away from the Word of God, the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ. They not only seek to destroy the church but also its witness to the world and so deceiving unbelievers into a false watered down confession of faith in Christ. Jesus also warned that that these false prophets will increase in the last days and will deceive many (Matthew 24:11). They will be so convincing that even well-grounded believers could be taken in by them if they were not on their guard and standing firm on the Word of God. While it is easier to recognize the devil when he comes at us as a roaring lion (1 Peter 5:8) it is much more difficult to do so when he comes as an angel of light (1 Cor, 11:13 - 14). What they say may appear to be right at least in part and it may all sounds plausible and we can be deceived into thinking that such teaching is not harmful but to compromise the faith in even a jot is to open the door to complete contamination, like sin if only one law of God is broken then we are sinners. These false teachers will stop at nothing to gain their own ends even to denying the Lord that bought them and the truth of who Christ is. At the end of this verse Peter tells us that these false prophets he warns the church about had one time excepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour but had become apostates denying that they had ever had a personal experience of Salvation. Because of their heresies they will bring a swift destruction on themselves. 2:2 And many will follow their debauched lifestyles. Because of these false teachers, the way of truth will be slandered. Many will be taken in by these false prophets and follow in their immoral and uncontrolled way of life. Destructive ways the NKJV has it the Authorised King James uses the word pernicious which is a more stronger word taken from a root word meaning ruin or loss, damnable physically, spiritually or eternally (Strong).
Because they were called Christians and had turned from the truth and were teaching erroneous things the Word of God, the Way of salvation, will be slandered. 2:3 And in their greed they will exploit you with deceptive words. Their condemnation pronounced long ago is not sitting idly by; their destruction is not asleep. In their greed for money and power they will alter and put their own interpretation on the Scriptures. Paul says of them in Romans that they do not serve Christ but their own selfish desires (Romans 16:18). If you let them they will use you for their own ends and to expand their own heresies just like the devil will. 2:4–5 For if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but threw them into hell and locked them up in chains in utter darkness, to be kept until the judgment. And if he did not spare the ancient world, but did protect Noah, a herald of righteousness, along with seven others, when God brought a flood on an ungodly world, God did not spare the angels that sinned against Him but cast them into the bottomless pit, the abyss, locking them up and binding them with chains in utter blackness until the day of judgment (Jude 6).In the time of Noah when God saw the extent of how evil the people had become (Genesis 6:5) He did not spare them but destroyed them by water; preserving only righteous Noah and his family (Genesis 6:8). 2:6 and if he turned to ashes the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah when he condemned them to destruction, having appointed them to serve as an example to future generations of the ungodly, Because of the evil practices of the people of Sodom and Gomorrah God condemned and destroyed the cities and all who lived in them by fire. This was an example to all those who came after of the punishment of what will happen to all ungodly people (Jude 7). 2:7–8 and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man in anguish over the debauched lifestyle of lawless men,(for while he lived among them day after day, that righteous man was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard) He rescued Lot and his family because he lived right before God. Although he had lived among these wicked people and was distressed by their lifestyle he did not copy their behaviour or become contaminated by it (Romans 12:2). 2:9 - 10 — if so, then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from their trials, and to reserve the unrighteous for punishment at the day of judgment, especially those who indulge their fleshly desires and who despise authority. Brazen and insolent, they are not afraid to insult the glorious ones, Since the Lord did all this it shows that he will not condemn the just (Roman 8:1, 1 Thess. 5:9) but deliver them when they are tested (2 Timothy 4:18). It shows also that he will keep the wicked for punishment on the day of judgment (2 Thess. 1:9). He will be particularly hard on those who disobey Him and indulge in sexually immoral behaviour and those that are impudent, insolent and not afraid to speak evil things against God His creation or other heavenly beings. 2:11 yet even angels, who are much more powerful, do not bring a slanderous judgment against them before the Lord. Although the angels are much more powerful than these people they do not bring any accusations about such beings (e.g. the devil) before the Lord. Since it is God who has created such beings it is right alone to pass judgment on them. Michael the archangel, when contesting with the devil, did not dare insult him but came in the authority of the LORD God and said "The LORD rebuke you!" (Jude 1:8).
2:12–13 But these men, like irrational animals — creatures of instinct, born to be caught and destroyed — do not understand whom they are insulting, and consequently in their destruction they will be destroyed, suffering harm as the wages for their harmful ways. By considering it a pleasure to carouse in broad daylight, they are stains and blemishes, indulging in their deceitful pleasures when they feast together with you. These false teachers are like unthinking animal's creatures of instinct who are born to be captured and killed for food. They have no understanding that it is the almighty powerful God that they are speaking against. Their destruction will be their reward for all the harm they have done against God and their fellow man. They blatantly indulge in wild immoral parties in broad daylight and are a disgrace and stain upon the church. They were even turning the church feasts into occasions to fulfill their own lusts. This was possibly happening in the so-called "love feasts," a kind of church supper involving the communion that degenerated into an excuse for a party. This practice is condemned by Paul in 1 Cor. 11:21–22. 2:14 Their eyes, full of adultery, never stop sinning; they entice unstable people. They have trained their hearts for greed, these cursed children! Following on from the wild immoral parties Peter says that they are always on the lookout for an opportunity to commit adultery and their sinful desires are never satisfied. They lure people who are weak in the faith into sin and their hearts are set on what they can get for themselves. They are cursed sons of disobedience (Ephesians 5:8). 2:15–16 By forsaking the right path they have gone astray, because they followed the way of Balaam son of Bosor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness, yet was rebuked for his own transgression (a dumb donkey, speaking with a human voice, restrained the prophet's madness). They have turned away from the true way that they had once known and embraced the way of Balaam son of Besor a heathen prophet. For the love of money he chooses to disobey when God told him not to side with Israel’s enemy Balak to place a curse on Israel. God used a donkey to speak in a man’s voice to rebuke the prophet (Matthew 6:24). 2:17 These men are waterless springs and mists driven by a storm, for whom the utter depths of darkness have been reserved. These false prophets are like springs that have dried up they promise a great deal but have nothing to offer or like clouds that look full of rain but are driven away by the wind. Their place has been reserved for them in hell (Matthew 22:13, Jude 1:13). 2:18 For by speaking high-sounding but empty words they are able to entice, with fleshly desires and with debauchery, people who have just escaped from those who reside in error. These people brag about themselves but there words are meaningless they are able to entice away by offering a religion without restraint one that suits them, a wide path instead of a narrow one (Matthew 7:13 - 14). 2:19 Although these false teachers promise such people freedom, they themselves are enslaved to immorality. For whatever a person succumbs to, to that he is enslaved. These teachers expound a gospel of liberty using the truth of saved by grace and therefore not subject to the law (Romans 6:14) as an excuse for license to do whatever the flesh dictates. They themselves are in bondage slaves of sin and Satan (John 8:34, Rom. 6:16-18). 2:20 For if after they have escaped the filthy things of the world through the rich knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they again get entangled in them and succumb to them, their last state has become worse for them than their first.
Peter ends this chapter with a warning that is repeated in various ways throughout the NT. Anyone who has received the Lord Jesus Christ as Saviour and has been delivered from the power of sin, yet turns back and is entangled again with the old life of sin, is worse off than when they started (Heb. 6:4– 8; Phil. 3:18–19) . 2:21 For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than, having known it, to turn back from the holy commandment that had been delivered to them. The terrible fact is that it would have been better for them to have perished in their sin and ignorance than to have known the way of righteousness and then afterwards reject it and forsake it. 2:22 They are illustrations of this true proverb: "A dog returns to its own vomit," and "A sow, after washing herself, wallows in the mire." Peter uses Solomon’s proverb, ”As a dog returns to his own vomit, So a fool repeats his folly” (Prov. 26:11) as a very descriptive illustration of these peoples behavior. They choose to take up again a life of sin instead of a righteous life with Christ. Just like another proverb they are like pigs who have been washed and then will go straight away and wallow in the mud, they have been wash in the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ and turn back to living in sin (Heb. 6:4-6 and Heb. 10:26-31). © Derek Williams & Mathew Bartlett 2015 Bible Studies Online UK www.biblestudiesonline.org.uk You may copy, print or distribute our studies freely in any form, just so long as you make no charges. Sign up today for our FREE monthly Bible study magazine “Living Word” Scriptures taken from the NET Bible www.bible.org