Sunday: False Prophets and Teachers
It’s sometimes easy to idealize the early church, to think of it as a time of great peace and harmony among the earliest believers in Jesus. That would be a mistake. Even from the days of Jesus the church faced struggles, often from within (think of Judas). As the New Testament epistles show, many of the problems came from false teachings in their midst. The early church struggled not just with persecution from the outside but from problems within, as well.
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In this letter Peter deals with some of those internal challenges. What are they? “But there were also false prophets among the people, even as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them, and bring on themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their destructive ways, because of whom the way of truth will be blasphemed. By covetousness they will exploit you with deceptive words; for a long time their judgment has not been idle, and their destruction does not slumber” (2 Pet. 2:1-3, NKJV). It hardly sounds like a time of great peace and internal harmony among the brothers and sisters, does it?
Read 2 Peter 2:1-3, 2 Peter 2:10-22. What is Peter warning about here? What are some of the false things that were being promoted in the churches?
Second Peter 2:1 most likely reveals the reason the Lord inspired Peter to write the letter. He was warning them that just as there had been false prophets in the past, there will be false teachers in the future. Peter outlines quite a litany of charges against these teachers, everything from “destructive heresies” (2 Pet. 2:1, NKJV) to leading the unwary into bondage (2 Pet. 2:19) and a host of other errors, as well. From what he wrote, we can see that these were indeed very dangerous teachings, which explains why he reacted so strongly against them. Peter knew nothing of the idea that doctrine doesn’t matter.
Look at how strongly Peter reacts to these false teachings. What should this tell us about how important truth is? How can we protect ourselves against any and all attempts to bring false doctrine into the church?
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This presumes that the current teachings of the church are perfect.
I don't think that is quite true Trevor; although sometimes it appears that we think that way. Realistically though we need to understand that our perception of our teachings may need to change. Truth is a journey both for us as individuals and collectively as a church.
Yes, because it is built on the notion that almost any different teaching is false. George Knight's comment on our forefather not being admitted to our current Church is point at hand. The idea of truth being a journey for the Church would then suggest that we started out incorrectly and are making our way to truth. God starts his end-time movement incorrectly?
In a strict sense, yes, the end-time movement did start out incorrectly, believing that Jesus would come in 1844. it took quite a while for our core beliefs to reach a stage of general agreement And the early history of the church is a story of learning and growing and developing. They grew by comparing Scripture with Scripture and by prayer and listening to one another.
George Knight's comment may indeed be an indictment on how inflexible we have become. Perhaps we should allow room for others to grow in their understanding. We still have much to learn in our spiritual development.
Well God never starts anything incorrectly. Our movement might have started thus. Hopefully we would have corrected things in the end.
In 1844, they were looking for Christ 2nd coming in 1844.
But it did not take a while for the Advent movement to realize that this movement was based on a huge mistake. It took Jesus' not showing up at the end of their set date in 1844 for them to realize that the movement had been based on a huge mistake, a mistake that they would not have made had they heeded Jesus own statement that "No one knows the day nor the hour of his return." Our SDA movement still has many doctrinal and scriptural flaws. Even Ellen WWhite later wrote in 1891 that "The fact that certain doctrines have been held as truth for many years by our people, is not a proof that our ideas are infallible." and the sentence before that says, "There is no excuse for any one in taking the position that there is no more truth to be revealed, and that all our expositions of scripture are without an error." Counsels to Writers and Editors p. 35. My understanding is that when she wrote this statement, she was sent to Australia. I doubt that those doctrinal flaws and errors have been corrected yet.
Pete, thank you for quoting Sr White's sentence about "no more truth to be revealed". At the time it was quoted to me out of context i.e. without the preamble which gives it a totally different meaning! Read as a whole .... "There is no excuse for any one in taking the position that there is no more truth to be revealed, and that all our expositions of scripture are without an error." I understand that there WILL be more truth revealed. Do I understand correctly? Sr White's 'high English' is a challenge for many whose mother tongue is other than English. As an English-speaking South African I have been misunderstood by my Afrikaans-speaking church family more times than worth the mention! Where in the past the church was split by race - now it is split by language! Oh Lord - come quickly so that we all can speak the language of Canaan and all understand each other!
Prayerful study and close connection with the Spirit of God daily are vital in having discernment. There are times coming and even now, when it will be difficult or even impossible to see certain errors unless we remain close to the Holy Spirit thru Gods Word and sincere prayer.
Maurice over the past 6 months, I have developed a new appreciation for your views and insights. I find that they are biblically based and colored your own personal experiences. May God continue to bless you.
It is through interpersonal interaction that we grow in some of the Christian graces that are so lacking in people who isolate themselves. It is our very diversity that gives us strength, and it is our diversity that sometimes kindles strife. We are all babes in the faith, as we all have so very much to learn. My concern is that in our fear of being exposed to "false doctrine" we barricade ourselves behind a wall of prejudice and rigidity that does not allow for personal expression and individuality.
What kind of God throws all these diverse souls into the pot to work this stuff out?
A wise God--for that is how we learn so much of what we need to grow spiritually.
Yes, I would affirm that the history of our church began incorrectly in first assuming that the earth was the sanctuary to be cleansed at the end of the 2300 days. God was leading the church in a spirit and scripture guided progressive underständing. Our understanding today can be progressive in the way that our teachings be centered around our High Priest within the heavenly sanctuary, pinpointing to that center of our faith, clustering our teachings around this great center. Thus, bible study comes alive. Peter was writing to newly baptized christians. (1 Peter 2:2; 3:21) Spiritual progress was still ahead of them and necessary to cope with the false teachers teaching false freedom. (2 Peter 2:1.19) Even today false interpretations on christian freedom are under way doing away with the law of God and proclaiming freedom from the law of God rather from justification by the law (Galatians 1:16; James 2:12) failing to differentiate between both elements. The best way to combat error seems to be a presentation of biblical truth rather than attacking them.
Winfried Stolpmann
The church didn't start out incorrectly. The Adventist denomination started out incorrectly. The chruch is not SDA.
Horace, we could debate some of these ideas for a long time and I don't want to get into a long semantic debate. Here are a couple of ideas that we should perhaps consider:
1) Did the early disciples know everything correctly right from the very beginning? Did the early church never have to debate issues? Clearly there was some learning and grown that needed to happen. What was important was that the disciples and the early church were willing to grow and develop and remain close to Christ.
2) The mark of the true church is that its members are followers of Jesus. Irrespective of whether we think that the Seventh-day Adventist Church is "the Church" or not, we should all be followers of Jesus. The point is, that we are not judged on how correct we are but on who we follow. I agree that we can be somewhat egocentric about our perception of the Church and we need to reminded that there are indeed followers of Christ who have not even heard of Seventh-day Adventists, or have perhaps turned away from the Seventh-day Adventist Church because of our attitude. We still have a lot to learn. We need to grow the relationship with Jesus.
Maurice, i understand your veiw point,All i was saying that the chruch start out correctly, with a hundred and twenty people,but Satan come in and scatter them so all these Denamiation come in with some truth and some false doctrine.
Hi, it's very important as Christians to safe guard our doctrines for false teachers are among us whose mission is to bring confusion in the church of God by bringing teachings which are not right. Lets pray for strength from and for wisdom on how to handle such problems, lets what Peter, he fought with courage things which bad in the house of the Lord.
I have a question: What do you think about false prophets and false teachers. Are there any that are applicable from personal experience?
The real subtle ones are the ones that beguile us easily. I can remember long and fruitless theological discussions that have gone nowhere, yet as a participant I have felt that it was particularly important to win. The notion that we have got to be right, rather than having the right relationship with Jesus is a false teaching that I have fallen for too many times.
The other false teaching that is related to this is the idea that we are right and everyone else has been led astray by false prophets.
So true. I remember a discussion here that began with a Sr. White quote which included the admonition to not waste time and energy on this point, but to put the energy into the work in the cities or some other mission. Group then went on to discuss said point, and I to read discussion, ad nauseum.
We should be wary of getting stuck in theology and forgetting the Gospel.
Inspirations tells us that we have many many lessons to learn and many many many to unlearn. A wrong that we have held for so long will not become truth neither will truth become wrong when come in contact with error.
The problem we have is that, because we have held a wrong for truth for so long, we corrected, we resist saying we have been doing this since time in memorial. Let us have a teachable spirit remembering that truth is progressive and not static. Of course we learn with guidance of heaven.
If the church (SDA or not) focuses on becoming perfect in doctrine, they will miss the mark completely. We (the church) must become "doers of the word rather than hearers only or we are useless like salt that has lost its savor.
The Lord does not call us to debate, but rather take the good news of Jesus to the world, which includes ministering to the suffering.
Rather than worry about being right, be concerned about doing the will of God.
It is claimed that our doctrines are Bible centered and we all know that the Bible truth never changes why then is it that our Church manual gets amended now and then? Why is do some issues come up again and again at every GC. Will our truth have changed?
For clarification.....Truth never changes, but perhaps our ability to articulate it does....
We could extend the question and ask why didn't God reveal all the truth to the great reformers like Luther, and the Wesleys? There is such a thing as growing our understanding and that applies to both individuals and churches. We still have a lot to discover and the reason that maybe issues keep returning to the GC session is simply that we as individuals still have a lot of growing to do. I am finding that all too often we wait for the church to make a decision when we as individuals need to do some rethinking of the issues. We can easily become institutionalized about our Christianity when God is simply saying you need more time to think individually.
I know a lot about physics, but if I ever thought that I had learned all the physics "truth" there is, I would have been left behind a long time ago. Christianity is richer that physics and we need to recognize we have much to learn.