You must open your Bible at the passage indicated and follow this article with the Scripture before you, if you would get any real help. Spare forbids quotations of any length from the passage so, as you read, refer to the Scripture and THINK.
If consequently fresh light begins to break in upon you, do not lightly turn from it but lifting up your heart in thanksgiving to God pursue your searching of the Word on the point. It may open up to you a fruitful field of truth and you can resume your reading of the article on another occasion.
THE two evils mentioned in verse 10 seems always to accompany “damnable heresies” as their natural result. The flesh finds an attraction in the heresies, because it loves to gratify itself and to do its own will, and to despise and speak against all that would hold it in check. The truth puts the sentence of condemnation on the flesh; the heresy on the contrary fosters it.
These twin evils—self-gratification and that of the lowest character, and insubordination under the plea of obtaining a larger liberty—are very prominent in the latter part of this second chapter. The contrast between verse 11 and 12 is very striking. These false teachers are but men. Angels who are greater than man in their power and might would never impeach those in dignity or authority, however much they might deserve censure, in the reckless way these men do. But as a matter of fact these teachers, who speak of dignities in a way that would suggest that they themselves were greater than the angels, are really just like—not angels—but “natural brute beasts made to be taken and destroyed.” The poor animal without reason—for that is what the word “brute” means —may heedlessly destroy what it is not capable of understanding, like the proverbial bull in a china shop. These men are like that; they violently attack and destroy, as far as words can do it, what they do not understand.
Many teachers there are of “modernist” persuasion who exactly (exemplify this. How trenchantly they attack the old foundations of the faith. What is the authority of a Paul, a Peter, a John or even indeed of Jesus Himself before their slashing words and pens? As a matter of fact however the simplest person, who being born again has become a child bf God, is conscious that they have not the least comprehension of that which they attack. The most costly china is to a bull just what the truth of the Scriptures is to them.
Are some of us, who are old-fashioned believers in Christ, to tremble and be intimidated by these assaults? There is really no need for it. It may look as if nothing can stand before them in their mad career, but it is only so because God is very patient and has plenty of time in which to settle accounts. We remember a nursery picture and rhyme book which amused us in childhood’s days. There was the story of the bad dog who ran amuck and bit a large slice out of a man’s leg. The last words of the rhyme however were, —
The man recovered from the bite
The dog it was who died!
We are irresistibly reminded of this by the closing words of verse 12. The faith of God survives in unbroken health; the false teachers “perish in their own corruption,” and receive the due reward of their unrighteousness.
How terrible is the indictment laid against them in verse 13 and 14! The adultery laid to their door may not be literal in all cases, but in its spiritual significance it certainly applies to all false teachers, for they all either teach or sanction unholy alliance with the world. Hence not only do they sport themselves in their own deceits—the foolish ideas engendered in their own minds—but they beguile unstable and unestablished souls. They destroy themselves, but they also bring themselves under the curse of destroying others.
In verse 15 their secret motives are unmasked. They have followed the way of Balaam. There is then nothing original about their performances. They follow in a well beaten track first trodden by Balaam of infamous memory, who sold his prophetic gifts for money. He was not the first person to prophesy for hire, for this has always been a custom in idolatrous religions, but he appears to have been the first to offer to prophesy in the name of the Lord for hire. With Balaam the supreme question was “Will it pay?” If a paying proposition he would prophesy to order—as far as he could. This was terrible madness involving terrible moral degradation. In verse 12, notice, the false prophets are on a level with the “natural brute beasts”; in verse 15. Balaam is below them. A dumb ass was able to rebuke him.
What then is the secret motive behind the many and various onslaughts of the modern false teachers? It is the same old story. The real drive behind them is in this—IT PAYS.
Generally it pays financially. When years ago the late “Pastor” Russell conducted a great campaign in London, hiring the most expensive halls and advertising on lavish scale, he was reported by a daily paper to have said, that he really did not know, what to do with the money that poured in upon him.
It always pays if fame and notoriety is the desired thing. The sensational newspaper always patronizes the man retailing a false novelty. Thorough-going modernism is alas! a high road to preferment in ecclesiastical circles.
And when preferred and in high office, what have they to give? Just, nothing. They are “wells without water” and so no spiritual thirst can ever be slaked by them. They are as “clouds carried by a tempest” which deposit little or nothing to refresh the weary earth.
Do they accomplish anything? Yes, alas! they do. They speak “great swelling [or, high-flown] words of vanity” to the ensnaring of many souls. Oh with what deadly accuracy are the inspired words of Scripture aimed. Certain secular papers have recently been making merry over the amusing medley of scientific jargon used at the recent meetings of the British Association. “Great high-flown words” were in plenty of evidence; and words of vanity “they were also, wherever they touched upon “the things of God” known by no man “but the Spirit of God” (1 Cor. 2:1111For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. (1 Corinthians 2:11)). By these vain words they capture some “who have just fled those who walk in error” (N.Tr.), promising them liberty.
Liberty! That word has a very familiar sound. Has not someone said to you in effect. — “Why be enslaved by blind adherence to a Bible which you imagine to be inspired? Why not adopt the enlightened modern view? Treat it as an ordinary book, classical and interesting of course, but of no supernatural authority. Thus you will emancipate your mind from its trammels and begin to move with full liberty in the vast fields of modern speculation.” Oh, how enticing the proposition! How fatally it works amongst well-meaning folk of unsettled minds, just lied from those walking in error and from the gross pollutions of the world, yet though thus reformed not born again. It opens up before them a way, quite high-class and scientific, right back into the old corruption from which they had just emerged.
The poor victims of these false teachers, who are thus freshly and finally entangled in the world’s pollution so that their latter end is worse than their beginning, are not truly converted souls, but merely people who through a certain knowledge gained of the Lord are outwardly reformed in their ways. They are consequently likened to the dog and the sow, both unclean animals. Such is dog nature that it has the unpleasant habit of returning to its own vomit. Such is sow nature that however well washed it loves the mire and plunges into it at the first opportunity. The person who may be intellectually enlightened and consequently reformed in outward actions, yet without that fundamental change of nature produced by the new birth, falls an easy victim. The false teacher promises him liberty and by his great high-sounding words of vanity cuts the slight mental leash that held him in restraint, and there he is back again in the old ways of sin, whether vomit—uncleanness generated from within, or mire, — uncleanness from without.
They had a “knowledge of the Lord and Saviour,” they knew “the way of righteousness,” they “escaped from them who live in error,” yet back they went to their own eternal loss. Sad, sad for them, but what pen can portray the judgment that will overtake the false teachers who have encompassed their ruin? In due season it will not slumber as verse 3 states.
Chapter 2 Then, is a very dark one. It introduces by way of parenthesis a very necessary warning. With the third chapter the apostle Peter returns to his main theme the immense importance of true prophecy. The true believer, being born again, has a pure mind. Yet though pure it needs to be stirred up to constant mindfulness of what God has said whether by the holy prophets of Old Testament days or by the apostles and prophets of the Lord Jesus in New Testament Scripture. The chapter plainly shows us what is the effect of bringing prophetic truth to bear upon the pure mind of the believer; he is thereby separated in heart and life from the world that must come not only spiritually but also materially under judgment and so disappear (see, verses 10-14).
This, be it noted, is exactly the opposite of what is found in chapter 2. There it is the iniquitous teaching of the false prophet with the inevitable effect of entangling its votaries in the world and its corruptions. Here it is the light of truth given through the prophet raised up of God, which has the effect of separating those who receive it from the world and its corruptions.
This distinction stands true everywhere and always. So much so, indeed, that we may be able to judge of the truth and soundness of any teaching set before us by asking ourselves this simple question, — if I receive this teaching as truth will it have the effect in my mind of separating me from the world or of confirming me in it? There are other tests, of course, which we must not ignore, but this one alone is quite conclusive.
F. B. HOLE.