ANNOUNCER: Does 2 Peter 2 say, there will be false teachers among believers. Is it possible for there to be false teachers who are believers? And what happens when believers are duped by false teachers? This is Grace in Focus, and let’s talk about this topic today here on Grace in Focus. Thank you, friend, for joining us. We are a ministry of the Grace Evangelical Society. Learn more about us at faithalone.org. Bob Wilkin’s latest book is available there in our bookstore. It is The Gospel Is Still Under Siege. And we want to invite you to our national annual conference, May 18th through the 21st, this year. It will be a great three-and-a-half days of fellowship, learning, meals together and recreation, and friend-making for your kids at VBS. We have a great Free Grace curriculum for them they’ll really enjoy. So bring them along too. And everything you need to get registered is at faithalone.org/events. Come and see us there.

Now with today’s question and answer discussion, here are Bob Wilkin and Ken Yates.

KEN: Bob, we’ve got a question from Richard, and he read one of your outstanding blogs. 

BOB: Oh, I’m glad he read one of those, not the other ones. 

KEN: There you go, that’s right. He says that you wrote a blog, a series of blogs about what’s wrong with Calvinism, and he was reading these blogs, and he had a question about 2 Peter chapter 2, verse 1. And I’m going to read the verse for you, then I’ll ask the question. Peter says in 2 Peter 2:1, “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 his question is, he believes that 2 Peter was written for believers, and that’s true. But he says, based upon your blog, how do we interpret the phrase, “there will be false teachers among you” in this verse, and then he goes on to say, will there be false teachers among believers? I think the answer is, well, we’ll talk about that, yes. And then does “among you” refer to somebody within the church or outside the church? 

I know you wrote the blog, and in 2 Peter, Peter is talking about false teachers among the believers. Peter sees these false teachers as unbelievers, but they are unbelieving false teachers who are within the church who are influencing those within the church, and we can expand on that. 

BOB: And we know they’re unbelieving false teachers because of verse 17, right? 

KEN: Right, it says in verse 17, he’s describing them, “These are wells without water, clouds carried by a tempest, for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever.”

BOB: Now, I’ve never heard anybody call Jesus’ kingdom, “the blackness of darkness forever,” right? “God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.” So Jesus’ kingdom is not a kingdom of darkness, but Satan’s kingdom, the lake of fire, is going to be a kingdom of darkness, not light. And so verse 17 establishes these are unbelieving. Now, as you said, this doesn’t mean that all false teachers are unregenerate. A believer can be duped and confused and become a false teacher. 

In fact, my personal thinking is seminary is very dangerous today, because a lot of people who go to seminary, end up going backwards in their spiritual maturity. They often lose assurance of salvation. They often become postmodern and begin to think that we don’t know anything for sure. So lots of bad things can happen when people go to higher Christian education. 

Having said that, I think it is important that our next generation of pastors and missionaries and teachers get training. That’s why we have our own online seminary, right? It’s a free online seminary and unaccredited, but we think accreditation brings with it problems that lead you to become doctrinally questionable because they require you to get doctorates from these liberal schools. 

KEN: Right. And I remember when I was young and I told you it was a missionary and I said that I was going to go to seminary and he said, we know we call it “cemetery.” You’ve got to be careful where you go to school, especially today and of course when I went, that was a long time ago. So it’s even worse today. 

Believers can be duped. That’s what 2 Peter’s talking about. In fact, even starting in verse 18 of chapter two, Peter starts talking about you need to watch out because these guys, who Peter says are unbelievers and they’re influencing the church, he says they can lead believers astray. There’s many people today who teach false doctrine, even false gospels, who are believers. 

BOB: Absolutely. Maybe you could read. I wrote an article on this. You can go to faithalone.org on 2 Peter 2:18-22 [see here]. A lot of people say that these people in these verses are unbelievers, but I think it’s clear there’s two separate groups and if you follow the third person plural, they and them, you’ll see that there’s the false teachers and then there are the people I call the dupes. So maybe we could just take a minute and read. Ken would you read, read verse 18, then we’ll make a comment, 19, we’ll make a comment, et cetera. 

KEN: Sure. He’s talking about these false teachers. It says, “For when they speak swelling words,”

BOB:  “When they speak swelling words,” that’s the false teachers. 

KEN: I love this, “of emptiness.” There’s nothing there. In the previous verses, he talks about clouds without water. There’s no value in what they’re saying. 

BOB: No rain. 

KEN: When it’s hot out there and you see a cloud and you think, oh, this is going to be great. It’s going to be great. The rain is going to come down, but they promise things, but then they don’t produce. And that’s what these guys are. 

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KEN: “They allure through the lusts of the flesh, through lewdness, the ones who have actually escaped.” 

BOB: Okay. “The ones who have actually escaped” is a separate group, that’s the believers. 

KEN: Right. “From those who live in error.” And it even seems like these are believers who have been taught how to live morally. 

BOB: And we’re going to see this. They’ve not only been taught how to live morally, but they have begun on the path of righteousness. So when it says they have escaped, it doesn’t mean they’ve escaped in their position. He means they have escaped in their experience. They have become spiritually mature believers. Now keep going.

KEN: And in verse 19, these false teachers “promise them,” so another group, “they promise them,” 

BOB: The “them” are the dupes. 

KEN: “liberty, they themselves are slaves of corruption.” 

BOB: “They themselves” as the false teachers. 

KEN: right, “for by whom a person is overcome, by him also he is brought into bondage.” 

BOB: Okay. So the false teachers can bring born again people into bondage. 

KEN: These who have escaped. 

BOB: Who’ve already escaped that bondage, but now they’re falling back and then what does he say? 

KEN: “For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” 

BOB: Okay. Notice they’ve escaped the pollutions of the world. 

KEN: That’s not they’ve escaped the lake of fire. They’ve escaped the pollutions of the world. So they’ve been taught. 

BOB: They’ve grown. They’ve matured.  And it when it says knowledge, that doesn’t mean some people say, well, when you believe in Christ, then you know Him, well, not necessarily. In Scripture, knowing is a flexible term. Jesus said to Phillip, “Have I been with you so long, and yet you don’t know Me?” John 14:9. Knowing in John’s first epistle refers to being an intimate fellowship with Jesus. And I would say the same thing is true here. They’ve come to know God in their experience. 

KEN: And it says, “and they are,” this is again, those who are duped. “They are again entangled in them and overcome, the latter end is worse for them than the beginning.”

BOB: So these are people who you’ve ever been on switchbacks where you go back and forth on the mountain and going up and up and up. So basically what Peter is describing is someone who has climbed up the mountain of righteousness or the path of righteousness. And they now fall from their exalted position and their position after they fall and hit the bottom is worse than before they began growing as a Christian. 

I’ve known examples of this. There are people who are worse after falling as a Christian than before they began growing as a Christian. I remember a guy my first year in seminary, he was a fourth year student and he ended up leaving his wife who was eight months pregnant for another woman while he was a fourth year student at Dallas Seminary, about to graduate. Before he came to faith, he was a very nice person and when he was a new believer before he grew in the faith, he was a very nice person. He never would have done that kind of thing. But over the course of time, he changed and became worse. And it’s possible, you know, some of the people on skid row are former doctors or former lawyers and these are people who may have been very strong believers, but through various circumstances, they fall away. 

KEN: It’s kind of like the phrase we have “how the mighty have fallen.” 

BOB: Exactly. So in answer to his question, when he says, were these false teachers being among born again people? Yes, that’s exactly what he’s saying. And don’t we see this today on the radio, don’t we see it on YouTube, don’t we see it on Christian TV, don’t we see it in Christian books? There’s a whole lot of people who are promoting a false saving message, they’re promoting a false sanctifying message. They’ve got all kinds of heresies, all kinds of false teachings, people need to be careful today. And of course, I realize some of you listening may go, yeah, you need to be careful with what Ken and Bob are saying. And our answer would be, that’s right, you need to be careful what everybody says. Because we’re to be Bereans who search the Scriptures and see what matches up with Scripture. 

KEN: Yeah. So here when Richard asks a question, does “among you” refer to someone within the church, the answer is yes, these are within the church. And then he also asked, do these false teachers retain their salvation? Well, we’re arguing that the false teachers that Peter is addressing are unbelievers. 

BOB: They were never believers. 

KEN: They were never believers, but they certainly could dupe people, as they said.

BOB: And those people duped could become false teachers themselves. 

KEN: Right. And then they probably would if they started teaching, if they were following them, and would they retain their salvation? The answer is obvious, yes, 

BOB: Obviously yes, because once you’re saved, you’re always saved, we call that OSAS, or once you believe in Him, you’ll never perish, right? John 3:16. 

KEN: Right. And so if we could summarize it, false teachers can either be believers or unbelievers. But you’re asking specifically about 2 Peter 2:1, the way Peter describes him, he knows that these guys are unbelievers. And that’s what he’s saying. 

BOB: But we should all be aware of being duped, because there’s lots of false teachers today, so you need to be Bereans and search the Scriptures, and I strongly urge you to be in a solid, Bible-teaching church, that’s so important. 

KEN: And listen to GES. 

BOB: Now, we’re not a church, but we do try to help churches, and so I agree with Ken, check us out, check the Scriptures out, see what they say. 

KEN: And when you check, whoever you check out, remember, keep grace in focus.

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