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How To Spot False Teacher - PART 1

2 Peter 2:10-11
and especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling passion and despise authority. Bold and willful, they do not tremble as they blaspheme the glorious ones, 11 whereas angels, though greater in might and power, do not pronounce a blasphemous judgment against them before the Lord.

This verse is a continuation of the verse in the previous post. It is the second part of a very long run-on sentence that describes the qualities and behaviors of the false teachers that were on the scene in Peter's day. This article is entitled Part 1 because this where he begins to describe the false teachers.

This section of scripture is not full of warm fuzzy feel-good bible quotes. Peter is just as concerned about exposing false teachers as he is comforting Christians suffering persecution. It is an extremely important subject, being mentioned in at least ten books of the bible. We should be equally concerned about this subject because there are just as many false teachers today as there were in Peter's time. As Christians, we must learn to spot them and then avoid and expose them so others will not fall into error. The main issue is the preservation of the truth!

Back to the text:
This is a somewhat confusing text to digest on a first read. Rather than try to explain all the details, I want to quickly get to the point of the passage. Here's my paraphrase based on my study of the passage:

[ (God) will keep His promise to punish the unrighteous at the time of judgement,] especially those (false teachers) who indulge their carnal desires for things like money, power, and fame. These people can't stand to have anyone in positions of power over them, even mocking those in positions of authority. They are proud and arrogant, even to the point of thinking they have the authority to speak to demons as if they were more powerful than they are. (The truth is, these creatures deserve a certain amount of dignity and respect because they were once angels. This shows how arrogant these false teachers truly are. Even angels themselves, out of respect, do not bring accusations against demons to God. (this is shown in Jude vs.8-9)

I'll admit to throwing alot of commentary in there, but this is as close as I can get to explaining the meaing of the text. This is a difficult passage to translate and there are differing explanations to the part about angels and demons.

The main idea is readily apparent, no matter if the illustration about angels is missed or not.

That is:
One way to spot a false teacher is to look for the qualities of arrogance and lust. Not just "sexual" type lust, but lust for things like fame, and money.

My advice to you is to carefully scrutinize any Christian teacher/leader/preacher (especially if they are on TV) to see if these qualities describe their lives. If so, it's best to stay away, no mater how popular they are.
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