“I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them” (Acts 20:29-30).
It didn’t take long for Paul’s warning to the elders of the Church in Ephesus to come true. Within the lifetimes of the original apostles false teachers had invaded the Church and were spewing their doctrines around wherever they went.
Paul called such people false apostles, deceitful workmen, masquerading as apostles of Christ. He said they are servants of Satan whose end will be what their actions deserve (2 Cor. 11:13-15).
John said they have the spirit of anti-Christ. He said, “They went out from us but they didn’t really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us they would have remained with us, but their going showed that none of them belonged to us” (1 John 2:19). In other words they may attend a church but they are not part of the Church.
Peter was the most aggressive in his condemnation of the false teachers. Here are some excerpts from 2 Peter 2, a chapter devoted entirely and exclusively to false teachers.
“But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them-bringing swift destruction on themselves. Many will follow their depraved conduct and will bring the way of truth into disrepute. In their greed these teachers will exploit you with fabricated stories. Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping” (2 Peter 2:1-3).
You would think with the advent of the written word, all this false teaching would have stopped, because believers could check what they were hearing against what the Bible says to see if they were being told the truth or not. But the reality is that even in countries where the Bible is readily available most believers simply don’t take the time to read and understand it. A great majority seems to be content with having someone else read it for them and then tell them what it says. These believers have always been fair game for the false teachers.
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