False teachers lurk among local congregations and perhaps inhabit pulpits. No giant blinking signs identify them. Cliches about wolves in sheep’s clothing do little to alert slumbering believers to the danger stalking them at this very moment.
But Christ-followers are not fumbling around in darkness as they wait on an inevitable attack.
Rather, Jesus gave us details that illuminate who these false teachers are what we need to know to avoid their snares.
Desiring God’s David Mathis recently identified four truths about prophesied false teachers:
1. The obvious: They are among us.
“We begin by acknowledging not just the possibility of false teaching, but the certainty of it. We should not be surprised to find false teaching in the church today. Jesus and His apostles are very clear that false teachers will arise. They promise it,” Mathis writes. “So, we should not be caught off guard that false teachers have arisen throughout church history and likely have multiplied in our day” (Mark 13, Matt. 24, and Acts 20).
2. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it’s a duck. False teachers will reveal themselves through their lifestyles.
“They are not just false in their teaching, but also in their living,” Mathis writes. “Beneath their doctrinal error, however subtle and deceptive, we will find ethical compromises in tow. And those don’t usually come out overnight; they take time. But they will come” (Matt. 7, Luke 6 and 12).
3. Follow the money … and the sex and the power.
We can boil it down to three essential categories found in 2 Peter 2—and all three are about character and conduct, not teaching:
- Pride, or defying authority: They deny “the Lord who bought them” (verse 1; also verses 10, 12–13 and 18).
- Sensuality, which typically means sexual sin: “many will follow their sensuality” (verse 2; also verses 10, 12–14, and 19).
- Greed, for money and material gain: “in their greed they will exploit you” (verse 3; also verses 14–15).
Again and again, Peter’s descriptions relate to greed, sensuality, and pride—or money, sex and power. What false teachers throughout history have shared in common is not the specific nature of their doctrinal error, but the inevitability of moral compromise in one of these three general areas.
4. Try as you might, you won’t spot all of them.
There are approximately 350,000 churches in the United States alone. The average church welcomes 350 attendees each week. That’s 122,500,000 weekly church attenders—virtually impossible for you to identify all the false prophets out there.
“It’s easy to hear someone’s teaching online or at a large conference, but how can we know their lives are true? The greatest defense against false teaching is a local church community that knows, enjoys and lives the Word of God—and holds its leaders accountable. Little, if anything, can be done to hold teachers accountable who are far away, but much should be realistic and actionable in the life of the local church,” Mathis writes.
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