03 - Faiths Contention 2011

Once Peter has established faith’s convictions, he forges ahead to deal with those who were denying the faith. He will deal first with the doctrine of the heretics (2:1-3a), then with the doom of the heretics (2:3b-9), and, finally, with the deeds of the heretics (2:10-22).

He begins first with the lying message within the doctrine of the heretics. “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.”—2:1

The word for “false prophets” points to one who openly proclaims a lying message that he claims to have received from God. Down through the ages, God’s men have frequently been plagued by Satan’s counterfeits. Peter is hearkening back to the many instances recorded in scripture.

Jeremiah, for instance, complained, “The prophets speak falsely,…and my people love to have it so” (Jer. 5:31). Isaiah described the desperate condition of the Israelites on the eve of the Assyrian invasion: “This is a rebellious people, lying children, children that will not hear the law of the Lord: which say…to the prophets, Prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits” (Is.30:9-10).

Paul the Apostle warned that in the last days, professing believers would do the very same thing. “For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear” (2 Tim. 4:3).

Peter echoes the same conviction. As it happened before, he wrote, “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.”

“Destructive heresies” will be their stock in trade. While we’re here, let’s define three important words:

APOSTASY: The abandonment of what one once held or believed, particularly sound Bible doctrine.

BLASPHEMY: Speaking about God with contempt, hatred or disdain. It is the verbal abuse of God.

HERESY: is the act of laying error alongside truth with the intent to deceive.

Peter said that the heretics teaching these heresies would reach the place of actually “denying the sovereign Lord who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves.” Many of these “damnable” heresies are in the world today.

LIBERAL THEOLOGY denies every cardinal doctrine of Scripture, reducing Jesus to the level of a well-meaning teacher who, because of his advanced thinking and popularity, brought about his own martyrdom.

JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES deny the Trinity, hell, the deity of Christ, and His bodily resurrection. MORMONISM, with the age old lie “You shall be as gods!” is a damnable heresy. And the current belief in “tolerance” and multi-culturalism teaches that there are many ways to God, not just Christ. This, too, is a damnable heresy.

Peter warns that their destruction will be “swift.”

Next, the Apostle focuses on the lifestyle of the heretic:

“Many will follow their depraved conduct and will bring the way of truth into disrepute.”—2:2

The word “depraved” comes from a Gk. word meaning “lascivious.” A lascivious person is someone who has abandoned all restraint and revels in indecent behavior. Peter is pointing to how apostate teachers who have abandoned the truth, soon endorse the most foul and filthy lifestyles imaginable. Because of this, “the way of truth falls into disrepute.”

Peter then focuses on their motives:

“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.”—2:3

These false teachers are greedy. They will weave tall tales, lies, and twist scripture in order to get your money. In the Middle Ages the Catholic Church sold indulgences—the giving of money to deliver the souls of loved ones out of purgatory—the very thing that infuriated Martin Luther and helped spur on the Protestant Reformation.

Peter says “their destruction slumbers not.” God’s judgment is on their heels. Their downfall is assured. It may appear that they are getting away with it, but in the end God’s wheel of justice will catch up to them.

Peter now opens up his Bible and takes his readers back to the past. He has three Bible illustrations of God’s dealing with apostasy in days of old. He begins with the angels that sinned.

“For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell, putting them in chains of darkness to be held for judgment;”—2:4

Sin didn’t begin on earth with Adam and Eve. It began in heaven with Lucifer and his angels. The “angels that sinned” fall into two categories. First, when Satan fell, he apparently dragged down a third of the heavenly host with him (Rev. 12:3-4). Jesus said, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.”—Luke 10:18

Large numbers of these fallen angels are actively engaged today in holding our world in bondage. They harbor special malice toward the Jewish people (Dan. 10: 12-13, 20-21) and toward the church (Matt. 16:18). They exist in a hierarchical structure with Satan as their head.

They are organized as principalities, powers, rulers of this world’s darkness, and as wicked spirits in high places (Eph. 6:10-18). They are of a different order than demons, which have a craving to possess human bodies (Luke 11:24-26).

From the ranks of these higher, more powerful angels came a group of angels that had a further fall. Jude chimes in with more information about them: “And the angels who did not keep their positions of authority but abandoned their proper dwelling—these he has kept in darkness, bound with everlasting chains for judgment on the great Day.”—Jude 6

So both Peter and Jude mention angels that are right now being “held in chains of darkness” awaiting the Judgment Day. Who are they? What did they do? They are not roaming the earth as are other demon spirits.

First, both Peter and Jude put their fall in the context of the sin of Sodom, which was the sin of “going after strange flesh.”

Many solid Bible scholars believe that this particular group of fallen angels lusted after human women. In pursuit of this unnatural desire, they violated the order of their being and, in consummating their craving, brought down upon their heads the wrath of God. Peter is pointing to the judgment that overtook these angels who fell not once, but twice.

Peter also seems to place this time of profound corruption during the time of Noah and the judgment of the flood. “If he did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others;”—2:5

The angels that involved themselves in this unimaginable corruption, Peter says, were “thrust down to hell.”

Hell in this verse comes from the word “Tartarus” which is a Greek name for the under-world, especially the abode of the damned.

Tartarus is not the lake of fire (Gehenna), though that will be their final destination. Until the day they are delivered over to the lake of fire, these wretched beings are currently in detention in Tartarus, held by “chains of darkness.”

Moses describes their invasion of the human race in Gen. 6:1-2. “Now it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born to them, 2 that the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves of all whom they chose.”

Some argue that the phrase “the sons of God” is pointing to the godly line of Seth, and that these “sons of God” were Sethites. Aside from Adam being called a “son of God” in Luke 3:38, and born again believers being called sons of God (John 1:13; rom. 8:14; 1 John 3:1), Angels are called sons of God in every other place where the expression is used in the O.T. (Job 1:6; 2:1; 38:7; Ps. 29:1; 89:6; Dan. 3:25).

These “sons of God” mentioned in Genesis, as fantastic as it may seem, appear to have been fallen angels taking on human form, just as we find them doing when they appeared to Abraham before Sodom’s destruction. They sat in Abraham’s tent and ate a meal. They walked into Sodom where the Sodomites clearly thought they were men. Yet in mere hours these same beings brought fiery wrath upon the cities.

They warned Lot to get out quickly, “For we will destroy this place, because the outcry against them has grown great before the face of the LORD, and the LORD has sent us to destroy it.”

The result of these fallen angel’s unnatural relations with women was the giants we read of in the O.T. Gen. 6:4-5 “There were giants on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown. 5 Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”

Wickedness in vs.5 is “moral depravity.” This was a totally morally depraved culture that preceded the flood. The “giants” Moses mentions are what are known as the Nephilim, meaning “fallen ones.” They were people of giant size, strength, inventiveness, and iniquity. Their destruction was necessary for the continuation of the human race. The giants were also known as Anakim (Num. 13:33) and Rephaim (Deut.2:10: 20-21).

The antediluvian people—those that lived before the flood—had been given two preachers, Enoch and Noah. Enoch was a prophet and had warned of judgment to come (Jude 14). Noah preached for 120 years while he was building the ark (Gen 6:3; 1 Pet 1:20).

When God saw what was happening between fallen angels and women, He placed a time limit of 120 years on His divine calendar. During this time Enoch had a son he named Methuselah, which means “when he dies, it shall come.” This was prophetic. God was saying, “When this man dies, it (judgment) shall come.”

When the ark was finished, Methuselah died. The death of Methuselah must have given Noah the text for his last sermon. “Methuselah is dead!” we can hear him say. “And now it is about to come—the flood of which Enoch warned. An ark is ready! Run for safety and get in while you still can!” Nobody came.

When the flood came, Peter and Jude both say that God “cast them (these wicked fallen angels) down to hell (Tartarus) and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved for judgment” (vs.4).

Jude writes: “And the angels who did not keep their proper domain, but left their own abode, He has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day;”—vs.6

And as for the human race of that day, Peter writes that God, “did not spare the ancient world, but saved Noah, one of eight people, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood on the world of the ungodly…”—vs.5

So why should he spare ours should it continue in its increasingly corrupt sin? Peter’s message is, He won’t.