SIGHT & SOUND OF FALSE TEACHERS (PART VI)
By Akin Ojumu
Duping delight is the thrill, excitement, and exhilaration that con artists experience while perpetrating their con. Almost always, people who experience duping delight want to share their accomplishments with others in order to seek admiration. At the same time, they also feel deep contempt for the victims of their deception.
Schadenfreude, another personality disorder quite similar to duping delight, is the experience of pleasure, joy, or self-satisfaction that comes from learning of or witnessing the troubles, failures, pain, suffering, or humiliation of another.
Like the con artists, false teachers experience duping delight and schadenfreude. They all enjoy a feeling of pleasure and satisfaction for being able to perpetrate their deception and then successfully get away with it. The longer they carry out their con and not get caught, the greater is the degree of contempt they have for their victims and the more profound is their disgust for the prey for getting duped.
Unfortunately, Church folks don’t understand this about false teachers. They don’t know that these people they follow suffer from a sickness of the soul. For some reason, Church folks seem incapable of appreciating the fact that the charlatans in the pulpits take pleasure in the misery of their victims.
In a sense, this was the point Apostle Peter was trying to drive home to the first century Believers who were exiles in ancient Asia Minor. He wanted them to know that false teachers are not their friends but enemies who derive pleasure in seeing them fall for their scam. So that there’s no confusion in their minds, Peter went on to describe, in vivid details, the character of false teachers.
This commentary series examines Peter’s characterization of the hallmarks of impostors. Today’s commentary focuses on the last of the defining attributes of charlatans.
11) Last State Worse Than the First
2 Peter 2:20
“For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first.”
“Defilements of the world” mentioned in this verse describe the putrid or poisonous vapors that ooze from society. It refers to the stench of the moral decay that emanates from the world in which we live.
What Peter is telling us here is that, at some point in their lives, the false teachers and those who follow them wanted to escape the moral contamination of the world system, and they sought religion. Although they wanted to give the Lord Jesus a try, but, it was on their own terms and not on His terms.
Unfortunately, the false teachers and their followers never genuinely surrendered their lives to Christ. They heard the true Gospel, alright, and they tried to take a step towards the message of the Cross, but, eventually, they rejected and turned back from the Christ of the Gospel. And like it is with all apostates, their end will be far worse than the first. It’s eternally damning to taste Christ and then spit Him out.
Hebrews 6:4-6
“For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt.”
Hebrews 10:26-27
“For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.”
12) Better For Them Never to Have Known the Truth
2 Peter 2:21
“For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them.”
Having been exposed to the true teachings of Scripture, false teachers and their followers profess to know Christ. They pretend to have the Christian experience. On the outside, it seems as though they are set in the way of righteousness. But by their lives they demonstrate that they ultimately had chosen to reject Christ and, thus, were never truly saved and never really belonged to Christ.
1 John 2:19
“They went out from us, but they did not belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us. But their departure made it clear that none of them belonged to us.”
Now, these false teachers were not made outside Christianity. They were bred and reared in the Church. But they were always one leg in and one leg out. Eventually, they rejected the Truth. But on their way to perdition, they tried to recruit followers whom they seduced with the promise of earthly pleasures. They conned their victims with happy lies.
13) Dogs Rolling in Vomit & Pigs Wallowing in Mire
2 Peter 2:22
“What the true proverb says has happened to them: “The dog returns to its own vomit, and the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire.”
Without mincing words and not caring about political correctness, Peter compared the apostate false teachers to dogs and pigs. They are like dogs who return to their vomit and are not any different from pigs that go back to wallow in the mire after being thoroughly washed. What an apt description for apostates.
Unfortunately, victims of charlatans have themselves to blame. Whoever puts himself, under the illusion of the promise of happy lies, in the hands of a false teacher, who is a prisoner himself, will also become a prisoner. Bondage to corruption awaits anyone who follows false teachers.
Comments
Post a Comment