A Warning About Manipulative Teachers

Listen to our friend Mo share Peter’s warning about manipulative teachers in the church.

As Peter was nearing the end of his life, he prepared Christians for false teachers who infiltrated churches with corrupt, self-serving teachings. Peter pointed out that these false teachers were interested only in the money they could make from an unsuspecting audience. They were manipulating God’s people with lies so the people would pay them. Peter warned the church that these false teachers were inevitable. He also warned that, contrary to what these false teachers said, Christians should not be surprised by the suffering and persecution they experienced. No follower of Jesus would be exempt from suffering and persecution, not even Peter, who was in Jesus’s inner circle.

Today we should not be surprised that false teachers around the world still attempt to manipulate churches with promises of a life of luxury. But God does not manipulate us. He doesn’t need us to pay for his good news, nor does he promise us the easy life. The life of luxury is not the prosperity that God offers us. Instead, Peter said not to think that fiery trials are strange. He seemed to think that times of suffering and persecution are the times when our true prosperity shines. In those times we can rejoice because we are blessed to bear the name of Christ and share in his sufferings, and the Spirit and the glory of God rest on us. “And after you have suffered a little while,” Peter wrote, “the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. ... I have written briefly to you, exhorting and declaring that this is the true grace of God. Stand firm in it” (1 Peter 5:10, 12 ESV).