Threatening the Church's Testimony

The apostles of Christ viewed as most serious the tendency of false teaching in the church to hinder or neutralize the testimony of the church in the world. They were most concerned with the potential of false teaching to cause spiritual harm at such a level that those outside the church would feel able to mock the professing believers with impunity. Peter was making it plain that there was a grave danger that people in the church, people who had professed faith in Christ, would feel the pull exerted by the false teachers and would be inclined to be influenced by their heretical views. When Peter said that there would be many who would follow the pernicious ways of the false teachers, he said so with the sense of sorrow that those who had heard the Gospel being preached would so readily listen to that which was against the Gospel. Peter's predictions came true not only in the aftermath of the apostolic age but also in the generations that followed, and perhaps never more vividly than in the church of the early 21st century. Toleration for compromise with that which is false has opened the door to carnality on a grand scale in the church. But Peter wanted everyone to know that there would come the day of judgment.