False Prophets Hurt True Christianity

“But there were false prophets also among the people,
even as there shall be false teachers among you, who
privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying
the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves
swift destruction. And many shall follow their
pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth
shall be evil spoken of. And through covetousness
shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you:
whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and
their damnation slumbereth not.” 
2Peter 2:1-3
	One of the things I have complained repeatedly about
in sermons, newspapers, and radio broadcasts have been
media attacks upon Christianity. One of the very first
teaching efforts I participated in after moving back
to the United States, in 1986, was on the subject of
apostasy. I used the very chapter this morning’s key
Scripture is from. During that exercise I pointed out
the damage prophetic Scripture says false teachers do
to the truth. They cause the way of truth to be evil
spoke of because they give opportunity to those who
would attack Christianity.
	People who talk to nations love to refer to the false
teachers as fundamentalists because they can use that
word to run down those who hold fundamental views of
Scripture. So people who believe that Scripture means
exactly what it says becomes in their verbiage
suspect. In these recent days some have gone so far as
to equate fundamentalists of other religions, such as
Islam, with those who are “ignorant enough” to believe
the Bible. This means the media types not only cannot
recognize the Signs of the Times from Bible
revelation, but they label those who can as kooks to
be either ignored or actively persecuted.
	Often, when t.v. or movies have actors portraying a
Christian, the person either turns out to be a child
molester, mass murderer, or cult leader who is going
to feed his followers poison Kool Aid. But this
prejudice should not cause us to either ignore the
fact of false prophets or keep us from identifying
those who mix truth and error for their own purposes
of deception. They have kept up with technology and
moved into the Internet just as they have done their
predatory fishing in other places. The Bible says to
mark them, and we should not be dissuaded from doing
that.