The world is in its greatest crisis ever. Politicians and Church Leaders have failed to find the answers and actually make matters worse. Recent history often discredits past politicians and shows how their decisions, with hindsight, were disastrously wrong. Too often they lied to us, not willing to trust us with the truth.
However the conclusion that I have come to after 90 plus years, is that this world is a battle ground. On one side is a God of love, who not only created us for a purpose, but was willing to sacrifice His own Son to rescue us from our own follies; on the other side is a very evil spirit, determined to control the world by subversion and encourage men to create their own destruction.
2 Peter 2 delivers a strong warning against those who do wrong and encourage others to follow them in doing evil. Peter says false teachers will arise among believers. He compares them to false prophets from Israel’s past, explaining that they will introduce destructive heresies, deny Jesus, and exploit people with deceptive words. Their actions lead others into sin, and they bring disrepute to the truth.
Peter assures that God will judge these evildoers, just as He judged the ancient world during Noah’s time and destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. However, God also knows how to rescue the godly, as seen with Lot.
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. Many will follow their depraved conduct and will bring the way of truth into disrepute. 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.
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; 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; if he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by burning them to ashes, and made them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly; and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the depraved conduct of the lawless (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard) – if this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to hold the unrighteous for punishment on the day of judgment, (2 Peter 2.1-9, NIV).
God did not spare the world in Noah’s day because of their sin; God did not spare Sodom and Gomorrah. This sin is in the Church today; people, even leaders, want to live in sin. Even so, God knows how to rescue godly men. There is a day of judgment coming; those who repent in this life will spend eternity with Jesus. The message of the Church is ‘repent and be baptised for the remission of sin,’ (Acts 2:38).
They have left the straight way and wandered off to follow the way of Balaam son of Bezer, who loved the wages of wickedness, (v15): In this passage, Peter is not talking about unbelievers, but those who knew the Truth and have backslidden. As a child, I used to debate with my father the question of ‘once saved, always saved’, this is based on the verse where Jesus said, ‘no man can take us out of God’s Hand’ (John 10:28), but some people deliberately choose to leave the Truth; they follow the way of Balaam, who was supposed to be a prophet of God, but he became corrupt, seeking personal gain over obedience to God.
There is forgiveness for those who genuinely seek it: ‘My brothers and sisters, if one of you should wander from the truth and someone should bring that person back, remember this: whoever turns a sinner from the error of their way will save them from death and cover over a multitude of sins,’ (James 5:19-20, NIV).