EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/19/2025 5:35 PM
My Worship Time Focus: “The Secrecy”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: (2 Peter 2:1-b)
Message of the verses: “who will secretly introduce destructive heresies,”
I want to go ahead and quote the entire first verse of 2 Peter 1:1 so we can see the whole verse at once because there is still a lot more to look at from this verse. “1 But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves.”
It is true that false teachers are never honest and straightforward about their operations. For after all, the church would never embrace them if their schemes were unmasked. Instead, they secretly and also deceptively enter the church, posing as pastors, teachers, and even evangelists. That is why Jude describes them as “certain persons [who] have crept in unnoticed” (Jude 4). MacArthur writes that “the verb ‘to creep in’ (pareisduo) means to ‘slip in without being seen,’ or ‘to sneak in under false pretenses.’ The term refers to a clever defendant attempting to fool a judge, or a criminal secretly returning to a place from which he was banished.” This seems to me to come from Satan who is always looking for people that he can use to disrupt the church. Those who have read my Spiritual Diaries for a while know that I really love to study the book of Revelation, and in the 2nd and 3rd chapters of that book we see a list of seven churches, that I believe are in order of what the dominant church of different ages of the church in the order of these churches are listed. I will list these churches in the order that they are given in the 2nd and 3rd chapters of Revelation, and also the years that they are the dominant church in the world according to Hal Lindsey’s commentary on Revelation “There is a New World Coming.” Ephesus from A. D. 33-100; Smyrna 33 A. D. 100-312; Pergamos: 321-590 A.D.; Thyatira 590-1517 A. D.; Sardis 1517-1750 A.D.; Philadelphia 1750-1925 A.D.; Laodicea 1925-Present day. In the two churches highlighted in yellow the Lord has not bad things to say about them, as for the others it is a steady downward spiral with of course the two church highlighted in yellow, so from Ephesus to Laodicea the churches are getting worse and worse, and keep in mind that when the rapture of the Church takes place the church will be in the bottom. Now keep in mind that there are all of these churches active in the church from the beginning to when the rapture takes place, but what I am talking about here is the main church of the different time periods. So the time period that Peter writes his letters in is the first time period. In these letters that are found in Revelation we see that, as mentioned only two have nothing bad said about them by the Lord but in the last church Laodicea He has nothing good to say about it, very sad. Satan is clever, but God will judge him as seen in the last part of Revelation and he will burn in hell forever. What a waste!
MacArthur continues “Posing as true shepherds, false teachers introduce destructive heresies (or literally, ‘heresies of destruction’). Destructive (apoleias) means ‘utter ruin’ and speaks of the final and eternal condemnation of the wicked. In this context, the term indicates that the antics of these men have disastrous eternal consequences, both for them and their followers. That this Greek word has the sense of damnation can be seen by its use to describe the fate of Judas in John 17:12, its application to unbelievers’ doom in Romans 9:22, its use to describe the judgment of the man of sin in 2 Thessalonians 2:3, and its use by Peter in 3:7 of this letter to describe the destruction of the ungodly. Peter marked those heresies as contrary to the gospel—they damn rather than save.
“The term heresies (haireseis) denotes ‘an opinion, especially a self-willed opinion, which is substituted for submission to the power of truth, and leads to division and formation of sects’ ((W.E. Vine, An Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, 4 vols. [London: Oliphants, 1940: reprint, Chicago: Moody, 1985], 2:217). By using this word, Peter indicated that those false teachers had exchanged the truth of God’s Word for their own self-styled opinions. As a result, they distorted the truth to their own ends, convincing the gullible to believe their lies. Their teaching then, was nothing more than a religious counterfeits—a pseudo-Christian knockoff. While hiareseis can simply refer to a sect or division (Acts 23:14; cf. 5:17; 15:5; 24:5; 26:5; 28:22; 1 Cor. 11:19), here it refers to the worst kind of deviation and deception—teaching that claims to be biblical but is actually the very opposite.
“False teachers do not always openly oppose the gospel. Some claim to believe it, to have the true interpretation of it; but in truth they misrepresent it, or offer a shallow, inadequate message that cannot save. Because their teaching is as lethal as it is subtle, the self-styled opinions of false teachers can damn the souls of unsuspecting, professed believers (cf. Matt. 13:20-22, 36-42, 47-50). Unless they repent, believe the truth, and turn to Christ, those who embrace these heretical doctrines will be eternally lost.”
11/19/2025 6:24 PM
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