2 Peter 2:1-3

Recognizing a danger for the believers of his day, Peter penned this warning: “There will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies” (2 Pet. 2:1). His words are as true today as they were in the first century.

Spotting false teachers can be difficult, and many people are swayed by their lies. Matthew called them ravenous wolves in sheep’s clothing (Matt. 7:15). How, then, can we detect deceptive teaching?

First, become familiar with biblical truth, and be vigilant. On the surface, false teaching may seem to align with Scripture, but underneath lies a faulty agenda.

Second, listen for any denial of truth, such as someone who claims to believe in God but argues that the creation story is myth. It is dangerous to pick and choose which parts of the Bible can be taken literally.

Third, notice teachings that promote sensuality. False teachers interpret the Bible in a permissive way: they often make allowances for immorality, misrepresent grace, and justify sin as gratifying “natural desires.” Why do they guide others this way? Some may not realize their mistake. Others are driven by power and greed: if a leader can stir a crowd emotionally, the offering plate will likely be full and the church will probably grow–both for the wrong reasons.

Don’t be led astray by false doctrine. The wise will guard themselves by feasting daily on God’s Word. Then they can compare teachings to Scripture and scrutinize them for the three signs of falsehood listed above. The truth is able to set us free, but lies entangle and lead to much bondage.

It has been said that life is like entering a very long movie that has already started and then learning that you have to leave it before it ends. It is at once an analogy I appreciate and find troubling. As a Christian, it is the reality, and the hope, I profess: “My days are like the evening shadow; I wither away like grass.  But you, O LORD, sit enthroned forever; your renown endures through all generations.”(1) Even so, entering a movie already started and leaving before it ends also means that I could entirely miss the point.

Every time I read St. Augustine’s Confessions I seem to come uncomfortably face to face with myself, and with it, the thought that someone has already told my story—or at least very real parts of it. It is this shock of recognition that wakes me to my own pride and makes real the danger of missing the point. In Augustine, as in countless others who have wrestled with God long before me, I am reminded that I am a small character in a much greater story. I have entered a movie that has already started, and to my surprise, it’s not all about me.

What if there is a vast stage full of lives who have wrestled with questions quite similar to your own? Men and women who have gone before you may well have lived with the same doubts and faith, pains and hope. Many have lived aware, often more than we are, of life as it existed before them and time that would march beyond them. Many have lived to “tell the old, old story,” that they might take it in to their own. For they saw with the writer of Ecclesiastes that it is important to realize there is “nothing new under the sun,” lest we miss the sun entirely by focusing only on the shadows we watch it cast. They saw that it is important we see the momentaryness of our lives specifically because there is a permanence to life itself, a story with an end and a beginning.

Jesus once turned to his disciples and said, “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see. For I tell you that many prophets and kings wanted to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it” (Luke 10:22-23). The disciples were seeing in the present all that kings and prophets looked for at a distance. Yet even those who walked intimately with Christ were not always aware of all there was to see. Chances are good we are missing him too.

If life is like entering a movie that has already started and leaving before it ends, it is important to look both behind us and ahead of us in order to see what is in front of us. There is only one place in Scripture where God is referred to as the “Ancient of Days” but it significantly comes from the lips of one indelibly marked by the present. “As I looked,” says Daniel describing a dream, “thrones were set in place, and the Ancient of Days took his seat.  His clothing was as white as snow; the hair of his head was white like wool. His throne was flaming with fire, and its wheels were all ablaze” (7:9). This one addressing God as sovereign over days long before his own is someone who could have been overwhelmed with the small picture of life before him. Jerusalem was in ruins; God’s people were scattered. Daniel could have easily viewed his situation as being stuck somewhere in the middle of a movie he wasn’t happy with, yet he chose to see beyond the troubling scene in which he was living. And he saw the “Ancient of Days” in the midst of the days he was given.

We, too, have entered a story that has already started and we may very well leave before it ends. But we can still live with sight beyond our own—looking back at lives of faith and God in history, gazing forward at all that God has promised, seeing all that God has placed before us. Though the picture before us seems unfair, or life is not what we bargained for, there is a story. Our lives may be like the evening shadow, but they are lived within a greater tale.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) Psalm 102:11-12.

And they rose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem. . . . Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he was known to them.  Luke 24:33, 35

When the two disciples had reached Emmaus and were refreshing themselves at the evening meal, the mysterious stranger who had so enchanted them on the road took bread and broke it, made Himself known to them, and then vanished out of their sight. They had constrained Him to stay with them because the day was far spent; but now, although it was much later, their love was a lamp to their feet, indeed wings also. They forgot the darkness, their weariness was all gone, and immediately they headed back the seven miles to tell the wonderful news of a risen Lord who had appeared to them on the road. They reached the Christians in Jerusalem and were received by a burst of joyful news before they could tell their own tale.

These early Christians were all on fire to speak of Christ’s resurrection and to proclaim what they knew of the Lord; they happily shared their experiences. This evening let their example impress us deeply.

We also must bear our witness concerning Jesus. John’s account of the sepulcher needed to be supplemented by Peter; and Mary could speak of something further still; the combined accounts provide us with a complete testimony from which nothing necessary is missing. Each of us has peculiar gifts and personal experiences; but the one object God has in view is the maturing of the whole Body of Christ. We must, therefore, bring our spiritual possessions and lay them at the apostles’ feet, that we may share all of what God has given to us.

Withhold no part of the precious truth, but speak what you know and declare what you have seen. Do not allow the toil or darkness or possible unbelief of your friends to dissuade you. Let us rise and march to the place of duty, and there declare what great things God has shown to our soul.

The family reading plan for May 25, 2012

Isaiah 26 | 1 John 4