“These are wells without water, clouds carried by a tempest, for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever.”
We now come to the indictment of false teachers.
These are wells without water
An ancient thirsty traveler would see a well far off in the distance. He anticipates the promise of water. He would hope to quench his thirst. When he gets to the well, he finds it dry. A dry well is a great disappointment.
False teachers are like dry wells. We look for spiritual refreshment from these false teachers, but the taste is empty in the end. We anticipate blessing, but we end in cursing. People who teach truth offer the refreshment of the truth of the Word. False teachers are dry because there is no truth in them. False teaching, in the end, is a big disappointment.
clouds carried by a tempest
There is no stability to a cloud. The wind carries the cloud wherever the wind chooses to take it. Buying into false teaching is like being in a squall. A squall is unstable. Apostates preach one thing and live another.
When we see a cloud coming, we expect a refreshing shower. There is the promise of rain, but these clouds surrender no rain. Although they are driven by strong winds (“tempest”) and give very powerful anticipation of rain, no rain comes. All this “tempest” is a lot of action but no substance. False doctrine often comes with a lot of blusters and high-sounding hopes, but, in the end, those hopes end in emptiness. These teachers are impressive from a distance.
Like wells that promise refreshing water, these clouds promise rain. All the promises are in vain. There is no water or rain. False teachers always promise more than they can deliver. In the meantime, people buy into their promise, waiting to receive what they will never get.
for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever
God gives the vendors of false systems of belief a special reservation, a reservation in Hell.
“Blackness” is gloominess. Gloom is reserved for these teachers. False teachers teach darkness, but darkness is where they will spend eternity (2 Pe 2:1,3,12). They claim light, but their teaching is darkness. They get a judgment like their teaching. Their teaching was dark, so they end in “darkness forever.”
Mt 25:30, “And cast the unprofitable servant into the outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
Few people on earth do as much eternal damage as a false teacher does. Whenever we talk to an authentic physician about a quack medical doctor, his blood rises. Nothing gets under his skin more than a fake physician does. When a false teacher tells his people that there is no Hell, he causes eternal casualties. People love to hear that there is no such thing as Hell. Nothing should get under the skin of a true preacher more than this. This is why Peter gives such strong descriptions of these false teachers.
PRINCIPLE:
Be warned that false teachers mislead and give false hopes.
APPLICATION:
The Bible warns us everywhere about getting too close to false teachers. Separation is the order of the day for them because you cannot tell what they teach by what they say. They sound good at first, but their teaching is vacuously obscured by religion.
Some man-made religions today claim that there is neither a Heaven nor a Hell. Jesus spoke more about Hell than Heaven. If we reject the idea of Hell, we reject the credibility of Christ.
There are many religious fairy tales out there. People love to believe in fiction. They would rather believe fabricated fiction than the truth. One of the most popular television series of all-time is “Star Wars,” fiction about the future.
Unregenerate false teachers manufacture their own religions and claim to speak with authority, but they are not consistent with biblical content. This is the opposite of Jesus, who promised water that springs up into everlasting life (Jn 4:13,14) and backed up his claims by the authenticity of who He was and what He did.
