When the Devil Joins the Church

Snake oil didn’t start as a punchline. It was once a real treatment for aching joints, until a famous salesman turned it into a traveling show and sold people a warming sensation that looked like a cure. That true story opens a sharper question we all have to face: what happens when the “product” is spiritual, the pitch is religious, and the stakes are eternal?

We connect the rise of snake oil to the Bible’s sober warnings about spiritual deception. We talk about Satan not as a cartoon villain, but as a convincing “angel of light” who loves to keep people chasing comfort without repentance. We also unpack why Jesus reserves some of His strongest words for false teachers and how the “broad path” can feel safe, kind, and even holy while still leading away from the gospel.

Then we slow down in 2 Peter 2:1 to map three clear realities: false teachers are inevitable, their strategy is to smuggle destructive heresies in beside truth, and their end is tragic for them and for those who follow them. We explore where false teaching shows up today, including cultural propaganda, education, denominations, and influencer-driven religion, and we end with a haunting courtroom story about a pardon that had to be accepted to save a life.

If you care about biblical doctrine, Christian discernment, and protecting the church from comforting lies, listen through to the end, then subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review with the biggest “red flag” you’re learning to spot.

Transcript

From Real Snake Oil To Scams

SPEAKER_00 0:26

If you hear someone referring today to snake oil, well, you know immediately they're referring to somebody trying to sell a fake product, somebody scamming somebody. In the past, though, snake oil was a real product. Snake oil was a traditional Chinese medicine that was brought to the United States in the 1800s when thousands of Chinese immigrants arrived to work on the Transcontinental Railroad. They brought their families and their cultures and their medicines with them. One of their homegrown medicines was snake oil, extracted from Chinese water snakes. It was used specifically for joint pain and arthritis. Over the years, its popularity spread, and Americans wondered, you know, how can we get in on this deal? And uh, of course, the problem was Chinese water snakes lived in China. Uh so one enterprising salesman uh began using rattlesnakes to sell his product. His name was Clark Stanley, and he was the first snake oil salesman. He became famous. He traveled across the United States dressed as a cowboy, even though he wasn't one. He put on these shows in front of crowds. He'd slice open a live rattlesnake and drop it into a cauldron of boiling water, and then his stuff kind of rose to the surface, he'd skim off the top and bottle it, and people stood in line to buy it. Couldn't get enough of it. They'd rub it on their aching joints. Many people said it cured them. By 1893, Clark Stanley's snake oil was in such demand that he built production centers in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. But eventually the truth came to light. In 1917, the Food and Drug Administration had been created by Teddy Roosevelt, and they eventually got around to testing his snake oil. And they found out that it didn't contain anything related to a snake at all, not even rattlesnake, that had all just been a show. His production line was mixing mineral oil, fatty oil from beef, chili peppers, and turpentine. Sounds like Chipotle to me, but at any rate, I can't eat there, it's too spicy. But those ingredients created this warming sensation when it was rubbed on joints, and that just led people to believe they were cured. He was a con artist. He'd been lying to the public for years. He was fined by the United States government, a whopping amount of$20, and he was put out of business. And you'd think, well, that's the end of snake oil. Well, his version of it. Because today we live in a world of con artists and scammers and fake products, and we have to be careful. I couldn't help, as I came across that story, to think of the world's first scammer, the original con artist, Satan himself. He's a master at convincing the public to buy worthless things, to pursue unsatisfying goals. Now he's not wearing a red suit and you know carrying a pitchfork. He's actually a rather mesmerizing angel who masquerades as an angel of light. He's a convincing individual. Convincing, selling to the human race products that he claims will solve their problems. And his favorite tool is the Bible. He's a master Bible student. And he loves religion. Religion is his most powerful show on earth. He knows at the heart of every human being there is this longing, this God-created longing to worship. And mankind is going to worship something or someone. Now it's one thing to con somebody on stuff that, you know, supposed to heal arthritis. It's another thing to con somebody with false teaching that will lead them to hell. Seeking someone to devour, literally discredit, or ruin, you could translate it. A lion doesn't roar when it's time to go hunting. He roars to mark his territory. His roar means this territory is mine. So Satan is roaming around, as it were, effectively protecting his territory from the truth of the gospel that will invade it. His territory happens to be this fallen world. Paul calls him the God of this world. 2 Corinthians 4, verse 4. In other words, he's been given delegated authority to roam and to connive and to create these world systems. Paul says that he is the ruler of this world, this world system, you could translate it. He considers you, Christian, an invader of his territory. And he's not happy about it. Ultimately, Satan loses. In fact, even now he can only do what God allows. Christ will return to reign as king. But for now, Satan has been given limited authority to build his false kingdom. His false remedies for the sicknesses of the soul that everybody knows they've got. Let me give you this snake oil. He's probably the world's greatest snake oil salesman ever. What he sells might make people have a warm sensation. It might make them feel fuzzy, comfortable, satisfied. But it is religion which is his favorite snake oil, and it will not cure the terminal disease of sin. Another reason, by the way, a lion roars is to communicate with members of his pride, to gather them. It's time to strategically work together. Likewise, with Satan, his communication system within the demonic world, which circles the globe, would probably stun us if we were aware fully. The Apostle Paul simply referred to it as the mystery of evil. It's at work. It's a mystery how it all seems to collaborate, but it just does. Because he's behind it. You have this communication, this cooperation system that spawns all false gospels, all false teaching, all false doctrine, all false religions. And the Apostle Paul simply pulls the mask off it and he says, No, it happens to be the doctrines of demons. It is the teaching of demons. Just as in the Old Testament, they were warned, you're worshiping that idol, you're actually worshiping a demon. They're behind it all. Teaching that is demonically inspired, demonically driven, demonically multiplied to create this beautiful path of deception. A wide path of flowers flanking either side. It's a pleasant path, seems satisfying, seems good, seems right, it's comfortable. But the path, which Jesus called the broad path, which many travel, Matthew chapter 7, verse 13, leads to a precipice and falls into the flames of hell. Jesus Christ will warn his audience over and over again of false teaching. His most scathing condemnation was never against the Caesars of the world. He effectively ignores them, tells us to pray for them. His scathing condemnation is against false teachers. In other words, you with your teaching shut the door in their faces. If they believe you, if they believe your teaching, that will effectively lock them out of heaven. Jesus goes on to say to them, for you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte a disciple. And when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves. That is a damning accusation. That's shocking. False teachers are actually in league with hell. They're making disciples who will follow ultimately the devil rather than the Lord. Disciples that will ultimately go to eternal judgment instead of to what we've been singing about eternal joy. Imagine that, though. The devil has a disciple-making program. And he's all about religion. Let me tell you, religion is his favorite scam. Be warned. The devil loves to go to church. The Apostle Paul will actually name those in league with the devil. It'll name people, false teachers who were active in his day. And I intend to name some too. To protect you, not just to expose them. Peter is going to take an entire chapter to describe them. It is a red-hot chapter. Like D. Martin Lloyd Jones once said, who pastored faithfully in England, that this is one of the most terrifying chapters in the entire Bible. So get ready. I don't know how long it's going to take for us to get through it. I really don't. I just know we're going to get through verse one today. An entire verse. What do you think about that? But this chapter is thunder and lightning in print. He begins the chapter, by the way, in verse one, by calling false teachers heretics. And then he ends in verse 22 by referring to them as dogs who return to their vomit. Isn't that a very pleasing thought? Or pigs, he writes, who go back to wallowing in the mud. Peter's not interested in making friends. He's interested in warning the believer and the church. And he's going to take this entire chapter to expose and condemn, to describe in vivid terms, to rebuke in no uncertain terms. Anyone opposing the word of God, anyone twisting the word of God, anyone denying the character of God, anybody who is distorting the gospel of God. Now he begins in this first verse by making us aware of what I'll call three characteristics of false teachers. Let me point them out. First, there is the certainty of false teachers. What I mean by that is that false teachers are inevitable. They are unavoidable. They're irrepressible. In other words, you can be certain they're not going to go away. So don't be surprised. Don't be discouraged. They're not going to go away. Peter's going to make that very clear. They're in every generation, in every culture, spreading their false doctrine. You're not going to get rid of them. I couldn't help but think of, you know, when they take my grandkids to Dave and Busters. That's where you can spend a lot of money in 30 minutes. It's amazing how much. Goes out the door. And then we play that game, whack-a-mole. You ever play that whack-a-mole? You know, mole pops up, you hit him with a mallet, and then another one hit it with a mallet. It's a violent game. I don't know what it's teaching my grandkids, but eventually I'm helping them. They're using the mallet, I'm using my hands. We're going to get rid of them. We're going to beat this game. And then time runs out. And we didn't win. That's the same sense here. You're not going to get rid of them until the end of time. And in a way, Jesus is going to take care of it. He's going to separate. And really, there's a sense where we can expose all we can, but we will leave to the Lord the end result. Peter makes this clear in verse 1. He writes, but false prophets also arose among the people. He's referring to the Jewish nation, the Jewish people in Jewish history. Just as there will be false teachers. There have been false prophets. Prophecy, however, is going to end, and they will be replaced. Peter says, there will be in the future tense false teachers. Peter uses the future tense to indicate that beyond his own day, his own church, his own experience, this will be the standing characteristic of the church age. False teachers will infiltrate it. There will be false teachers. False teaching. As I thought in my study of all the different ways false teaching impacts the lives of people in league with a false gospel, not leading people toward holiness, not leading people toward repentance, leading people to do whatever they want to do and feel whatever they want to feel. Not to walk with God, but walk effectively away from Him and His Word. I thought of several forms of false teaching. First, false teaching from defiant nations. They are circling the globe, and I have a lot of illustrations, but I'm going to begin with ours and leave it for now with ours, our own country, regarding its own false teaching, its own propaganda, its own unbiblical views of, you name it, evolution, gender fluidity, animal equality, the deifying of Mother Nature to be able to produce life and guide life and guard life. Our nation has rejected the creator, God, and has now elevated, as Paul warned in Romans chapter 1, the created being, the creature, the animal. Pet law was one of the fastest growing aspects of law in our country. There are countries now that demand that you cannot own a pet unless you give them a certain amount of time a day. I was watching a documentary a few weeks ago. My favorite kind is where they're studying something on the planet. The intricate systems of nature, which are beautiful to watch. And of course, as I watch it, I marvel at my creator, God. That's not the purpose of the documentary, though. Sometimes I just turn the volume off and watch it. And I expect the propaganda to begin, you know, eventually. And in this one, it certainly did. Paraphrasing, but the intent of the script of this documentary, and it was read by a rather sad-sounding female narrator, is that human beings are basically ruining the planet. And ever since we evolved as superior animals, we're just messing it all up. The narrator intoned with his moving music that it's up to nature to fix itself if we would just get out of the way. In fact, the last sentence, the last paragraph of the documentary, and I was writing it down, it went so far as to say that animals are our only hope. I feed squirrels, my wife and I, and birds, and are we hoping they can solve our problem? The last sentence of the documentary, I wrote it down. Our future is in their hands. Oh, it just sounded so so great. The music, especially. Our future is in their hands. What must our creator God think of that blasphemy? False teaching from defiant nations. Secondly, I'll give you another categorical statement: false teaching from educational institutions. This is pagan propaganda that's in textbooks where atheistic influences of teachers and professors in our institutions impact students from kindergarten to doctoral degrees. Even today, I was reading a couple of days ago the president of the Chaplain Society for Harvard University. Harvard was named after a pastor. It would be 70 years before our president of Harvard was not a pastor. Now the one voted in, the man voted in to be the president of the chaplains of Harvard University is an avowed open atheist. Doesn't even believe God exists. Last month I received this report from Global Scholars. Global Scholars is an international ministry that places believing professors in secular universities around the globe. It's a wonderful ministry, and we support it through our own nephew, one of our nephews is who's teaching in Pakistan. The letter began by saying you might never have heard of Carl Hochschaffer, a university professor, and I hadn't heard of him. He founded modern geopolitics. He developed the concept of, quote, living space, end quote, and expansion, even if it has to be ruthless, ruthless expansion of nations in order for them to flourish. The letter went on you might not have heard of Muhammad Kuth, a university professor who taught Islamic studies in Saudi Arabia, a man who influenced a generation and beyond of students to believe in the comprehensive authority and the right of authority of Islam over every culture on the planet. You might not have heard the name of Mohammed Kut, the letter red. This university professor, but you know the name of his most famous student, Osama bin Laden. You might not know the name of Professor Hashafer, but you know the name of his most famous student, Adolf Hitler. False teachers whose influence directly or indirectly took the lives of millions of people. But when I read that, I couldn't help but think of an even more destructive influence beyond dictators and terrorists, our religious false teachers who've influenced not only millions, but entire nations that have captured them even to this day. Nations around the world where if someone becomes a believer, they forfeit their life. With that, let me add a third category of false teaching. This is false teaching from religious denominations. You notice here in verse 1 where these false teachers are located, Peter writes, There will be false teachers among you, not in your neighborhood, not in your school, not in some political office, not in your place of business. They may be there, but he's not necessarily interested in that. They have infiltrated the church. They are among you. He's writing the believers. They're mingling with the people of God. They're serving on committees and church boards. They're holding seminars. They're writing books. They're preaching sermons. They're building media ministries. They're selling products to the people of God. They're using the name of Jesus. They're claiming the power of the Holy Spirit. They're gathering massive followers. They're now referred to as Instavangelists, as opposed to televangelists. This is the new domain with millions of followers. False teaching is circling the globe faster than the gospel. It reminded me of something Mark Twain, that great theologian, wrote on one occasion. He said that a lie can run around the world while the truth is still putting on his shoes. And that's true. But Peter isn't warning the world. He's warning the church. These false teachers will be among you. Which means the devil doesn't just try to outright destroy the church, the devil often joins it. And then from the inside corrupts it. And over these 40 years of ministry here in this church, I've seen, and you with me, if you're as old as I am, the collapse of mainline Protestant denominations. Utterly bankrupt now. Not because they deny the existence of Jesus as the Son of God. They just reinvent him. Not because they're openly, you know, denying the Bible, they're just reinterpreting it. In the arena, as we see on the news all the time now, of sexual ethics. The shift of denominations has been swift. It's been staggering. The Church of England, the Anglican Church, is the last to collapse, or the most recent. I watched a documentary recently where pastors and scholars and churches were gathering to reinterpret the Bible's condemnation of homosexuality into something that God actually created and can find honorable if it's monogamous. The church ought to celebrate it. Now, this reinterpretation has been taught in liberal churches for 50 years. It's been codified in liberal Baptist associations and denominations, Lutheran, Episcopalian, Methodist, Presbyterian, now Anglican. And the move, by the way, is on in your lifetime, it's continuing on to get into the so-called evangelical church, to get on board and to be welcomed by the interpretation within supposed evangelicalism. And by the way, the term evangelicalism is now bankrupt. It doesn't really mean anything. I thought of Andy Stanley's church in Atlanta, which is leading the way in this regard. He's going to host the second conference a few weeks from now, which he's calling unconditional. Speakers have been invited back to teach his church how to adapt so that it can learn to include homosexuals and transgender, to help parents help their children who are identifying as a different gender. Speakers include a man married to another man who believes that same-sex monogamous relationships are acceptable, pleasing to God. Peter would have that in mind. He opens hereby clearly telling us don't be surprised when it invades the church. Paul warned the Ephesian elders, I know when I depart, the wolves are coming. They don't look like wolves, they look like sheep. False teachers give people what they want to hear rather than the truth they need to hear. False teachers make people feel comfortable in their sin rather than challenging them to repent and follow Scripture. But they will always be around. Secondly, Peter reveals the strategy of false teachers. He writes here in verse 1: Just as there will be false teachers among you, here's their strategy. Here's what they're going to do. They will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the master who bought them. This phrase, to secretly bring in heresies, means to smuggle in. It means to bring in alongside them. That leads me to think of another category of false teaching. I mentioned it before, but let me just make sure it's clear false teaching from respected church leaders and biblical scholars. There are a lot of people who give their lives to studying the Bible who reject it. I've often wondered why they give their lives to do that. Because Satan has an agenda and they can be incredibly influential. This is so deceptive how they smuggle it in. What Peter means here is that these teachers are teaching right things, but attaching wrong things ever so subtly to right things. They're bringing in false teaching by keeping it closely aligned to true teaching. They will say things that are biblical, but then they'll slip in something that is unbiblical. Keep this principle in mind. This is what Peter's saying. They teach something false by making it look similar to something that's true. Satan used the religious scholars in the Lord's generation. They had the Old Testament memorized. And what did he often say to them? Have you never read? I mean, you didn't you read it? They counterattacked the message of the Lord. We have more accounts of Jesus dealing with religious leaders more than he ever did with the devil. Church leaders who appear to believe the gospel, they appear to have respect for the Bible. They might even hold up a Bible, like Joel Osteen, and the congregation will join him in quoting a little creed of how important the Bible is, and then he will deliver a sermon that will avoid the cardinal truths of the Bible. He will misinterpret it. I watched him in one interview where he explained why he doesn't, he refuses to mention things in the pulpit like sin or hell or judgment or repentance. He says, Well, I leave that up to God. And I sit there and talk to the television and I say, No, God has left that up to you. Deliver the truth, preach the word. I watched him refuse to even answer the question if Christ was the only way to heaven. And he dodged it. The interviewer said, Well, isn't that the claim of Christianity? And he said, Well, I'm just gonna leave that up to God. Satan will get an influential church leader, someone on the inside to question, to doubt, clear teaching of Scripture. And he has used biblical scholars who are respected to affect. We deal with it on the graduate level, on the seminary level. Generation of men who are preparing for ministry. I think of N. T. Wright, who's taught for years New Testament and early Christianity at the University of St. Andrews. He lectures at the University of Oxford. He's friendly, he's kind, he's soft-spoken, he's smiling, he's your grandfather, he's a brilliant scholar nearing the age of 80. John MacArthur once called him a happy heretic, and I would agree. But the evangelical world, and again, why the world evangelical is going to have to be replaced with something else eventually, it's lining up to sit at his feet. Can't get enough of them. His books are bestsellers, and he does indeed write so many interesting and profound truths, and he says them so winsomely. But you dig deeper and you ask harder, more specific questions, and he disrespects the Bible, and he disrespects the Lord. In one podcast just a few weeks ago, he raised doubts as to the existence of literal figures in the Bible, including Moses, Job, Jonah, and even Adam. He denies a literal six-day creation narrative and goes even further to say that Adam and Eve were not the first created humans. In fact, they really weren't created at all. He calls them human-like creatures. They were proto-humans, he says, as they evolved. In that same podcast, he explained away the reality of Jonah and the great fish. He says that never happened for real. He said the book was a folk tale to drive home some helpful principles. And I would wonder what those helpful principles would be. He was asked, because it was an open mic, the question by somebody who had the courage to ask him, but didn't Jesus clearly use Jonah as the signature sign of his resurrection? Just as Jesus said, Jonah was in the belly of that great fish three days and three nights, so also I'll be in the grave and then I'll rise again. Isn't that the signature sign of the resurrection? And he waffled. And then he actually said, and I quote, Jesus' reference to Jonah was a reference to somebody whom Jesus at least thought was a real person. So Jesus made a mistake. Jesus didn't know the Old Testament book wasn't true after all. Jesus didn't know Jonah was real or wasn't real. Beloved, that's heresy. That's heresy. So why does anybody read this man's books? Well, I'm reading them because I want to warn you about what he's saying. I'm wasting my money. But why do evangelical publishers publish his stuff? Because he says a lot of good things. They're not alert enough to recognize that he's a living illustration in our generation of what Peter is describing here in this text. This man is a smuggler. He's bringing heresies into the church by camouflaging them with other things that are the truth. Be alert when you're watching a podcast or a television preacher. One author said this, it was R. C. Sprohl who said, if you spend time in front of the television watching preachers and evangelists, you will see and hear virtually every heresy that the church has battled from the first century on. Peter goes on to say here in verse 1, notice they secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the master who bought them. The term here for bought is the word used. This is redemptive language. This is an interesting phrase. It's the word used for paying the price for someone's redemption. This language presents an unlimited scope of atonement. This phrase means that the false teachers deny the despotes, is the word, the master, the one who has the authority to which they should submit. They won't. They deny him, which means they are not saved. Yet Peter says they have been bought by Christ. It's the language of the atonement. Literally interpreted, these false teachers have had their sins paid for by Christ, but they are rejecting that payment on their behalf. They're spurning the sacrifice of Christ. Now, some would say then, if you believe that, that Christ is wasting his sacrifice on unbelievers. Now, actually, this means that Jesus Christ actually died for the whole world. That we can offer the gospel legitimately and honestly to everybody. Chuck Swindahl writes on this text that these false teachers are rejecting Christ's payment for their sins, and that agrees with other passages like where Christ paid the price for the sins of the whole world, 1 John 2.2. Not for the elect only, if you go back to that text, 1 John 2.2, but for the sins of the whole world. Jesus paid the ransom price for everyone. 1 Timothy 2.6. Jesus died for the entire world, including all of humanity. John 3.16. But although Christ's death is sufficient, only those who believe will receive the benefit. As theologians put it with whom I agree, the death of Christ was sufficient for everyone, but efficient for those who believe. So they are denying their only hope. That leads me to the third thing. Third description. That is the tragedy of false teachers. Peter writes at the end of verse 1, denying the master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. This is their tragic end. And all who follow them. They've rejected their only hope. And they've given their lives then to oppose that hope. Subtly, distorting the gospel. Now let me offer several reminders as we begin this series on false teachers and false teaching. First, false teachers thrive where needs are real and discernment is weak. That's what makes snake oil salesmen so successful. People need a cure. They want to feel better. And they'll buy anything that promises to make them feel better. Second, false teachers use biblical terminology but rewrite the meaning of biblical text. Jesus made a mistake. Genesis 1 isn't true. Adam and Eve evolved. Third, false teachers ultimately ruin their lives and the lives of those who follow them. Go to that table and sign up to paint somebody's face. In 1833, George Wilson was caught robbing a U.S. mail truck or train. He was to be hung by the neck until dead. His friends interceded for him, and President Andrew Jackson issued a formal pardon. But George Wilson refused the pardon. And the sheriff didn't know what to do. You can't hang a pardoned man. I have read some of those court documents that are available online. It was recorded that George Wilson chose to, and I quote, waive and decline any advantage or protection the pardon offered. His case and the confusion behind it eventually had to go to the United States Supreme Court. What are we going to do with this guy? Supreme Court Justice John Marshall wrote this opinion, and I've edited it down to a few sentences. A pardon is not completed without acceptance. It may be rejected by the person to whom it is tendered. And if it be rejected, we have no power as a court to force it upon him. George Wilson was hung by the neck until he died. Peter begins here with the certainty of false teachers are always going to be around. The strategy of false teachers, they're smuggling error into the church. The tragedy of false teachers, their doom is certain, their influence is deadly. So the question is who are you following today? Now may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.