Charles Spurgeon Commentary 2 Peter 2

But there were false prophets also among the people,

How true that is still! Do not be startled, brothers, as though some strange thing had happened to us in this generation. It always was so, and so it will continue. If there are true prophets, there will also be false prophets; and if there is the Spirit of God, there will be the spirit of evil; and often, just as the everlasting truth is full of power, the everlasting lie will be full of power, too, and will strive mightily against it. That same sun and shower, which will make that wheat grow, will at the same time cause the thorns also to spring up; and perhaps for a time they may threaten to choke the wheat, until at last the wheat will choke the thistles.

There were false prophets also among the people,

Even as there will be false teachers among you, who secretly will bring in damnable heresies,

They always try to do their hateful work secretly; and then they ask, "What is all this fuss about? We have not departed from the truth; we are as sound in the faith as any of you are," when they know, traitors that they are, that they are undermining the foundations and trying to take away the very cornerstone of the faith.

These "false teachers" will deceive the very elect of God if it is possible. But they are not easily deceived, for God has given them a discerning mind by which they try the spirits whether they are of God. The Lord Jesus said of His sheep, A stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him: for they know not the voice of strangers. Sheep though they are, they have discernment enough to know their Shepherd; and the godly soon detect false teachers who secretly "bring in damnable heresies."

If God spared not the angels that sinned, he will not spare any who sin, however high their position may be; even though they are the angels of the churches, he will cast them down to hell.

Which some today say could not be consistent with the acts of a God of love. Their imaginary deity, from whom they have taken away every glorious attribute of holiness and justice, would not have done this; but the God who judges righteously must and will punish sin, as he has always done; and this God is our God for ever and ever, even the God who is a consuming fire.

I love to see in God's people a holy horror of the sin which surrounds them. In several of the prayers in which we joined before we came upstairs to this service, there were many tears and cries over the wickedness of our streets: the impurity and the drunkenness which defile so many all around us.

Alas! alas! People seem bent on horrible iniquity; and it looks as if London, this great modern Babylon, will repeat the story of the cities of the plain. We may well pray, "O Lord, have mercy upon the people!"

We have far too many, nowadays, of both these sorts of sinners, and of the two sorts joined in one: them that walk after the flesh in the lust of uncleanness, and despise government.