In the first chapter of Peter's epistle, he instructs his readers on how to strengthen their faith. It is clear that this is an urgent matter and a priority for the apostle, so much so, that he vows to dedicate his remaining years to stirring up the church by way of reminder to this end. He outlines 7 qualities in verses 5-7 which will serve to supplement the faith of the church under trial. If chapter one is primarily devoted to exhorting the church to fortify her faith... the second chapter details what to fortify ourselves against. Peter outlines the nature of the enemy in our passage with a goal to equip Christians to identify the false teaching, realizing it is poisonous, and to stand against it with the truth of the apostolic Word of God. In our day, it is worthy of note that as the framework of our culture continues to weaken, crisis moments our times present tend to render people particularly susceptible to error and false teaching. As in Peter's day, the pressures of the worldly environment could easily illicit spiritual desperation and a frantic search for answers. Just as a drowning man trades reason for fear as he thrashes about accelerating his demise, so a state of spiritual panic can cause us to drown in a sea of confused messages popular in our day. Since we must soberly embrace the call to exercise discernment in times like these. It only seem fitting that we open this new year with a warning and a challenge. We must beware that it is dangerous territory in the war of ideas these days, and we need to be challenged to exercise our spiritual faculties to discern good from evil in spite of cleverly devised myths. Peter's 2000 year old, yet incredibly timely, words serve to remind us of the sufficiency of the Word of God to equip us for this task...