What Is a False Teacher?

Of course, in the technical sense, anyone who teaches any error could qualify as a false teacher.  If you stand up in your high school geography class and teach that the world is flat and not a sphere, you are a false teacher.  If you tell your children that Santa Claus is a real person who delivers toys to all the children of the world on Christmas Eve, you are a false teacher.  If you deliver the weather report on most network television news programs, you are a false teacher…most of the time.

In the New Testament however, the false teacher is specifically described in a couple of key books.  I want to briefly survey those books and examine the description of the false teacher.  I’ll draw some general conclusions at the end for the purpose of discussion.