8, 9. (a) What warning did Peter give concerning the last days? (b) Would these “ridiculers” and “law-defying people” be exclusively outside the Christian congregation?

⁸ But other scriptures make it clear that even during “the last days” of the present system of things, cases of apostasy would occur within the true Christian congregation. The apostle Peter wrote:

“In the last days there will come ridiculers with their ridicule, proceeding according to their own desires and saying: ‘Where is this promised presence of his?’ . . . You, therefore, beloved ones, having this advance knowledge, be on your guard that you may not be led away with them by the error of the law-defying people and fall from your own steadfastness.”​—2 Pet. 3:3, 4, 17.

⁹ Peter was not merely warning his brothers against “ridiculers” and “law-defying people” in the world. Christians have always been well aware of danger from that quarter. Peter was also speaking of the danger of being “led away” by some within the Christian congregation who would become “ridiculers,” making light of the fulfillment of prophecies concerning Christ’s “presence” and adopting a law-defying attitude toward “the faithful and discreet slave,” the Governing Body of the Christian congregation and the appointed elders.

¹¹ Thus the one who doubts to the point of becoming an apostate sets himself up as a judge. He thinks he knows better than his fellow Christians, better also than the “faithful and discreet slave,” through whom he has learned the best part, if not all that he knows about Jehovah God and his purposes.