With the discovery of gold in 1848 by James Marshall the California Gold Rush had officially begun. People poured into California from all over the world and during the next six years, over 300,000 (or about one out of every 90 people then in the United States) had found their way to California to seek their fortunes. But most did not become rich like they thought. In fact most of the fortunes where made by selling supplies, while others made their money by taking advantage of the situation by selling glasses of water for $100.00 each. Others made their money by running scams like this ad that appeared in a Richmond Indiana newspaper in 1849. An individual was selling salve in a bottle for $2.50 or $5.00. He claimed that all you had to do was to rub it all over your body, get up on the top of the mountain and roll down and all the gold stuck to you; and guaranteed you by the time you got to bottom with one roll you'd have enough gold, when you scraped it off, to live happily ever after. He sold two types of salve, one for gold and one for silver (Charlie Martin Sr., Historian). Others spent 10 hours a day panning for gold to only find out what they thought was gold was Iron Pyrite, which was called fool's gold. They were taken in by its outward appearance. After all it looked like gold and it glittered like gold, so they thought that it had to be gold. Likewise, when it comes to our Christian walk, everyone who claims to be a teacher or a Christian may not be. Oh, they may sound like a Christian because they use all the right words, and they may even have a big study bible. Some may even have titles and degrees, but it doesn't always guarantee that they are what they say that they are. In our passage of Scripture this morning, Peter points out the effects that the false teachers were having on those who listened to their teaching and followed after them. In many ways these individuals ended up like a lot of would-be gold prospectors with a bag full of worthless material, stuck in a place were they really didn't want to be, and in worse shape than what they began in. These prospectors learned the hard way that "all that glitters isn't gold," and I think there are a lot of Christians today who need to learn this same truth, that there is a "Spiritual Fool's Gold"