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II Timothy 3: 1-8
Posted : 3 Aug, 2013 03:55 AM
II Timothy 3: 1-8
II Timothy 3:1-8 says "This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy ,Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good,
Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;
Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.
For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts,.Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.. Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith."
When I first became interested in II Timothy 3; 1-8 I saw how closely Paul's prophecy predicted the personality traits of the Me Generation of the sixties and seventies. I did not see until some time later that in this text Paul is also predicting that the church in the last days when perilous times shall come will depart from sound doctrine, into man-made false theologies.
When he mentions having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof, ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth, and resisting the truth he is talking about those who claim to be Christians, what they call the church.
"For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables." II Timothy 4: 3
The II Timothy church begins to exist after the falling away of II Thessalonians 2: 3, and the leavening of the Gospel in Luke 13
"Then said he, Unto what is the kingdom of God like? and whereunto shall I resemble it?
19.It is like a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and cast into his garden; and it grew, and waxed a great tree; and the fowls of the air lodged in the branches of it.
20.And again he said, Whereunto shall I liken the kingdom of God?
21.It is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened."
Luke 13:18-21
The word "till" indicates that this leavening happens over a period of time. The parable of the leaven is also found in Matthew 13: 33, though it is has not been fully understood to refer to the apostasy of the church.
But those in the churches who want to pretend that scripture does not predict a falling away from sound doctrine in the end times will say that in Luke 13: 18-21 and Matthew 13: 33 the leavening is a good thing. Paul teaches, however, in I Corinthians 5: 6 that "Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us:"
The leaven which causes the falling away from sound doctrine in the churches is brought in by the huge number of false prophets seen, for example, in Matthew 24:11. The false prophets operate over a period of decades to leaven the churches with their man made theologies which contradict some scriptures while appearing to be in agreement with others. The leavening goes on over time until the whole is leavened as Luke 13: 21 says. A little leaven eventually leavens the entire church. "A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump." Galatians 5: 9
After the churches are leavened with man made theologies, those in them learn these man made theologies and impose the theologies upon scripture to distort the meanings. Man made theology becomes the authority for Christians rather than scripture interpreting scripture. The categories of discernment in these man made theologies are too few. Francis Schaeffer used to say that many Christians do not have enough categories to mentally represent the truths of scripture.
A cognitive problem goes along with the falling away from sound doctrine. In the parable of the salt in Matthew 5; 13 says "Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men."
We may think that "savour" merely refers to how salt gives food a better taste. But the Greek word behind savour is Strong's Exhaustive Concordance number 3471, moraino, from 3474, moros, "dull or stupid, as if to shut up, heedless, blockhead..." Moraino is a cognitive condition. Under the many false prophets operating for decades, the churches have lost their intelligence, which means their spiritual discernment.
"For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by
us, even by me and Silvanus and Timotheus, was not yea and nay, but in
him was yea. For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him
Amen, unto the glory of God by us." II Corinthians 1:19-20
In Jesus Christ there are no shades of grey, no double mindedness,
only absolutes. The dialectic
mind, on the other hand, operates on shades of grey and doublemindedness.
"But above all things, my brethren, swear not, neither by heaven,
neither by the earth, neither by any other oath: but let your yea be
yea; and your nay, nay; lest ye fall into condemnation." James 5: 12
But the dialectic mind does not believe in the absolute truth of the Word of God. It wants to argue
against that absolute truth, and tries to compromise it in some way - by a dialogue with those who are presenting the truth.
The dialectic mind starts from a position that there are no
absolute truths or absolute morals. It is a double minded mind, and
accepts yea and nay about doctrines taught in the scripture. Those who
use dialectic
arguments against the facts of scripture are always looking for
loopholes, shades
of grey, contradictions and verses where the meanings and implications
are not spelled out in great detail to hit at with their rejection of
the absolute.
Those who operate with the dialectic - which is now almost everyone in our culture -
try to justify themselves before men (Luke 16: 1).
The dialectic as an argument, a way of changing the absolute truth
that one's opponent holds to, historically has come out of a system of
thought which teaches that there is no God.. It comes out of Hegel
and Marx. But before Hegel and Marx it came out of the second beast of
Revelation 13: 11, who has two horns like a lamb but speaks as a
dragon, and from the dragon himself whose use of the dialectic was on
Eve in Genesis 3 to fix her obedience to the absolute authority of God over her.
Dialectic thinking goes along with the loss of spiritual discernment in the churches. The dialectic
mind is built upon the mind of natural man. When the churches lose sound doctrine more and more of their members remain in the state of the natural man. "But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.' I Corinthians 2: 14
And in this process of leavening, those in the churches have a love of their man made theologies and have a relationship of affection with the theologies and with their churches, but they fail to develop a love of the truth.
As Paul says in II Timothy 3: 8 they resist the truth. They resist the truth in large part because it contradicts what they have been taught in the churches.
"And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.
11. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:
12. That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
Faith is the basis for coming to the knowledge of the truth, and for having a love of the truth.
We begin to come to the knowledge of the truth and to have a love of the truth by having faith that the Word of God is truth, and that Jesus Christ is, among other things, The Truth (John 14: 6).
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