Now Is The Time, Part II

A week ago I wrote on the importance of making your peace with God as quickly as possible - the pain it saves you is enormous.  Of course, until you get there, you probably will not even see that there is another way...

Thinking this time on 1 Timothy 4:1-5

It is interesting to think that 2,000 years ago, the early Christian Church, "The Way", was being challenged by false doctrines taught those whom believed they had authority!  If you remember from 1 Timothy 1, Paul has written to Timothy to encourage him to stay in Ephesus and continue to correct the doctrine of the Church there!

So, I look at the Church today; false doctrines abound in almost all churches! Some because of long held tradition, others because they believe they have been given a "special Gospel" or revelation.  Just think on all of the minor issues churches fight over and willingly separate over!

Looking back at this passage we can see that Paul warns of the Church being impacted by:

• Loss of Faith
• Deceiving Spirits
• Teachings of Demons
• Hypocritical Liars
• No Conscience
• Forbidding Marriage
• Forbidding certain foods

We live in an age when all of these are a problem.  Your church today is no better than probably any of those condemned by Paul in Ephesus, to which Timothy was instructed to correct and we do know that since Ephesus was to become part of the Gnostic Movement, so Paul's worry was valid.

This is a serious problem within the Church.  No believer wakes up one day and thinks, "Wow, today is a great day to embrace the doctrine of demons!".  Yet, it happens and unfortunately quite often.  Not far from where I live was a large flourishing Christian Church, Community Chapel and Bible Training Center, back in the 1980's.  A decade later I was to meet dozen of victims of this church - their lives destroyed by rearranged marriages, via corrections the pastor was told to perform, sexual abuse, money laundering, etc all brought the church down once the molestation of teenage girls was learned by the State police.  Yeah, it was quite the Christian witness in the Seattle area.  I wonder how many were permanently left with a "no way" answer to anything Christian because of the abuses of this church.  And they started out very normal.

But, somewhere along the way, the pastors started being influenced by a new doctrine, one which gave them power, then money and finally enslavement of the once faithful.  It was little matter to lure them into sin, they had left God behind long before.

And that bulletted list above became the actual ministry of that church!  Talk about deju vous Paul!  From Timothy to real life in just five verse!

So, your church think certain foods are forbidden?  Paul disagrees.  Your church believe in Celestial Unions, causing open sex, dissolved marriages, underage acts with the pastoral staff? Uhm, Paul disagrees.  The pastors are liars, seem to never understand condemnation of the Holy Spirit, everything has an excuse - but not a real reason?  Get out of that church now!

And to a certain extent we too are guilty.  God created goodness and set it around us - we trashed His creation!  The food which were good are by and large genetically modified anymore.  Nature has been replace by man's arrogance thinking he can do a better job - but to what end I wonder?

Something to consider, something to think about, something perhaps to cause you to correct the local body you are in .....