“Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared,” 1 Timothy 4:1-2 -> me: Well, I didn’t get that far into chapter 4 today. I spent all of my time on the first two verses.
The first part of 1 Timothy 4 is all about those who leave the faith and follow false teaching. Paul uses ‘expressly’ or ‘clearly’ because Peter, James, and Paul himself wrote Spirit inspired scripture on this topic and Jesus Himself talked about it in Mark 13:22. The apostacy Paul talks about here is specified in a two-fold manner. 1) The apostates ‘follow’ deceiving spirits and 2) believe things taught by demons. Verse 2 talks about teachings coming through hypocritical liars which means that the deceiving spirits and demon find particular allies in these hypocritical liars.
These false teachers have lost all sense of the wrongness of their actions which is why Paul uses the term meaning ‘cauterized’ to describe the consciences of these men – Ephesians 4:19.
Here is the META POINT -> The consciences of these false teachers have ceased to warn them of the falseness of their teaching…they have become anaesthetized. This is scary because the false teaching can be so cleverly woven to sound truthful.
As a Christian who has his head deep in God’s word, I must stay vigilant to the false doctrine being disseminated around me. I can see it in people I once respected and I can see it in the leadership of some of the churches surrounding Canyon Hills.