Why this apostasy differs from Timothy's

“The world Timothy ministered in is the one we’re heading for,” Preacher Richard Jordan explained recently to a large crowd of young preachers.

“We’re in a transition period right now; you still have guys like me around. Timothy and Paul did not face the type of apostasized Christianity we’ve faced in the past; they faced a pagan world that thought like what our world is heading for. The apostasy of Christendumb has had 2,000 years to develop itself. That’s what’s crumbling.

“II Timothy 3:13-14 says, [13] But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived.
[14] But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them;

“You see how he says, ‘But continue thou’? We’re not in verse 13, we’re in verse 14. We’re going to live in a world that’s like verse 13, but Paul’s telling us what we’re to do in that world.

“What do you first have to do? Learn it. As you learn it, it will give you assurance. Assurance doesn’t come because you talk yourself into it. Assurance comes from the truth of God’s Word taking root in your heart. As Paul says, ‘Rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught.’

“II Timothy 3:15 says, [15] And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.

“That salvation is not initial salvation and justification unto eternal life; that’s salvation from the problem of verse 13; from the apostasy in the chapter. Context is king. There’s all kind of salvations in the Bible.

“In I Timothy 4, Paul warns, [1] Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils;
[2] Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron;

“He tells Timothy in the last verse, ‘[16] Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in them: for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee.

“Paul’s saying, ‘Pay attention to the doctrine, because in doing so, you’ll save yourself and them that hear thee.' He’s not talking about getting saved from hell; he’s talking about being saved from the apostasy. The salvation here is from the apostasy and from being led away.

“By the way, at this point Timothy had a lot of Scripture. I read a thing the other day where a guy’s saying, ‘Well, we know that in the New Testament times they didn’t have any concept of a canon of scripture.’ I thought, ‘That fellow fell off a stump and hit his head.’ But that’s what they all tell you: ‘Oh, it wasn’t until the 4^th and 5^th century when the canon…’

“Listen, your New Testament scriptures were written, collated together, copied and distributed before 70 A.D. That’s what the evidence in the Scripture says. If Peter can talk about all of Paul’s epistles in II Peter 3, don’t you think people had them? Sure they did.

“You think the church at Thessalonica sent the original manuscripts to the church at Ephesus to read? Well, if you do, you fell off a stump and hit your head.

“Paul tells the Corinthians, ‘[37] If any man think himself to be a prophet, or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord.’ There were prophets in those churches who could identify, ‘That’s scripture and that’s not.’ They had a mechanism to do that.

“Your Bible didn’t come along as an afterthought of a bunch of mossy-backed religious prelates somewhere who couldn’t figure out whether Jesus was God or Mary was His mother. That’s the same crowd that says they ‘fixed’ your bible.

“That’s the same crowd that tells you the Church gave you your bible. It’s all backwards. You know what it is? It’s all religious nonsense and fortunately it’s something that the wintertime is allowing to be pushed away. Things disintegrate in the fall and in the wintertime you clear the ground. We’re seeing the ground being cleared about us.

“It’s the economic stuff, social stuff, arts and culture stuff being swept away too. You remember how in the mid-’70s the ‘Blue Laws’ that said you couldn’t be open on Sunday suddenly came crashing down in the space of a year?

“The reason something like that falls so quickly is the underpinning of it is gone. We’ve got laws nobody understands why we have them for so then it’s, ‘Let’s just get rid of it.’ You’re seeing that happen in our culture now where kids today know nothing about the founding of our country or its history. Your kids are blanks to what America used to be. All of that comes crashing down in the wintertime.”