II Timothy fits today

While I Timothy is devoted to matters of church establishment, rulership and standards for operation, II Timothy reveals the church in absolute, total ruin. Paul starts the book by lamenting, “All they which are in Asia be turned away from me.”

“In every chapter, Paul points to the declension—the departure from truth and from sound doctrine,” explains Jordan. “As you go through II Timothy, the steps in the apostasy are laid out as well as the countermanding responsibility in light of it and how to be faithful.

“The die is cast and the course is clear that the church the Body of Christ is going to spend most of its earthly sojourn in apostasy that permeates the whole of it. And that’s why when you study church history . . .

“You begin in the 1^st Century studying in the Scripture, but as soon as the pages of God’s Word are concluded and the Bible’s completed, the study turns to church history--the history of institutions, organizations and political, social kinds of movements.

“You can study your Scriptures ’til your eyes bug out and you don’t see anything in it about denominations and the history of buildings and institutions. What you study about is some truth; some doctrine living in some people, and that truth going out and permeating the communities they live in.

“The form is not the issue. That’s not to say there wasn’t a form to it because there was. In I Timothy is sort of a handbook for the operating of the local assembly. But when you come to II Timothy, it’s obvious the people are going to ‘have a form of godliness but they’re going to deny the power thereof.’

“The spiritual source of the life of Christ in them—working through the truth of His Word—no longer becomes the issue. In fact, it becomes very confused.

“When Paul says in II Timothy, ‘For Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world, and is departed unto Thessalonica; Crescens to Galatia, Titus unto Dalmatia,’ he’s not just talking about them personally, he’s talking about the doctrine that he preached.

“He’s saying Demas has departed from the truth that’s been committed to him, and in light of all that, II Timothy was written. I heard a fellow describe the book one time as ‘Timely Tips to Timothy for Tempestuous Times,’ and I always thought that was a great title for II Timothy because that’s just what it is. II Timothy is an epistle that addresses situations then that are very similar to the way things are today.

“When II Tim. 3:13 says, ‘But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived,’ you know why things are worse today than they’ve ever been before. Because there’s more people on the planet then there have been before! You put more sinners in a bag, you get more of the same.”

(new article tomorrow)