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thoroughness in Volume 32 of The Berean Expositor, pages 212-218 . All that we will do here is to give two short

extracts from that article and pass on to chapter four.

`A question now arises from the last clause of verse 15. Is the church "the pillar and ground of the truth"? If we

use the word "church" in its most spiritual meaning, we shall find no basis in Scripture for such an important

doctrine. The case before us, however, is most certainly not "the Church" but "a church", a church wherein there are

bishops and deacons; in other words, a local assembly, and surely it is beyond all argument that the truth does not

rest upon any such church as its pillar and ground. The reader will observe that in the structure, chapter 3:15 is

divided between D and E, and that the latter part of verse 15 belongs to verse 16. There is no definite article before

the word "pillar", and a consistent translation is as follows. Having finished what he had to say about the officers of

the church and Timothy's behaviour, he turns to the great subject of the mystery of godliness with the words:

A pillar and ground of truth and confessedly great is the mystery of godliness.

Here the teaching is that whatever or whoever the mystery of godliness shall prove to be, it or He, is the pillar and

ground of truth. The mystery of godliness is then explained as "God manifest in the flesh", and He, we know, is a

sure and tried Foundation'.

As to the reading of the Greek at 1 Timothy 3:16, we give the following summary:

`The reading of 1 Timothy 3:16, "God was manifest in the flesh" is witnessed by 289 manuscripts, by 3 versions

and by upwards of 20 Greek Fathers. Moreover, the text of the R.V. does not make grammatical Greek. The

relative pronoun hos should agree with its antecedent. Musterion is neuter. Bloomfield in his Synoptica says "hos

ephanerothe is not Greek". We would conclude this study, with the calculated affirmation of our belief that the

original reading of 1 Timothy 3:16 is, "GOD was manifest in the flesh" and, like Thomas of old, we bow in this

Presence and say "My Lord, and my God" and, like Philip, we say "Show us the Father, and it sufficeth us"'.

The focal point of the epistle is this `Mystery of Godliness', and its relation to the epistle as a whole can be seen

if we eliminate all detail and observe the following features:

A 1:17

The King of the ages.  INVISIBLE.

B 3:16

God manifest in the flesh.

SEEN.

The King of kings.

UNSEEN.

The apostasy of the last days of this dispensation is not a departure from faith in general, but from the particular

and vital doctrine which the structure places central `God manifest in the flesh'.

The words that introduce this prophecy of 1 Timothy 4:1 have an air of solemnity about them, `Now the Spirit

speaketh expressly'. A quotation introduced by the formula `it is written', commands attention and obedience, but

here, the writer of the epistle seems to imply that the Holy Spirit had broken the silence as He did in Acts 13:2, or as

the `voice', broke in upon Peter's vision, Acts 10:13. Some idea of the exactness implied by the adverb rhetos

`expressly', can be gathered from the fact that in Mathematics, rhetos was used to specify an exact quantity as

opposed to a surd, which indicates a quantity not capable of being expressed in rational numbers. We are going to

read that in the latter times there will not only be an `apostasy' which, however sad to contemplate, is not beyond

belief, but that this apostasy from the faith is vitally connected with seducing SPIRITS, doctrines of DEMONS, the

forbidding of MARRIAGE, the abstention from MEATS, with OLD WIVES FABLES, and BODILY EXERCISE. Such a

collection of strange items seems but remotely connected with `the faith' and, therefore, to prevent anyone from

treating this warning lightly, we are told that the Spirit spoke `expressly'.

This departure from the faith will have a near and a more remote consequence. The near consequence is the state

of affairs depicted in 2 Timothy 3 and 4 (when the `perilous times' will have come), and will at the same time

prepare the way for the greater apostasy of 2 Thessalonians 2 which belongs to the dispensation that follows upon

the close of the present one. We shall see that the apostasy of 1 Timothy 4 is an incipient opposition to the Mystery

of Godliness (1 Tim. 3:15,16), an opposition which reaches its fulness in the manifestation of the man of sin.

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Which also includes a more complete structure of 1 Timothy.