(3) Specific errors, will be propagated.

(a) Prohibition of marriage.

(b) Enforced abstinence from certain kinds of food.

(4) Digression. Confutation of the pseudo-ascetic precept.

Arg. (1) From the purpose of God in creation.

Arg. (2) From the intrinsic nature of all creatures.

Arg. (3) From the sanctifying power of the Word of God.

(5) Practical conclusion. Timothy's ministry.

Two related agents, superhuman and human are concerned, and consist on the one hand of seduction and

doctrines, and on the other hand with seared consciences and hypocrisy. The link between these agents of evil and

their dupes is likewise two-fold, namely, the one `gives heed', the other `speaks'. Without this medium of

interchange the doctrines of demons would neither have been promulgated nor received.

`Some shall depart from the faith, giving heed'. The word prosecho we have already seen occurs a number of

times in the Pastoral Epistles, the affix pros revealing only too well that there will be an inclination on the part of the

hearer, a thought that is developed in 2 Timothy 4, under the figure of the `itching ear', and expressed in terrible

reciprocal justice in 2 Thessalonians 2, where we read of those who take part in another and related apostasy that

such will be deceived `because they received not the love of the truth ... and had pleasure in unrighteousness'.

`Speaking lies'. These two words are used to translate the one Greek word pseudologos `a lie-speaker'.

Ordinarily we should expect some construction as we find, for example, in Acts 20:30, where `speaking perverse

things' is in the original lalountes diestrammena' and which were used `to draw away' disciples. Here something

deeper and more deadly is intended than the mere `speaking of lies'. Speaking lies in any sense and for any reason is

to be repudiated, but is nevertheless a common failing, but to be `a lie-speaker' is somewhat different.

The Greek pseudos and its derivatives occur some sixty-five times in the N.T. but are rarely used of the telling of

an untruth in the common sense of `telling lies'. It is used of false brethren, teachers, witnesses, apostles, prophets

and of false Christs. Paul uses the word in one form or another twenty times, and John also uses it twenty times. In

the Gospel of John we read that the Saviour said to some in His day `Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of

your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth

in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it' (John 8:44). Literally,

this passage reads: `When he speaketh THE lie' and when he thus speaks `out of his own things he speaks'. He is not

only a liar himself, but `the father of IT'.

There are three other occasions where `The Lie' is mentioned, namely Romans 1:25, where it refers to the

Babylonian corruption of primitive revelation; Ephesians 4:25, where those who are members of the New Man are

urged to put away `The Lie' and to speak truth with their neighbour, and in 2 Thessalonians 2:11 where the Mystery

of Iniquity reaches the surface and is revealed in the Antichristian blasphemy of the man of sin. This is `The Lie' of

which Satan is the father. The apostasy of 1 Timothy 4:1 is furthered by `the oppositions of science falsely so

called' pseudonumos (1 Tim. 6:20). There is no reference here to `science' as the term is understood to-day, but a

claim to special knowledge, a gnosis that was the germ from which gnosticism sprang, and which is also

discoverable in Colossians 2. This `science falsely so called' is in opposition to `that deposit' of truth that had been

entrusted to Timothy by the apostle Paul. The oppositions, or `antitheses' of false gnosis are spoken of again and

again by the apostle within the short compass of these three pastoral epistles. As we value `the Truth' let us spare no

pains in discovering the methods adopted by those whose purpose it is to further `the lie' and then let us act as

Scripture commands.

We have already observed when setting out the structure, that references to the teaching of heterodox doctrine

open and close the first epistle to Timothy (1 Tim. 1:3; 6:3). Let us note in fuller detail the way in which this false

teaching is described in these epistles.

`Neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which minister questions, rather than godly edifying which

is in faith' ( 1 Tim. 1:4). The R.V. reads `a dispensation of God' where the A.V. reads `godly edifying', the Greek

oikonomia instead of oikodomia involving the change of but one letter. This opening warning is balanced by the one

already considered, concerning the opposition of a pseudo-knowledge and which we saw was inimical to the