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"Keep at it in season and out of season, refuting, checking and exhorting men; never
lose patience with them, and never give up your teaching, for the time will come when
people will decline to be taught sound doctrine and will accumulate teachers to suit
themselves and tickle their own fancies; they will give up listening to the Truth and turn
to myths" (II Tim. 4: 2-4).
The figure of the itching ears was known to Timothy, as it is found in Greek writers
before the days of the apostle. It denotes among other things a desire for something
pleasant at all costs, a shirking of responsibility and a shelving of troublesome truth.
There well be no dearth apparently of teachers in the last days, who will satisfy this
craving, and the main basis will be the opposite of the musterion (mystery), it will be the
muthos (the myth or fable).
Modern civilization has made it necessary that all along the roads both in town and
country there should be erected signs, warning and directing the traveler. Some of these
signs are long distance warnings, e.g. telling a lorry driver that some miles ahead is a
bridge only fifteen feet high, others are immediate and are at our very door? These
warnings and signs may be used as symbols of the Signs of the Times. Long distance
signs are those of Matt. 24:, the movements now taking place in Palestine and among
the Nations. The more immediate signs include the notice "Beware" found in Col. 2:,
and the warning concerning apostasy in I and II Timothy which we have had before our
notice in these articles.
The testimony of The Berean Expositor is such that it cannot afford either the space or
the time to elaborate those long distance signs that belong to the dispensation that will
immediately follow the close of that of the mystery, but it does fall within our
responsibility to draw the reader's most serious attention to the warnings that are found in
Paul's later epistles, for such belong to our calling, to our peace and to our hope of
reward.