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"Nature abhors a vacuum", said the old scholars, before the pressure of the
atmosphere had been demonstrated. This may have been a learned way of covering
ignorance, but it nevertheless expressed a truth. Ears that turn away from truth must
listen to something, and the penalty is that such ears will be opened to myths.
Writing of the close of another period of deception the same apostle said:
"With all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they
received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall
send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie; that they all might be damned
who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness" (II Thess. 2: 10-12).
This movement had startled in the apostle's own day, "All they which are in Asia be
turned away from me" (1: 15), and the first movement that turned away from the apostle,
will complete its circle when it turns away from the truth entrusted to that same apostle.
The many attacks, misrepresentations and the way that the testimony of Paul the
Lord's prisoner has been ignored, bring home to those who love the truth, how truly the
apostle has depicted the closing days of this dispensation.
The Christian Church as a whole has turned away from "the Mystery". The Greek
words Mystery and Myth come from the same root, and like the two sons of the one
father Abraham, they represent the spirit and the flesh.
We will not waste our space or the reader's time in tabulating the "myths" that have
been accepted in place of the truth of God. We would only ask him when he opens some
modern commentary to notice how frequently the word "myth" is used in the exposition
of the foundation book of all Scripture, namely the book of Genesis. Here we pause and
in our next study we must consider the contrasted ministry towards which the apostle
urged his son Timothy, and all who would "honour God" as the name Timotheus means.