Paul goes on and tells Timothy, “You know my manner of life”.  “You know who I am.  You’ve watched me, Timothy.  You’ve heard my doctrine.”  Paul gets so bold as to not only tell Timothy, “Listen, don’t you teach anything other than what I’ve taught you,” he says that to the whole church.  “And if they teach any other gospel, let them be damned to hell.”  So, is doctrine important?  Yes.  Is the lordship of the real Jesus important?  Yes.  But what then should we expect?  There are those, verse 7, who are “Ever learning, and never coming to the knowledge of the truth.”  There’s a lot of “learning” going on today, a lot of study.  Dear lord, we’ve got our devices that we can pull up concordances and lexicons and think we’re somehow a scholar.  These men who are the most scholarly people today, who profess themselves as evangelicals, don’t have a clue Who God is, or they wouldn’t represent Him as this monster that they’re presenting and calling it sovereignty.  God can do whatever He wants.  Of course He can, but He won’t do anything outside of His nature.  God can’t sin.  God can’t lie.  Amen?  God is sovereign.  Yes, He is and He chose to give man free will, because He’s not insecure.  So, as we continue to hear and be inundated with this message in this last hour, guard yourself.

Let’s see what else he goes on to say.  These are people who can give you all kinds of letters and lessons and come up with all of these doctrines.  You have the scholars and then you have the woo‑woos.  And we’ve got charismatics running around today, or as they said back in the sixties, “charismaniacs.”  “The Lord told me.  The Lord spoke to me.  I sense this.  I had this dream.  I had this vision.  I had 42 visions this morning, and God came and personally appeared before me and spoke to me.”  A guy the other day on TV, “I was lying on my deathbed, and Jesus came in there personally and appeared to me.  And for an hour and a half He walked around my bed praying and God raised me up.”

Jesus doesn’t need an hour and a half to heal you!  There’s nobody in the Bible He walked around for an hour and a half!  He touched them and they were healed, praise God!  Amen?  Where are you getting this stuff?  Seducers, doctrines of devils; isn’t that what he says?  Stop being naive.  Know the heart and the character of God.  Know His voice and when any other false shepherd speaks, we don’t listen or hear them.  “My sheep know My voice, and another they will not follow.”  Hallelujah!  You’re not conning me with this stuff.  The “gold dust” falling out of the sky.  Grab some of that stuff!  It’s worth twenty‑six hundred an ounce.  “Why are you going to church?”  “Get more gold dust, praise God!”  Kenneth Copeland and whoever it was, I don’t remember right now, standing up on the platform, filled 12,000‑seat auditorium, talking to one another in the Holy Ghost.  “He that speaketh in an unknown tongue speaketh not unto men, but unto God:…and gives thanks well….”  Praise God!  Get off the platform, you heretic.

We’re not looking for sensationalism.  We’re living to walk in the truth and in the light.  We live that Berean experience of going to the Scriptures to make sure that what’s being said is verified in the Old Testament, as it pertained to the Bereans.  Is what this is representing true?  Could Jesus truly be the Messiah?  Read Isaiah 53.  You can’t read Isaiah 53 and not know Who that is.