The Scripture declares emphatically that before the end comes there will be a falling away:
Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition” (2 Tim. 2:3).
Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons” (2 Tim. 4:1)
When I was a young believer, I understood these verses to mean churchgoers were going to leave their communities, denying God and the redemptive work of Christ. But as the years passed, I realized that my lack of scriptural knowledge had led me astray. The fact is, most apostates will actually remain in their communities, sing hymns, pray their prayers, participate in the Lord’s supper, and possibly evangelize. In fact, they might occupy pulpits and places of responsibility. But they will depart from the Christian faith in the sense that they will repudiate what Jesus believes regarding moral issues. Obviously, this repudiation will not happen overnight. It will result from a slow moral drifting induced by a propensity to conform to the world, a propensity already fostered by amoral preachers hiding behind evangelical parlance. So here we are, facing an apostasy in the making.
An early symptom
There are multiple indications pointing to an imminent downfall; one of them is the increasing promptness, among us, Christians, to avoid the Scriptures when discussing moral truths.
No ifs, ands, or buts about it, in a time of moral decay—a decay leaking through the roof of many congregations—the Scriptures are simply not welcome, and they are not welcome because of their explicitness. That’s right, they are too clear to be opposed. I am not saying no attempts are being made to extirpate some verses here and there. But the difficulties involved are just too overwhelming; therefore, most accommodationists prefer to avoid the Scriptures altogether, and more so, any head-to-head debate based on them. This is done under the pretext of not having sufficient time, or of being unwilling to promote enmity, or perhaps of being unprepared to debate a specific subject, and the list goes on and on. In fact, those who want to reason from the Scriptures are often accused of being divisive, aggressive, arrogant, and destroyers of peace. In this way, and many others, the Scriptures are being annihilated, hidden behind the curtain of “progressive communication”, which is nothing more than progressive silence.
The legacy of shunning the Scriptures
What we have seen so far leads us to the subject of this post, namely, “The turning of the ears”. Let’s read the verses that introduce this practice:
For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; 4 and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables. 5 But you be watchful in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.” (2 Timothy 4:3-5)
As we have read, the fourth verse presents us two turnings, the turning of a person’s ears, produced by the person himself, and the turning of the actual person, which is a side effect of the previous one. Obviously, both turnings are tragic, because the truth is the only agent that can make a person free:
And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” (John 8:32)
If this verse means what it says, the person who circumvents the truth for moral convenience circumvents, in the same move, the possibility of personal freedom. This is explicit in the verse under consideration. It tells us, and tells us explicitly, that the one who evades the truth will be carried within the confinement of fables, and this, not as an aftereffect of judgment, but rather as an immediate outcome of the person’s moral decision.
The guillotine of self-deception
When a person tells us a lie in order to deceive us, let’s call the person Albert, we usually regard his intention as highly offensive and disgusting. And if his deceiving skill causes us to believe him, we find ourselves humiliated, frustrated, and at a loss. In fact, if we could take hold of Albert, we would tell him a few things, and you can be sure our little speech would not be of the mildest. But strangely enough, the person who turns his ears from the truth is actually doing the same thing Albert did, but somehow he considers himself a good person, working for his well-being and future prosperity. It could be asked: How can such an exaggerated double standard exist? It can exist because the one turning his ears from the truth has lost sight of reality. He is no longer able to question himself. Actually, it is written of him:
He feeds on ashes; a deceived heart has turned him aside; and he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, “Is there not a lie in my right hand?” (Isaiah 44:20)
Here the person referred to is both the deceiver and the one being deceived. It’s this unity that makes the deceit so powerful. When we read: “But evil men and impostors will grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived” (2 Tim. 3:13), we could hardly imagine that the deceived can be the deceiver as well. I am not saying he cannot deceive others—he obviously can—but he is the most apt to deceive his own heart, because the “turning of the ears” amounts to a self-imposed illusion that hoodwinks its adherents.
How can we help these people? The answer is indeed unfortunate: As long as they turn their ears from the truth no help can reach them, for only the truth can set them free.
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