1st Timothy 4:1-5

1 Timothy 4, 1-5, Doctrines of Demons is the title, and I'll read as it is there at the top of the page. But the Spirit explicitly says that in the latter times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron. men who forbid marriage and advocate abstaining from foods which God has created to be gratefully shared by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with gratitude, for it is sanctified by means of the word of God and prayer." It's interesting, we broke this up in different segments. Last week we covered more than a dozen verses, today five. And we gave you a wad of paper last time, today one sheet. And it's only a page and a half of that. But, let's ask some questions.

Why would the Holy Spirit warn of the certainty of false teaching? What's the value in that? Why would the Holy Spirit warn? Yeah, how long has the Bible warned against false teaching, false prophets? Yeah, way back early in the Old Testament. As a matter of fact, what happened in chapter 3 of Genesis that brought this whole problem out in the first place?

God was questioned. God was questioned. First there was a question and then there was a statement. The question doubted God's Word. The statement contradicted God's Word. So the problem originated right there in the garden. But it continues with us today. Paul is making an appropriate warning here. The Spirit explicitly says. Now, interesting, these days people are inclined to get real vague about the Holy Spirit. But this isn't vague, is it? The Holy Spirit explicitly says.

So how soon after Paul wrote this would it begin to be fulfilled? How soon? You look at your watch? Yeah. Yeah, in other words, this is happening quick. As a matter of fact, we have issues with it today. I guess the question comes is, what are the latter times or later times? Every time later. Yeah, basically we're in it. It's been around for a while.

What does it mean to fall away from the faith? Is that a friction factor problem? How do you fall away from the faith? Abandoning or forgetting the original teachings. Let's ask this question. What is the faith? Once delivered by the saints by Paul. Well, let's think about this. It's actually the term starts in Acts chapter 6, the faith. It continues throughout most of the books of the New Testament all the way into the book of Revelation with some equivalent terms to the faith like the truth, the gospel in the larger sense, not just the gospel of how you're saved, but the gospel in terms of the larger teaching of the apostles. So falling away from that teaching. Now here's Paul. Is the New Testament complete when he's writing this? It's not yet complete, and yet the falling away is there, and that's even before the New Testament is done. The falling away happened quickly.

There was, I understand, so I'm getting this like second hand, but I understand there was a class once, it was a Bible college or seminary class, And the instructor broke up the class into smaller groups and he says I want you to go away and come back to me and tell me what's the largest theme in the New Testament epistles. What's the largest theme in the New Testament epistles? And they came back and interestingly all the different groups looked at it and they said false teaching. False teaching is the largest theme in the New Testament epistles is what they concluded. I haven't personally gone to confirm that, but I would not doubt that it is the case or very close to the case. OK.

To fall away from the faith, how does that happen? What does that mean? How do people fall away from the faith? Could it happen here? Could, couldn't it? And how does that happen? How does that happen? Well, certainly false teaching, but I guess the question is, yeah, how does that happen? In other words, if you look at it, here's the Word of God.

Yes, Carol? Laziness can be a part of it. Yeah. If you look at it. Holly? Oh, I was just going to say, probably very gradually. Yeah, gradually is frequently exactly the process. You don't walk in one day and, heaven sakes, what's happening? Verne's teaching that the Godhood has seven and a half persons. Why is he reading the Baha'u'llah Gita? Why is the Koran being read?

So it isn't typically that big jump. You're right, it's more like a slow leak. It isn't like the tire went boom! It's just a slow leak and now the tire's flat. And yeah, it typically happens as a creeping in. It happens because of laziness, inattention. And so is there something in particular to be done? What makes the difference between not falling away and falling away? Yeah. Well, I was just going to say it's very insidious because, like you said, it just creeps in and it comes from people that, many times from people that present themselves as people that know, people of authority, people that have studied the word and are teaching it. And it almost, to me, sounds like sometimes you don't have to be that strict. You can fudge a little bit here and fudge a little bit there. You don't really have to. Obviously, you don't have to be all 613 or whatever. But you still have certain responsibilities as a Christian and a belief system. And this is very insidious. My responsibility is to get into the Word. What does it actually say?

If you've ever been in a situation, if you've ever driven a car with loose steering, You know, where you got the steering wheel and, you know, I thought I was holding the thing steady. The car starts, you know, and then woo, and you try to correct it, and then it goes woo back the other way. The car easily drifts within the range of your control.

And after a while, it's a little unnerving. Well, I mean, we look at them and say, well, I understand that. But what happens is churches can get loose steering. And we end up getting this drift, as Holly pointed out, it's not like a sudden ka-chunk, it's more often this slow leak, this slow drift, and before you know it, you're not on target.

If you were to start in a boat or a plane from San Francisco and to head towards Honolulu, what happens if you're one degree off? You don't get to Honolulu, right? One degree off is enough to miss Honolulu. I'm not sure what you hit, but it isn't Honolulu, right? And that's the same thing as churches get one or more degrees off, and at first it doesn't seem like much.

But the bigger picture, the longer term picture is that, yep, you're falling away, you're off track. Okay. So then we asked the question earlier, what is the faith? The faith is the set of teachings of the Apostles, which by the way had not changed but had been built upon. What do I mean by that? They had not changed but they had been built upon.

In Ephesians, in Philippians and Colossians, we have a teaching For example, Ephesians 2.6, you've been seated with Christ in the heavenlies. Philippians, you have a heavenly citizenship. Colossians, set your mind on things above.

Those things were not taught from any record we have in the New Testament until Paul had arrived in Rome. Very interesting. Now, was that in conflict with what was taught earlier in the New Testament? No, not in conflict, but it was additional revelation that was only brought out by the time Paul reached his house arrest in Rome. So you have not a change of teaching, but additional truth revealed. So when we say the faith, in Acts 6, that's the first time the term shows up, you have a smaller set of teachings.

And then as time goes on, those get built upon. To the point that, and we refer here at Holly Hills to the identification truths, to the point that by the time Peter is writing 1 Peter, he expresses the identification truths. Dead to sin, alive to righteousness. But that wasn't until a few years after Paul had written about, we're seated in the heavenlies, we have a heavenly citizenship, set your mind on things above. Okay.

So is anyone losing their salvation in this passage? And why do we say that? How can we be so sure about that? I'm sorry, what? They have an eternal position. One cannot lose their salvation and you start to say something. Yeah, in other words, the faith is a set of teachings, right? So it's possible that someone could be saved and yet go off track in their teaching. That's part one. Or two, that the person never was saved and still is off track in their teaching, right? So either of those is a possibility.

But it's not, even though you fall away From the faith, it isn't a statement of loss of salvation any more than Paul, who wrote to the Galatians, said that you have fallen from grace. Does that mean they've lost their salvation? No. It means that, because he calls them believers, he calls them saints. He wouldn't urge them to walk by the Spirit if they weren't saved in the first place.

But what he's saying is, in their walk, in their living, they had fallen from living according to the principle of grace, as Romans 5.21 puts it, the reigning principle.

Okay. Doctrines of demons. If Paul going overboard calling this doctrines of demons, is that a little bit much? I mean, is it like one click past where it ought to be? What do you think? Pardon? Yeah, it is intense for a reason. And I think as we look at it, we may find a little bit of a surprise, but his choice of terms is not accidental. So who are the agents or parties in this falling away? Who's falling away and how is this happening? Who's falling away and how is this happening?

Yeah, in other words, here's Timothy, he's been assigned to where? At this writing. Where was Timothy assigned to? Pardon? Ephesus. He was assigned to Ephesus to correct the false teachers and no doubt this is one of the elements that Paul wants them to pay particular attention to.

This is an issue, keep your eyes open and your ears listening and make sure that you take note of this point. Now, how is this falling away happening? We talked earlier about laziness, we talked about you know, people not paying attention, those kinds of things. Is there a spiritual cause for the falling away, aside from human beings?

Satan is always there. What does he call it? Doctrines of demons. Now, here's what's interesting. We have it from Scripture that the angels are in a hierarchy. There is an order to the angels. That is likewise true with Satan and those fallen angels that are under him. There is a hierarchy. And while Satan is certainly at the head, he has other agents who are working in concert and cooperation with him, and those are, we call them fallen angels or otherwise called demons.

They are spiritual beings who have made a decision to fall away from the Lord. Here's something real interesting. Adam fell and what did God do about it? Adam fell and what did God do about it? Pardon? Okay. Yes? Okay, so here's Adam fell, Adam and Eve get set outside the Garden of Eden, not just for consequences, not you were bad and so now you're leaving, but to keep him away from what?

Keep him away from the Tree of Life, and so now, here is Adam fell, but what else did the Lord do because Adam fell? Yes, he had the plan in place from the foundation of the world. There was from the foundation of the world the understanding of what God was going to do to offer a plan of salvation for mankind.

Genesis 3.15 is the first clear indication of that plan being initiated and worked out. However, Do Satan and his demons have any plan of salvation? None. None that we know of. Not that no biblical indication at all that Satan and the demons will have any sort of opportunity for salvation, second chance.

Quite a different way of working with those beings. So these demons It's a strange position. Imagine the spiritual insanity. You have nothing to gain, but nothing to lose. You see that? The demons have nothing to gain and nothing to lose. Pardon? They've already lost everything. Can you imagine the...

See, our situation is we're born and we have the opportunity to make a choice to take God's payment for our sin and be saved. And that payment is through Christ, right? Each person that is born and then grows up has that opportunity. For the demons, they're not born, they don't reproduce, they were created all at once, from any indication we have, and they were all at once presented kind of in a time window, if time is really the appropriate word, the chance to decide you're either going to be with the Lord or you're going to be against him. Revelation chapter 12 gives an indication that about a third of the angels decided to side with Satan. It's like, okay, you're going to side with Satan.

This is what's going to happen. You're going to be relegated to the planet Earth. That's going to be your domain until your very last days, in which case you're going to go to the lake of fire. And it's interesting that Jesus uses the term prepared in the perfect tense, which means The lake of fire was prepared back then. It's like the Lord presented to the angels. He says, here's where you're going eternally. Make your choice.

So here are these, here is Satan and his followers, his hierarchy, and with nothing to gain and nothing to lose. This is spiritual insanity. Yeah, this is spiritual insanity. They made their choice and now with nothing to gain and nothing to lose, their hierarchy is strongly motivated to delude and deceive. And so here is this demonic hierarchy offering these false teachings to lead people away.

And why would they do that? That's because the very head of the hierarchy is deceptive. The very head of the hierarchy calls into question what God says. And isn't that why they fell in the first place? Right? They call into question what God said. They said what was true was a lie and what was a lie was the truth. It's consistent with the species, if you will. It's consistent with the species. And so, now here's the other interesting thing.

So far as we know, there are only two categories of spiritual beings in the universe. What are they? You're correct about that, but yes. Angels and humans, so far as we know, are the only spiritual beings that have been created. But they're not of the same kind. And yet there is an interaction. And Paul's cautioning about the interaction because he says that there will be doctrines of demons. And these doctrines of demons are designed to deceive.

And what do they have to gain by it eternally? Nothing. Pardon? Yes, it is a strange, warped, again, I think spiritual insanity is an appropriate term, it is a strange, warped perspective that says, you know, I'm headed here. As a matter of fact, it says in Matthew, Jesus comes up to this demon-possessed man, and the demon starts speaking out, you're not going to start torturing us yet!

They're deathly afraid of it, and they know he's going to be the one that points them there. They're scared to death. But meanwhile, again, the spiritual insanity, they want to continue this deception according to their hierarchy. I don't understand why they would be motivated about anything. Yes? Yes. So they can't help themselves, they can't improve their lot, but they can get revenge, they think. Yes.

You don't think there are any demonic crowns in hell? Demonic crowns? Yeah, you know, we have this picture of, you know, somehow these demons are in charge of hell or something like that. They're not in charge of hell. They're not in charge of anything. They will be there. The hierarchy will be broken up. Any advantage that they thought they might possibly have will be completely and totally lost. The lake of fire was initially prepared for Satan and his angels, right? Yeah, it was originally prepared for that purpose. That's why and how it was prepared.

Now, let's ask this question. What does it mean to pay attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons? To pay attention. What does that mean? Pay attention. Probably compare what it is that Satan said to the Word of God. Compare everything to the Word. Let's think about this.

What's the opposite of paying attention? Ignoring or deliberately setting aside would be on the opposite end of this, right? And so then the other end is paying attention to these things. So you're paying more attention to the deception than the truth, right? Paying attention to the deception rather than the truth. Why would people do that? Why would people do that? and just a laissez-faire kind of attitude. That's the kind of approach. So, why are these demons paying attention to doctrinal issues? Does doctrine matter?

Because they get to the birth of God's creation, and the pinnacle of God's creation the Mankind that was created in his image. The first Mankind, because that was the natural God's creation. Also, because of Ephesians, the word is our sword, and so he forms our Ah, there we go. With the Word of God, let's think about what is the Word of God and what does it do? The Word of God is the sword of the Spirit. So of those weapons against the angelic, you know, evil angelic powers, the weapons that we have itemized in Ephesians chapter 6 starting with verse 10 through verse 18, the one offensive weapon that comes out clearly is the Word of God. That's the sword of the Spirit, right?

So what happens if you put that aside? Keep it in its sheath. Yeah, you have no offensive weapon. If you set the Word of God, keep it in its sheath and keep it aside. You have no offensive weapon at all. That's part one. Let's think also, here's the Word of God, Hebrews 4.12. It is alive and powerful, penetrating where? Just under the skin? To the dividing line between soul and spirit. Deep inside you is where the Word of God touches.

Now, if we can keep that sword in its sheath, where are you getting touched? Nowhere. just superficially. And that's what we're going to find the doctrines of demons point to. They'll say that the answer is in stuff you do on the outside. And that's as deep as it gets. The tendency of the demons is to glance shallow and call that spirituality. So what are these doctrines of demons? Yes. Yeah.

I was just going to say that Church Scientology really depends upon love for one another. Believe in God, and the love of God, and there is no hell. God is all loving, all kind, all just, and there you would never ever a great many cult groups deny hell. And that's much more appealing.

I don't want to get too distracted. I love distraction sometimes. At any rate, at the moment, I don't want to get too distracted, but why would the various cult groups have so much in common with denying hell? Why would that be so important to them? If you take that negative out of the picture, then people are drawn to it because that is people's propensity to go to something that's easy.

They're not interested in the negative. They're not interested in responding to, oh, by the way, there's a hell to shun. Let's ask this question. The demons, are they interested in hell? They would rather not think of it, right? So why not teach everybody else not to think of it? Right? And after all, if we all agree that there isn't one, then there must not be one, right? And then maybe we won't have to go there, right? Right? Yes?

Like the politician Hitler said, if you tell a lie often enough, it is somehow the truth. Yeah, excuse me, go ahead. because, I don't know where I heard this, but Satan likes to remind him of our past and we need to remind him of his future. So Satan is reminding him of his future. They're just letting him shame them, convict them, make them feel alone, make them not feel empowered like they should be by the word of God. One of the things that Satan likes to do is to distort truth. Including, you know, where's he going? Where is his cohort going? where they're headed, and to keep people deluded about where they're headed if they don't deal with the central issue in the universe, and that is, what are you doing with Jesus Christ? Let's look at the next one down, Liars. The hypocrisy, oh excuse me, I forgot one important question.

What are the doctrines of demons? What are the two primary things that Paul calls the doctrines of demons? From the passage, from the passage. Verse 3. It's that simple those two things he calls the doctrines of demons one forbidding marriage and Then secondly abstaining from certain foods now does that sound demonic to you?

At the face of it you say well, what's the problem with that that's not that bad I Mean, it's not like you're you know torturing babies or something because they were told to abstain from certain foods by God's law. Right, and here are Jews, they were told to abstain from certain foods, and was that list fairly lengthy? In fact, it was. I mean, all sorts of things.

Probably a number of us would have no problem going to restaurants that serve things that are on the do not eat list according to the Law of Moses, right? So if you go to Red Lobster, you're in trouble. And, you know, everything tastes better with bacon on it, but you can't tell that to an Orthodox Jew. The Law of Moses did forbid eating certain foods, but what's interesting, Paul here turns around and says, and he's one of those guys that, I mean, he used to go around, you know, killing Christians and saying, you know, you guys eat the wrong food.

Now, so here he is, turning around and saying, no, that's doctrines of demons. What's the problem? I mean, it's not that big a deal. I mean, I don't eat wheat and corn and barley and rye, right? So is that demonic? I don't eat those things because I'm allergic to them. And what's the problem?

What's the problem with saying, well, you know, if you just don't eat certain foods, that that's spiritual attainment? Yeah. Faith in the doing. If I do this, if I don't do that, it's faith and confidence in what I do. That's the big deal. Something else.

God created food right there in the garden and said you can eat this and this and this, right? God made food for what? To be eaten. I take it that you've all probably eaten sometime, right? So God created food to be eaten. When did God bring about marriage? And it was right there in the garden. The bottom line is Genesis 1 and 2. This is all stuff that God made.

And so what the demons are doing is saying no and no. Yeah. Go ahead and eat of this fruit and that fruit and this food and that food. At the end of the flood, told Noah, go ahead and eat this and that, you know, animal. And the demons turn around and say, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, stay away from that. And, you know, both in the garden and after the flood, God said, be fruitful and multiply. And the context he meant that in was marriage, right?

So here are the demons coming along and saying, you know, God said it was okay, but not really. Here's a weird twist. God told Adam, don't eat from this tree. Don't eat from this tree. It's not good that man should be alone. So he made a wife, Eve. So what are the demons doing? They're confounding what God most clearly said was fine. Isn't that interesting? The things that are right there in the garden, now the demons come up. We got our demon rules, right? And if you just do our demon rules, then you do our demon thing. Yeah, Nancy?

So the wall was really designed in part to show people their need, but it was also the laws that they were given. They weren't given necessarily for health reasons, but to set them apart. Yes. To show them as being different. The Jews were to be set apart, and that was the reason for their laws. Yes.

But Paul is speaking to the church, which is no longer under the law. Right. And therefore, Jews who are still practicing Jews and not neighbors, not in the church, they would still have been required to keep those dietary laws. The Jews would have seen themselves as still under the law, yes. But the church is not. The church is not.

He's writing to the church at Ephesus, is that largely Gentiles or Jews? Gentiles at Ephesus, right? Some population of Jews, but definitely in the minority. and it would be for Gentiles, there would be no basis for telling them, don't eat this, don't eat that, don't get married, all that. Here's something real interesting.

1 Corinthians 7 verse 1. Paul had been writing back to the church at Corinth about questions that they had. And in 1 Corinthians 7.1, some people have said, well, Paul said, it's better for man not to touch a woman. I believe, and the context shows that, that better for man not to touch a woman was teaching by the Corinthians that he corrected. Because he said, stop depriving one another. Right? That was their question in Corinth. They had been teaching that even those who are married should abstain. Right?

And so what do we have here? Here's the doctrines of demons, the same kind of error. The tendency for people is to go either into excessive law, heavyweight law, or license. And so these doctrines of demons here is, let's make some extra laws. Here are the demon rules. And the laws, in fact, violate what God ordered and allowed. in his work. The laws the demons came up with. Okay.

Liars. The hypocrisy of liars. That's a rather weighted statement. Why does Paul use such strong language? Hypocrisy of liars. Doctrines of demons. Abstaining from marriage and some foods? Is Paul getting too heavy here? Has he got the heaviness knob just two clicks too far? Yeah. Part of it is to catch the feeder's attention. Okay. Realize that it's a dangerous path that you're going down and it's not leading to where you think it's going to lead. Kind of like a careful, sharp clip. It may be straight and narrow, but it's not being straight and narrow. Okay.

What's the problem with these hypocrisy of liars? What's their problem? Does he touch on it? Does he describe what the problem is? The hypocrisy of liars have what problem? Seared in the conscience. See, human beings have this interesting thing called a conscience. People do all sorts of wrong things.

But what people often do is, you know, it's like the car with the loose steering. You know, it starts drifting over. So how do you do it? You have to way oversteer the other way. So people say, well, I violated this. So let me fix it by going way the other way.

Right. And so this is a human tendency. This is how human beings in their own thinking, and being persuaded by demons, will try to pursue life and holiness. I'm going to pursue life, and so I'm just going to go for the gusto. And then, oh boy, that stung, so I'm going to go over here and follow a whole bunch of rules, and that will fix it.

What's that? Yes. See, when human beings end up concocting their own solutions, that's what you get. Instead of saying, what does the Word of God say? We end up saying, I think this will fix it. I think that will fix it. And we end up correcting and oversteering both ways. License, law, license, law. And we end up banging against the rails. Yes? Is it possible also Yes, yes.

It unfortunately happens in ministries, both church ministries and parachurch ministries, that when things finally surface and blow up, that you find that the people who are leading or participating in the ministry are doing something quite different than what they've been teaching. Nancy and I were aware of a church back in Nevada where the fellow who was the head pastor at the church, people were very impressed with his teaching. just his sermons were just beautiful apparently, so I'm told. But it was discovered that he had been having affairs with multiple ladies in the congregation. And there were some people that said, oh but he makes such great sermons.

And not seeing, now wait a minute, you've got a major contradiction here. Major contradiction. the hypocrisy of liars, two-faced. Doctrines of demons, hypocrisy of liars, combinations of words that sound pretty intense, but they're in fact real problems. And, as Carol pointed out, there is a human concoction here, human beings having brought together this thing, invented it, that's the problem. When we deviate from God's word, these terms that seem strong, hypocrisy of liars, doctrines of demons, they're in fact not too strong. Why? It's because they glance shallow. The answer is, I just got to stop eating this. The answer is, yeah, I know God created marriage from the very beginning, but you can't do that. Nothing goes in or out.

My great-great-grandfather came to Denver in the spring of 1859 and shortly thereafter became a doctor in the Civil War. And he had to, in some case, cut off limbs. And what would he do with the limb after he cut it off? or cauterized the surface. Not sure if he particularly knew it at that time, but if one thing, it would be disinfection. In addition to that, to the disinfection, there would also be a kind of a cutting off.

You don't have blood flow and things of that sort to the degree you would otherwise. This searing of conscience, you have a conscience that somehow is not fully functional. It's now been substantially altered. It's not got the natural flow and function. It's conscience that doesn't work right anymore.

Yes? I think you see a lot of that on TV because there's so much violence, so much bloodshed, so many people dying, that people kind of become numb to that. Think about this. Is it possible for someone to have some sort of a moral conscience about something and to just blow past it? to override that moral conscience where this doesn't bother me anymore. So what you have is here is the moral conscience and you've basically overridden it to the point it doesn't function anymore. It doesn't work anymore. Not like it used to. Yes? You just don't notice it anymore.

You're not noticing that there's a problem. Prior to being a pastor, I worked for a number of years as a civil engineer and I'd be out on construction sites And of course, all the heavy equipment, when it goes in reverse, you've probably heard, you know, the beep, beep, beep, beep. After a while, everything is beeping, right? Everybody's beeping. So you just turn it off. It's supposed to be an alarm, but the reality is that after a while, you mentally just turn off the alarm. You don't hear it.

And that's kind of... Functionally necessary. But in the area of conscience, that's dangerous. Yes. And certainly the pastor that you said in Nevada, he had to override his moral principles. Yeah. He could prepare impressive sermons. Who's that? The pastor I was talking about in Nevada.

Impressive sermons, but he had overridden his conscience, not just once, but multiple times. And he still lives in the same area, and he's a different occupation obviously, but yeah, he had overridden his conscience, just blown past the stops, and now has no spiritual involvement at all. It was a moral breakage of what ought to have been there, but it also had spiritual consequences. great deal of damage to the church, but also damage in his own heart. Because he's not, instead of saying, whoa, boy, did I make a mistake, his continual breakage of conscience made him commit to spiritual neutrality, which is obviously dangerous.

Let's take a look here. Why do people not only tolerate legalism, but promote it? And by legalism, I mean not just the laws of Moses, but inventing things. Why do people not only tolerate, but promote inventing rules? Oh, if you just abstain from these foods, that'll fix it.

Yes. You know what's interesting is some of the food disorders are a matter of control. Is it a disorder? Yeah. But it gives the illusion of control. Hmm. Very interesting. That control issue can be a big one for people and to say I'm not eating that gives me a sense of control. Does the control help anything? No. But I still feel like I'm in control. and somehow that's important to people. Okay? Why forbid marriage?

I mean, it seems like, you know, boy, it's been around a while and culture's all around the world. The premise was you're more spiritual if you had no physical intimacy, no pleasure, no involvement. You're somehow What is interesting is within a couple of centuries of Paul writing this, the church would start to fall into these teachings. That's right. When you look at it, what happened is you had the monasteries and the monks, and they would go on these long fasts. Here's John. He wrote Revelation about 95 A.D. By 170 A.D., the church had fallen into the pattern of calling pastors priests. And then within another century, century and a half, two centuries, then all of a sudden you see this abstaining from foods and abstaining from marriage starting to fall into place here.

So what you see is the church beginning to adopt the doctrines of demons. I'd say church is in the official or kind of sociopolitical sense. Yeah? Plus I would think that it would not promote relationships how God intended them to be. This is really critical. You bring up a very important point. God majors in relationships. Our relationship with Him. Our relationships with one another. Those are all things that God cares about.

And what we end up doing is, let's concoct some rules that will obstruct what God intends those relationships to be. Instead of saying, thank you Lord for the food, let's eat. together. Instead it's, I'm going to be spiritual and not eat today. I'm not going to eat this food and that one and this one because then I'll be more holy and I'll be in control. Instead of the relationships that are what God intended from the beginning, being full and being what God intended, Okay, in spite of the fact that we have a shorter than normal lesson running out of time.

So, what heavenly institution does marriage represent in the scriptures? What heavenly institution does marriage represent? Yes. Right. Marriage of Christ and the Church. The eternal romance of Christ and the Church. is what marriage pictures, and it is not the only place, because it's actually from the Gospels all the way into Revelation. But Ephesians 5, 21-33 is the central passage on that point. And so if you're going to obstruct people's view of the eternal romance of Christ and the Church, how can you do that in the Church? Prohibit marriage. Obstruct marriage and say, no, we're not going to do that. Why?

Because people might think of Christ in the church. It will get in the way of seeing this eternal romance that God intended from the very beginning. During the tribulation period at the very end, what do we have pictured? The marriage supper of the Lamb. And that's the time when the demons will be dancing, or at least trying to.

Right? Okay. We have run out of time. This is the second buzzer unless I'm coming up with tinnitus. Okay? Alright. So I'll leave it to you to ask some of the rest of the questions of yourself. Let's take a minute to pray here. Okay? Lord, we do thank you for what you've revealed. We thank you for the truth in your Word. And we thank you for the insights that we have because of it. And thank you, Lord, that we do have the full authorization and freedom to enjoy and participate and carry out the things that you've created and instituted from the beginning. And we do pray for continued insight into and from your word. We give you thanks for it all in Jesus' name. Amen.