“For the time will come when people will not tolerate sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, will multiply teachers for themselves because they have an itch to hear what they want to hear.” (v. 3)

I don’t know how much attention you give to Christian denominations in America, but there’s this thing that has been happening for the last fifty years or so:

Ever time one of them aims for “progressive” doctrine, they find the slippery slope, and they slide. They remove their feet from the solid ground of Christ and His Word—and they wander toward whatever and whoever’s words please the times. They multiply teachers and platforms that, under the banner of affirmation, preach wholly unbiblical and unsound content.

Every time we aim to make the Word of God more appeasing to its hearers, we abandon it. And, worse, we abandon the very hearers we’d hoped to appease, for they are left without root and without truth and without life.

We ought to be multiplying the teaching—the faith once for all delivered to the saints—and not merely multiplying teachers. We have the Teacher, and by His Spirit, we have His Word. Beware the impulse to massage what He gives into what you want.

Hold doctrine. Uphold those who teach it in the church. And let your itching ears be confronted, rather than tickled.

— Tyler