Notes of Blue and Black

If you spend enough time scrolling through Christian TikTok or Instagram Reels, you will inevitably stumble into the theological "wild west." Between genuine encouragements and Bible verses, you will find influencers pitching "secret" meanings of Hebrew words, deep dives into the Nephilim, hyper-specific end-times timelines, and "hidden" books the church supposedly doesn't want you to read. It feels like a distinctly modern, algorithmic problem. But the truth is, the Apostle Paul dealt with the exact same issue in the first century. In 1 Timothy 1:3-4, Paul issues a military-style order to his protégé, Timothy, to stay in Ephesus and command certain individuals to stop teaching false doctrine. Hermeneutically, this passage sets the stage for the entire epistle: Paul is confronting erring teachers who were devastating the local church with extra-biblical ideas. Here is a breakdown of what Paul was fighting back then—and why it looks remarkably like the ...