Paul now gives Timothy a severe warning about what will happen. There will be terrible times in the last days. There are things we can and must do to counter false teaching in the church, but even so a time will come when things get really difficult.
"People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God". This is a painfully accurate description of features of our own society. Now we need to be careful here. This does not mean the end is imminent (it might be, but this on its own does not prove that it is). Rather we see signs of the end. In fact in the last days things will be far worse than they are now.
They will have a form of godliness but deny its power. So there will be a form of religion or "spirituality" about such people, but the power of the gospel will be denied. What is this power it is talking of here? It is probably not the power of miracles, rather it is likely to be the power of the gospel to transform lives, to deal with the sin in our lives.
False teachers have a habit of worming their way into the lives of of gullible women. This is a recurrent feature that is seen in such situations. Jannes and Jambres were, according to Jewish tradition, two of the Egyptian magicians who opposed Moses. Just as the Egyptian magicians ultimately failed, so will false teachers. We need to take matters seriously, but we do not need to be afraid.
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