2 Timothy 3

http://www.esvbible.org/2+Timothy+3/

Paul warns that "in the last days" there will be a lot of corrupt people. They will be easy for the Christians to see because they will wear their disbelief plainly. They will act out against what God wants us to do. Nobody is perfect, but these people won't even try. They will go into people's homes and try to mislead them. At one point, Paul goes far enough to say that their stupidity in doing this will be there downfall because they oppose the truth. If two people who opposed Moses ended up having stupidity be their downfall, think how much more people opposing the very Word of God will be exposed by stupidity.

Paul tells Timothy that Timothy knows all about who Paul is, what he is doing, and why he is doing it. Following this, he says that Timothy knows that because of all of that, Paul is persecuted, and the persecution follows him. We can see a lot of this in the Book of Acts. Furthermore, Paul says that anyone who lives the life of a Christian will be persecuted. It's harder to understand that in a country like the US where so many people are followers of Jesus that we despise others for their meaningless differences in practice when all that really matters is that they are believers. In places like China, the persecution is so bad that if you are a follower of Christ, you will band with any follower of Christ you find because at least you have somebody. We can't separate the real believers who love the Lord with every fiber of their beings from the posers because the persecution is so little. I respect the believers in other countries where the penalty could be death because they truly experience what Jesus and Paul both talk about. Paul says that we should use the Scriptures because they are all useful in some way for teaching or correcting others. All Scripture was inspired by God.