While there is a beneficial place for teachers (this scripture was telling Timothy to be a good teacher) scripture is clear that it is the Holy Spirit who is to be our teacher and lead us to ALL truth. Surely He can do this through other people. However the problem arises when people trust in men to teach them more than they trust in God to teach them. Religion is designed to have people do this. So this scripture sounds like a prophecy of sermons, preachers, & authors to me. The Spirit cannot teach you if you hitch your cart to someone else's horse. Most of what people "know" are things they don't know for themselves. Most of their knowledge comes from preachers & predetermined doctrines that have been passed down. They have discovered few if anything themselves through the Spirit's teaching because they have signed up for the wrong class. They have signed up to be taught by indoctrinated or ego driven religious leaders. Those same religious leaders will deride those who don't preach what or how they preach using the verses above. They will say, "itching ears want to hear easy & happy teachings" but the truth is an itching ear mainly wants to hear what agrees with it already. It doesn't want to hear something new. It doesn't want to be challenged to believe something different.
For thousands of years doctrines (teachings) invented by men have been formulated & propagated. Every denomination & every church thereof has already decided what is true & what is false. There is no room for the Spirit to teach because everyone already has everything down in neat little packaged boxes. The church leaders, church fathers, & church history's most touted theologians are the ones people are taught to listen to directly or indirectly. People walk around as if they are fatherless while the Father longs to lead them Himself but they are imprisoned by lies or are fearful or unwilling to follow Him themselves. The living God has been traded for the dead teachings of men. Religion has hidden or deleted most truth from people's hearts & minds. The truth is what religion desperately seeks to destroy. Instead religion, as if designed by Satan himself, claims to have all the answers. It speaks shame, fear, & death. It sets up its own set of leaders who, knowingly or not, directly usurp the place & work of God in people's lives.
So many people see through religion because it is lifeless, Godless, & loveless. Yet religion has claimed the concept of God for its own so people who reject religion often reject the concept of God. Religion seeks only to devour & deceive the many well intentioned people who choose to adhere themselves to it. The dangerous few who tell the truth are continually told to be silent. Even some who know the truth fear what would happen if other people knew it. My God is The Truth & He sets people free. Freedom is the enemy of religion because religion enslaves people & causes them to act like shame filled beggars who plead for God's mercy and forgiveness as if Christ had never died & rose again. Religion empties the cross of its power. At most the cross is taught as a ticket to a far off heaven.
You can fit a lot of dirt & rock into a box but you can't fit the whole planet earth in there. Likewise you can find truth while in religion & its systems but you can't find the vast majority of it in there. Knowing truth lets us experience freedom. There isn't much freedom inside of a box so there can't be much truth either. Each doctrine is a box as well, prohibiting anything that disagrees with it. After enough time in religion people themselves become box like, excluding any ideas or people who don't fit into their box. As sad as it is, the box of religion, its systems, & its doctrines will always restrict truth, leaving most of it outside. All of us are ignorant about something and there are countless things we could be deceived about too. Who do you trust more, ignorant, deceived men, alive or dead, who have followed their own itching ears or our all knowing, all loving, completely trustworthy Father?
