Does this Scripture apply to all Christians?

Question

2 Timothy 4:2----" Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching."

Answer 1

yes, its saying to spread the word of God

Answer 2

Absolutely. God's message for all Christians is to continue spreading the faith and increasing the number of his disciples. When he says to be ready in and out of season, he is simply saying that you shouldn't limit your spreading His news to only when you feel like it. Spread the Word every time the oppurtunity comes along. Convince people that God is their Maker, their Creator and that he sent His son to save us from eternal death. Rebuke them for their sins and teach them his holy name. A good book to back this up would be The Prayer of Jabez by Bruce Wilinson.

Answer 3

It should. It was written by the Apostle Paul to Timothy who was preaching. We should all be ready at any time to study and teach others about JESUS CHRIST and answer questions both privately and publicly. GOD expects that. Have a great week!
Eds

Answer 4

Your question might matter if the Bible actually were the Word of God.

The canon of the Bible was not formalized until the Council of Carthage -- when it affirmed a resolution of the synod of Hippo recognizing a group of books drawn together and claimed as divine by Bishop Anathasius. Anathasius did not even coin the word canon until 327 and the Council of Carthage did not formalize the list approved by Hippo until the 390s, and then sent it on to "the Church across the sea" (Rome) for the Pope's approval.

There are no full copies of what is now considered scripture until the 4th century. There are two copies from the 4th century (Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus) together with hundreds of manuscript fragments of various forms (Papyrus and Vellum Manuscripts and Vellum Palimpsests). Overall there are over 5000 copies of at least part of the present canonical Bible that are from the sixth century or earlier. These range from a few verses to whole books, to Bibles that were read in churches. According to Dr. Bart Ehrman, one of the foremost experts in the world on Textual criticism and Textual reconstruction, those manuscripts have between them at least 200,000 differences. Some of those differences are minor, or meaningless -- but some are very important and would change core Christian doctrines like the Virgin birth of our Lord and his divinity -- among others.

One does not need to be an expert to see that the Bible is fiction, and not the Word of God however. Even the American Bible Society explains scriptural accreation as starting with Hebrew tribesmen telling stories around a campfire. That is exactly where the earliest parts of the Bible started -- then it was expanded through midrash and so forth.

Looking at the received texts, the idea of Sola Scriptura becomes evidently ludicrous. The Bible says that the world has corners (Isaiah 11:12) and that it sets on pillars (I Samuel 2:8). It says that God accepted a human sacrifice -- he may have prevented Isaac's, but he allowed a general to sacrifice his own daughter without even a murmur, the text giving tacit support to the idea that having given his word, the man had to kill his child. (Judges 11:30-39). It clearly maintains that genocide is often commanded by God (Joshua 10:40-42 and I Samuel 15: 2, 3 and 8) and that, after killing all the adults in a race, taking the female children as sex slaves is permissible (Numbers 31: 17-18).

The God revealed by the Bible is not only both a liar who doesn't know the natural laws of his own world, and a monster, as shown above -- but he has no real regard, even for his own people, whom he forces into cannibalism (Leviticus 26: 27-29) when he is mad at them; or his priests, whose faces he wipes with dung (Malachi 2:1-3).

It is not only gays and lesbians that are hated by bible-god. This monstrosity also suggests killing kids who eat or drink too much (Deuteronomy 21: 18-21), and says that if he is angry with parents he will kill their children (Leviticus 26:22) and he blames things upon children whose great-great-great grandfathers committed the things being blamed on the kids (Exodus 20: 5).

Putting it in a word, bible-god is a monstrosity, a horrific demiurge of evil. Something that even he admits ( Isaiah 45:7 ) [Furthermore, the word used in Hebrew for evil, the word ra' is widely conceded to mean a number of different things: It can mean "wickedness," "mischief," "bad," "trouble," "hurt," "sore," "affliction," "ill," "adversity," "harm," "grievous," and "sad." So no matter what particular interpretation is given of this word -- it has profoundly negative implications. The idea that god is sovereign over the affairs of man makes this even worse, because no matter what interpretation it has, it indicates that bible-god deliberately does harm.]; evil about which he sometimes changes his mind (Exodus 32:14). What a font of unchanging morality -- that almighty God can decide to kill an entire people, and then be talked out of it by a human servant... Furthermore, it is obvious, if God can change his mind, then even if the Bible were not full of errors and horrors, you could not trust that God had not changed his mind on any other issue in it.

So, yes, I suppose if one wants to take as truth a book that says that beetles have four legs instead of six (Leviticus 11: 21-23) and that rabbits chew their cud [which they do NOT] (Deuteronomy 14:7) and if you are willing to, having accepted it as truth, overlook the fact that bible-god routinely changed his mind (I can show you other instances if you wish) then yeah, I suppose its words would matter and people therefore would be going to hell.

I, on the other hand, while a Christian (as in Christ follower) am NOT a literalist, and do not think that a book of bronze age myths owing heavily to the Sumerian and Egyptian myths in the Old Testament and to a collection of pagan faiths, particularly Mithraism in the New Testament matters at all.

Christianity is centered around love, faith in Christ, and Eucharist. At best the Bible is sacred because of its place in the life of the early church and should be regarded as holy myth -- stress on the myth. And what is a myth? It is fiction.

Regards,

Reynolds
Schenectady, NY
http://www.rebuff.org
[e-mail]

Answer 5

A true Christian is to be like a lamp, the light should not be placed at the bottom of a hill under cover so that no one may see, but instead at the top of the hill for all to see. We are the light of Christ.

Answer 6

Though I have not been a Christian since I was young, I believe the entire New Testament- along with Christian interpretation of the Old- is intended for all Christians to apply.

Answer 7

yes. We all have a ministry to "preach" whether it be in a pulpit, with a musical instrument, a testimony, and etc. The Bible speaks of a "fivefold ministry" of pastors, preachers, evangelists, prophets and apostles, but even so, it's much broader than that!

Answer 8

Paul wrote this letter to Timothy, not to a body of believers. (The difference between a pastoral letter and a general epistle)
Therefore, we need wisdom to determine what instructions are to be followed by all believers and what are specific to Timothy.

concerning this scripture, I believe it applies to all believers, although every believer's capacity for ministry - their calling - differs.

god bless

Answer 9

Yes, you can do it without insulting other religion or trying to convert everybody around you to Christian.
Preach the love of God and love of Jesus, you don't have to preach the doctrines of your religion.
Best way of preaching is show how Jesus changed your life, by living a holy, happy, honest, righteous life!

Answer 10

Why wouldn't it? Paul is exhorting us to tell others what we know about Christ. We should always be ready to share because you don't know when an opportunity will present itself. We should also be prepared to help guide another Christian when we see them falter.

Keep searching the truth.

Answer 11

The Scripture is God's Word to all Christians and non Christians. It applies to "man-kind". Anyone who hears the Word and reads the Word, should expect to hear God speaking.