2 Timothy 4:3

Ear-Tickling Messages

Unfortunately, preachers with ear-tickling messages are all too abundantly available. “In periods of unsettled faith, skepticism, and mere curious speculation in matters of religion, teachers of all kinds swarm like the flies in Egypt. The demand creates the supply. The hearers invite and shape their own preachers. If the people desire a calf to worship, a ministerial calf-maker is readily found.”

Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament, 4 vols. (New York: Scribner’s 1900), 4:321, quoted in Ashamed of the Gospel, John F. MacArthur, Jr., 1993, Crossway Books, p. 36