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Summer 2026“See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. For in Him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.” (Colossians 2:8-9 ESV).
We live in a time where truth is under assault from every direction. Truth is no longer seen as something that is absolute, or even objective, truth is now viewed by most society as something that is subjective and subject to change at a moments notice when people desire to justify their way of living.
There is no doubt that we are living in the time that the Scriptures speak of when Paul tells Timothy, “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers.” (2 Timothy 4:3 NKJV).
Rather than going to church on Sunday to hear what the Word of God says on a subject, or studying it for themselves, people flock to online influencers and content creators. Anyone can be a Bible scholar when all you want to hear is someone support the lie you want to believe.
There is no need for true Bible doctrine according to many, because “doctrine divides.” Doctrine does divide. It divides truth from error. Doctrine is not in its purest form some man-made teaching. True doctrine is extracted and harmonized from all the Bible passages on a given subject. Those passages are then fit together and measured against the rest of the Bible to make sure there is no error in the conclusions you have arrived at when harmonizing the Scriptures. Yet we find ourselves in a culture which has no desire to hear sound doctrine.
We are raising the next generation and sending them out as sheep among the wolves in many cases. We have not properly prepared those around us for the attacks of this world because we have failed to properly prepare ourselves for the world that we now live in. We must guard against the attempts of the world to take us, and the future generations captive through the lies and deceit that are so often presented as facts.
In Colossians 2:8-9 the Apostle Paul tells the church at Colosse, the Church at Laodicea, and by extension the faithful of all ages, “See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. For in Him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.”
We have allowed the world to take too many of us captive with its philosophy and empty deceit. I think of those who are graduating and getting ready to head off to colleges and I truly worry for them because of the wolves that lurk in the halls of “higher learning.”
What the Apostle Paul was dealing with was the false doctrine of the Gnostics, called Gnosticism. The Gnostics believed that all flesh was bad, and therefore Jesus did not actually come in the flesh and physically die for our sins, but rather He was merely a spirit being. They also believed in what they called secret knowledge, or gnosis in the Greek. They sought secret knowledge to unlock the divine spark to achieve salvation.
Not much has changed in two thousand years, we have merely changed the names to protect the guilty! Today we have many people who believe that they possess secret knowledge, knowledge that you must receive to ascend to higher levels of consciousness.
The mystery religions of the paganism of Paul’s day have never really gone away. The world still seeks to corrupt minds with its philosophy, empty deceit, human traditions, and elemental spirits.
In his commentary of the Bible, Adam Clarke says of the world’s desire to cheat you (take you captive), “Their goods were the salvation they had received from Christ; and both the Gentile and Jewish teachers endeavored to deprive them of these, by perverting their minds, and leading them off from the truths of Christianity.”
The way to guard against being deceived and taken captive is in the recognition of who Jesus Christ is. Colossians 2:9 says of Christ, “For in Him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.” Once you come to an understanding of who Christ truly is, that He is God, you will understand why you need Him.
God came down and robed Himself in flesh and died for us so that He might deliver us from the bondage of sin. He indwells believers. Christ in you changes everything. Do not let the world take you captive, surrender to Christ today.
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