<p>3:6 <i>For of these are they that creep into houses and take captive weak minded women laden with sins</i>- This entering the house churches which comprised the larger Ephesian church and creating havoc is exactly the scene we found in 1 Tim. 5:13. There, according to the reconstruction offered in our notes there, we encountered a group of young widows, the same group of gaudily dressed prostitutes within the church who were slammed in 1 Tim. 2, &quot;going about from house to house&quot;. These women were getting more adherents in the house groups which comprised the church at Ephesus. Note how Tit. 1:13 speaks of a similar scenario, whereby the church at Crete suffered whole 'houses' being subverted; i.e. house groups were taken over by the false teachers. The G.N.B. does well in translating &quot;weak women who are burdened by the guilt of their sins&quot;. Most of the Gentile converts had come from the Diana cult, and perhaps these women had been part of the thousands of Ephesian women involved in the cult prostitution of the Diana cult. The false teaching women kidded these other women that actually they need not feel bad about it, and could join them in essentially the same behaviour under a Christian guise. The 'creeping in' to the house churches is very much the language of Jewish false teachers in Gal. 2:4; Jude 4 and 2 Pet. 2:1. Yet in our reconstruction, these female false teachers were Gentiles who had once been involved in the Diana cult. But we have noted repeatedly that there was a heady mix of Jewish myth and Gentile paganism at Ephesus. The constant fear that 'Satan', the adversary, would use the situation refers to the organized Jewish campaign to undermine Christianity. And they would be eager to use the women who were involved in this false teaching.</p><p><i>Led away by various lusts- </i>This along with the &quot;sins&quot; earlier in the verse are fairly obviously sexual in character. The false teaching sisters of 1 Tim. 5, who feature here too, were therefore offering some kind of justification for sexual misbehaviour. We note that by the time the Lord wrote His letter to Ephesus in Rev. 2, the problem had been resolved. But it was not resolved immediately, for between the first and second letters to Timothy, the problem was still present.</p>