<p>2:14 <em>Of these things put them in remembrance, instructing them in the sight of the Lord, that they do not fight about words, to no profit, to the catastrophic destruction of those that hear them</em>- The &quot;them&quot; in view appear to be the teachers at Ephesus. The fact the Lord later commends this church in his letter to them indicates that Timothy successfully obeyed Paul's command here. The teachers were to be redirected towards the basic issues of the Gospel and the implications which arise from it, rather than using their teaching ministry to provoke profitless arguments about words and meanings. Such teachers would lead to the eternal destruction of those who heard them. And this is a profound warning to those right wing groups whose teachers have filled them with third hand garbled stories about &quot;the original Hebrew actually means...&quot; whatever, and demanding everyone accepts their particular peculiar take on a matter of semantics. This warning was especially required in Ephesus, which was under attack from Judaizers who would have insisted that they had superior knowledge of the Hebrew language, and would easily have dominated the Gentile audience with various arguments about Hebrew words. The wicked will be &ldquo;overthrown&rdquo; in the final condemnation (2 Pet. 2:6)- but this is the very same word used for &lsquo;apostasy&rsquo; or &lsquo;subversion&rsquo; (AV) or &quot;catastrophic destruction&quot;. If we apostatize, we are overthrowing or condemning ourselves and others ahead of time. Israel in the wilderness &quot;rejected&quot; the land- and so they didn't enter it (Num. 14:31 RV).</p>