We're doing a verse by verse study through the book of First Timothy and as we continue in our study through this book, we come this morning to 1 Timothy chapter 4, verse 6, and my goal, this morning is to try to cover, verse 6 and 7. And the title of the message, this morning is Preventing Apostasy, preventing apostasy. And we'll get everything we're going to say essentially from, versus 4, through, 6. Last week we heard a stunning announcement, from the text that we covered, and that is regarding the inevitability of apostasy.
Today we're going, Focus on a more positive nature on how we can actually prevent apostasy in ourselves and in others. As we begin this morning, let's let's take a few minutes to think on a parallel track just in the physical realm. This past week, one of the things that grabbed a lot of the headlines was the death of Senator Ted Kennedy. And I believe it was on Wednesday this week that I read a headline that said something like this, Ted Kennedy dies of brain cancer at age 77.
He had been diagnosed with, brain cancer about 14 months ago and fought that, and eventually succumbed, to that. And politics aside, headlines like that, that have the C word in it, remind us of how prevalent cancer is, this dreaded blight, in the world, today. In fact, let me just ask for a raise of hands. How many of you would say that you have been diagnosed with any form of cancer or someone you love and care very deeply about, family or friend, has been diagnosed with cancer?
Raise your hand. See, basically, every hand, in this room goes up when we ask that question. All of us have been touched by, cancer. I was reading this week that the American Cancer Society says one out of every two men and one out of every three women will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime....
