1But know this: that in the last days, grievous times will come. 2For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, 3without natural affection, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, fierce, not lovers of good, 4traitors, headstrong, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5holding a form of godliness but having denied its power. Turn away from these, also. 6For some of these are people who creep into houses and take captive gullible women loaded down with sins, led away by various lusts, 7always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. 8Even as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these also oppose the truth, men corrupted in mind, who concerning the faith are rejected. 9But they will proceed no further. For their folly will be evident to all men, as theirs also came to be.
10But you followed my teaching, conduct, purpose, faith, patience, love, steadfastness, 11persecutions, and sufferings—those things that happened to me at Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra. I endured those persecutions. The Lord delivered me out of them all. 12Yes, and all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. 13But evil men and impostors will grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. 14But you remain in the things which you have learned and have been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them. 15From infancy, you have known the holy Scriptures which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. 16Every Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness, 17that each person who belongs to God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.
The Lycaonian city of Lystra appears six times in the Bible (Acts 14:6, 8, 21; 16:1, 2; 2 Tim. 3:11). Located approximately twenty-five miles south by south-west of Iconium, this city was originally a Roman colony, colonized by Roman army veterans, under Augustus Caesar in 26 B.C. The colony was founded on the route called Via Sebaste to provide protection from hostile mountain tribes.
Inscriptions dated to the era before Paul's arrival, as well as the Roman poet Ovid's Metamorphoses (8.616-724), describe the gods Zeus and Hermes wandering about the city as unwelcomed, unadorned visitors. After Paul healed a crippled man (Acts 14:2-6) so that he could leap (vs. 10) for all to see, Lystrans (connecting the myth with the reality of Paul's miracle) wrongly concluded that Paul (the chief speaker) and Barnabas were actually Hermes (the messenger god) and Zeus respectively, and brought sacrificial bulls and garlands to worship them. Led by the priest of the temple of Zeus outside the city (14:13), the residents cried out in Lycaonian, "The gods have become like men and have come down to us" (Acts 14:11)! After Paul refused such idolatry (14:14-18) the fickle crowd degenerated, at the instigation of unbelieving Jews (14:19), into a angry, violent mob. In a public riot (cf. 2 Tim 3:11), they stoned Paul, dragged him outside the city, and left him for dead (Acts 14:19). Nonetheless, Paul later returned with Silas on his second missionary journey, recruiting Timothy, who was highly regarded by the brethren in Iconium and Lystra, and whose father was Greek (Acts 15:40-16:4). Paul would later write the two epistles to Timothy, his son in the faith (1 Tim. 1:2).