In These Final Times

(2 Timothy 3: 3 - 5) But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of stress. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, inhuman, implacable, slanderers, profligates, fierce, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding the form of religion but denying the power of it. Avoid such people.

It certainly seems that those days are here, the world has become a cesspool of humanity exhibiting all of those noxious characteristics. We are told that they “hold the form of religion but deny the power of it,” meaning that for the most part they follow the laws of the land, most of which are based on the commandments of God, but that they deny the existence of the Creator and worship the created and the works of their own hands rather than the Creator. Their righteousness, such as it is, comes not from God but from themselves. We are admonished to avoid such people because they are in diametric opposition to us and can only continue to inflict emotional and even physical harm on true believers.  

(2 Peter 3: 3 - 4) First of all you must understand this, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things have continued as they were from the beginning of creation.”

Scoffers fail to recognize that we are all finite beings, our lives having a beginning and an end and so it seems to them that the recorded crucifixion and resurrection of Christ which occurred some two thousand years ago and the promise of His return has been long forgotten by the powers of heaven. The wheels of time and man’s progress just keeps on turning as always and that man’s religious beliefs must therefore all be just a wishful myth.

(2Peter 3: 8 - 9) But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow about his promise as some count slowness, but is forbearing toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.

God's kingdom is not of this world and therefore is not governed by time. God lives in the forever present, not the past or the future, just the continual now. Only humans have a limited past and a limited future because we are governed by time.

Micah 7: 2 - 7) The godly man has perished from the earth, and there is none upright among men; they all lie in wait for blood, and each hunts his brother with a net. Their hands are upon what is evil, to do it diligently; the prince and the judge ask for a bribe, and the great man utters the evil desire of his soul; thus they weave it together. The best of them is like a brier, the most upright of them a thorn hedge. The day of their punishment, has come; now their confusion is at hand. Put no trust in a neighbor, have no confidence in a friend; guard the doors of your mouth from her who lies in your bosom; for the son treats the father with contempt, the daughter rises up against her mother, the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; a man’s enemies are the men of his own house. But as for me, I will look to the Lord, I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me.

The governments of nations are all corrupt from the top on down, there is no-one who is trustworthy anymore, and sadly this extends to the smallest unit of government which is the family. However there is hope, and I cannot have put this any better than the Apostle Paul did in the following excerpts from his letter to the Romans because it speaks to us of this very day and hour as we suffer the indignities heaped on us by every human agency even including our own family members. However we are admonished by Christ himself to pray for them, it is a required exercise of faith.

(Mark 11: 24 - 25) Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against any one; so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses. 

(Romans 8: 3 - 7)  For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; 

(Romans 8: 31 - 35) What then shall we say to this? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, will he not also give us all things with him? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies; who is to condemn? Is it Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us? Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

(Romans 8: 38 - 39) I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.