The Last Days

242 - Today's Prime Time Devo comes from 2Ti 3:1-5, “But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: 2 For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, 3 unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, 4 traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away! (2 Tim 3:1-5) Paul's last letter to Timothy and here he says, “brace yourself Timothy!” because in the last days perilous times will come. The Greek word for perilous here contains the idea of “reducing strength.” Difficult and even dangerous times will come for the church, periods where its strength will be sapped by these worldly influences. That's why we must turn away from them. A common mistake that we make when reading such passages as these is we assign the last days to our own particular time frame. We look at these behaviors and observe the world around us and say, “the Lord is coming soon.” Now don't get me wrong here! We need that kind of an attitude! We could all use a little more sense of urgency as it concerns the return of the Lord Jesus Christ. You can't help but believe that the writers of the New Testament had that kind of urgency. What we need to understand is that Paul, Timothy, Augustine, Martin Luther, John Calvin, George Washington, you and I, all have lived and live in the last days. Think about it, why warn Timothy of these things if they are reserved for the absolute “Last Days!” These traits of the world have been with us from the get go. Sometimes they are more prevalent than other times, but they will plague the followers of Christ until He returns. When they intensify as they seem to be doing in our world today, the church will face perilous, strength sapping times. But, these cycles have always been with us! Our job is to be prepared at all times, to keep believing and preaching the Gospel, to guard our own behavior against such traits, and knowing that as bad as it may get, the very gates of hell will not prevail. Perilous times will keep coming until the end, and our part is to keep preaching the gospel because Jesus said in Mt 24:14 "And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come.