1 But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. 2 For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, 4 treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people.
My whole church knows that I ride a bicycle to work. I have been hit with belts, had bottles thrown at me and had cars purposely act like they were going to hit me, then swerve at the last second. I have had people call me names, speed up to a ridiculous speed to miss me by inches and throw beer on me. I have seen them treat their fellow motorists with contempt. Are things as bad as they can get? I don't think so.
Mankind still has people who are loving and will care for you with amazing love. I have had people offer to help me when my bike chain broke, give me the right of way when it wasn't mine to take and wave at me just to be friendly. There are a lot of good and godly people left.
My tendency is to focus on the bad people and say: "Look, it must be the last days." I point out the difficulty and the people being lovers of self and think that I might be the only holy person left. What a joke! There are so many others who sacrifice for the Lord more than me. There are so many others that have a closer walk with Him.
Yes, all the things that Paul mentioned exists today. People are all the bad things he said they would become. However, I think there were people just as bad in Paul's day. These people have always existed.Why else would Paul tell his readers to avoid such people.
We tend to remember the past fondly. We also think things are currently bad. Have you ever thought that Paul was telling us that we are already in the last days? Maybe this is just the nature of the people who don't know Jesus. Thus, we should always be prepared for Jesus to return. We don't have to wait for things to get worse.
On the other hand, things may be as bad as they will get because things will never improve for those who don't know the Lord. Some of them are good people but the tendency is to be selfish. Many of those who don't know the Lord will be like that. Many of the ones who do know the Lord will be so far away from Him that they will act selfishly.
Maybe things have never changed. Maybe the overall world never changes until Jesus returns. What do you think?
No comments:
Post a Comment