2 Timothy 3: 1-9: The last days.(please click here for todays passage)

I’ve often been asked this question (or something like it): ‘’I think we must be in the last days don’t you pastor?’’ What the people who ask this question mean is that they believe we are in ‘the last of the last days’ just before Jesus returns. I don’t know whether or not that is the case. I’m not going to join the ranks of the speculators and date-setters. What I do know is that we are nearer to Christ’s second coming than we were when we first believed, and we should always live in the light of His return – a reality someone described as living ‘’in the future tense.’’

Let me make one or two observations:

  • Biblically speaking, we have been living in ‘’the last days’’ (1) for more than two thousand years. A study of this expression in the New Testament will show that it refers to the entire period between Jesus’ first and second comings. Paul was referring to people who were around in his day when he wrote these words – false teachers (5b-9). He wasn’t limiting his thoughts to two thousand years down the road. I very much doubt that he was thinking beyond his own times;
  • We can use these words as a check-list. Are we like this in anyway? If we see any of these characteristics in ourselves let’s declare war on them and, in God’s strength, put them ‘out on the street’. There should be no home for them; no welcome mat put out by you and me;
  • In particular, be aware of the danger of having an empty shell of a religion, with no heart, no nucleus, no centre (5). It is possible for Pentecostal, Charismatic and Evangelical churches to have a ‘’form of godliness’’, but to lack true life-changing power – form without fullness. That thought scares me. I don’t want ‘’Ichabod’’ (meaning ‘’the glory has departed’’) to be written over our church or my ministry;
  • There will be people in our day also who are always learning but never seem to fully respond to the truth (7). We should not surprised. It happened, and it will happen.