Preparation For Suffering
By John Fast
“But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come.” – 2 Timothy 3:1
Dear Reader,
I do not know who you are, nor do you know who I am, but I have something of utmost importance to say to you. It concerns the times in which we live and the danger they pose to your precious and immortal soul. I do not know whether you are old or young, rich or poor, educated or uneducated, liberal or conservative, Baptist or Buddhist, Methodist or Muslim, Protestant or Catholic, religious or irreligious. But I do know that you have an eternal soul that will either be lost or saved. You will either suffer eternal torment in a real hell, or you will enjoy eternal life with God in heaven. If some of what I say in the following series of studies seems to you harsh and censorious it is because I have a deep concern for the glory of Jesus Christ, for your eternal soul, and for the abysmal and abominable state of professing Christianity today.
I have no agreement with those who speak nothing but peace and pleasant words, and withhold from people the terrible fact that their soul may be eternally lost. I am one of those old-fashioned and obsolete pastors who believe the entire Bible and everything it contains from cover to cover. I speak strongly because I feel deeply. Time is too short, life is too uncertain, the times are too dangerous, and there is too much false security, false religion, and counterfeit Christianity to permit a false charity, or to be concerned with standing on ceremony or political correctness. It would be a waste of time to list all the forms of godliness which now dominate the greater part of professing Christendom. At the risk of offending, and knowing full well that what I say will be dismissed by most, I speak plainly. I am fully aware that it is a thankless task to write such things in times like these, but I desire to be innocent of the blood of all men (Ac 20:26; Ezk 3:18).
The Apostle Paul’s warning to Timothy which heads this paper provides the impetus for this series of studies. It is a warning to all professing Christians of imminent danger. It is not my intention in these studies to frighten anyone with imaginary dangers and doomsday predictions. I am not prognosticating the soon return of Christ for His people (although all of God’s true children should be living in constant anticipation and readiness for Christ’s imminent return). I am not interested in, nor am I qualified to tell you how to protect your money and possessions in the face of some impending economic, political, and social collapse. I have no intention of railing against any social injustice or any threat, whether real or fabricated, to your religious liberties. I am not going to advise you on how to survive some prediction of a looming environmental disaster. I am speaking of things as they are right now, not warning of things that might happen in the future. My concern is for your eternal soul, not simply your temporal happiness, comfort, pleasures, and riches. My care is for where you will spend eternity, not merely for the quality of your brief life in this world. My prayer, hope, and intention is to awaken everyone who reads these studies to the spiritual realities of the times in which we live. They are times which the Bible declares to be “difficult; dangerous; perilous” times.
Dare to Compare
If professing Christians would only compare the signs given in Scripture that distinguish a season as “difficult” with the conditions that actually prevail all around us, there can be no doubt in the mind of any honest and thinking person who takes the Bible seriously that we are now in such a season. It is perhaps the most dangerous season mankind has ever known because the spiritual conditions that prevail are the result of sins willfully committed against so long an exposure to known truth, over so long a period of time, and in the face of so many unheeded warnings. The worst sign of all is the present abysmal spiritual decay which exists among professing Christians. This makes all the rest of the signs of the times much worse. Very little of true faith and true Christianity is to be found among the mass of professing Christians beyond the mere name. An ordinary profession of a belief in God in general, to be ranked among the children of God, to attend a place of worship, to have a reputation among men, is now thought good enough to carry every professor to heaven. But a name is only a name, and a form is merely a form, and neither will ever survive in dangerous times.
We live in an age of unreality. Authenticity is rare. It is an age where it has become almost impossible to distinguish the fake from the genuine with the naked eye. We have manufactured stone, imitation wood, and realistic-looking fake diamonds. We have artificial flavors, and sugar, egg, meat, and milk substitutes. It is the age of fake news, adulterated food, and counterfeit Christianity. It is an age of the enhanced and the implant. It is an age where virtual reality has replaced actual reality, and a time in which people create their own reality on social media and represent it to the world as authentic. Children are sheltered from the reality of failure, disappointment, and the consequences of their bad behavior and foolish decisions. When reality does invade a person’s faux world they discover their life has been built on a foundation of sand, and find themselves ill-equipped to cope with reality. But there is one unreality that is to be avoided more than all others, and that is a spiritual unreality. It consists of the fond hopes and dreams with which so many please themselves of continued peace, safety, tranquility, and prosperity, even when the sins of the times are so openly egregious, and the signs of the times are so dismal as they are now.
A form of godliness has been kept up, but its power has become so scarce, so misrepresented, and so counterfeited, that when the genuine is taught and seen, it is so outside the norm of what people have come to think of as Christianity that they think it is unChristian. Darkness has been stealthily, imperceptibly, and increasingly substituted for light and light for darkness (Is 5:20). The god which people have made for themselves is not the God of the Bible, but of the prevailing culture, “Can man make gods for himself? Yet they are not gods!” (Jer 16:20). When people under a form of godliness live securely in sin, they cannot be prepared for dangerous times. They must first be awakened to their true condition and be deeply convicted of their sin, guilt, danger, and humbled to the dust. Today the mass of professing Christians deny that God still judges sin, at least not their sin, because such a God is inconsistent with the god they have created and worship. Therefore, “As they have chosen their own ways, and their soul delights in their abominations, so I will choose their punishments, and I will bring on them what they dread, because I called, but no one answered; I spoke, but they did not listen. And they did evil in My sight, and chose that in which I did not delight” (Is 66:3, 4). A mere form of godliness can provide nothing but a deadly false security, especially in dangerous times.
People today think and live as if the mere denial of the fact that God judges sin – especially sin that is willful, calculated, and intentional against known truth and in the face of all the Bible’s warnings, and against all the advantages under which they live – that their denial places them out of reach of God’s judgments. Since they believe that God loves everyone, they believe that God will judge no one. They cannot reconcile their conception of the God who is love with the God who is also “a consuming fire” (Hb 12:29), so they reject the latter to preserve their own conception of the former. They deny that God hates all sin wherever He sees it (Hab 1:13); that He sees all sin wherever it is; and judges and punishes all sin wherever it is not covered and pardoned by a true faith in the true Lord Jesus Christ. They reject the God who condemns everyone that is not in Christ Jesus through a living and active faith (Rm 8:1).
To continue in this self-deception is itself a judgment because instead of being softened and awakened out of their false security by the signs of the times, the times only harden them in their sin and blind them to their true condition. They speak peace to their souls while indulging themselves in their sins, their wrong beliefs, their false and dreamy securities, and their various forms of godliness. The more they are warned, and the more they suffer from the consequences of their sin, and the worse the times become, then the more they harden their hearts, the more tightly they cling to their sin, and sink deeper into their depravity, “they have gone deep in depravity…He will remember their iniquity, He will punish their sin” (Hos 9:9); “A man who hardens his neck after much reproof will suddenly be broken beyond remedy” (Pv 29:1). The greater part of professing Christians have been told, and so they think, that it is an easy thing to become and be a Christian, and that Christianity is an easy task, only to find out too late that they have been deceived. It is the way which leads to eternal destruction that is easy, broad, and adaptable to virtually all views and opinions, therefore it is the most well-trod, the most crowded, the most prevalent, and the most popular (Mt 7:13).
Be Prepared
To be forewarned is to be forearmed. It is wisdom to prepare your place of shelter before the storm comes. It is prudent to determine the nature of the foundation on which your house rests before the storm hits. Satan and the mind of man have been inventing false Christs since the time of the apostles which multitudes have made the foundation of their faith (2 Cor 11:4). You will have need of a great stock of genuine faith in dangerous times. The necessity of faith is seldom seen, felt, and exercised in a fair season; that is, in times of ease, prosperity, and religious tolerance. The testimony of Jesus Christ, history, and experience all prove that a fair-weather faith will not withstand even the normal and everyday trials of life (Mt 13:18-22). How much less will such a faith withstand the winds and perils of dangerous times, “And if it is with difficulty that the righteous is saved, what will become of the godless man and the sinner” (1 Pt 4:18)? Your foundation must be firmly anchored in the Son of God, His infallible word, and in sound doctrine if you are to avoid being tossed about by every wind of false doctrine and the trickery and craftiness of false teachers. A dangerous season will test your foundation when the storm of counterfeit Christianity and antichristian wind and rain blows against it. A mere form of godliness is a foundation of sand that will disintegrate from under you in perilous times. It is folly to wait until the storm bursts upon your house to wonder about the stability of your foundation. To assume you are immune from the dangers of the times, and presume that your house will survive the perils of the season, is sheer self-deception.
It is when people “are saying, ‘Peace and safety!’ then destruction will come upon them suddenly” (1 Th 5:3). If you think you can put off your preparations until your foundation actually begins to crumble under the dangers of a perilous season, you are sorely self-deceived. This is equivalent to thinking you can put off turning to Christ for salvation until you are on your deathbed. This is presumption, not saving faith. A hope based on a deathbed profession of faith is a slim thread on which to hang your eternal soul, yet most people will cling to their false hopes until their house actually collapses and crushes them. Will God not justly say to you in such a season, “Where are their gods, the rock in which they sought refuge?…Let them rise up and help you, let them be your hiding place!” (Dt 32:37, 38)? Dangers and troubles are much more the worse when they come upon us unexpected and catch us by surprise. Just a few years ago many people went to great extremes to prepare for the theoretical Y2K disasters which never materialized, but how very few make even the barest preparations for their precious and eternal soul, even when the signs which make for dangerous times are so pervasive and obvious.
The Holy Spirit has told us that, “There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven” (Eccl 3:1). Jesus said that it is an evil and adulterous generation that will not discern the signs of the times, but instead they demand other signs (as if they would actually heed them) than the ones God has already graciously given in His word (Mt 16:3, 4). A secure person in a dangerous season is a person who is under the influence of a powerful spiritual deception. It is an unchanging principle of human nature for people to feel “secure in your wickedness” (Is 47:10). They look around and see that “those who provoke God are secure” (Job 12:6). Therefore they tell themselves, “The Lord does not see, nor does the God of Jacob pay heed” (Ps 94:7). They are blinded to the fact that no one can “hide himself in hiding places, so I do not see him, declares the Lord” (Jer 23:24). They do not stop to question the stability of the foundation on which their life rests. They assume their own wisdom, opinions, practices, and forms of godliness provide a solid enough footing on which to build their lives, that is until the storm bursts and shows them to have been horribly and tragically mistaken. Like unbelieving Israel, they stumble over the stumbling stone (Rm 9:32). “When the whirlwind passes, the wicked are no more, but the righteous has an everlasting foundation” (Pv 10:25).
People’s habits, practices, opinions, and customs may change from age to age, but neither the heart of man nor the nature of God ever changes. “The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous runs into it and is safe. A rich man’s wealth is his strong city, and like a high wall in his own imagination” (Pv 18:10). They do not consider that, “Riches do not profit in the day of wrath,” (Pv 11:4), and that it is a false hope that rests “on the uncertainty of riches” (1 Tm 6:17). They ignore, neglect, and doubt God’s warnings, “Cursed is the man who trusts in mankind and makes flesh his strength,” (Jer 17:5), and, “Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and clever in their own sight” (Is 5:21). It is a standing principle of human nature that people still tell themselves, “The overwhelming scourge will not reach us when it passes by, for we have made falsehood our refuge and we have concealed ourselves with deception” (Is 28:15). Such is the dangerous false security which the various and multiple forms of godliness that exist today have instilled within the mass of professing Christians. The dangers which the season poses to their soul are hid from their eyes.
Four Fundamental Truths
In this study I want to impress on your heart and mind four truths contained in Paul’s admonition to Timothy. It is essential that we understand these truths if we are to not only heed their warning, but also to prepare ourselves for the evil and dangerous times in which we now live, “The prudent sees the evil and hides himself, but the naïve go on, and are punished for it” (Pv 22:3; 27:12). If you have any care and love for your eternal soul you dare not ignore the Bible’s warnings, nor the signs of the season in which we live.
First, is the warning itself, “But realize this,”
Second, there is the nature of the times themselves, they are “difficult times”, or seasons.
Third, is the certainty of these times or seasons; they “will come”.
Fourth, is the time of their coming; they will come “in the last days”.
First Fundamental Truth
First, is the warning itself, “But realize this,”. The verb translated “realize” means, “to know; to perceive; to understand; to learn by observation and experience”. This is the most important thing; to realize the nature of the times in which you live. It is a command, and it is in the present tense indicating that this is something of which Timothy is to constantly be aware. Paul is telling Timothy that in addition to all the other instructions given to him, it is Timothy’s responsibility to be aware of the season in which he lives, and to know the particular and peculiar dangers which such a season presents to God’s people. Timothy is not to overlook, ignore, downplay, whitewash, or manipulate the signs of the times and the danger they represent to professing Christians. He is to warn of the judgments which the times invite and deserve, to recognize the hand of God in the times, and to prepare God’s people for the dangers of the season in which they live. God’s judgments always begin with His professing people (1 Pt 4:17).
Dangerous times are no time for the faithful servant of God to be blind, negligent, and silent (Eccl 3:7). Like Jeremiah we should say, “My soul, my soul! I am in anguish! Oh, my heart! My heart is pounding in me; I cannot be silent…Disaster on disaster is proclaimed” (Jer 4:19, 20). One of the primary and fundamental duties of a shepherd is to be a watchman. He is to watch for and guard against all that endangers the sheep. One faithful pastor of the early twentieth-century, Charles Jefferson, wrote,
“There are old errors which are as fierce as wolves and pitiless as hyenas; they tear faith and hope and love to pieces and leave churches, once prosperous, mangled and half dead. Or it may be that new conceptions of God and the world are rising and blazing like suns in the firmament of the world of thought…Instruction is needed to prepare men to refute changed ideas of the Scripture, or inspiration, and of authority; and the watchman is looking in the other direction.” (Charles Jefferson, The Minister as Shepherd, CLC Publications, 37, 38).
A difficult season is no time to be looking the other way and telling “everyone who walks in the stubbornness of his own heart,…’Calamity will not come upon you’”(Jer 23:17). They are not times in which, under the pretense of some false charity, broadmindedness, and spurious unity, to neglect making a distinction between the holy and profane, and the clean and the unclean (Ezk 22:26). The same fire sent to consume the dross also purifies the gold. “The floods came, and the winds blew, and burst against” the house founded on the Rock as well as against the house built on nothing but sand (Mt 7:25, 26). The wheat as well as the chaff goes through God’s sieve. The Vine-keeper who cuts away the unfruitful branches also prunes the fruitful ones. There is “a time to plant, and a time to uproot what is planted” (Eccl 3:2), and every tree which God has not planted He will uproot (Mt 15:13). In dangerous times it is to be feared that the bulk of professing Christians will find that their faith rests on nothing but a foundation of sand, and that their root is in a shallow profession of faith that cannot endure the scorching heat of difficult times.
From this warning it is clear that it is the duty of all professing Christians, and especially of the shepherds of God’s flock, to anticipate and discern the dangers which face believers in the times in which they live. If we pastors are negligent and fail in this duty to warn people of their dangers, then God will hold us guilty for their blood. Today, many professing Christians are so caught up in hunting for signs, whether real or imagined, of Christ’s imminent return that they totally ignore all the clear and obvious signs and warnings of the times in which they live, and the real and imminent dangers which the times pose to their own souls. Should not the signs of the times arouse those who have been entrusted with the care of souls to a greater seriousness of the dangers which the season poses to the souls under their care? It is a firm principle still today that, “if they had stood in My council, then they would have announced My words to My people, and would have turned them back from their evil way and from the evil of their deeds” (Jer 23:22). By failing to realize the times in which we live, it is to be feared that the bulk of ministers today do not “furnish this people the slightest benefit”, declares the Lord (Jer 23:32). Famous, popular, and celebrity preachers we have in abundance, but shepherds who are watching and guarding their flocks, and who make clear distinctions between the holy and profane, are far and few between. Most are looking the other way. If it were otherwise there would not be the excessive number of false doctrines and forms of godliness that abound and thrive today.
To be insensible of a present difficult season is a security which is condemned throughout the Bible. It is a disposition of heart and mind that God abhors. Nothing is more loathsome to God than a self-confident and secure temperament in dangerous times, “Woe to those who are at ease in Zion, and to those who feel secure in the mountain of Samaria” (Am 6:1; cf. Lk 12:19-21). Such people, whether it is obvious or not, are undoubtedly under the dominion of one or more of the sins which make a season dangerous. Such a secure and insensitive outlook is a certain indication of future eternal ruin. You have the Bible at your fingertips, and in it you can read of all the dangers which your careless way of life produces, but the Bible has no influence on your life. Its signs and warnings do not concern you in the least. You think they do not apply to you. You dismiss them as belonging for another place and time. You attribute all these present signs and dangers to any and all causes other than the sovereign hand of God. Oh, I implore all who may read this that you will not be insensible of, but be affected by the dangers that the season in which we now live presents to your immortal soul! Do not be as Israel who, “turned their back to Me, and not their face; though I taught them, teaching again and again, they would not listen and receive instruction” (Jer 32:33).
Wake up, arouse yourself, shake off your spiritual apathy, and realize that we live in dangerous times! Take seriously the fact that you have an immortal soul. The effects of rejecting God, Jesus Christ, His word, and His gospel are all around us. Rampant, open, and unashamed immorality; uncontrollable and senseless crime and violence; an epidemic of drug use; debauched, atheistic, and godless education and entertainment corrupting the hearts and minds of our children; a multitude of false gospels, false Christs, false shepherds, and false churches; Christless Christianity and forms of godliness without its power; all of it bringing disaster upon disaster, even upon our children, to where even our schools and churches must become armed compounds.
Parents demand that more be done to protect their children’s physical safety, yet remain totally unconcerned that their children’s minds, hearts, and souls are assailed everyday by an education system that is not simply ambivalent to God and His word, but is actively hostile toward them. Parents daily expose their children to the toxic output of a degenerate entertainment industry that targets and corrupts their children, desensitizes their conscience to evil, degrades their souls, and produces and promotes the very evil they fear. They would rather pay for armed guards, buy their children bulletproof backpacks, and control their behavior with drugs, than repent of and forsake their sinful and worldly lives, thinking, opinions, and lifestyles. Parent’s demand that their children’s bodies be protected but show virtually no concern for their precious and immortal souls. They deceive themselves and pacify their conscience by imagining that thirty-minutes of Sunday school and their church’s children’s and youth programs can counter and undo the effects which a continuous stream of ungodliness, lies, deceptions, worldliness, and the influence of their peers and the culture exerts on their hearts and minds. They never stop to consider that more often than not these programs to which they entrust their children are based on and influenced by the same ungodly, unbiblical, humanistic, and worldly principles which they hope to counter and avoid. They simply instill and perpetuate a form of godliness that denies its power. People still sacrifice their children to their idols and make idols out of their children.
People pacify their consciences by ascribing “natural” disasters to “natural” causes, as if it were less terrible to be destroyed by a natural cause than by the God of nature. Most people today are more willing to attribute “natural” disasters to manmade climate change than to the God who sovereignly controls the climate. For safety they take refuge in a practical atheism. They may call these disasters “acts of God” but they never stop to consider why God would have acted in this way. They are forced to exclude the hand of God in these calamities in order to eliminate their fears. So-called “natural” disasters are random events with no connection to a people’s sin, but if they are from the hand of God, then they are meant to be a warning to awaken a people secure in their sin; “unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” (Lk 13:3, 5). These same people will cry out to God to rescue them from a “natural” disaster while at the same time denying the hand of God in the disaster. The god they cry to, their one supreme being, is one supreme nothing.
Yet despite all of this overwhelming amount of clear evidence that as a nation we are under the wrath and judgment of God, instead of producing loud and strong calls for repentance, driving us to our knees, turning us from our wicked ways, forsaking our false religion, various forms of godliness, and futile attempts to indulge our flesh, our love of the world, and to indulge our sin without suffering its consequences, and turning to Jesus Christ in humble repentance, and casting yourself on His grace and mercy to save your soul; instead there is a doubling-down in evil, debauchery, self-indulgence, and false religion. We think and say, “I have peace though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart” (Dt 29:19).
We blame anything and everything conceivable, even inanimate objects, for all the evil and disaster in our midst; everything that is except our own sin of rejecting and repudiating God, His law, His Bible, His Son, and His gospel. All His signs, all His gracious warnings are spurned and attributed to natural and second causes. Instead of humble repentance, most people continue to shake their fist at God, indulge themselves in their pleasures, and dare God to do anything about it. If you are looking for irrefutable evidence of how thoroughly this nation, and even most of professing Christianity, has forsaken the one true God, look no further than the principle of Proverbs 28:4, “Those who forsake the law praise the wicked,”. The extent to which the wicked in this nation are praised, exalted, and honored is clear evidence that God and His word (for you cannot have one without the other) have been forsaken, even by the mass of professing Christians. It is not guns, but sin, people, and the natural wickedness of the human heart that is out of control and without any restraint. When God’s word and His salvation are rejected and corrupted; when His mercy is abused, and His warnings are ignored and scoffed at, it always produces a horrible lack of restraint (2 Chr 28:19; Rm 1:29-31).
Instead of admitting that all the evil we fear and bemoan is a direct consequence of a willful and deliberate rejection of God for our idols, and for the corruption of His word and worship, we continue to seek and contrive our own humanistic solutions to all the evil we fear and see around us. But, “In vain have you multiplied remedies; there is no healing for you” (Jer 46:12). The warning with which Moses warned the people of Israel is applicable to professing Christians today, “know this day that I am not speaking with your sons who have not seen the discipline of the Lord your God….but your own eyes have seen all the great work of the Lord which He did” (Dt 11:2, 7). It is one thing for unbelievers to refuse to see any connection between their sin and its consequences, but when the bulk of professing Christianity refuses to see that it is their own sin, false worship, and their multiplied and accumulated errors, influencing generation after generation, until we now have multiplied forms of godliness, all going by the name of “Christian”, and tailor-made to suit virtually every sort of personal preference, this makes for perilous times indeed (Is 42:23-25).
It only takes a little leaven to eventually leaven an entire lump of dough. Sin always leads to more sin. Lawlessness results in further lawlessness (Rm 6:19). Once Israel began to drift into idolatry, “they sin more and more” (Hos 13:2); “they proceed from evil to evil” (Jer 9:3). A little compromise with the world eventually results in God’s worship becoming nothing more than a carnal form of entertainment, and the sermon becomes a twenty-minute pep-talk. It only takes the introduction of a little false doctrine, a little compromise, a little negligence, a little sin, a little worldliness, and a little human wisdom, until over time they multiply and culminate in a dangerous season. The flesh can only be sown to for so long until from the flesh we must reap corruption (Gal 6:8).
When what was once considered sinful, scandalous, immoral, irreverent, sacrilegious, and heretical by previous generations, even among unbelievers, becomes accepted and the norm in succeeding generations, even among professing Christians, and when the evil lives of the current generation makes the evil of previous generations appear righteous by comparison, we are in dangerous times, “Yet you have not merely walked in their ways or done according to their abominations; but, as if that were too little, you acted more corruptly in all your conduct than they” (Ezk 16:47). When what was once universally known to be evil is now given hearty approval (Rm 1:32), and when doctrines which have been taught and affirmed by all believers for millennia – doctrines such as the eternal conscious torment of unbelievers in a literal hell – are now denied by most professing Christians, even the Pope, to continue to remain blind to the fact that we are in dangerous times is done at the risk of your eternal soul. If the good are not few, and the bad are not very bad, then there is still hope for any nation. But in a nation where the good are comparatively few and the bad are very bad, destruction is unavoidable and there remains little hope of recovery. “Why do you cry out over your injury? Your pain is incurable. Because your iniquity is great and your sins are numerous, I have done these things to you” (Jer 30:15). In such a time the true people of God must prepare themselves for dangerous times.
Where would your soul be right now if it was your life which was suddenly snuffed out by one of the many acts of senseless violence, or cut short by one of the many disasters which has claimed the lives of others? These things do not spring up out of the dust, “Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both good and ill go forth?” (Lam 3:38); “The One forming light and creating darkness, causing well-being and creating calamity; I am the Lord who does all these” (Is 45:7). For a true believer, sudden death brings sudden and certain glory, but for the unconverted professor and sinner sudden death brings sudden and certain hell. Sadly, today such thinking is scoffed at as ignorant superstition, or reviled as a bad archaic doctrine that needs to be discarded, or condemned as heartless and cruel. We have become too wise, too sophisticated for this kind of old-fashioned doctrine. The few voices that are warning you and calling for true repentance are ignored and scoffed at as irrelevant, fanatical, unfeeling, and intolerant, even by the mass of professing Christians. Will nothing drive you to your knees? Will nothing humble the stubborn and rebellious hearts of the mass of professing Christians? Will nothing induce you to forsake your sin, false security, and worldly lives? When will you defile your idols and “scatter them as an impure thing, and say to them, ‘Be gone!’” (Is 30:22)?
The question asked of Israel by the prophet Isaiah can be asked of this nation in general and of professing Christianity in particular, “Where will you be stricken again, as you continue in your rebellion? The whole head is sick, and the whole heart is faint. From the sole of the foot even to the head there is nothing sound in it, only bruises, welts, and raw wounds, not pressed out or bandaged, or softened with oil” (Is 1:5, 6). We are bound and determined to learn the hard way that God is not mocked. We are experiencing the harsh reality of God’s warning, “Your own wickedness will correct you, and your apostasies will reprove you; know therefore and see that it is evil and bitter for you to forsake the Lord your God, and the dread of Me is not in you,” (Jer 2:19). O, I plead with all who may read this; “Return to Him from whom you have deeply defected” (Is 31:6). In dangerous times the true people of God are not discouraged, but encouraged to look to God alone. The world and false religion will never be convinced that “the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding” (Jb 28:28). There is nothing that is despised and rejected more by most people, even by most professing Christians today, than the thought that true wisdom consists, not in some blind optimism and unfounded self-reliance in our own goodness, wisdom, and abilities, but in repentance from sin, and in faith, love, fear, and obedience to Jesus Christ and His word, which is found only in His Bible.
In such a season, not to be looking to Christ in humble repentance and dependence is evidence of a heart which is oblivious to the horrid state and condition of the church of Jesus Christ, and of the danger which the times present to your precious and immortal souls. It is to be feared that the generality of people who profess to be Christians actually live for this world, and rarely think about the next, except in times of a personal crisis or national disaster. Their thoughts and time are primarily taken up with their various pleasures and diversions. Money, honor, position, and power are pursued so they can indulge their worldly desires and pleasures all the more. While they pursue the world and their various lusts, they go on secure in their sin and their assorted forms of godliness, oblivious to the dangers of the season in which they live, and thoughtless about the concerns of eternity. They are careful to plan and prepare for a comfortable retirement, but are wholly negligent in their concern for a blessed eternity. They are always alert for any danger to their worldly and carnal self-interests, but strangely secure and careless in matters that pertain to their immortal soul. In matters that relate to their worldly interests and pleasures they exercise the most diligence, but when it comes to their eternal soul they simply presume all will be well. Will not your carefulness in all your temporal and worldly interests and pleasures rise up in judgment against all your carelessness in your spiritual; especially when God has made it obvious that we are now living in a dangerous season? .
Second Fundamental Truth
A second observation to be made from Paul’s warning is the nature and character of the times themselves, they are “difficult”. The word translated “difficult” is used only two times in the New Testament, the other being Matthew 8:28 where it describes the demon-possessed man as being “exceedingly violent”. The times are difficult because they are “fierce; violent; harsh; grievous; troublesome; dangerous”. They are hard times, hazardous times, perilous times; times in which it is very dangerous and difficult to live, and a season in which people, even Christians, will not be able to escape from suffering a great deal. Do not be deceived into thinking that Christians will be exempt from the sufferings which are the result of living in dangerous times just because you live in a nation that practices religious freedom. To the contrary, it is the abuse of this freedom which is one of the principal causes that make a season dangerous. The greatest dangers will not be to your worldly and temporal interests, but to your eternal soul. Much more will be said of this in the studies to follow.
Third Fundamental Truth
A third truth which needs to be impressed on our minds is the certainty of these seasons; they “will come”. There is no English term which adequately expresses the force of the original Greek word henistmai. It is descriptive of an eagle swooping down on its prey. Our translators gave it the maximum force they could. Paul does not say difficult times “shall come”, as though he is predicting some future event, but that they definitely “will come”. When the conditions which make for dangerous times prevail, then nothing can stop the times from being dangerous, violent, and fierce. It will be a difficult season in which to live because it is a season of God’s certain judicial judgment on such times. “Behold I am bringing disaster on them which they will not be able to escape; though they will cry to Me, yet I will not listen to them” (Jer 11:11).
Nothing can stop, prevent, or soften these judgments, the worst of which are always spiritual in nature. There is no escaping them, especially for those who have habitually sinned and rebelled against known truth. “See to it that you do not refuse Him who is speaking. For if those did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less shall we escape who turn away from Him who warns from heaven” (Hb 12:25) It is these spiritual judgments that make all the other marks of a dangerous season much worse. Judgments such as hardness of heart, blindness of mind, a seared conscience, forms of godliness, and false hopes and securities. Judgments which they that are under them, never feel, see, complain of, nor will they ever be convinced of, even though they are oftentimes obvious to those who realize and discern the signs of the times.
The Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Rome, “And we know that the judgment of God rightly falls upon those who practice such things” (Rm 2:2). Practice what things? The things mentioned in chapter 1:18-32; suppressing God’s truth in unrighteousness (18); failing to honor God as God (21); exchanging the glory of God for gods of their own invention (23); the blatant and open practice of all sorts of immorality and giving “hearty approval to those who practice them”, by those who know “that those who practice such things are worthy of death” (24-32). In other words they knowingly and deliberately practice and approve of all the things they know in their conscience that God abhors. If God inflicts these judgments for the rejection and abuse of what He has made evident and known by the light of nature within their conscience, how much greater will be those judgments for the abuse of the light of the gospel? “Anyone who set aside the Law of Moses dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled underfoot the Son of God,…and has insulted the Spirit of grace” (Hb 10:28, 29)?
If people have neglected, despised, and corrupted so great a salvation (Hb 2:3), because they rest securely in their sins and forms of godliness which they have invented, how can they hope to escape the judgments and dangers of a perilous season? They are blind to the danger such times present to their souls. They will never admit their foundation is built on sand until their house is collapsing around their head, and even then they will blame its collapse on anything and everything except themselves and the ground on which they built. When the conditions which make for perilous times prevail, then it is certain that “difficult times will come”. Because people refuse to see God’s hand in His lesser judgments, they grow worse and worse, and harder and harder, thereby making the times inescapably perilous to their own souls. In such seasons it is to our advantage to see both the wrath of God and His sovereign hand in these judgments, as well as sufficient reasons in ourselves that His judgments are deserved.
Fourth Fundamental Truth
A fourth truth expressed by Paul concerns the time in which these difficult seasons will occur; they are “in the last days”. But what is meant by “the last days”? The “last days” denote God’s final stage in His plan of redemption. They began with the earthly ministry of Jesus Christ, “God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son,” (Hb 1:1, 2); “For He (i.e. Jesus) was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but has appeared in these last times for the sake of you” (1 Pt 1:20). They constitute the entire church age, “Children, it is the last hour; and just as you heard that antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have arisen; from this we know that it is the last hour (1 Jn 2:18); “It is in the last days that you have stored up your treasure!” (Jm 5:3); “in the last days mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts” (2 Pt 3:3).
Within this period known as “the last days”, there will be times and seasons that will be much more difficult than other times. Times where professing Christians begin to succumb to multiplied and accumulated errors, false doctrines and practices, negligence, and the effects of having their minds led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ. Their hearts will be seduced by the deceitfulness of riches, ease, accommodation, and prosperity, and lulled into a dreamy false security. They hold to various forms of godliness that are fashioned to reflect a people’s own conception of God, but deny, reject, and scoff at its power. It is a season in which professing Christians grow increasingly worldly and carnal, resulting in a general spiritual decline, malaise, and degradation.
Over time, these multiplied and accumulated spiritual deteriorations culminate to produce a season in which it is exceedingly treacherous to live, and where not even Christians will be able to escape suffering, no matter how hard they try. Having sown the wind, a time comes for reaping the whirlwind. Having sown to the flesh, a season arises where from the flesh we must reap corruption. Do not let anyone think or say as was once said of the prophet Ezekiel, “he prophesies of times far off” (Ezk 12:27). To the contrary, we are at this very moment living in such a season. Do not demand, as that evil and adulterous generation did, to be shown a sign. Instead, “why do you not analyze this present time?” (Lk 12:56). It should be obvious to all who have eyes to see and ears to hear that we are now living in such a season. To deny we are in such a season is the same as denying the infallibility of Scripture, which is the same as admitting you are not a Christian. “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return to the Lord, and He will have compassion on him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon” (Is 55:7).
Oh, reader let me speak plainly to your conscience concerning the Apostle Paul’s warning. It is no idle warning. It is of utmost importance to your eternal soul, and you ought to examine your own heart to see how it operates in your life. Do you realize the danger which the times in which we live present to your soul? Do you take the signs of the times seriously, or do you demand other signs than those already given? Look around you and consider your situation. Eternity is staring you in the face. Time flies. The season is dangerous. Multitudes have already been given over to a depraved mind to do those things that are not proper (Rm 1:28). Millions are resting secure in their innumerable forms of godliness while continuing to live in their sin. A countless number of professing Christians are trusting in their own works, either in whole or in part, for their salvation. The mass of professing Christians have no true knowledge of God (1 Cor 15:34). Will you continue to sleep on and rest in a dreamy false security? God has given you a command to realize the danger of the times, yet you do not. He has graciously given you marks that plainly identify the season as dangerous, but you dismiss them. He is now alarming a careless world with His judgments, but they make no impression on you, and you attribute them to other causes. Why will you hold fast to your false hopes and forms of godliness? Do not let it be with you like it was with Old Testament Israel, “Why then has this people, Jerusalem, turned away in continual apostasy? They hold fast to deceit, they refuse to return…They have spoken what is not right; no man repented of his wickedness, saying, ‘What have I done?’ Everyone turned to his course” (Jer 8:5, 6). Will you return to live securely in your sin, refusing to repent? If so, how can you hope to escape the judgment of God that rightly falls on those who practice such things (Rm 2:2)? Do not be deceived, the longer God withholds His severest judgments, and the longer His lesser judgments are ignored and attributed to second causes, the heavier His judgment will be when it falls.
To refuse to depart from evil and return to God in faith and love; to reject Jesus Christ as the sole object of our faith, love, reverence, obedience, and delight, is not from some old or former sin; it is not by reason of our original fall into sin, nor is it from our natural hostility to all that is God, but from a new and horrible sin outstripping them all in its guilt and contempt of God. It is a rejection of all the evidence of God’s providential warnings; it is a rejection of the light of the gospel on your conscience and acting against it by your lives. You continue in your sin and excuse, justify, redefine, and make allowances for your sin, even when your sin is clearly exposed as sin, and are invited to forsake your sin and live. It is a rejection of all the Bible’s warnings and signs which mark a season as dangerous. It is a sin against all the privileges and advantages which you enjoy in this nation, making your guilt increase in proportion to the privileges under which you live.
Such is the final rejection of God’s gracious warnings, appeals, and offers in the gospel. Such is the rejection of His love, renewing grace, and atoning blood. Such is the rejection of His clear commands. It has more contempt and malignity in it than all other sins whatsoever. God will send lesser judgments and milder corrections to prevent more severe and destructive ones, but when the lesser only harden, this makes for dangerous times indeed, “You have smitten them, but they did not weaken; You have consumed them, but they refused to take correction. They have made their faces harder than rock; they have refused to repent” (Jer 5:3). Woe to you and all like you if you refuse to realize, and remain willingly ignorant of the times in which we now live so you can continue in your worldly way of life, and hold to your particular form of godliness. For the sake of your own soul, realize the danger which the times in which we now live pose to your precious and immortal soul, and turn in faith to the only One who can save your soul from certain destruction; the only God and Savior Jesus Christ, His blood, and His righteousness.
Finally, if you are one of the few who have been brought by the grace of God to realize the danger of the times in which we live, allow me in closing to give you a few words of exhortation from the heart. When visible Christianity is plagued with the apostasies and the scandalously worldly and immoral lives of professing Christians, and with the worldly, carnal, and greedy corruption which exposes the Christian faith to contempt and ridicule from the world, it falls upon true Christians to prove by their holy and pure lives that all are not this way. It is their obligation to expose all this as the unfruitful deeds of darkness, not biblical Christianity. If some are a blot and stain on the name and doctrines of Jesus Christ, then others are to be to the praise of His glory. The more others are a disgrace to the name and cause of Jesus, the more God expects His true children to honor and adorn it by their lives of holiness and obedience. When others love God and His word less, we must love them more. The more others distort and misrepresent Christianity, God’s word, and His worship, the more we must hold to the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ. The more others annul, adulterate, peddle, and compromise God’s word, the more clear, precise, steadfast, and immovable we should be in our adherence to it.
True Christians are not to be “conformed” to this world (Rm 12:2). The word translated “conformed” in this verse is also translated “fashioned”. When it comes to the world’s values, tastes, opinions, wisdom, priorities, and practices, the believer is to be “unfashionable”. The less distinction there is between the lives, tastes, beliefs, priorities, and practices of the world and the mass of professing Christians, the greater ours should be distinguished from them. When the lives of the mass of professing Christians reflect that they are actually citizens of this world, the more true believers must live as citizens of heaven. The more the minds of others are set on the flesh and the things on this earth, the more we must set our minds on the things that are above. The more the mass of professing Christians walk by sight, the more we should walk by faith. When others fret, despair, compromise, and trust in man, riches, and their own understanding in dangerous times, the more believers should display that our trust is in the Lord, and our trust is the Lord (Jer 17:7).
The world and false religion hated, and still hates, the Son of God because He testified of it, that its deeds are evil (Jn 7:7). We should expect no better reception from either when we do the same (Jn 15:18, 19; 1 Jn 3:13). The Christ and Christianity that the world loves are not the Christ and Christianity of the Bible. The church that the world loves is surely the church that Christ despises. The abundance, predominance, and popularity of the world’s versions of all these are a sure sign we are living in dangerous times.
In our next study we will examine the things which the Bible declares make a season difficult.