In the last days difficult times will come...All Scripture is inspired by God and...

2 Timothy 3 (NASB) from the daily reading in the One Year Bible

 “Difficult Times Will Come”

But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. ² For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, ³ unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, ⁴ treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, ⁵ holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these. ⁶ For among them are those who enter into households and captivate weak women weighed down with sins, led on by various impulses, ⁷ always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. ⁸ Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men of depraved mind, rejected in regard to the faith. ⁹ But they will not make further progress; for their folly will be obvious to all, just as Jannes’s and Jambres’s folly was also.

¹⁰ Now you followed my teaching, conduct, purpose, faith, patience, love, perseverance, ¹¹ persecutions, and sufferings, such as happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium and at Lystra; what persecutions I endured, and out of them all the Lord rescued me! ¹² Indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. ¹³ But evil men and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. ¹⁴ You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them, ¹⁵ and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. ¹⁶ All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; ¹⁷ so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.

“… in the last days difficult times will come. ² For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, ³ unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, ⁴ treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God”  Paul wrote these things to Timothy, who he was training up for ministry. So surly Paul thought that the circumstances he described as the “last days”, were expected to come to pass in that generation. To some extent I am sure it did. But as we read this, certainly we can see that even more these conditions exist today. Paul says: “But evil men and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.”  There is a constant worsening of the spiritual condition of those who reject God. In science there is a term, entropy, which describes the natural tendency of things to proceed from order toward randomness or disorder. That natural tendency, by the way, flies in the face of the many theories that science has come up with to explain the origin of man, evolution and the move from disorder to order goes against the natural tendency of created things and energy to instead go from order to disorder. That is  for another day. There is though, a spiritual entropy, if you will, that causes the spiritual condition of things to deteriorate in much the same way as the natural things do.

Genesis tells us the beginning.  In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. ² The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.   The words formless and void are translated from a word that means chaos or disorder. That was the original condition of creation. Look what happened next.     Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. ⁴ God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. ⁵ God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.    God spoke, by the word of God He created light. God saw that the light was good and He separated the light from the darkness, God organized and created order from chaos. God continued to create order.    ⁶ Then God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” ⁷ God made the expanse, and separated the waters which were below the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse; and it was so. ⁸ God called the expanse heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day. ⁹ Then God said, “Let the waters below the heavens be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear”; and it was so. ¹⁰ God called the dry land earth, and the gathering of the waters He called seas; and God saw that it was good.

By His spoken word, God continued to create things and cause order in the physical realm we live in. The beginning was when He separated light and darkness by His word. Let’s look then at the spiritual application of order and chaos.      

“…the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. ²⁰ For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. ²¹ But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.” (John 3:19-21)    Then Jesus again spoke to them, saying, “I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life.” (John 8:12)

Jesus is the Light. He is the One who came into the world to bring spiritual light where there is darkness. For those who reject the Light there is a natural progression toward darkness. Paul says: “evil men and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.”  Just as by His spoken word God created order from chaos, God’s written word serves to provide light for the spiritual condition of man.   Paul says: ¹⁶ All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness

Training in righteousness; Romans 3:10-12 says:  as it is written, “There is none righteous, not even one; ¹¹ There is none who understands, There is none who seeks for God;
¹² All have turned aside, together they have become useless; There is none who does good, There is not even one.”

He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. (2 Corinthians 5:21) Training in righteousness is training in Christ. God’s written word from Genesis to Revelation is the story of redemption in and through Jesus Christ.

All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness. Scripture, all of scripture, God’s written word is for the purpose of revealing God’s plan for spiritual redemption and light. God gives each one the ability to chose. In addition just as in the beginning when:  The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, it says:  and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters,   so too, even now the Spirit of God moves throughout the spiritual darkness and chaos on earth. Even without the light of God’s word, the Spirit, as Jesus says: when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment; ⁹ concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me; ¹⁰ and concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father and you no longer see Me; ¹¹ and concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world has been judged. (John 16:8-11)  

The Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil.  For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. We should not be surprised then at the conditions we see in the world today, at the fact that:  difficult times will(have) come. ² For men will be(are) lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, ³ unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, ⁴ treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God

Thank You Heavenly Father, Lord Jesus Christ and Holy Spirit. You are Light and in You there is no darkness at all. Thank You for revealing the Light of the world through Your spoken word, Your written word and through Your living word as the Holy Spirit move throughout the darkness. I pray that Your kingdom come, your will be done,  on earth as it is in heaven. Your word tells me that one day we will no longer need any other source of physical light. There will no longer be any night; and they will not have need of the light of a lamp nor the light of the sun, because the Lord God will illumine them; and they will reign forever and ever.(Revelation 22:5) Amen.