The Issues We Must Face, Part 1

“But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come…” (2 Tim 3:1)

The days in which we live are dangerous. The Bible calls them “perilous times.”  Pick up any newspaper or TV remote. Civilization, facing moral, spiritual, social, political, national, and international darkness, is coming apart at the seams. Nations are collapsing all around us. The sands of time are running low for this generation; we’re in the shadows of the end of an age. Jesus Christ is coming soon! I cannot deny the feeling of my heart that God is about ready to step down out of heaven and judge the wickedness of this old world.

I’m not so foolish as to try to rescue it from that collision course with judgment. Social engineers are doing their best to save it.  But the purpose of the Gospel is not to save civilization from wreckage. It’s to save men, women, boys, and girls from the wreckage of civilization — and let them know there’s a new world coming.

These perilous days, setting the stage for globalism, are the fore gleam of the coming kingdom of Antichrist.  But they shouldn’t cause us to panic. Even when it gets dark, it gets gloriously dark, for it’s after the darkest hour of night that the morning star appears.  We’re looking for the Lord Jesus Christ to come. In 2^nd Timothy 3, Paul tells us not only how to survive but thrive, be victorious, get ready for heaven, and take as many as we can with us! 

The Issues We Face
Like a physician listing symptoms, in 2 Timothy 3:1-8 Paul describes the condition of our culture.  People will be…

Lovers of themselves.  What is the tone of this age? “Me-ism.”  People turned inward, living for self alone, as if Jesus Christ never lived. 

Covetous.  People live for what they can grab, not what they can give. We’re to worship God, love people, and use things.  Today we ignore God, love things, and use people. 

Boasters and proud. Modern man continually boasts of human greatness and achievement. Like egomaniacs, people are strutting to hell, thinking they’re too good to be damned.

Blasphemers. Profanity and pornography, piped into the living rooms of America, blaspheme the name of God with First Amendment protection. You can have a rock concert with obscenities and blasphemies beyond description, yet boys and girls in school who want to have a nativity play are said to violate that amendment. 

Disobedient to parents.  We are raising a generation that doesn’t understand authority.  Schools ignore parents’ objections to liberal teaching on homosexuality, abortion, birth control, sex, and relative morality. Karl Marx is required reading, but the Bible is banned.  Witches, homosexuals and anarchists are invited in to air their ideas, but no Bible, token prayers, or Scripture reading, please.

Without natural affection. “Without natural affection” means “without family love,” the love God designed between a man and a woman and between parents and children. Divorce is epidemic, homosexuality is militant, and 97% of all abortions take place not to save the mother’s life, but simply for convenience.

Trucebreakers.  We’ve come to a day when a man’s word means nothing, whether it’s a business contract, a marriage contract, or a treaty between nations.  Many live together without the benefit of marriage in a nation of throw-away marriages.  

Without self-control, fierce. Our jails are filled.  We don’t have enough space to warehouse the criminals.  And the number of known terrorists groups is so large, it may be incalculable. It will not be long before your life and mine will be in much graver danger than today because of international terrorism. 

Despisers of those who are good. The heroes of today’s youth are not the godly, the missionary, the soul winner, or the mother who stays home and raises children. These are not their heroes.

Lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God. Resorts, theaters, stadiums, and nightclubs are packed. Sunday is a day to do almost anything but worship God. “The Lord’s Day” has been renamed “the weekend.”

Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof. False religion will be the order of the day.  Religious activity in America is at an all-time high — but so is our crime rate. Something is desperately wrong. Most Americans do not need religion; they need to turn from religion to Jesus Christ. 

Laden with sin. Every person is laden with a heavy weight of sin. That’s what keeps the psychiatrists going, the sedatives being sold, and alcohol consumed. People are trying to forget. They are sitting ducks for the devil. 

Led away with diverse lusts. Their unfulfilled desires create an emptiness that causes them to look for something — anything — to remove the guilt feelings they have.

Ever learning, never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. We have a knowledge explosion today and a generation always looking for something new. Knowledge will increase, but not truth.

As it way in the day of Moses. Look for an explosion of the occult…more miracles than ever, most not done by God but by the power of darkness, Satan. Many will be swept up by these miracles. 

But we don’t have to face these issues without hope, for Paul tells us how we’ll face them.

How do we face them? In Part 2 of this message, Dr. Rogers explains how to cope with these issues.

Dr. Rogers’ thoughts on terrorism were delivered ten years before 9/11. Did it strike you that his description has become even more accurate today?