“But know this, that in the last days grievous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, haughty, railers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, implacable, slanderers, without self-control, fierce, no lovers of good, traitors, headstrong, puffed up, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God; holding a form of godliness, but having denied the power thereof: from these also turn away.” 2 Tim. 3:1-5.
We are living in the last days of this world’s history. Empire has succeeded empire, and civilization has moved westward through the ages, until it has now belted the earth. No new empire or nation can now rise in new territory and dominate and control the old. When the nations now upon the scene of action have run their course, the kingdom of God and of His Christ will be ushered in.
Before the first advent of Christ there was well-nigh universal peace in the earth, a reign of secular law and order, which helped to make that “fulness of time” when God chose to reveal to men His Son. And to-day there is well-nigh universal peace, a token of that new “fulness of time” when God is heralding the news of the soon-coming second revelation of His Son. This time He comes not merely to live as a man, but to execute justice as a God.
Important, then, are these last days; and grievous, too, they are, even as the Holy Book declares. Every feature of these times was foreseen by the seers of old, and they photographed every lineament of our days; and now, as we look at the reality and then at the Scriptural photographic likeness, we see that these are the last days, for no other times fulfil the likeness in all its lines. These are the times the Scriptures plainly portrayed.
Let us compare the times in which we live, and the photographic likeness of them as given in the Word. The logical result will be conclusive.
“Lovers of Self”
“In the last days grievous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of self.” Never was photograph more true to its original than is this scripture true of our times; the times are grievous, for men are lovers of self.
What means the awful beggary of our cities? Why are women beaten down, men murdered, street-cars robbed? What mean these poor, miserable little dives in the working man’s ward, each snatching a starvation living from the poor dwellers of the dozen smoke-befouled tenements? Why, in our cities, is one thief in three set free on a suspended sentence? What is this awful misappropriation of funds, and malfeasance in office? Why is it that criminals and vicious men are placed in positions of trust, to betray and rob and murder those who set them there? Why is crime licensed, and a premium put upon profligacy?
God knows the awful maggot-festering rottenness of hundreds of city holes, and He knows why these grow daily worse and more defiling until they smell in foulness to the heights of the high heavens. God knows this, and He knows the reason of it all. It is because men do not love their fellows; instead, they are “lovers of self.”
“Lovers of Money”
“In the last days grievous times shall come. For men shall be . . . lovers of money.” All too well we know the truth of the prophetic word. We are now in this time, a time of all times when men love self and love money, and run into any excess to grasp money and minister to self.
In the city of Chicago alone there are 7,500 licensed liquor-saloons, besides a thousand other places where liquor is sold—$115,000,000 spent for liquor in that one city. Neither is it the only city of that kind. The great brewery interests have packed our cities with saloons wherever they could possibly crowd one in and make it pay. And the poor vice-bitten liquor-habit victims are confronted with these hellish temptations whenever they step upon the streets.
The multiplication of these dens of iniquity is possible because men love themselves more than their fellows, and love money and love self even to the beggaring and debauching and demoralizing of humanity. They have so pushed their campaign of drunk-education that, reckoning it out by population, every man, woman, and child in Chicago drinks in one year seventy gallons of liquid hell in the form of beer, and four gallons of spirituous—evil spirituous—liquor. Is it any wonder that our cities furnish such a staggering array of savage crime? To put into man that which will make him more merciless than the wild beasts of the jungle, does not come from a love of humanity; it is caused by a love of money that reckons self more valuable than the price of countless souls.
And then less degraded in form, but just as evil, is the awful betrayal of trust in public and private; and this is causing the suffering and sorrow and death of hundreds by a piracy upon the public. Trusts combine to compel money from those who ill can pay the price. Accumulations of capital seek to grasp all national resources and minister them for private profit, regardless of the cost to others.
The “grievous times” have come when men are “lovers of self, lovers of money.”
“Boastful,” “Railers”
“Grievous times. . . . For men shall be . . . boastful, haughty, railers, . . . headstrong, puffed up.” No pleasant picture this, and, worst of all, it is not an imaginary picture, I assure you; it is a photographic likeness of our times, true in every shade and line.
Truly this is an enlightened age, an age named in the prophetic word as “the time of the end,” when “many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.” Dan. 12:4. This is an age of increased knowledge above every age of all historic times. But the knowledge has made men, many men, exalted and heady. These have become so wise in their own conceits that they have ceased to be learners of the truth, but essay now to judge the truth.
“Puffed up” with their own accomplishments, they delineate all the past history of the earth, even to the doing away with the records of God, lay down laws for the conduct of man in the present that exalt him to divine peerage, and attempt high-sounding prophecies of the days that are yet to be that annul even the black reign of death.
“Boastful!” with their little yard-stick of “development doctrine,” they pass through the earth rejecting everything that does not conform to their puny measure. Truly has one said, “The skepticism of our day is rather sad than frivolous. It invades the church; and does not stop in the pews, but ascends the pulpit and preaches. The old cosmology has been overthrown in headlong ruin; rituals, creeds, and Scriptures are overhauled. Everything in heaven and earth is called upon to show its credentials.”
“Haughty.” Who can doubt it? As a certain writer has said of the arrogance and assumption of this age: From the “supposition that God has not spoken since the first century of the Christian era, we have reacted to the extreme opposite supposition that God has never spoken until now, and that the compelling spiritual dictates of the age in which we live are the first and only voice of the living God!”
“Boastful, haughty, railers, . . . headstrong, puffed up.” Do you think the delineation true to the times? Is it in harmony with the facts? You know that it is. The Bible is criticized in our times as tho it were of no more authority or sacredness than a last year’s newspaper, and not half so important. And this process of criticism goes on “from Genesis to Revelation,” as says the June “Independent,” “with no fear of the curse at the end of the last chapter.”
“Lovers of Pleasure”
“Grievous times.” “For men shall be . . . lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.” The one fact that as a nation we are spending annually $922,803,065 for mere amusements in theaters and resorts and shows, is its own verification of the divine Word. Spending enough for these things alone in thirteen months to pay the entire national debt! Spending almost a billion dollars a year for drunkenness and cigars! Spending $22,000,000 a year to hear the rattle of musketry and to see the glare of fireworks! Yes, it is true that in these days men love pleasure more than they love God; for the people of this country alone spend twenty times as much each year on mere trips of pleasure to Europe as they spend for the salvation of the heathen in all the lands of the earth!
“Form of Godliness,” but No Power
“Holding a form of godliness, but having denied the power thereof.” And right here is the fountain of all the trouble. The church has not been true to her Master. The great impress she should make upon our times, is not made. She has no power for the helping9of the world’s needs. The times are all too unaffected by great tides of virtue which she might pour into the hurt of the earth to the healing of sin’s disease.
Rejecting the message of the great Sabbath truth, she has kicked at the eternal law of the sovereign God. And to free herself from this law she has claimed absolution from its authority through the atonement of Christ. He who averred that He came not to destroy the law, is made the destroyer of the law for all of that. And she sings, in happy forgetfulness of the exacting claims of its righteousness,
“Free from the law — O happy condition!”
Thus rejecting the law and teaching its abolition, the church has opened up the great flood-gates of lawlessness. The church has accepted the tenets of science that do away with all religion save that which is purely natural. The church has stood by and abetted those who break down the authority of the Word. And now the world, robbed of all authority and law, is an authority and law to itself, and does as seems good to it.
And so we have come to the last days and the grievous times.
But there are those who are still true to God and to His Word. The Scriptures give us their portraits also, and with photographic exactness. “Here is the patience of the saints, they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus. . . . And I saw . . . a white cloud; and on the cloud I saw one sitting like unto a son of man, having on his head a golden crown, and in his hand a sharp sickle . . . for the hour to reap is come; for the harvest of the earth is ripe. And he . . . cast his sickle upon the earth; and the earth was reaped.” Rev. 14: 12, 14-16.
Yes, there are those who hold to the complete law of God, and who also rely by faith upon the life of Christ that keeps from the law’s transgression. In every clime, in every land; in every church, even in highway and hedge, they may be found. And the Most High, in whose hand are all events and every result, knows infallibly those that are His.
We are in the last days of this world’s history. You can not break the statements of God’s Word. You can not change the facts that verify its truth.
Think about this; pray about it; act upon it. Swing into line with God’s eternal purpose. Keep step with the mighty drum-beats of His invincible providence.
