Years ago, I was visiting with my parents in Albertville Alabama. I was on a summer break from seminary classes, so it was a good time to visit. My dad and I were sitting out on the carport, sipping iced tea, and just talking. It was a very hot day, but my dad always preferred sitting in the shade of the carport more than being inside where it was so much cooler.
My dad was always interested in the subject of “end times” and even asked me on this occasion why I rarely preached sermons on the last days. On Sunday mornings it was his habit to watch those television preachers and Bible teachers who always seemed to stress why we are NOW in the last days.
I was a young pastor in the 1990s and my dad was right that I didn’t preach much about the last days or the end of the world. My only defense as to why I didn’t was that I have always been eternally optimistic and believed it was better to preach more about God’s grace than His judgment. I still do. Being one who has needed God's grace so many times tended to motivate that type of preaching.
Throughout my life I have heard it said, countless times, that “we are living in the last days.” It seems that every crisis, war, or series of natural disasters led to even more speculation as to the day and the hour. But the world didn’t end. Each day the sun rose on a new day. But I digress.
As a pastor and seminary/Bible college professor I have had church members or students ask me over the years, “Dr. Guthrie, do you believe we are living in the last days?”
I always quoted Matthew 24:36 which says:
"But about that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone." (NASB).This scriptural answer never seemed to satisfy their curiosity. They were looking for verification from a “professional” man of God that soon the Rapture would occur.
Taking church history courses in seminary only strengthened my belief that sin, destruction, hatred, bitterness, war, calamity, and other like things have always been a rampant part of man’s reality. When I took those courses I hoped I would study about the days when Christians were aflame for Jesus and won great victories for His glory.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case in any sense.
I have often used Jeremiah 17:9 as my best argument as to why mankind has always been worthy of God’s judgment and wrath.
The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; Who can understand it?Jeremiah was right. Man’s heart is evil and full of deceit. Studying church history has only verified that reality in countless ways for me.
Please don’t misunderstand, there were wonderful seasons of ministry and victories for the gospel and the cause of Christ. I enjoyed studying about those seasons. But still, they seemed to be over-shadowed by how hateful, evil, and wicked people (even God’s people) could actually be.
Because man has always been worthy of God’s judgment and wrath, I have been hesitant to say that we are indeed in the last days. Up until this point I have not seen, at least in my lifetime, evil to the degrees that it has been displayed throughout history. So, I have held off on saying, “Yes, I believe that we are in the last days.”
It’s one thing to read about the evils of man throughout history but it’s quite another to actually see it day after day on social media and cable news.
In my 60+ years of life events such as the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, and Robert F. Kennedy have happened. There have been heinous and unnecessary wars. Terrorist attacks, like those of September 11, 2001, have actually occurred, live and in real time, for all to see on television screens around the world.
With the terrible events I have just mentioned and countless others I still believed that our world was no worse than it was centuries ago.
But it all seems so different now.
Just a few examples.
Politicians have always disagreed but never have I seen pure hatred in their eyes and sounding through their words for those who hold an opposing opinion.
It seems today if someone believes in traditional values of home, marriage, and family he or she is labeled a bigot and worthy of being silenced and “canceled.” We live in a world of “preferred pronouns” and if anyone objects to the use of them, again that person is literally hated and called a bigot.
Transgenderism has been around for as long as I can remember. Drag queens are nothing new. But transgenderism didn’t make national news nor did it become a national and international rallying cry. Corporations and schools felt no need to acknowledge them in one way or another.
There wasn’t a reason for them to do so. Most of us just let them live their lives regardless of our personal or religious views. I’m sure there are some exceptions, but we didn’t burn down their nightclubs or send police to raid their parties. We simply left them alone. But today, they are no longer content with that.
Professional sports were never political when I was a kid. Today I don’t support professional sports of any kind because they have stopped playing the game in favor of ramming one side of a political argument down our throats. But that’s just me.
When I was living those “Wonder Years” of elementary school all the boys were boys and the girls were girls. I never once played on the playground with a boy who thought he might actually be a girl. There were a few that we thought were “sissies” but many of those sissies punched our lights out for calling them that. We were all rough and tumble and girls had cooties. That was reality. And I believe it still is.
I’m convinced that the reason none of us struggled with our “gender identity” is because those two words were never used in a sentence together (gender and identity). We didn’t “identify” as anything. In 1968, if someone asked me what I “identified as?” I would have looked at them and said with the strongest Nashville Tennessee drawl that I could muster, “Wha-ut?”
You see, if you don’t know about something it’s kind of hard for it to be real to you. In my childhood and teenaged years we didn’t have Tik-Tok or Instagram. We didn’t sit for hours scrolling videos and listening to other kids from around the world tell us that they identified as a red-tailed hawk. We didn’t see guys dressed as girls and putting makeup on during a live stream.
It's interesting to me that we rarely hear of anorexia or bulimia any more. I’m sure it still exists but it seems to have run its course. Back in the 1990s it was the big thing for a number of young women. But no one at that time, at least that I recall, said that these women were merely “identifying” as over-weight. It seems that I remember that most people thought these women were suffering from a mental disorder of some kind. Maybe if Tik-Tok existed in the 1990s, things would have been different.
It wasn’t that long ago that I was living in a world where we had made giant steps toward equality and unity ("Equity" as it's called now). The neighborhood that I lived in had a diversity of races and ethnicity and no one seemed to mind. My doctor was African American and my pharmacist immigrated from India. The school my children attended was very diverse. This was normal and again, no one seemed to mind.
Back then (the 1990s and early 2000s) few would say that the issues of our past were completely resolved. But I believe that most of us would have said that we were closer than we had ever been and NO ONE wanted to go back.
Now back to "end times."
The Bible says in 2 Timothy 3 …
1But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. 2For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, 4treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these.
In my opinion social media has become the Evil One’s favored tool to sow discord and division. Racial and ethnic tension has been reborn with a vengeance and a fervor. Years of working together to create and build a better world that exemplified Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s vision has almost been annihilated.
Many people are acting as though it is 1953 rather than 2023.
I can only imagine the hate that will come my way for writing such things.
Our smartphones are forever in our faces because we are afraid we may miss something “important” that someone posted. I'm guilty. But people say things on social media that they would never say in an environment that had actual people with ears to hear within it.
We live in a world where biological men wearing the uniforms of women’s sports actually are allowed to compete against biological women and girls. People who have earned PhDs argue that this should be and remain the norm. Fairness to the biological women be damned!
In a nation of free speech conservative speakers are threatened with violence and screamed down by radical leftist students as they share their views and opinions that they were invited to share at a particular university. The hatred of these leftists is as intense as it can possibly be.
The Bible says in 2 Timothy 3 …
1But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. 2For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, 4treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these.
In my opinion social media has become the Evil One’s favored tool to sow discord and division. Racial and ethnic tension has been reborn with a vengeance and a fervor. Years of working together to create and build a better world that exemplified Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s vision has almost been annihilated.
Many people are acting as though it is 1953 rather than 2023.
I can only imagine the hate that will come my way for writing such things.
Our smartphones are forever in our faces because we are afraid we may miss something “important” that someone posted. I'm guilty. But people say things on social media that they would never say in an environment that had actual people with ears to hear within it.
We live in a world where biological men wearing the uniforms of women’s sports actually are allowed to compete against biological women and girls. People who have earned PhDs argue that this should be and remain the norm. Fairness to the biological women be damned!
In a nation of free speech conservative speakers are threatened with violence and screamed down by radical leftist students as they share their views and opinions that they were invited to share at a particular university. The hatred of these leftists is as intense as it can possibly be.
This is why I am calling for prayer. There will be more about prayer in the posts to come. We live in a time when there is nothing else we can do. Conversations lead to violence, discord, and hatred. Hatred is the reality within so many. It is so sad and heart-breaking.
I could continue with many other examples but I believe I have made my point. To my dad who now resides in heaven, and the students and church members who have asked me, “Dr. Guthrie, do you believe we are living in the last days?”
Yes.
I could continue with many other examples but I believe I have made my point. To my dad who now resides in heaven, and the students and church members who have asked me, “Dr. Guthrie, do you believe we are living in the last days?”
Yes.
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