We Have Met...

           But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people. (II Timothy 3:1-4)

          Oh dear! Do you see what I see in the passage above and in the world? We’re in the last days! Of course, the problem is that Timothy lived in the Roman world, were all of these things were also common. Come to think of it, those things very likely describe mankind from the day Adam and Eve sinned. They were disobedient to their Father. They were proud. They were lovers of themselves. I’m going to suggest that since the Resurrection, we have been in the last days, but they don’t compare with The Last Days.

          Reread the list because there’s something more important there than “Oh, the last days!” Whose picture do you see hanging next to that description? If you list someone else’s, doesn’t that show that you’re slanderous? Who of us doesn’t love pleasure? Would we need to think about the going getting tough if we didn’t love pleasure, possibly more than we love God? Ultimately, these are things that we each face daily, and it is against them that we must struggle daily. These things are at least part of the reason that the going gets tough. As Pogo said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”