Living
for Christ in the End Times
A Challenge
to Prepare for His Soon Return
Dr. David
R. Reagan
The
Bible clearly teaches that society will degenerate in the end
times, becoming as evil as it was in the days of Noah (Matthew
24:37-39). The Apostle Paul, speaking as a prophet, says that
society will descend into a black pit of immorality, violence,
and paganism (2 Timothy 3:1-5). He asserts that men will be "lovers
of self, lovers of money, and lovers of pleasure." People will
be "boastful, arrogant, and unholy," and children will be "disobedient
to parents."
Sounds like the evening news, doesn’t
it? In short, we have arrived.
Signs of Coming Persecution
We should be deeply concerned over
these developments, not only because we are witnessing the destruction
of our beloved America, but because both Jesus and Paul prophesied
that when these things occur, the Church will come under attack
and individual Christians will be persecuted.
Jesus said that as lawlessness increases,
"most people’s love will grow cold" (Matthew 24:12). He stated
that in this hostile atmosphere, many professing Christians will
"fall away" and will proceed to cooperate in the persecution of
their former brothers and sisters in Christ (Matthew 24:10). Paul
indicates the same thing when he says that people will be "haters
of good" and that they will therefore be "brutal" and "reckless,"
reviling those who stand for righteousness (2 Timothy 3:2-4).
We are watching these prophecies
come true today before our very eyes, both here in America and
around the world. As our culture has secularized and paganized,
Christianity, the Church, and Christians have come under increasing
attack as "intolerant bigots." (See Dennis Pollock’s editorial
on page 9.) The attacks are going to intensify, and it is going
to become increasingly difficult for Christians to stand for righteousness.
Jobs will be lost. Careers will be destroyed. Christians will
even be sent to prison for speaking out against evils like homosexuality
because such pronouncements will be labeled as "hate crimes."
What then are those of us who love
Jesus to do as we face a rising wave of ridicule, harassment,
and persecution for our faith? How shall we live for Christ in
the end times? Let me suggest a few guidelines.
1) Order Your Priorities —
The starting point is to review
your priorities and make certain that God is first in your life.
Be honest with yourself. Don’t play games. Don’t kid yourself.
Most Christians have allowed their
priorities to get very mixed up. Usually, job or career is number
one, family is second, and God is third or even fourth behind
an obsession with sports or something similar.
Ask yourself this question: If God
were to give you the opportunity to make one request, what would
it be? Would you ask for money? Power? Fame? Success?
Solomon asked for wisdom, but David
asked for something ten thousand times more profound — he asked
for intimacy with God (Psalm 27:4). And, because he put God first,
he states in Psalm 27 that he did not fear life (verse 1) or death
(verse 13). It is also the reason that he is remembered as "the
man after God’s own heart" (Acts 13:22).
2) Stand on the Word —
The Bible says that the end times
will be an age of deception (Matthew 24:24, 1 Timothy 4:1, and
2 Timothy 4: 3-4). In fulfillment of that prophecy, we are today
being bombarded with false but alluring religious systems offered
by the Christian cults, Eastern religions, and the New Age Movement.
Most professing Christians are sitting
ducks for spiritual deception because the average Christian is
not certain what he believes. And even when he is able to articulate
a belief, he usually does not know why he believes it. The result
is that a Jehovah’s Witness can turn the average Christian into
a theological pretzel in two minutes flat.
Anyone can be deceived. If you are
to guard yourself against deception, you must get into the Word
and stay in it on a daily basis. Also, you must test everything
by the Word (1 John 4:1). For Catholics this means discarding
doctrines like purgatory that have no basis in the Word whatsoever.
For Protestants it means being alert to the twisting of scriptures
or the manipulation of verses out of context. On every doctrine,
the Bible needs to be searched from Genesis to Revelation to see
what is said about the particular topic.
3) Believe in the Power of God
—
I am convinced that most professing
Christians are deists. A deist is a person who believes in an
impersonal god who never intervenes in human affairs. According
to Deism, we are supposed to cope with our god-given reason, our
talents, and the wisdom of the Scriptures. As far as the deist
is concerned, at the end of the First Century, God retired, the
supernatural ceased, and the age of miracles came to an end.
But the Hebrew Scriptures teach
that God never changes (Malachi 3:6). And the New Testament specifically
states that "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today, yes
and forever" (Hebrews 13:8).
There is no way we can cope with
the evil of end time society in our own strength. Anyone who tries
to do so will be defeated. Our only hope is to turn to a God who
is alive and well, who is still on the throne, who hears prayer
and answers prayer, and who still performs miracles.
We must realize that the Bible teaches
that we can limit God by our unbelief. This a great paradox. Think
about it — although God is all-powerful (Luke 1: 37), we who are
powerless in comparison can nonetheless limit His power by our
unbelief (Mark 6:1-6). That’s because God is a gentleman. He does
not force Himself upon us. If we want to try to cope on our own,
He will let us. He responds when we reach out to Him in faith
(James 1:6).
4) Persist in Prayer —
One of the greatest blessings God
has given believers is supernatural communication. God cares for
us personally (1 Peter 5:7), and He desires to communicate with
us (James 4:8). Because He loves us, He earnestly desires our
fellowship (John 4:23).
The tragedy is that most professing
Christians seem to be inclined to turn to prayer as a last resort
— only when all else has failed and the situation has become desperate.
Some of this reluctance to seek God in prayer is due to pride,
and thus the Scriptures continually exhort us to humble ourselves
(1 Peter 5:6). Others fail to depend on prayer because of unbelief.
They either think God doesn’t care, or else they think He is no
longer active in history.
But the Bible says "we do not have
because we do not ask" (James 4:2). How many blessings of God
have you left on the table because you tried to handle your problems
yourself? The Bible also says that "the prayers of a righteous
man can accomplish much" (James 5:16). Do you interpret this to
mean that the power of your prayers depends on your righteousness?
That is not what it means. If you are truly born again, then you
are a righteous person because you are clothed in the righteousness
of Jesus (Isaiah 61:10).
5) Rely on the Holy Spirit —
Most professing Christians seem
to be afraid of the Holy Spirit. This is usually due to a lack
of knowledge concerning the Spirit. For example, there is a tendency
to write off the Holy Spirit as some sort of impersonal force
— like "The Force" in Star Wars.
We need to understand that the Holy
Spirit is a person. He is the supernatural presence of God in
the world today. He performs a dual role. For the unbeliever,
He is God’s Evangelist. He is the one who works on human hearts
to draw them to the Cross in repentance. No one is saved apart
from the testimony of the Spirit (John 6:44 & 65).
With regard to the believer, the
Holy Spirit is God’s indwelling presence to provide us with power
and guidance. He is our Enabler. He is also God’s Potter, for
one of His basic responsibilities is to daily shape believers
more fully into the image of Jesus (2 Corinthians 3:17-18).
One of the ironies of the Christian
life is that we cannot serve God in our own power. Rather, the
only way we can effectively serve the Lord is by relying on the
power of His Holy Spirit who resides within us. It is possible
to quench and grieve the Spirit (1 Thessalonians 5:19 and Ephesians
4:30).
The Word calls on us to be filled
with the Spirit (Ephesians 5:18). This can happen only if we are
willing to release the Spirit to become the Lord of our lives.
Most of us are content to let the Spirit be resident in our lives.
He does not want to be simply a resident; He desires to be president.
Is that the case in your life? Is
the Holy Spirit on the throne of your life? Or is He being treated
as an unwelcome guest? There is no way you will be able to withstand
the pressures of end time society without relying daily on the
power of God’s Spirit.
6) Practice Tough Faith —
Faith comes easy when everything
is going smoothly. When there is good health and prosperity, it
is easy to praise the Lord. The test of faith comes when all the
circumstances of life turn sour.
God has not promised believers a
rose garden. We live in a fallen world. The rain falls on the
just and the unjust. The wicked prosper. Justice seldom prevails.
It is easy for the righteous to
grow discouraged. This calls for the practice of tough faith —
the kind of faith that is not dependent on circumstances. It’s
the kind of faith that hangs in there when the going gets tough
because of a confident belief that "all things work together for
good for those who love the Lord" (Romans 8:28).
God never promises that believers
will be immune to suffering. What He does promise is that He will
be there to walk through the trials with us. He promises to be
beside us when we "pass through the waters" and "walk through
the fire" (Isaiah 43:2). And He states that He will be there when
we "walk through the valley of the shadow of death" (Psalm 23:4).
What is the quality of your faith?
When life turns sour, do you turn to God, or do you question Him
or even curse Him? One of the keys to hanging tough is to learn
the promises of God’s Word (like Philippians 4:6-7, 11-13, and
19) and start claiming them in prayer when confronted with the
challenges of life.
7) Keep an Eternal Perspective
—
We are to be in the world but not
of the world (John 17:11 & 16). That’s a difficult principle
to follow. It constitutes a daily struggle.
It is so easy to get our eyes off
the Lord and focus instead upon the world in which we live. The
daily demands are so pressing. And one of the greatest of those
demands is that we conform to the world — to the world’s language,
dress, entertainment, and values.
That’s why we are constantly exhorted
in Scripture to consider ourselves as "aliens, exiles, and strangers"
who are just passing through this world (Hebrews 11:13 and 1 Peter
2:11). We are told to "set our minds on things above, not on the
things that are on the earth" (Colossians 3:2). And we are warned
to never fall in love with the world or grow comfortable with
it (Romans 12:2 and 1 John 2:15-16). In fact, Jesus said we are
to "hate our life in this world" (John 12:25), and His brother,
James, said "friendship with the world is hostility toward God"
(James 4:4).
What does it mean to hate the world?
It means we are to hate the evil world system that prevails in
society. We are to hate a system that glorifies violence and immorality
and which depreciates the value of life.
As C. S. Lewis once put it, "We
are to live like commandos behind the enemy lines, preparing the
way for the coming of the Commander-in-Chief." In other words,
we are to live yearning for the day when Jesus will burst from
the heavens to bring peace, righteousness, and justice to the
earth.
8) Look for Jesus —
This brings us to the final guideline
I would like to emphasize regarding how to live for Jesus in the
end times. The Bible tells us point blank that we are to live
"looking for Jesus" (Titus 2: 13).
Most Christians are so caught up
in the world that they live thinking about anything but the return
of Jesus. This is a sad state of affairs because Jesus’ return
is our "blessed hope" (Titus 2:13). And His return is imminent.
Another problem is that most Christians
know so little about Bible prophecy that they cannot get excited
about the Lord’s return. How can you get excited about an event
you know nothing about? Ignorance produces apathy.
And apathy about the Lord’s return
has tragic consequences. It robs us of an eternal perspective,
and it destroys any sense of urgency about reaching lost souls.
It also undermines a powerful motivator for holy living.
You see, when a person comes to
truly believe that Jesus is returning and may return any moment,
that person will be motivated to holiness and evangelism. Regarding
holiness, the Apostle John put it this way: "We know that when
He appears [the Rapture], we shall be like Him [glorified] . .
. And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him, purifies himself,
just as He is pure" (1 John 3:2-3). Regarding evangelism, Peter
writes that the only reason Jesus has not yet returned is because
"God does not wish that any should perish, but that all might
come to repentance" (2 Peter 3:9).
A Spiritual Mirror
Paul provides us with a spiritual
mirror for end time conduct. He says we are to "deny ungodliness
and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly
in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and the appearing
of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus" (Titus
2:12-13).
When you look into this mirror,
what do you see? Are you walking in the center of God’s will?
Have you ordered your priorities to put God first? Are you standing
on the Word of God, testing everything by it? Do you believe in
a personal, caring and all-powerful God who hears prayers and
answers prayers, and who still performs miracles? Are you relying
daily on the power of the Holy Spirit? Are you practicing tough
faith, refusing to allow the calamities of life to overwhelm you?
Are you keeping an eternal perspective, refusing to get comfortable
with this world? And are you daily looking for Jesus? Is the Rapture
in your heart? Is "Maranatha!" on your lips?
If you would like more detailed
information about this topic, click
here for a summary of Dr. Reagan's new book: "Living for
Christ in the End Times."
