Are We there?
Matthew 24: 12, "Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold."
I am not one of these Christians that go around predicting when Jesus is coming back. Ask me when Jesus is coming back or when the rapture is going to take place, and I will tell you that Jesus comes back every day for someone. Just today alone I have heard that the Lord has come back for Casey Kasem, and Tony Gwynn, and that is just the ones that I know of at this time. The end comes every day for someone, and we never know when that end may come for us. We do not know the day or the hour that he is coming for us.
I know that there are those that keep saying that the end of the world is coming and that it is not too far away. Others may say it like this, "we are living in the last days." I want to be very clear about this from my point of view, I have no idea if we are living in the last days, I do not have knowledge of when the last days are going to be. I do know and realize that with each passing day that we are getting closer to the end of time as we know it.
One time Jesus was teaching and talking to the disciples about when the end of time would come. He told the disciples many things, but one thing the he told them was in the last days that love would grow cold. The Message Bible says it this way in Matthew 24:12, "For many others, the overwhelming spread of evil will do them in--nothing left of their love but a mound of ashes."
In the last two weeks the news has been filled with stories of evil and stories where the love between people has grown cold. A couple of 12 year-old girls killing their friend because of a game, shootings at Wal-Mart as close as Festus, Missouri. Two murders in Kennett, stabbings, a church shooting, a school shooting, these things sound a lot like evil and love that is nothing but a mound of ashes.
We serve a patient God who loves us and desires that none would perish. I believe that God is willing to give everyone a chance to believe in him and to trust him for saving faith. I believe that God will delay sending his Son back to earth so everyone will have a chance at salvation. Will everyone answer yes to God's invitation to believe in him? Sadly no! Yet we cannot give up hope of offering salvation to all.
So instead of waiting and looking for Jesus return and letting love grow cold or turn into "a mound of ashes" let us be about the work of spreading scriptural holiness and salvation throughout the land.
God bless,
Pastor Barron Willer