Life In The Last Days

2 timothy 3:1-9   v1 You should be aware that in the last days life will be very difficult. v2 People will love money and love themselves. But they will not love what is good. They will claim that they are better than other people. And they will be proud. They will say cruel and insulting things. They will not obey their parents. They will appreciate nothing, and they will not believe in God. v3 They will show no natural love. They will be hard and cruel. They will say things about people that are not true. They will be wild and have no control over their own actions. They will hate all that is good. v4 You cannot trust them. They act without caring whether what they do is good or bad. They are vain and proud. They will love pleasure rather than God. v5 They will have some kind of religion, but they will deny the power of the truth. Do not have anything to do with such people. v6 Some of them get into homes and gain control of weak women. These women are slaves of *sin and have all sorts of wrong desires. v7 They are always learning but they are never able to know the truth. v8 Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, these people are enemies of the truth. They have minds damaged by evil and a belief that is false. v9 They will not get very far. Like Jannes and Jambres, it will be plain to everyone that they are foolish. 

The Lord Jesus will return one day. The period before he comes will be the last days. They will be terrible times and life will be hard. The verses list the bad attitudes and the evils that are to come. We can see them all already in the world. But they will spread wider and get far worse in the last days. 

Paul writes this not to frighten us but to warn us. He wants to prepare us for what is to come. Paul lists the kind of attitudes that people will have. And he lists what they will do in the last days. It is not that these things are new. There have been people like this all through history. But in the last days, there will be a big increase in such evil. 

These people will not look after anyone else. They are selfish and only think about themselves. Their aim in life is to get as much money as they can for their own benefit. 

They will think of themselves as being most important. They are proud of what they have. And they are proud of what they are in their own opinion. They try to convince people of how much better they are. They talk as if other people, as compared to themselves, are of no worth.

They will say evil things. They will not respect other people in how they speak. They will be insulting and not polite. They will not obey or show respect for their own parents. 

They are not at all grateful for what they are or have. They do not give thanks to God for all that he has given. They live as if there were no God. This is because they will not believe in him. 

They do not have natural feelings, and they do not show love. They never forgive people if they think that they have done wrong things to them. They will wrongly accuse people and speak bad things about them. They are not able to control their own actions. They are fierce and wild. They hate everything good because they are evil. 

You cannot depend on them because they will not be loyal. They will not do what they have promised. They do things without thinking. And they do not care what the effects might be. They will do anything to get what they want. 

They see themselves as important and they are proud of it. Their one aim is to satisfy their own desires. They love to please themselves. They have no room for God in their lives. They do not love or know him. 

Many of these wicked persons say that they have some kind of religion. Some will even claim to be Christians. A true belief in God will have the power to change us. And it will change how we live. The attitudes of these people show that they do not have a real belief in God. How they live denies the power of their religion. And so it shows that their religion is false. Paul tells Timothy to avoid these people. He should not receive them into the church. 

In that society, the women stayed in the home. Few of them went to school or had an education. Some of the false teachers went from house to house. They persuaded the women to let them come in. They lied to the women. They said that they had come with good news for them. Once in the house, these teachers explain their strange ideas. These ideas seem good to those women who were weak. They believed what they heard. They came under the control of the false teachers. Some women were weak. They would accept without question what they heard. It was so easy to convince them that these false ideas were the truth. They suffered from the shame of what they had done. They knew that in their hearts there were all kinds of wrong desires. Here was a message that could make them feel better, they thought.

These women were eager for change, for new things. They wanted to know about the latest ideas. But with all their searching, they could not find the truth. So, they remained in their sin. And they did not know the truth that could set them free. This truth is the gospel of Christ.

Jannes and Jambres, did magic. They were evil men, who were against the truth of God. They opposed Moses and Aaron whom God had sent to free the Jews from Egypt. Paul says that the false teachers are like those evil men. But like those men, these are enemies of the truth. They are working against God. They have believed a lie and there is no truth with them. The evil that they have accepted has ruined them. Their minds have become wicked. They can no longer know what is true or receive it. They have denied the truth of God. Jannes and Jambres were foolish to oppose Moses. They could not do the powerful works that God gave to Moses. God defeated them. And everyone could see that they were foolish.