Book Of Jude: It Is Written For Our Times!

Book of Jude: Written for Our Times! Kelly Durant

2. This is a breakdown study of Jude and why focus on it? Because it is very relevant to our present times. Please keep your Bibles open to follow along and take notes. This book has references to the book of Enock, an extra canonical book that is valued by the Orthodox Church, and many other churches are currently taking a new look at it.

It speaks of the punishments God gave to the disobedient fallen angels and is a warning to all those who leave the faith or practice evil.

1 Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James, to them that are sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ, and called: 2 Mercy unto you, and peace, and love, be multiplied.

This is a salutation but it is addressed only to us, the Christian believers. How do we know? Because of the phrase “to them that are sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ” You being a Salvationist understand that being sanctified is something which comes from living a sincere holy life with the Holy Spirit leading.

How do you and I get sanctified by God? By being preserved in Jesus, remaining obeying His teachings, which goes along with our doctrine number 9 to have ‘continuance’ in the faith for salvation. We are called to live and serve as Jesus did. What blessings do we get from God for this? Mercy, peace, and love!

3. 3 Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.

What does it mean to contend for the faith? The word, ‘contend’, sounds similar to the word ‘contentious’ but there is a big difference. We should never be contentious, that is desiring to get into a fight just to stir up trouble, but It is implying that we must speak up and fight, to defend what is true from the Word of God. If you don’t stand up for Jesus and the faith, you must ask yourself if you are really a believer or not!

In Christianity we can study how to do this through ‘apologetics’. I think more than ever you and I must prepare ourselves to be able to answer anyone who verbally attacks us, mocks us, or just seeks to counter you or me over our faith in Jesus. Our faith is under heavy attack from ungodly people in the schools, colleges, and workplace, in cyberspace, and also in movies, the daily news, and the music/imagery industry.

4. 4 For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ.

To begin, how many of you can observe that some churches of late seem to have quite a few people in them that seem to have lost the mission of Jesus? They seem to have a preoccupation with making the church conform to the society’s culture, or a preoccupation with their own entertainment, praise bands and modern preachers, who do not even use scripture as the message? When you hear a person pressing a certain dubious issue in the church, ask yourself, what are their fruits? What do they in their private lives for Jesus and others? Those seeking influence and money yet have no obedience to Christ are usually deceptive ones seeking to divide and conquer!

What is lasciviousness? Lasciviousness is a gross form of wickedness that has sexual overtones. It starts in a sinful heart (Mark 7:21-22), and manifests itself in fleshly (carnal) actions (Galatians 5:19), and can lead to a state of being “past feeling” (Ephesians 4:19). https://www.christiancourier.com/articles/1123-what-is-lasciviousness People contaminated with this nature accept no correction or reasoning. Fake Christians follow their own philosophies and undermine the Bible.

These influences come from the condemned demons of old. Jude clarifies in verse 6 that the first fallen angels who came to rape and murder as they pleased have been captured and are waiting the judgment of hell, but what about the others after that? They are still here! Jesus cast out demons into pigs but the demon spirits of old are still with us usually possessing people in high places, possessing people of influence such as in actors and musicians, and they focus in on infiltrating churches so they can divide them and destroy them having them overcome by the trends of the world rewriting their doctrines to include their demonic activity! Apostacy is increasing year after year.

Here is a problem we face, Christians in the church are not being warned and educated on how demons operate. The world has conditioned us to accept that some people with their perverted aggressive and rude behavior speaking up to contradict righteous Christian leaders are just normal. Just accept how this generation is?! No!