The End Is Coming Soon

“The End –Coming Soon!”

February 28, 2016

2 Peter 3:3,8-11

“Above all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.”

“But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare.

Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives.”

The World has seen some dark times since God created it. Once it was so bad that God regretted that He ever made man. If it had not been for one – just one – righteous man God would have destroyed the world. Let’s read it again.

“The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.” But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.” Genesis 6:5-8

If you read the story of Noah you will find he was far from perfect. He made some huge errors of judgment but he obeyed God as far as he knew God’s will – and God found him righteous. The rest of the world gave into their evil thoughts and the evil inclinations of their hearts. It was a wicked time in our history. But it wasn’t the only one. Another time came when Israel had crossed over the Jordon and claimed the Promised Land. It was a land flowing with milk and honey – in others words it was a wonderful, prosperous, sweet land. But God’s people forgot Him and it make came evil. Listen again to the story.

“After that whole generation had been gathered to their ancestors, another generation grew up who knew neither the LORD nor what he had done for Israel. Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the LORD and served the Baals. They forsook the LORD, the God of their ancestors, who had brought them out of Egypt. They followed and worshiped various gods of the peoples around them. They aroused the LORD’s anger because they forsook him and served Baal and the Ashtoreths. In his anger against Israel the LORD gave them into the hands of raiders who plundered them. He sold them into the hands of their enemies all around, whom they were no longer able to resist. Whenever Israel went out to fight, the hand of the LORD was against them to defeat them, just as he had sworn to them. They were in great distress.” Judges 2:10-15

“(There was no king in Israel in those days, and every man did whatever he thought was right.) Judges 21:25

That phrase “Every man did whatever he thought was right” kind of sums up the attitude of a rebellious nation. Another way of saying it would be that every man did whatever he thought was best for him! Or, Every man did whatever he felt like.

The world becomes an evil place without God. Because man’s heart is inclined to evil continuously – whenever he does whatever he felts like he can get away with it results in evil.

Another dark time in our history we call “The Dark Ages”. Wikipedia says this about it:

“Dark Ages is a term of historical periodization traditionally meaning the Middle Ages. It emphasizes the cultural and economic deterioration that supposedly occurred in Western Europe following the decline of the Roman Empire. The label employs traditional light-versus-darkness imagery to contrast the "darkness" of the period with earlier and later periods of "light". The period is characterized by a relative scarcity of historical and other written records at least for some areas of Europe, rendering it obscure to historians.

The term once characterized the majority of the Middle Ages, or roughly the 6th to 14th centuries, as a period of intellectual darkness between extinguishing the "light of Rome" after the end of Late Antiquity, and the rise of the Italian Renaissance in the 14th century.”