Week 3 February 2026, Devotion Part 1

But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days.  2 Timothy 3:1

After listing twenty specifics, the veteran missionary instructs his young son in the faith, “Have nothing to do with such…” How? The cartoonist Harry Bliss has a young woman sit on a rock high up in a remote area and while hugging her dog tightly, she cries out, “Please, meteor, come and just end it.” The Apostle Paul wrote his second pastoral letter from a dungeon in Rome, and his last days were near, but not terrible. He basked in God’s grace and peace and stated joyfully, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith.” Timothy’s mentor stated his twenty specifics as follows: “ People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.”  Paul means “Avoid them!”

People? Some name their culprits death and taxes, but may throw mosquitoes and meteors in the mix, along with the nightly noise of bears splashing in a neighbor’s pool. More terrible is the gun lobby’s proposal that every home should own a “cordless hole puncher.” If some scoff at terrible jokes, the other famous apostle is happy to enter the fray. He writes, “Knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing…They will say, ‘Where is the promise of his coming?...all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation’” (2 Peter 3:3-40).  Part 1 of 2

Comment: Philosophically speaking, we must agree with Solomon who concluded, “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”  That luminary in the sky gave way to forty days of punishing rain that swept away the early human race already stunningly marked by “violence and extreme wickedness.”  Once back on dry land, vegetation flourished and righteous Noah broke up his family by passing out drunk from new wine.  Peter and Paul’s apostolic observations by themselves could easily make despairing pessimists of us.  Some might even grab their pet and hope the sky will fall down on them. Thank God for the unknown writer of Hebrews who opens up the door of irrefutable hope for us.  He begins his book with the same main theme staring us in the face, but in his LAST DAYS God “has spoken to us by His Son, whom He appointed the heir of all things, through whom also He created the world.”  Silly common end-of-the-world cartoons aside, the “last days” span the period between Christ’s first and second coming.  Oswald Chambers called it the “great omission” if we avoid the Great Commission of Matthew 28.  It concludes with the verse, “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”  Only disciples of Jesus can make disciples. Therefore, Paul will also weigh in with some military advice, and Peter with the vital role of the true prophet who profits the Church.