Perilous Times: A Meditation on 2nd Timothy 3

This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.

For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters,

proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,

Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers,

incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good,

Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;

Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof:

from such turn away.

Sometimes the prophetic foresight of Scripture is overwhelming in its contemporary application, and such is the case with the third chapter of St. Paul’s second letter to Timothy.  Nearly 2000 years ago, Paul as an Apostle of Jesus Christ, ordained and set Timothy in charge of a locality of churches, giving him encouragement, challenge, and warnings appropriate to the work that lay before him.  As a young bishop entrusted with the care of souls, Timothy was given by Paul a great deal of practical advice for his vocation, which the Church has benefited from ever since.  For this Sunday’s lectionary readings, the Church turns her eyes and ears to this wisdom once again.

Timothy is warned that despite the nobility and high regard Christ holds for His pastoral office delegated to men, bearing that office in our fallen world would be a path of sacrifice, suffering, and service more akin to Jesus’ path to Calvary than any worldly path to glory.  St. Paul warned the young pastor that not only will his service be hard in the days at hand, but as time wears on, the world will only grow worse in its disregard for Christ and His Gospel.  This worsening of the world, the hardening of its heart against the truth of Christ revealed in Scripture and handed down since the days of Adam, Noah, Abraham, and Moses, would manifest in ever greater public embrace of evil.  Unlike the empty headed theologians of the last century or so, St. Paul does not paint a picture of man’s efforts bringing about the Kingdom of God on earth; rather, it is God who invades this dying world with His Kingdom, preserving it by His Word, and sustaining it against the ever darkening days which culminate in the final apostasy and judgment of all mankind.  St. Paul and all of Scripture warn us that the world is getting worse rather than better, and that the cross to be born as a baptized child of God is only going to get heavier in this world, rather than lighter.

This may seem counter-intuitive, when perusing the progress of history.  From a worldly perspective, we might be tempted to see ourselves at the pinnacle of an evolutionary ladder, building new rungs upon which future generations may climb as they achieve new technological, political, and social goals.  From a human perspective, we see today’s world as ever closer to utopia, with scientists on the verge of producing Artificial Intelligence to rival that of people, medical wonders to cure disease and forestall death, complex energy and utility systems that provide electricity, water, and sanitation to all, military weaponry to quickly obliterate any foe, political alliances aimed at global trade, world peace, and common prosperity. More and more people convince themselves that they have evolved beyond the ancient world’s attachment to gods and myths, and are becoming the gods of their own persons and societies.  These individuals now free from the absolutes of good and evil which flow from an absolute and transcendent God, seek to rebuild the world and redefine everything in their own terms—everything in relation to the pursuit of personal pleasure, losing not only their grasp on God but on philosophy, reason, and even Natural Law.  We find today a world leaning forward into the vortex of disordered passion and unhinged sentimentality, building ever greater technological wonders to prop up the civilization they have dreamt.  No longer content to live upon the shores of the civilizations which gave them birth, they yearn for the horizon of a not too distant shore, where they may be the gods they desire, and fashion the world in the image of their passions.

These are perilous times, indeed.  Throughout history’s ebb and flow, there have been civilizations which rose and fell as they gained or lost their grip on reality.  Regardless of the technological wonders of the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, the greatness of Assyria, Babylon, Greece, and Rome, the various empires of the East and the West, the hearts of fallen man remain the same:  bent on passion and lust, pride and avarice, if they are not curbed or held in check they produce some the darkest and most deadly of times.  In fact, we have the near history of the 20^th century, which shows in startling detail the inability of the technological wonders of the Industrial Revolution to prevent the greatest loss of human life the world had ever known—not wars of religion, but tyrannical aspirations of twisted atheists, who bent the technological wonders of their day to re-craft the world according to their disordered passions.  Hell bent to rebuild the world according to Darwinian, Marxist, and Nietzschean visions of a world without God and beyond good and evil, hundreds of millions of lives were brutally slaughtered to make the foundations of their tyrannical and murderous empires.  These atheists knew well that without God there was nothing left for man but the will to power, and they were quick to seek their place at the top of heaping skulls.  The technological marvels of the 20^th century did not curb the darkness of the human heart, but rather became the mechanized weaponry able to implement those dark passions with every greater brutality.

And now we come to our own age, this burgeoning 21^st century rushing to the end of its second decade.  New voices call for abandoning God in search for a new technological utopia, convinced that the world they will build in their image with these new tools and wonders will be better than the one’s attempted before.  Don’t be naïve—in the hands of those with darkened and fallen hearts, new technological wonders will only help them accelerate the implementation of their disordered passions in ways and rapidity unknown to past generations.  Those who know the end game of atheism know that all which remains without God is the will to power, and those who are ignorant of their ambitions will be made to know them in time, as their wicked power is brought forth to slaughter or enslave them.  As each successive generation has discovered down through the halls of human history, each technological step our race takes is not a step closer to utopia, but a weapon in the hands of evil men who unwittingly strive to bring hell on earth.  The fulfillment of the image of fallen man in the world is not a reflection of the beauty and virtue of heaven, but of the twisted fires of corruption and vice curling around the devil in his eternal prison.

Our minds in proper focue, we are prepared to hear St. Paul’s encouragement and admonition for how to endure this ever darkening world.  The answer is not in human hands, but rather in the pierced hands of Christ—an answer of grace, redemption, and restoration which God works through faith and repentance in His Only Begotten Son.  In Jesus we see the good that the world and all mankind was originally made to be, and in His death we see not only the height of human wickedness but the inexhaustible depths of God’s love and mercy for His creation.  In Jesus’ resurrection we see the first fruits of God’s promise to restore and resurrect His people and His cosmos to the good, the virtue, the beauty of His image.  There in Jesus we find the promise of His abiding Holy Spirit to keep and guard His people in every darkening age, and His assurance that the gates of hell shall not prevail upon His Church.  Not in the technological wonders of man’s fallen intellect, but in the eternal Word and Wisdom of God made flesh, Jesus shows us the beginning, the middle, the fulfillment, and the eternity of His saving love for us.  The salvation, preservation, flourishing, and assurance of mankind is not found in man, but in Jesus Christ alone.

And where does fallen man learn of this saving Jesus but in His Word, the power of the Holy Spirit working through it to give new life by faith through grace in Christ alone?  Thus St. Paul points his young pastor, and all to come after him, to that sure foundation breathed out by God, which has endured the rising and falling of every past age, and which will endure through every age yet to come:

All scripture is given by inspiration of God,

and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction,

 for instruction in righteousness:

That the man of God may be perfect,

throughly furnished unto all good works.

Here is the rest and the assurance of the saints in our age, no matter how dark and perilous it may become, just as it was the rest and assurance of the saints in every age before.  Hear the Word of the Lord come to you this day, breaking through the wicked delusions of fallen men, to declare to you the love and mercy of Almighty God through Jesus Christ His Son.  Hear Him, turn from your evils and the passions of evil men; repent, believe, and live.  Amen.