by Charles R. Swindoll
2 Timothy 3:1-5
Like sticks of dynamite
taped together with a short fuse, our times
are
really volatile. Anger is ready to explode into physical
violence at
the slightest provocation. This entire globe seems brimming with
hair-trigger hostility, ready
to flare into full-scale disaster.
It's not just a vast global problem, however. It's personal. It's
in
your neighborhood. Your school. Where you work. Home security systems
are no longer considered a luxury
for the rich. Even teachers are not
safe in the classroom.
But I must confess, the final
straw of shock came when I read of the
murder of John White in a quiet neighborhood in southwest Cleveland.
The
killer? A nineteen-year-old hired by White's two kids. That's
right. His seventeen-year-old son and fourteen-year-old
daughter paid
$60 to have their own father killed.
The teenagers paid off the murderer,
then hid the body in a back room
of the house. After that they used their dad's credit cards to go on a
ten-day
spending spree. While their father's body was decaying in the
utility room, they were cooking meals in the kitchen
a few feet away
and enjoying themselves in the living room.
After being caught, they openly
confessed the entire, bizarre event.
When asked why, they answered: "He wouldn't let us do anything we
wanted."
The dad had angered the kids by trying to enforce an evening
curfew and by not allowing them to quit school or "smoke
pot." So they
had him killed.
Centuries ago, in a stone dungeon, the apostle Paul wrote
his last few
sentences. Yet, today, they stab us awake with incredible relevance:
"But realize this, that
in the last days difficult times will come.
For
men will be . . . arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents,
ungrateful,
unholy . . . brutal, haters of good, treacherous,
reckless"
(2 Tim. 3:1-4).
The
Greek term he chose for "difficult times" means, literally,
"fierce, harsh, hard to deal with, savage." It is used
only one other
time in the New Testament, when it describes two demon-possessed men
as
"extremely
violent" (Matt. 8:28).
An apt description of our times. Yet there is a glimmer of hope amid
this
flood of violence. It is this: Christ's coming cannot be far
away.
These "last days" of pain---though
they may seem to pass slowly---are
daily reminders that our redemption draws near. And "we will all be
changed,
in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye" (1 Cor. 15:51-52).
Like, fast. Really fast. Faster than
a short fuse on sticks of
dynamite.
When everything looks hopeless, we have the comfort
of our eternal
Hope.
BY: Charles Swindoll
