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Preparing for the last days – Part 1

By Pastor W. F. Kumuyi
06 December 2020   |   1:17 am
The times are dangerous, insecure, trying, tempting, corrupting, critical and unsafe because the devil is working overtime to get believers off the narrow path that leads to Heaven.

Pastor W. F. Kumuyi

APPROACHING the end of the year should once again, remind us that life, as we know it on earth, will one day soon, come to an end. In fact, these are the last moments of the last days, when believers should be filled with the wisdom of God and come under His protection. Unfortunately, many who claim to know the Lord do not accept or understand that we are living in the last days. As the people of Sodom and Gomorrah failed to acknowledge that they were living in the last days, many believers are unaware that we are living in the last days of this world.

The times are dangerous, insecure, trying, tempting, corrupting, critical and unsafe because the devil is working overtime to get believers off the narrow path that leads to Heaven. For this reason, we need wisdom to be secured and preserved. Situations will try to hinder, limit, slow down and eventually stop or make us question what we have learnt. But Apostle Paul exhorts: “Continue thou in the things which thou hast learned”. The Scripture makes us
“wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.” Therefore, we should read, study, believe and obey every part of it to be “perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.” We must not use the Scripture to cover up or excuse our imperfections. The word of God is our wisdom and protection.

One of the signs of the last days is the lifestyle of those who do not genuinely believe in God. These are the transgressors the characteristics of whose lives in these last days are altogether atrocious. They are lovers of self, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers who think they are gods with the final authority. They belittle and do not recognise God. They are disobedient to parents, unholy and without natural affection. They are so concentrated on self that they do not consider others. They break marriage covenant once they are not pleased.

They are fierce and take delight in violence and fighting. They despise those who are more talented or better than them. They are traitors, heady, high-minded and lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God. All they have is selfishness, self-exaltation, self-indulgence, self-seeking and self-centredness. They “seek their own [and] not the things which are Jesus Christ’s”. They are less concerned about morals, salvation, true worship and God’s demand. They live carelessly because they are given to pleasures, forgetting that “she that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth”.

More than that, other common characteristics found in the transgressors in these last days include: (1) lovers of self; (2) lovers of pleasure; (3) lovers of money. If some people are not paid, they will not offer their gifts and talents for the work of God. Also, the love of money has made many to excuse false doctrines and compromise their faith. “The heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money”; (4) the love of the world; (5) lovers of darkness. Secret cults and hideous sects are on the increase today because people like to indulge in secret covenants. Although they profess to know the Lord and identify with the church, they have pleasure in unrighteousness, false doctrine and the secrecy of their secret societies; (6) lovers of strange women. Unimaginable things happen in the world today as well as the church because of the love of strange women and unequal yoke in marriage. It happened to Solomon. “…Even him did outlandish women cause to sin”; (7) lovers of violence. To escape the
corruption of these last days, we must be convicted, converted and completely cleansed.

Further Reading (King James Version): 2 Timothy 3:1; 1 Timothy 4:1,2; 2 Peter 3:3-5; 1 John 2:18; Revelation 12:12; 2 Timothy 3:1,2,5,7,14-17; Deuteronomy 4:2,4-6; 2 Timothy 3:1,2,4; Philippians 2:21; Isaiah 47:8; 1 Timothy 5:6; 6:9-11; Micah 3:11; Luke 22:3-5; 1 John 2:15-17; James 4:4; 2 Timothy 4:10; John 3:18-20; 2 Thessalonians 2:10; 1 Kings 11:1-9; Nehemiah 13:26; Psalms 11:3-5; 52:3-5; John 14:30.

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