Truth for the Times

2 Timothy
J. N. Darby
It is worthy of remark that the moment you get out of the epistles to the churches, you get general epistles and others which treat the Church as in the "last days." In John, there were "many antichrists." In 1 Peter, "Judgment must begin at the house of God." In 1 Timothy, "In the latter times some shall depart from the faith." In 2 Timothy, "In the last days perilous times shall come." In Jude, "Certain men are crept in unawares." In 2 Peter, "There shall be false teachers among you.”
It is at such a time that God specially commends us to His Word, and He has taken care that we should have in Scripture what would guide us in the last days, when He commends us to it. After Paul's departure grievous wolves would come in, not sparing the flock. He commends us to God and the word of His grace. (Acts 20. See also 2 Tim. 3:14-17.) We need the grace of endurance in such a day. And when one goes through the trial with God beforehand, he meets the enemy and the actual trial when it comes, and the distressing effect upon the heart is gone. God helps and sustains us in it and through it.
One is struck in reading 2 Timothy by the way in which Paul goes back from dispensational glory (as in Ephesians, etc.) down to natural and Jewish relationships of a private and personal character: "I thank God, whom I serve from my forefathers with pure conscience," and, "When I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice.”
There is nothing he insists on more than not to lose personal courage in a time of ruin, no matter how great the ruin may be: "For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind." It is always thus. "In nothing terrified by your adversaries." "Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord [i.e., the gospel and the testimony generally], nor of me His prisoner." Satan is to be met with confidence as a beaten enemy. This gives steady firmness to the soul. One has the truth, and knows one has it, which gives quiet consciousness, and keeps one in the midst of the attacks of the enemy in an evil day. He is to be thoroughly courageous when all the evil was coming in and was there; he was to "be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus," and to "endure hardness." It was when the power of evil had come in that he expects courage.
This is not the tide of blessing which carries on others, but the ebb had come, and individuals were standing and stemming it, and carrying on the testimony of the truth. It was not like the tide of the gospel at the first when "a great door and effectual... opened," but, rather, "be thou partaker of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God." It is then we require the power of God and personal courage more than ever. All this is truth for the times in which we live. (There is truth for eternity as well.)