These Are the Last Days

As a believer, you'd have to have your head in the sand not to recognize that the times we're living in are the end times. For these are, indeed, the last days. Well, how can you be so sure, preacher, you might ask? I'll tell you, friends, and I'll back it up with my Bible.

The title of my message today is, These Are The Last Days. And my text can be found in Luke's Gospel in Chapter 17. You can turn in your Bibles there now, friends.

We'll be in verses 26 through 30. When I was a little boy in the 1950s, it was a time when women wore their dresses down to the ankle, and they wore hats on their heads and white gloves on their hands when they went out in public. Modesty was still prevalent in the land, and there was still a sense of shame in society.

Now women go out in public half naked or worse. And when I was a boy, only sailors had tattoos. But now you're an eyeball if your body's not covered in tattoos.

And television shows back then would not dare suggest anything sensual. But now there's nothing left to the imagination. There used to be a moral dividing line in society, and you dared not cross it.

That was because the church in those days still was a moral compass to society. And the land looked to the church for guidance and direction. The steady moral downgrade of society has mirrored the steady spiritual downgrade of the church.

And when the church, friends, quit preaching against sin, then society began to legalize it. When the church quit preaching on man's duty of repentance, then society and church started living like the devil. Today society spins out of control all around us, and it lies in the grip of violence and perversion.

And it is these two factors that have met together at the crossroads of judgment. And they distinctly mark the days in which we live as the last days. And herald the soon coming Christ who will judge the entire earth.

Jesus gave very clear warnings and predictions as to the period marking the end times. He said it'd be a time when the earth's wickedness was about to be consummated at the Lord's return in glory and power. And Jesus made it plain that the last days would be marked when two conditions were prevalent in the world as they came together, marking the time before his return.

He said that in the closing days of this age of grace, society would be as in the days of Noah and as the days of Lot. Well, let me read you, friends, his words from our text from Luke's gospel, beginning in verse 26. And as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of Man.

Let me pause here, friends, to walk you back to the book of Genesis for a vivid description of what society was like in the days of Noah. We see from the following in Genesis chapter 6 and verses 11 through 13. The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.

And God looked upon the earth and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, the end of all flesh is come before me, for the earth is filled with violence through them. And behold, I will destroy them with the earth.

So the first prevailing condition before Christ's return is that as in Noah's day, which was a period of violence, so too it would be that vain society just before he returns. Now let us continue with our text as seen from Luke in verse 28. Likewise, also, as it was in the days of Lot.

Let me pause here, friends, and walk us back to the book of Genesis again for the description of what Sodom was like in Lot's day. Looking at Genesis chapter 19 and verse 4, which speaks of the two angels lodging with Lot that last night in Sodom. But before they lay down, the men of the city, even the men of Sodom, compassed the house round, both old and young.

Let me pause here, friends. Picture that horrible scene in Sodom's last night, the house of Lot is surrounded by lust-filled Sodomites, both old and young ones, and that boldly set about to fulfill their unnatural lusts. And all the people from every quarter, and they called unto Lot, Where are the men which came in to thee this night? Bring them out unto us, that we may know them.

That's the scene, friends, in America, Great Britain, and all over the globe at this dreadful hour, in the history of this sin-soaked world that is ripe for judgment, of violence and sexual perversion, or rampant in the land. I never thought I'd live to see the day when the entire world embraced homosexuality, and governments legalized it, and corporate society promoted it. I've never known a time in my life where there've been so many random murders in our cities, and serial killings are commonplace to where you take your life in your hands, just going out in public today, because you can be gunned down any minute by a madman.

I've never known a time when our young people are sexually experimented with those of their own sex, like they are today. We have arrived at the biblical crossroads of the two periods which Jesus so vividly described and predicted as the time right before he would return to earth to judge it. Listen, friends, to these terrifying words from 2 Thessalonians 1, and beginning in verse 7. When the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power, that, friends, should make every unconverted church member tremble and quake.

Every atheist who shakes his fists in the face of God now will be destroyed by him then. This is not Jesus meek and mild as in his first appearing, but as a vengeful judge coming with a sword of judgment in his hand. After hearing this message, friend, if you still don't think we're living in the last days before Christ's return, then I have no message for you, but for those of us who believe and recognize the desperate days in which we live and acknowledge that these indeed are the end times.

Let each one of us be busy sharing the gospel with the lost, and let each one of us live with a fear of God in our heart and an expectation on our lips. Come, Lord Jesus, come, let us pray.