In this compelling episode of Turning Point, Dr. David Jeremiah delves into how current societal behaviors might reflect biblical prophecies about the end times. Drawing from the apostle Paul’s writings to Timothy, he paints a vivid picture of increasingly self-centered people and fractured families as a prelude to greater societal challenges. Through engaging discussion, Dr. Jeremiah highlights God’s solution to humanity’s enduring sinfulness and calls upon listeners to embrace godliness in these turbulent times.
Welcome to Turning Point. If you think the human race seems to be falling more and more into sin and depravity, you’re not alone. Today, Dr. David Jeremiah examines this downward spiral and how it might be the fulfillment of an end times prophecy. Continuing the series, Where Do We Go From Here? Listen as David shares today’s powerful message, End Times People, A Biographical Prophecy.
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And thank you for joining us. I remember when I read this verse with understanding for the first time, and I kind of in my spirit said, yeah, that’s true. For this verse says that in the end times, people are going to be a certain way, and it describes them. And friends, when you read this verse, and as we go through this one-day study, you’re going to realize you’ve met some of these people. You have along the way, and you’ve discovered that what the Bible says about the time at the end and the kind of people who show up then is absolutely true. We’ll open our Bibles in a few moments to 2 Timothy chapter 3. You can join us then. And of course, there’s a book that we have called Where Do We Go From Here? And there’s a study guide. You can inquire about those when you go to our website, which is davidjeremiah.org. I will tell you about the resource of the month at the end of today’s program. But right now, we want to get started with this lesson. What kind of people are going to be walking around on earth when Jesus returns to take us home? Here’s what the Bible says. Why do people go the wrong way? Or in a broader sense, why do good people do bad things? For thousands of years, people have been debating those questions. Sociologists and laypeople expend huge amounts of air and ink trying to determine if human beings are basically good or fundamentally evil. According to scripture, sin is the fundamental problem of every person. Romans 3.10 says, no one is righteous, not even one. No one is truly wise. No one is seeking God. All have turned away. All have become useless. No one does good, not a single one. That’s from the New Living Translation. Our problem then isn’t just that we live in a sinful world, which we do. but that we live in a world full of sinful people. because our sin affects everything in our lives. The Bible makes it clear that we are all corrupted by sin, every one of us. That corruption entered our bloodstream through Adam and Eve, who rebelled against God in His garden. And the blood disease of sin has descended through the generations, and it affects all of us today. The Bible says, therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men because all sin. Because we have been stained by sin in this way, every one of us, the Bible says, there is none righteous, no, not one. We cannot produce anything good on our own. Collectively, individually, without me you can do nothing, Jesus said. So the blood of Christ and the Spirit of God must unleash their power in our lives if we’re to be godly people. God can come into a prison cell. He can take the life of a person who’s going the wrong way and totally change him, but only God can do that. There’s no other program that you can go to. God is the only one who can offset the impact of original sin, sin that started in the garden. What does this mean? Well, I want to show you a prediction about the last days that will put all of this into prophetic context. I want to quote from a letter written by another prisoner, this one on death row, and he wasn’t there for robbing banks. He was there for preaching the gospel. The apostle Paul wrote his final letter to Timothy from a Roman cell. Near the end of his letter, he drew a surprisingly detailed picture of how people will behave just prior to the Lord’s return and the beginning of the tribulation period. So I’m going to read that letter and see if you don’t resonate with what he said. 2 Timothy 3, 1 through 5, “…but know this, that in the last days perilous times will come, for men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control.” brutal despisers of good traitors headstrong haughty lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of god having a form of godliness but denying its power and then if you jump down in this passage to the 13th verse here’s what it says evil men and imposters will grow worse and worse deceiving and being deceived. So we’re not just imagining this. What’s happening right now isn’t just something that, oh, I haven’t known many evil people before, so maybe I’m just meeting them all right now. No, the Bible says that there will be a trajectory toward the coming of Christ when sinful people will be more sinful, evil people will be more evil, and difficulty in relationships and all the rest will be more profound. Worse and worse, the scripture says. With those three short words, Paul predicted people will descend into a rampant and accelerating godlessness as we approach the tribulation. Please note the apostle’s focus is not on bad times, but on bad people. As John Calvin wrote many, many years ago, The hardness or danger of this time is in Paul’s view to be not war, not famine or diseases, nor any of the other calamities or ills that befall the body, but the wicked and depraved ways of man. You know, it’s an interesting thing. Nobody knows how good a person can be and nobody knows how bad a person can be. Paul gave us 19 specific character descriptions of what people will be like. In other words, here in 2 Timothy 3, the Lord gives us 19 expressions to depict the nature of godlessness in the last days, the things we should expect and not be surprised by. I can’t bore in all the 19 words, and I’m not going to do a 19-word study, but I can show you a pattern in Paul’s words that move from selfish people, to splintered families, to shattered societies. First of all, selfish people. Right up front, the Lord tells us that the last days will be populated by people who are lovers of themselves. Narcissistic people. People who see themselves in the mirror and applaud. According to Paul, the days before the tribulation will be perilous because people will love only themselves. They will, according to the scripture, be boasters and proud and blasphemers. These people love to talk about themselves and to build themselves up. Such people want everyone else to love them as much as they love themselves. They write their own press reports. They pad their own resumes. When you finally meet the person in question, you hardly recognize them. These are proud or haughty people, which means they’re disdainful toward other people. Looking down on others comes as naturally to them as it does to a pigeon on top of a statue. Perhaps nothing represents this attitude better than social media. Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram allow us to constantly crow about our own success while simultaneously slashing away at the achievements of other people. Often through anonymous comments and online bullying, social media is a stronghold for selfish people. Unfortunately, selfish people rarely keep to themselves. You watch what’s going on right now in our culture and how we are treating one another. Selfish people. Well, selfish people end up being a part of splintered families. Paul goes on in Timothy and talks about how the increasing selfishness of the last days will manifest itself in selfish people. And those selfish people will unavoidably result in damaged families. People will focus less on their loved ones. Their time, energy, and passion will be tied up in themselves. And the result was, as Paul said, in the days prior to the tribulation, tribulation will be strewn with broken homes. And he uses five descriptions. And I’m not going to talk about all of them for very much, but I want to show you how interesting it is in the text of the Scripture itself. These five descriptions highlight the damage that broken people perpetuate on their own families in the last days. It says they are disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, and unforgiving. Those are the five things that are in the text. And I want you to know that when ancient Greek writers wanted to say something negative— they took a positive word and put a letter in front of it called the alpha privative. The alpha negated the positive word. You see the principle in English when we say something is distasteful. We take the word tasteful and we put a prefix in front of it, and that prefix negates the word. All five of Paul’s terms about the family included in the paragraph are alpha privatives. All five describe a positive attitude that has vanished from most families during the last days. Children will be disobedient willfully. They will do what they want to do, casting off oversight and authority. They will ignore the instruction of scripture that says, children, obey your parents in the Lord for this is right. They will be ungrateful. Gone will be a thankful spirit between children and their parents. And that lack of gratitude will extend to other relationships. The third word is unholy. In this context, that implies lack of respect. There will be no respect within the structure of the framework of the family. The picture is of someone who throws off the oversight at all levels of authority and harbors a growing sense of rebellion and independence. If you want to know what that’s like, go talk to the first public school teacher you meet and ask them if they know what we’re talking about. Next we come to the word unloving. Normal human relationships. will be destroyed and broken and affected and wither away. The word here is translated elsewhere in the New Testament as heartless. Homes will become hard places ruined by harsh hearts, and it’ll spill over into the whole society. And the final word is unforgiving, which could also mean truth-breaker. This refers to people whose rebellion becomes stubborn and hard-hearted. The root of bitterness within them grows into an emotional forest of poisonous trees bearing toxic fruit. And the lack of capacity to forgive others means they live as though they themselves could never be forgiven for all the harm they’ve done. By now you may be wondering, is this going to keep getting worse and worse? Is this going to be a whole negative sermon? No. Let’s take a breath of fresh air. Let’s take a moment and turn this around. If the ungodly world is characterized by these negatives, how should God’s people live in the midst of it all? It’s very simple. Our grammar has to change. We should leave off the alpha privative. In Christ, it’s not appropriate to negate a virtue. Our homes should be filled with obedience between children and parents. Families should be filled with gratitude and defined by respect. They should exude a natural love and affection. And we should be able to trust each other. We have to work hard to avoid the alpha privative lifestyle. You probably never heard that word before, but here’s a new term. Don’t be an alpha privative family. Don’t be a family that negates all the virtues that you’ve been given by Almighty God. We must be doggedly committed to biblical marriages and kingdom families. Whatever has happened to you in the past, start where you are today, and with God’s help, make your home a place that’s indwelled by the Lord Jesus Christ. Make it a Christian home. So are you getting this picture? When you have selfish people, they end up creating splintered families. And splintered families create shattered societies. It starts with individuals, doesn’t it? We look around, we say, oh, my church is a mess. Well, you probably had something to do with that. Right? If you’re looking for a perfect church, you can find it. Don’t go there because you’ll mess it up. You know, we’re always looking for some corporate answer to the problems, but the problems are ours. Our families are what we create them to be. Our counties are what we allow them to be. Our cities are. It’s all about us. So unless we’re willing to take insight on ourselves, we don’t have much of a chance to get better, do we? So we have selfish people. We have families that reflect on the selfishness of the people in them. And then those families go into churches and cultures and societies, and the society becomes what the family is. So what do we do with that? I mean, in this message series, I’ve been trying to tell you, here’s where we are, here’s what that means, and where do we go from here? So here’s the end of the matter. How do Christians live in such a place where selfishness reigns and immorality increases? How can we be different kind of end times people in a broken world? Let’s take a page from Benjamin Franklin. In his autobiography, Franklin described the darkness that filled the streets of Philadelphia during his day. It was pitch black at night and people were sleeping on the streets and they were stepping into mud puddles and stumbling over rough stones and even worse, crime was growing. Wasn’t safe to be out after sunset. So Franklin waged an intense campaign to persuade everyone to light the area around their own house. But he got nowhere. Finally, he just did it himself. but only in front of his own house. He planted a pole in front of his porch with a kerosene light on top of the pole. That night in the city of Philadelphia, there was one house bathed in warm glow. The lamp cast light on the street, giving passerbys a feeling of well-being and safety. But the next night, another house had a lamp, and then another, and pretty soon, almost the whole city was lighting the walkways in front of their houses at night. Franklin learned something. He learned that our example is often greater than our words and our admonitions. And that’s what we need to learn. With that in mind, I want to lift you out of 2 Timothy and take you to Ephesians 5. And this is the passage that says, “‘For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.'” That sentence is short enough to memorize, but it’s powerful enough to illumine the pathways around your life. First of all, you need to remember the grace that you received. How do we walk in the light when our society is defined by end times people? How do you be a Christian if you’re surrounded by people who are doing the kinds of things we’re watching right now, literally destroying the fabric of our country? Well, you have to experience God’s grace through an encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ. Metaphors involving light pervade scripture. And Ephesians 5.8 describes the difference that comes over us when we have grace with Christ. Before that moment, we live in darkness as deep as underground caverns. We are spiritually, morally, personally, and eternally in pitch blackness. But the moment we come to Christ, he pushes down the lever that connects us to the throne of grace and he switches on a billion megawatts of light inside of our souls. That experience is so vivid that many Christians describe their moment of grace in bright terms. So first of all, remember your salvation. Remember the grace you received. Remember that but for the grace of God, you would be a part of this culture, doing the things that right now are so hurtful to you. Without Jesus Christ in your life, you are capable, I am capable of all those things that we watch that are just making us shake our heads. Number two, reflect the light that you have become. That brings us to our next tactic for living in these dark times. We have to exude God’s light. We have to convey it. We have to reflect it. We have to radiate it. That’s what we read in Ephesians 5, 8. Walk as children of light, for the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, righteousness, and truth, finding out what is acceptable to the Lord. Remember the grace you received. Reflect the light you’ve become and reveal the darkness that you see. The Ephesians passage goes on to tell us something else. Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them, for it is shameful even to speak of those things which are done by them in secret. But all things that are exposed and are made manifest by the light, for whatever makes manifest is light. Therefore, he says, awake you who sleep, arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light. If you turn over a brick on a bright day, you’ll see a whole world of bugs and pests fleeing in every direction. These creatures prefer the darkness and the light expels them. And in the same way, the world is ill at ease when we walk in the light and seek through our lives to reveal Christ’s holiness. Did you notice how this happened naturally after you gave your life to Christ? All of a sudden, the people around you started looking at you differently. What’s wrong with him? He doesn’t laugh at my dirty jokes anymore. What’s wrong with her? She doesn’t like to get wasted on weekends anymore. We reply, well, you know what? I’m a child of the light and I can’t have fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness. Some people will turn away from us. Some will continue to be our friends, but our joint activities will become different. and some of them will follow your trail of light and find Christ for themselves. Let me give you a key little principle that I found really helps. The word fellowship in Ephesians 5.11 is translated from the Greek word . The last part of the word means fellowship. But the prefix soon is the Greek word for the word with. It means participating with someone in doing something. This verse tells us that once we become a child of the light, we can no longer participate with those who are doing the works of darkness. You can’t fellowship with them doing what they do. That’s what it means. It doesn’t mean you tell them you don’t want to see them anymore, you don’t want to be their friends, but it means you don’t do what they do. You don’t fellowship soon with them. john says for everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light lest his deeds should be exposed but he who does the truth comes to the light you and i are children of light i don’t want to be a negative person offensive making people uncomfortable or drive people away We can’t help being lights in the darkness wherever we go, and it’s gonna be different for you. If you live for Christ, if you’re not trying to be gray, if you’re not trying to mesmerize your own self by marrying the darkness with the light, which doesn’t work and is not acceptable and will just lead you wrong, if you’re trying to really be the light, you just need to get excited about this, someone isn’t gonna like you as much as they did before. But what I know is this, everybody in the world, whether they like to admit it or not, is looking for light. They’re searching, they’re trying to figure out why they are the way they are, why they do what they do. They’re looking for someone to help them. And if you don’t shine the light, if you compromise your witness, They won’t come to you because they’ll see the phoniness of who you are and what you’re doing. That doesn’t mean you’re better than they are. That just means it’s the light that dispels the darkness. Did you know that in the English language and in language itself, there is no word for darkness? The word for darkness is coined. Darkness is just the expression of the absence of light. So darkness isn’t a quantity, it’s the absence of light. When you walk into a situation, you change the darkness. You become a part of lighting up that area where you are. The light of the world is coming through you and Jesus Christ is living his life out in you. We’re living in a messed up world, let’s face it. The Bible warns that in the last days, perilous times will come, society will go from bad to worse. But remember, the city of Ephesus was also a place of darkness in Paul’s day, the city to which his letter was written. Yet Paul viewed the Christians there as children of light. Their presence lit up the city streets with the glow of Jesus. So even in dark days, you can experience God’s grace, exude his radiance, exhibit his holiness, and in a world increasingly dominated by the end times, God has empowered you to shine. And how many of you know, the darker the night, the brighter the light? So let’s don’t complain about the world in which we live. Let’s take advantage of the difference we make. Let’s don’t be obnoxious, weird people. You know, some Christians are like that. When you see people like that, you don’t want what they have. You want to get away from them as far as you can. But if you’re gracious, godly people, and you let your light so shine, and when others are being cruel, you’re kind. When others are doing the things that Paul described people do in the last days, you don’t do that. You are not an alpha privative Christian. but you’re a Christian in the truest sense, and you live your life that way, you will make a difference in this world. And if all of us determine to let our light shine, we can light up this world just like we light up this church on Christmas Eve. Amen. That is the truth. The light that shines the furthest has to shine the brightest at home. So in our churches, we have to be different than the list of people we have been talking about today. Say, friends, when you help us financially with this program, with a gift during the month of March, we have a special resource we would like to put in your hands. It’s a book called Understanding Biblical Prophecy, a 30-day Bible study. It’s yours for the asking when you send your gift, but you must ask for it. You must say, please send me this. the biblical prophecy study guide, and we’ll do it. We’ll send it to you right away. It’s never been released before. It’s brand new. And it’s really helpful because if you wonder, how do I interpret prophecy? This 30-day study will give you some clues to help you do that. And we’re happy to put it in your hands. We think it will be a blessing and will increase your value as a believer. So do it today. Thanks so much for listening. Don’t forget to join us tomorrow right here on This Good Station.
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For more information on Dr. Jeremiah’s series, Where Do We Go From Here?, please visit our website where we also offer two free ways to help you stay connected, our monthly Turning Points magazine and our daily email devotional. Sign up today at davidjeremiah.org slash radio. That’s davidjeremiah.org slash radio. Or call us at 800-947-1993. Ask for your copy of David’s new book, Understanding Biblical Prophecy, a 30-day Bible study. It’s a powerful resource, and it’s yours for a gift of any amount. You can also purchase the Jeremiah Study Bible in the English Standard, New International, and New King James versions, available in a variety of handsome cover options. Get all the details when you visit our website, davidjeremiah.org slash radio. This is David Michael Jeremiah. Join us tomorrow as we continue, Where Do We Go From Here? on Turning Point with Dr. David Jeremiah.
