Formidable Seasons

Tuts know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truce-breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. A.V.

But take notice of this, that in the last days there will set in

formidable seasons. For the men of those days will be self-lovers, money-lovers, boasters, overweening, foul-mouthed, unfilial, unthankful, unholy, unforgiving, accusers, abandoned, unapproachable, hostile to good, betrayers, headstrong, blind with self-esteem, pleasure-lovers rather than God-lovers, retaining indeed a theory of godliness but having negatived its power. And from these men — turn away. 2 In this dark paragraph the tone of the Apostle 2 Tim. iii. changes with a solemn suddenness. He has been 1-5 speaking of grave errors of both faith and practice, Pare but with the aim upon the whole to prepare Timothy to deal with them in patience and in love. Now he depicts scenes of advanced evil impending in the future, and he enjoins on him, in view of his dealings with ‘the men’ whom he should encounter then, to find his safety and his duty in isolation. ‘From these turn away.’

The passage has its obvious difficulties. To be What is its sure, the lurid account of prevalent evil, evil de- PapOree veloped evidently (ver. 5) within the. Church of

2 Tim. iii,
is:

The
Apostolic
Expectation.

Christ, is illustrated only too largely in many a ‘season’ of Church history, and under a wide variety of conditions. Often indeed has the thought risen in the mind of the student, the preacher, or the poet, that such is the state of ‘Christian’ society around him in his own time that the last of the last days must be upon him. So Cowper thought, late in the eighteenth century : —

‘The prophets speak of such, and, noting down The features of the last degenerate times, Exhibit every lineament of these.’

And he calls on the absent Lord, in a strain of majestic earnestness, to come and ‘make an end of sin.” And Cowper’s lamentation can be paralleled from a long series of witnesses all down the ages before him. But the suggestion of this passage might seem to be that St. Paul is anticipating in the very near future, well within Timothy’s lifetime, both a tremendous developement of evil within the Church, and ‘the end of the age.’ Was it really so? Did the forecast shape itself thus within his soul?

It is no part of the orthodox creed of inspiration, if I apprehend it aright, to think that the Apostles, as Prophets, could at will map the chronology of the future and say with decision how long the Lord would tarry. But on the other hand I fail to see proof in their writings that they definitely expected, as a fact, an early date for His longed-for Return. Among other tokens to the contrary I find an important one in the grave, elaborate,

1The Winter Walk at Noon.

Formidable Seasons

far-seeing care with which St. Paul concerns himself 2 Tim. iii, in one Hpistle after another with the order and 1-5. developement of the Christian Society; not at all as one who was looking for the entire cessation of Institutions, in ‘another world,’ in an age of direct divine manifestation. In view of such hints of his God-guided thought I cannot think that here he is telling Timothy that the Lord is soon coming, and that the next few years will see the last convulsive efforts of the evil which He alone can annihilate. Rather, by ‘the last days’ I take him to mean the whole ‘Christian age,’ shorter or longer, the ‘times’ between the Departure and the Return, whatever may be that date. As to that period he warns Timothy that it will still produce, in the mystery of sin, ‘formidable seasons,’ not one but many, and that of these one at least is impending now for him. If I may offer the conjecture, he is not so much saying that new and portentous sin will mark the very eve of the Return (though it may well be that it will do so) as that the ‘world’s old evil,’ even within external Christendom, will still, even to the end, have its earthquakes and cyclones, its ‘seasons’ when, in degrees awfully abnormal, ‘iniquity shall abound’ and ‘love in many shall wax cold.’

Such a time seems to have marked the last days of the great Apostles, the latter decades of the first century. How mysterious a phenomenon is this, how humbling, and withal how full of a solemn cheer, as we read the after-story, continued even till now, of the persistent, patient, restoring, mercies of our God!

Our own
ge.

For our own day, grave indeed is the message. Ours beyond question is a period when the bonds of both faith and order are strained to the point of breaking. The sanctities of Society, of Home, of Revelation, are everywhere as if on trial — before revolutionary tribunals. It is a ‘formidable season.’ But here we have the Bible foreseeing it all, foretelling it all. And that same Bible tells us, with the same voice of calm assurance, that the issue of it all shall be the triumph of our King.