Daniel 8:1-27; 1 John 2:1-17; Psalm 120:1-7; Proverbs 28:25-26
“At the end of their rule, when their sin is at its height, a fierce king, a master of intrigue, will rise to power. He will become very strong, but not by his own power. He will cause a shocking amount of destruction and succeed in everything he does. He will destroy powerful leaders and devastate the holy people. He will be a master of deception and will become arrogant; he will destroy many without warning. He will even take on the Prince of princes in battle, but he will be broken, though not by human power. This vision about the 2,300 evenings and mornings is true. But none of these things will happen for a long time….”
“Do not love this world nor the things it offers you, for when you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you. For the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions. These are not from the Father, but are from this world. And this world is fading away, along with everything that people crave. But anyone who does what pleases God will live forever.”
“I took my troubles to the Lord; I cried out to him, and he answered my prayer. Rescue me, O Lord, from liars and from all deceitful people. O deceptive tongue, what will God do to you? How will he increase your punishment?”
“Greed causes fighting; trusting the Lord leads to prosperity. Those who trust their own insight are foolish, but anyone who walks in wisdom is safe.”
When it comes to the things of eternity, Scripture is clear that half the fun is most definitely not in getting there. We are going to be seriously challenged at every single turn. The closer we get to the finish line, the more difficult things are going to be. This is the flip side of yesterday’s entry, I suppose. If we allow ourselves to become sidetracked and distracted from our ultimate goal, we are going to be deceived. We will lose our way and become easy fodder for those who would take advantage of our lack of vision and purpose. The world is full of piranha. Even Scripture recognizes that if we put our trust in other people for themselves and their own wisdom, etc., we are likely to experience disappointment, or worse, at some point. Moreover, there are those who will not hesitate to affirmatively misuse us and then devour us as it suits them. We need to be prepared for just this sort of testing, and we need to recognize it when we see it. There are demons among us.
But there are also “angels” we cannot live without. Not trusting others is an anathema within the Body of Christ. In our zeal for the End Times, we dare not overlook the import of continuing Christian community, and the safety in numbers. We simply cannot be a part of the Body, or help build it as the disciples we are called to be, unless we trust our actual and potential brothers and sisters in the faith. We know we are hard wired to crave friendship and community – those who don’t even have a disease named for them: sociopath. We therefore need to be clear on how to reconcile verses like today’s from Daniel with 1 Corinthians 12. In other words, we must be able to sort the demons from would-be “angels.”
Again, just to be clear, refusing to trust others is not the way to avoid the Antichrist or his evil ministers. It is, in fact, the start of the road to Hell. The Bible tells us we must not only love our neighbors, but pray for those who persecute us, as well. We are commanded to turn the other cheek, and to forgive seventy times seven. Still, we are told there will be false prophets misleading God’s children, too. All this would seem to make us fairly easy prey for those who would take advantage of our good will. In fact, prey we will be if we do not look through people to the goal at which they point.
This distinction is drawn nicely in 1 John. If others are leading us to love the world, or themselves, more than we love Christ, we need to love them from a distance. Pray for them – oh, yes! – and even befriend them as the Spirit leads (who knows when a person might accept the Gospel we live?), but do not trust their world view and do not be misled by them. Love of the world inevitably leads to a terminal craving that can never be satisfied. The secular view ultimately falls in on itself, because it has no lasting answers for its own problems. We must continually stay focused on eternity if we have any hope of rising above the material. The true test of Christian friendship, then, is whether it encourages us to rise above our circumstances via hope in the things and promises of God, or whether it places friendship and trust in others above those things that alone are capable of truly saving us. Simply, if friendship or trusting others is an end in itself, it is little more than the peddling of influence. If, on the other hand, those we trust encourage us to continually look outside ourselves and even past them to the One who can truly save, that is a friend worth having and trusting.
Most church-going folk are pretty glib when it comes to Christian lingo. They know to give lip service to Christ. But relatively few live lives that truly point others to the Savior, rather than themselves. We should never let our guard down just because we think the End Times may not happen in our lifetimes. The journey into darkness can begin any time. If we are to trust and follow anyone – and we must – we are to follow only those whose destination is Christ. If we are to lead others, we must lead only to Christ. Sorting out the angels from the demons is not as difficult as it sounds. The difficulty lies in forcing ourselves to see the truth of our friends’ lives, and in having the courage to choose another path when theirs diverge from the straight and narrow.
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