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How Should We Live Responsibly in the Last Days?

2 Timothy 3, 2 Timothy 3, 2 Timothy 3, 4:1-8

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of the end times from 2 Timothy 3.


Male: Let me lead us in prayer.

Father, we thank you for Don Carson. We thank you for all of the ministries you’ve given him to perform that sometimes amaze us that one man has enough time to do the many things he does. As he teaches at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, as he travels this country and the world, as he writes and tutors students, we pray for you to give him good health, continue to give him strength of mind, and give him a tender heart toward you. Bless him, O Lord, as he leads us tonight in our thoughts. May we worship you and learn of your Word together. Through Jesus Christ, amen.

Don Carson: Because I do travel quite a lot, I see a lot of different churches, and I have to say with gratitude to God that it has been a pleasure to be here and see so many different kinds of signs of health in this church. I could tell you what they are, but I don’t want it to go to your head. There are a lot of signs of spiritual health here for which I am profoundly grateful.

As for that book, The Gagging of God, I have to tell you that I was in Washington, DC, shortly after that book came out, and a friend introduced me as the author of The Gagging of God. He held this great big whopping book up in the air, and he said, “I just have one question. Who will gag Don?” So it all depends a bit on your point of view what a book signifies.

Now this evening, I’d like to direct your attention to 2 Timothy 3:1 all the way to 4:8. If you open up your Bibles there, instead of reading the whole passage right through, I’m going to read it chunk by chunk as we come to it. Not least when times are insecure, segments of the church have often indulged in a feeding frenzy of speculation over the last days. Wanting to cash in on the current wave, a colleague of mine at Trinity has suggested that he might begin to write a series of books with the title Right Behind.

Of course, the Bible does say some important things about the end, and before we mock too much those whose entire vision is bound up to prognostication, it’s really important for all of us to remember the words of the Lord Jesus in this regard. “Do not lay up treasures on earth where moth and rust corrode and thieves dig through and steal. Lay up treasures for yourself in heaven where moth and rust do not corrode and thieves do not dig through and steal.”

Then he adds this line, and it is this line that is often misunderstood. “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” It does not say, “Watch your heart.” There are other parts of the Bible that say that. “Watch your heart, for out of it are the wellsprings of life,” we read elsewhere. But that’s not what this passage says. Jesus says, “Watch your treasure, because your heart will follow your treasure.”

In other words, if you don’t really treasure a new heaven and a new earth, if you don’t really treasure seeing Christ face to face, if you don’t really treasure the final consummation of all things, if you don’t really love the idea of a resurrection body on the last day and real holiness before God, then your heart is not going to go in that direction, because what you treasure, your heart will go after.

Thus, whereas there are some people who say, “There’s a danger of being so heavenly minded that we’re no earthly good,” my own observation is there’s not much danger of that around. There’s much more danger of being so earthly minded we’re good for neither heaven nor earth. If you’re truly heavenly minded in the best biblical sense, you will be good for both heaven and earth, won’t you?

I think one of the reasons why sometimes God lets people die slowly is to detach them gently from too much attraction to this world. You watch people whose whole horizon is bound up with this world, and they have almost no feeling for eternity. Then as they become more decrepit, the idea of a resurrection body looks pretty attractive.

I have a friend in Australia, an Old Testament scholar by the name of Frank Andersen. He has been a great man in his time. Now he is a bit past it. Physically he’s run down. There’s not a lot of strength left to him. When you ask him, “Frank, how’s it going?” he’ll say, “I’m not suffering from anything that a good resurrection can’t fix.” Isn’t that wonderful? You see, he’s thinking with eternity in view. He’s thinking with the consummation. That’s where his heart is heading.

Now in the New Testament, it is important to recognize that the Bible’s treatment of the last days often is covering the entire period from the first coming of Christ to the second coming of Christ. Not quite always, but very often. When the Bible speaks of the last days, it is very often not talking about the very, very, very last days but the entire period from Christ’s first coming to his second coming. Sometimes that’s very explicit.

For example, 1 John, chapter 2, verses 18–19. There we’re told, “My dear children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that Antichrist is coming, so also even now there are many antichrists, by which you know that it is the last hour.” In other words, Christ has come and the kingdom has dawned, and Antichrist against him, therefore, has also come and is combatting him. That means the Antichrist is already here, the Christ is already here, so we’re in this last period of time. The sweep of history runs to the consummation, and Christ has come here. Now there is a conflict between Christ and Antichrist all the way to the very end.

This is not denying that there is a personal Antichrist at the end; it is saying that nevertheless that personal Antichrist is anticipated by many, many antichrists along the line, which means a passage like Revelation 12–14 can set up all of Christian existence as a massive conflict between believers on the one hand and an unholy triumvirate: the great Beast, identified as Satan; his first monster beast, which issues in power and persecution; and the second beast, which issues in deception. A kind of unholy triumvirate that apes the Trinity. The language is startling. That is, you have a kind of antichrist against God.

Now there are a lot of texts that speak about these things, and this is one of them. “But mark this: there will be terrible times in the last day.” Chapter 3, verse 1. That does not mean, “So you don’t need to worry about it now; wait until then.” The whole context shows that what Paul means when he tells Timothy to mark the terrible times of the last days is he has to take certain action right now because the last days have already begun. That’s what the whole flow of the passage says.

When you run through these opening verses, you discover some shocking things. Let me read them. “Mark this: there will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them.”

Eighteen items, nineteen traits; a sort of catalogue of vices in verses 2–5. Let me break them down for you quickly. The first four depict selfishness. Lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, and proud. They think of themselves as at the center of the universe. The more people stroke them and the more they can acquire, the more they think they are god.

The next two suggest socially destructive behavior. Abusive, whether in word or deed, which does not necessarily mean the kind of abuse for which you can be charged with a criminal offense, but even the kind of cheap abuse that takes place in the home when you try to manipulate people by running them down and making them feel small. Abuse in word and deed. Abusiveness. Disobedience to their parents. That is to say, there is a kind of overturning of any sort of authority, because, after all, I’m at the center of the universe, aren’t I?

Then four “un” words, which show that many sins are the privation of virtue. They’re the absence of what should be. Ungrateful (we should be grateful), unholy (we should be holy), unloving, and unforgiving. Then two more that reflect speech and behavior. Slanderous and without self-control, or self-discipline. Read through the Pastorals when you get home (1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus) and note how often these epistles speak of the virtue, the grace, of self-control or self-discipline. The word varies from translation to translation.

There is in our society a great deal that wants us to let it all hang out all the time, no matter how disgusting it is, but there is some place for self-control, for self-discipline. Then two more “un” terms. You don’t see that they’re “un” terms in our translations. The first one is brutal, but the word is literally untamed and thus savage; a word that serves equally well to describe fierce lions that are untamed and people who act like them. Savage, brutal. Then not lovers of good. Quite literally, unloving of the good.

Then four items that might show how Paul is moving from the characteristics of this age to the false teachers themselves that he combats in these letters. Treacherous, he says. That is, traitors. They once held to the truth, and then somehow they wandered off and are betraying the truth. I could introduce you to a lot of very important and influential biblical scholars who once held to the truths of the faith, and then somehow academic preference and academic promotion, and so on, became more important, and gradually they slid off somewhere else, and now they are the harshest critics of Christians. Put your undergraduate kids under them, and they will have a rough go.

Rash, with little thought of long-term consequence so long as there is short-term gain. No thinking ahead with eternity in view. Conceited. Far too impressed with their own opinions. Lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. Another form of idolatry. Finally, having a form of godliness but denying its power. For them religion is show. It’s what people think. It’s making themselves feel good. But the kind of power that transforms people in increasing likeness to Christ is simply not there.

Paul ends this first paragraph by saying, “Have nothing to do with them.” Clearly, that’s not saying, “Have nothing to do with anyone who ever participates in any of these sins,” because we’d have to excommunicate everybody, starting with ourselves. There would be rather few of us left. Yet there is a certain kind of pattern to this kind of “anti-Godness,” to this ungodliness. There are consequences to our beliefs and how we live and what our relationships are, and so forth.

Paul is not denying the glory of common grace and that you can find some nice people who are not Christians. He’s not denying any of that, but you match up this pattern over against the lovely depictions, for example, of the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5, and you discover they’re quite different worlds. Then in his final paragraph, before we come to the point of this section, Paul establishes three further ways of thinking about this last-days world. Let me read this paragraph, verses 6–9.

“They are the kind who worm their way into homes and gain control over weak-willed women, who are loaded down with sins and are swayed by all kinds of evil desires, always learning but never able to acknowledge the truth. Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so also these men oppose the truth, men of depraved minds, who, as far as the faith is concerned, are rejected. But they will not get very far because, as in the case of those men, their folly will be clear to everyone.”

Notice the three things Paul says about these false teachers. First, they prey on the vulnerable, sometimes with overtones that are sexual, with sexual connotations. The way Paul depicts this is a kind of sneaky infiltration even into Christian homes, gaining control over people. Let me tell you frankly. The vast majority of affairs have a power component to them. It’s not just sexual. When it’s a teacher in the church with someone else, that power component is transparent. Anybody who has had to work with fallen ministers in this regard knows this is true.

The text is not saying, of course, that all women are dumb and stupid and easily seduced, any more than it’s saying that all men are bad teachers. It is saying there is sometimes a confluence of evils. On the one side, power, control, manipulation, false doctrine, and false living, and on the other hand, weak-willed women and their own baggage of sins and neuroses and wanting to be stroked and loved and cherished. You put those two together and there is conflagration.

Then they have depraved minds, we’re told, and are careless about the truth (verse 8). Thirdly, sooner or later their folly becomes evident to everyone (verse 9). Do you realize how long it takes sometimes before false doctrine really is seen for what it is and false behavior is seen for what it is? It would be nice if every movement that came along, you could either bless it or damn it, “This is from God; this is from the pit of hell,” and then get on with your life, but very frequently it’s not like that. Discernment is required.

It takes time, and sometimes you don’t see the fruit of something for a decade, two decades, three decades. But let me tell you, in the church of Jesus Christ, which truly loves Christ with heart and soul and mind and strength and wants to be reformed by the Word of God, eventually these things become clear. It takes time. Don’t demand instant answers. Bring things back to the text again and again, and watch and wait and watch and wait and pray, and eventually the false exposes itself.

This is really cheerful on the last night of a spirituality conference, isn’t it? Indeed, there are some people who think this is a pretty negative picture; it’s not really quite fair. But when Paul paints with this broad brush, he is not saying every false teacher is characterized equally by all of these things. He’s describing these people of the last days in typical categories.

The point I want to lay down with you now is … What counsel does Paul give Timothy in the light of these realities? Granted that both he and we are living in the last days and these sorts of things are around us in one fashion or another, what do we do about them? Four things.

1. Hold the right mentors in high regard.

Verses 10–11: “You, however, know all about my teaching, my way of life, my purpose, faith, patience, love, endurance, persecutions, sufferings, what kinds of things happened to me in Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra, the persecutions I endured. Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them.” Hold the right mentors in high regard.

When I was an undergraduate at McGill University a long time ago, studying chemistry and mathematics, in my second year another chap, a brethren lad, and I decided we’d start an evangelistic Bible study. We were scared out of our wits. We thought we ought to do it, but he was very shy. I was going to have to end up doing the talking.

We didn’t want to be outnumbered, so we invited three guys in our wing, hoping that not more than two would come. All three showed up, so we were outnumbered the first night. By week five, we had 16 squashed in there, and this other chap and I were the only ones who were Christians. It was terrifying, and I was way out of my depth.

Mercifully, there was on campus a chap called Dave Ward. He was a graduate student in theology, and he was a bit of a rough jewel. He was a tough customer in all kinds of ways, but he had a kind of aggressive, thought through, intellectually mature, in some ways, apologetic. He could answer a lot of questions, and he became a kind of answer man for a lot of us on campus who didn’t know how to answer things. We got out of our depth, and we’d go down and see Dave Ward.

So one night I brought two of my guys who were asking tough questions I couldn’t answer down to see Dave Ward. Dave was one of these energetic souls, always huffing around all the time and putting on a coffee pot. “Okay, come on. Sit down. Why did you come?” The first fellow said, “Well, I think university is a time when we ought to ask a lot of questions and explore different religions. I’m doing some reading on Buddhism, and I want to do some reading on Islam. I thought I’d go along to a Christian Bible study and find out a bit about Christianity too.”

Dave said, “Sorry. Don’t have time.” Oh, good grief. What have I done bringing them here? The fellow looked a bit aghast, and Dave said, “Don’t misunderstand. I’ll give you some books to read, but I’m a student too. I don’t have time to talk to anybody who just wants to chew the fat. I don’t have time. Why did you come?”

The second fellow said, “I come from the sort of home that you people refer to as liberal, but it’s a great home. Our parents love us. We care about others. We give to the poor. We go to a nice, polite, liberal church, and we enjoy it. This is a good family. We’re tight together. I want to ask you this: What do you have that we don’t have? Huh?” Dave looked at him, and then he said, “Watch me.” The student said, “I beg your pardon?”

Dave said, “Watch me. Come and live with me. I have an extra bed. You can stay here two months, three months, four months. Be my guest. I’ll pay for your food. You get up when I get up, go to bed when I go, go to any of my classes with me, watch how we interact with people. You watch me for three months, five months, six months, whatever you like. At the end of six months, you tell me whether or not I have anything different.”

What do you think of that? I mean, have you ever told anybody who was asking about the Christian faith, “Watch me”? Why not? Paul says in 1 Corinthians, “Be imitators of me, even as I also am of Christ.” Here he says, “Now Timothy, you know these false teachers are out there. You, however, know all about my teaching, my way of life, my purpose, my faith, my patience. Watch me.”

There are many things in the Christian life that are caught by exemplification as well as taught in truth. That means it is important to choose your mentors well. Now as it turned out, that student didn’t literally move in with him, but he came down and saw him regularly, was genuinely converted, and is now a medical missionary overseas.

You see, Christian apologetics is not simply a question of getting all your truths lined up and that’s all there is to it. Truth is important. We’re not preaching ourselves. Paul does not say, “Imitate me.” He says, “Be imitators of me, even as I imitate Christ.” That one is an unavoidable Christian responsibility. There are so many pressures around us to follow certain kinds of people, to imitate certain things, and at different times of life we do it different ways.

You know, a 15-year-old or 16-year-old, some kid watching an old Clint Eastwood movie starts saying, “Go ahead; make my day.” Or some gorgeous chick who can sing all the high notes and wears far too few clothes. “Oh, it’s so cool!” Then farther on we start following other people: some guru, some mentor, some bigmouth. We are going to follow people. The issue is not whether or not we will; it’s whom we’ll follow. Watch your mentors. Choose them well.

What kind of people do you look for, then? When you think of models for your life, who will they be? Well, they should be people who are characterized by faith and patience and love and endurance; ideally, some people who have been tested by persecution and suffering and endurance and a testimony that is full of the Lord and how the Lord has rescued us from all of them. That’s maturity. That’s grace. That’s the working out of the gospel exemplified in men and women. Hold the right mentors in high regard.

2. Hold few illusions about the world.

Verses 12–13: “In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil men and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.” This is not saying that every generation is worse than every preceding generation. It’s saying that in every generation, evil people, unless they’re genuinely converted, just keep sliding down and sliding down and sliding down. Don’t be surprised by this.

Do you realize how much foolishness there is in this regard in understanding Western thought and Western history and where we are? Go back to 1910 through 1914, and there was a huge expectation that things were getting better and better and we were rising higher and higher, and a kind of polite, sort of deist Christianity plus a lot of education and good will would bring peace in all of the whole world. Ah yes, amen.

Of course, they didn’t believe in the depravity the Bible talks about. That’s far too negative and old fashioned. Then World War I and the Great Depression and World War II, threat of nuclear holocaust. You’d think it looks a little different. Then the twentieth century, quite apart from war, has been the bloodiest century ever. Apart from war, we’ve managed to bump off a million and a half Armenians, 6 million Jews, about 50 million Chinese, about 20 million Ukrainians, and on and on and on. About 170 million people apart from war killed by governments.

So we come to the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century, and now we have forms of postmodern thought that try to teach us there really isn’t such a thing as evil out there; it’s merely socially constructed. If we could just talk about things, it’ll all go away. Painful. Christians should not be surprised by evil. Hold few illusions about the world. Don’t become cynical. That’s different. But hold few illusions about the world.

We’ve just come through the bloodiest century ever, and you know what? It won’t surprise me if the twenty-first century is bloodier. Why should we think it won’t be? I’m not telling you that it will be. Maybe God in his mercy will restrain some of these things, but sooner or later somebody is going to let off an atom bomb where it shouldn’t go off. Why should we think we’re exempt?

That should not engender discouragement. It really shouldn’t. I love one of the lovely axioms of Tim Keller in this regard. He says, “Optimism is foolish, but pessimism is atheistic, because God is still on his throne.” But meanwhile, we have deceitful hearts. The track record of the human race is not all that hot.

So hold few illusions about the world as you think your way through what is coming down next. Don’t be surprised by breaches of family integrity and false doctrine and struggles of one sort or another and new debates about morality and false things that come along. There really does come a time sometimes when teachers in the church and parents … We get a little frustrated sometimes and say, “Oh, I just wish life would go on normally.”

But the whole history of the church teaches us that in addition to the good things we’re supposed to teach and the positive message we’re supposed to give and the good deeds we’re supposed to do in the helping of other people, there will also be false doctrine and there will be people who disappoint us. Jesus had his Judas and Paul had his Demas, and then even within the apostolic band Peter’s theology had to be corrected, and on and on and on. These conflicts will be with us until the very end. Hold few illusions about the world.

3. Hold onto your Bible.

Verses 14–17: “But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”

In this case, young Timothy has had a family advantage, brought up by Eunice and Lois who taught him the Scriptures. Now Paul is saying, “Cherish God for that heritage. Remember what kind of women these two were, and now hold fast to these Scriptures, remembering not only those who taught it but that this Scripture is itself God-breathed.”

It’s not just that the people who wrote it, the human beings with their different styles across different languages across different times across about a millennium and a half, were inspired by God; it’s the resulting text that is inspired, that is God-breathed. So hold onto this Word. It makes you more stable.

If, instead, you are a mere traditionalist and the only axiom that controls your religious life is, “As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever more shall be, world without end, amen,” you can never reform your traditions by Scripture. If, on the other hand, you’re the kind of person who loves every fancy fad that comes along, then it’s easier for you to be snookered another way. Test things by Scripture.

It reminds me of the old Scottish preacher who said, “You say I am not with it. My friend, I do not doubt it, but when I see what I’m not with, I’d rather be without it.” Because he has gone back and tested things by Scripture. This is what is God-breathed. Oh, we won’t get everything right, but in surprising measure we can come to genuine conformity. Hold onto the Bible.

4. Hold out the Bible to others.

“In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom …” Do you hear all of these eschatological dimensions? “In view of the presence of God right now in the church and of Christ Jesus, and in view of the end when this Christ Jesus will judge the living and the dead, in view of his appearing, in view of what is yet to come, in view of his kingdom, which, though it has dawned, is not yet consummated, I give you this charge,” Paul writes.

“Preach the Word. Be prepared in season and out of season. Correct, rebuke, and encourage with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.”

Then still with a personal note on top of that, verses 6–8: “For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time has come for my departure. I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day.” And then this: “And not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.”

So living in the light of the end and in light of the judgment still to come, hold out the Bible to others. Be prepared to think about it, preach it, and teach it. There are practical implications of this, aren’t there? Have you had the experience sometimes when you decide you’re going to share your faith with somebody at work perhaps and you just miss each other? You almost seem as if you’re on a different planet, and you realize how far their world is from your world.

I had a big one like that not too long ago. I was asked to go on Larry King Live for something. I was the token evangelical. They did it the way they sometimes do it, with the host in Atlanta and I was in Chicago and somebody else was in LA. We all had these split screens. You know, you’re sitting there in a little room, and the camera is just at you. You can’t see the other ones, but on TV these little heads pop out in various places.

It was all arranged at the last minute. I live on the far north side of Chicago. They sent a car up for me. Well, I don’t get driven around in a limo very often, but they sent this limo for me. I thought I should try not to look too much of a twit, so all the way down I was studying some papers and trying to make sure I didn’t stick my foot in it too badly when I got down there, and really ignored the driver.

Then we did the show, and he drove me back. This time I could relax, and I wanted to find out a little more about him. Well, he was a very interesting fellow. He turned out to be a 58-year-old Jewish man. He was married to his second wife, who was 29 years old. His parents had been wiped out in the Holocaust. We started talking about various things.

The biggest grief in his life at that time was the fact that his 32-year-old daughter was on life support. She had been driving an SUV in Kansas in the winter, and she slid. The vehicle flipped, and she bashed her head. She was brain dead. The only issue was when they were going to pull the plug. I said, “How are you handling that?” He said, “I just decided that the only way to think about it is ‘molecules bounce.’ ” So I said to him, “Is that the way you view the Holocaust as well? Molecules bounce?”

“Oh no! That was outrageous! That was evil! That was disgusting! How can you talk like that, that molecules bounce?”

“So you have some outrage for the Holocaust?”

“Yeah, of course!”

“And you don’t have any outrage for the death of your daughter?”

“Are you saying that the death of my daughter was evil?” I said, “Of course that’s what I’m saying. Not that she was more evil than others. The apostle Paul teaches us, for example, that the last enemy is death, because in God’s world, this is not the way it’s supposed to be. Of course it’s evil, but although it’s the last enemy, it doesn’t have the last word.”

I said, “Supposing you could really believe with all your heart that your daughter could live again. Would you look at things differently?” I thought I was getting somewhere. He said to me, “Oh, I know just what you mean. My daughter has a lovely garden in Kansas, and I think she’d like to come back as a butterfly.” Zoom! Right by each other … one more time.

Do you have that experience, when you’re talking to people about the Lord and you realize you’re on a different planet, you have a different worldview, you have a different vocabulary? But part of Christian responsibility in holding out the Word of God to others, which is what this text says we are to do in the last days, what we are to do in evangelism, what we are to do to see the gospel and the kingdom advance, what we are to do is to hold it out in such a way that it meshes with where they are, that they understand it. The categories are right.

That means we have to learn where they are, and it means we have to re-teach the whole Bible storyline. Nowadays there are helps and courses and guides. I know some of you are doing this sort of thing. If you have not started doing it yet, press your pastors to get them to help you. That’s what they’re here for: to learn how to teach the Word of God in a holistic way to a new generation of biblical illiterates, because the Bible says, “Hold out the Bible to others.”

Thus you prepare for the last day. Hold onto good mentors. This is a communal body, the body of Jesus Christ. Hold few illusions about the world. Avoid cynicism, but hold few illusions about the world. This is a wicked place. Hold onto the Bible. It’s the only thing, finally, that is the norming norm, God’s own self-disclosed Word, which will reshape all of your thinking and refine you and refine you again. And hold out that Bible to others. Let us pray.

Lord God, these things are simple and straightforward yet universal and challenging. Make us, we beg of you, by your transforming Spirit as holy as pardoned sinners can be this side of the consummation, and as long as it is still the day, as long as it is still the time for us to cry, “Even so, yes, come Lord Jesus,” make us faithful in such fundamentals as these. For the glory of Christ Jesus and for the good of the people for whom he shed his life’s blood we beg you, amen.

 

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