Posted on by Abe Austin

The Offensively Faithful- The Popular Immoral

Dangerous Trends)

In the last post I gave what I consider to be the strongest evidence that we live in the last days, and the scriptures show us that in those last days, the popular majority will go astray, will believe falsehoods, and will resent the righteous.

If this is true, then each one of us needs to be very careful of the moral trends of our day. We must hold each to scrutiny, and reject many of them, even though it will make us unfavorable with the masses. Of course, I am not saying that every popular trend in the last days is inherently evil. Today it is popular to reject slavery, and that is good. It is good, because it aligns with the nature of God and the words of scripture. But every trend that disparages faith, that denies God, that takes offense to the words of scripture, these are the trends that lead to the selfish and meanspirited population described in the last days.

From my perspective, these popular trends in the West include promotion of homosexuality, feminism, socialism, and transgenderism. Even before considering the substance of each, they have all begun by taking offense to scriptural doctrine, have undermined the commandments of God, and have demonized the faithful. That alone informs us of their deviant motives. And then, when we look at the actual substance, we see that they have directly supported grave sin, including abortion and sexual depravity, and that they have stoked the passions of the depraved, until physical violence has erupted, often targeted at those that do not accept their sin. They have also passed their twisted ideology on the young and the impressionable, leaving them to believe that acceptance of these sins is the only way to be moral.

Realistic Evil)

This raises an important point. I believe that too many of us assume that these trends and sins cannot be the image of apocalyptic evil, because we know people who live within these trends, and they do not seem evil to us. They’re just people, with qualities that we love. But this is by no means a proof of innocence or virtue. People that seem “good” to us can absolutely be aligned with evil trends. To prove this, we need only look at the historical record. We frequently point to people in the past whose ideologies we condemn as evil, such as nazis and slave owners, yet many of them did not view themselves as evil either. They just saw themselves as people, with qualities that they loved, just as we view those supporting the modern anti-God philosophies of today.

We make the mistake of assuming that the majority wicked of the last days will look like caricatures of evil. That they will all be sadistic, maniacal, moustache-twirling cartoon villains. But that just isn’t realistic. The wicked of the final days will almost certainly be like the wicked in all other times: people who feel justified in their time, people who live in a context that makes them believe that they are in the right, people who have other virtues that are used as evidence of being good and correct.

But none of us can evaluate our righteousness from within our own context. As the preacher taught, “every way of a man is right in his own eyes,” (Proverbs 21:2). In our own historical analysis, we can see that culture and consensus can override conscience and leave people feeling that even the most terrible of actions are right. What we require is an external standard to compare ourselves to. An unchanging yardstick that is synonymous with universal good. Such a standard has been given to us in the words and commandments of God. When our own conception of good does not align with what God has given to us, it is us who are in the wrong, not Him.

In conclusion, I do believe that we live in the last days, and in our day there are many who discredit and disparage the Lord, who support beliefs that are directly contrary to His word. Agreeing with these voices is popular, it is what we are taught from our earliest years that we are supposed to do. That creates a context that blinds us, that makes us genuinely call good evil, and evil good. Just as was foretold for the final days. When we see that our belief come from popular consensus, and that it is antagonistic to the scriptures, and that all people in history have thought that they were in the right, even the most evil, that should give us serious pause. Even though it might feel wrong to us, we should consider the possibility that we are, in fact, the ones in the wrong, and we should experiment with God’s law, to see if it does not soften our hearts and change our minds.

And if we do not, then Armageddon awaits.

Posted on by Abe Austin

The Offensively Faithful- Do We Live in the End?

Looking to the End of the World)

In my last post I discussed the moral makeup of humanity that we expect for the last days, and that the popular morality of that time would certainly be sinful and depraved. It remains for us to consider whether we now live in those last days, though. For if we do, that would be a strong indictment of the social movements of the world today.

As it turns out, I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and as the name suggests, one of our unique beliefs is that God has pronounced this to be the last dispensation, the last days before the end of the world and the second coming of Christ. Because of the testimony I have gained of the other tenets of this gospel, I take this matter of being in the last days on faith. Thus, I do believe that we live in the final age foretold.

But even without adopting the paradigm of my church, I believe there is still a strong case to be made for us being in the end times. And certainly, this is not a very rare opinion among Christians. Many, from all different sects, have also expressed the opinion that the world is ripening for destruction, and that things seem to be aligning for the prophecies given in the Bible.

Of course, Christians have been making these predictions basically since Christ’s ascension. I, myself, make sure to keep a healthy skepticism about any immediate second-coming predictions. Even though I say we live in the latter days, I don’t presume to know whether that means we are 5 years from the second coming, or 500. It will come when it comes, and I will happily welcome it, whichever side of the veil I’m on.

But let us look at a few reasons why now appears to be a likely candidate for the end times.

Reasons to Assume Latter Days)

  1. The depravity of the world. Certainly, the world has always known tremendous evil, including the very worst of what we see in the world today. But what makes this time especially evil is how even so-called followers of God have abandoned His commandments and justified the sins of the world. We slaughter our unborn, we watch videos of strangers having sex, and we cheer for the murder of our political rivals, all while calling ourselves Christian. There have been other times historically where God’s people abandoned Him, and those times have always immediately preceded their destruction. It seems probably that when the current family of God abandons Him, that their destruction would likely be one-and-the-same as the destruction of the entire world.
  2. The fulfillment of prophecies. Perhaps every era of history can lay claim to wars, rumors of wars, and evil abounding, but there are some prophecies of the end which are only fulfilled in these times or are only possible to be fulfilled for the first time now. The most prominent of these is the return of the nation of Israel. Less than fifty years after Jesus’s death Jerusalem was destroyed and the last remaining Israelites displaced, making it then impossible for Jesus to return to them there, though it was prophesied in Zechariah 13 that he would. It was only in the last century that the historic land of Canaan was restored to the Israelites, both fulfilling some end-time prophecies, and paving the way for others. Also, this is the first time when there has been such great global connection, allowing for the war of good and evil to play out on a universal scale, fitting the descriptions we have of the end.
  3. We happen to live in years whose numbers are meaningful. We are around 2000 years from the death and resurrection of Jesus, potentially 6000 years from the beginning of Genesis. If Jesus were to come in the near future, it would fulfill the pattern of six 1000-year-long days, leading into the seventh day of rest. We also see numerous calendars terminating and resetting around this time, including the Mayan, the Essene, the Zoroastrian, and more.
  4. We live in a time of global destructive power and acceleration. Technology and society are evolving at a pace that has never before existed. We have developed weapons capable of the utter decimation of society, and a social culture that changes every year. The potential of catastrophic system failure is only accelerating, and the worldly turmoil only makes that occurrence more and more likely.
  5. There is simply a sense of reaching the end of an era. The world has completely changed multiple times in the last 250 years and seems to be doing so again right now. We can feel the tides turning, the divisions expanding, the gravity shifting beneath us. It feels like we are at least at the end of a world, and given all of the above criteria, it seems it could well be the end of the world.

When I was a child, I only believed that we were preparing for the end, not that we were actually in it. Today I do believe we are in that 11th hour. Again, I do not know how long this period will last, but I believe that the prophecies detailing the end of the world apply to us today, including those that describe a fallen and morally bankrupt generation. Tomorrow I will examine what that means for trends that are current and popular, and how any who live to follow the consensus should immediately reconsider that.

Posted on by Abe Austin

The Ends of Good and Evil

Of Evil)

Lying is evil. Stealing is evil. Murder is evil. These are functions of the wicked, not of the good.

If all evil behaviors belong to the wicked, and are eschewed by the good, then it logically follows that the wicked will afflict all these evils upon the good, tormenting them even unto death.

To be righteous is therefore to accept all the evil of the world, while denying oneself any opportunity to retaliate in kind. It therefore follows that evil will naturally triumph over good, as it can murder the righteous, but the righteous cannot murder the wicked.

Of Good)

That being said, triumph is good. Resurrection is good. Salvation is good. These are states of the righteous, not of the wicked.

If all good outcomes belong to the righteous, and are denied to the wicked, then it logically follows that the righteous will overcome all the afflictions of the wicked, even being raised from the dead.

To be righteous is therefore to accept all the evil of the world, but then being raised above it all. It therefore follows that good will ultimately triumph over evil, as it can overcome evil, but the evil cannot overcome the good.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Genesis 50:25-26

25 And Joseph took an oath of the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you, and ye shall carry up my bones from hence.

26 So Joseph died, being an hundred and ten years old: and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt.

Unlike Jacob, Joseph was not immediately carried to his resting place in the land of Canaan. He was embalmed after the Egyptian tradition and then he was laid to rest in Egypt. Many years later his prophecy would come true, though, as the Israelites carried his bones with them in their Exodus and laid him to rest in Shechem.

Of course, this meant that all the time that the Israelites were in bondage, and also later when they wandered forty years in the wilderness without a proper home, during all that time they had the bones of Joseph close beside them. How fitting that Joseph, who was carried away from his home and had to wait years for his deliverance, was present with the Israelites when they went through the same experiences. He was the first Israelite slave in Egypt and his bones were a companion to the last ones.

Also interesting to me is that in his death we see the dual nature of his nationality. He was embalmed and laid to rest in Egypt, the land of his redemption and vocation, but his conviction was to still be brought back to the home of his fathers. When his brothers sold him into Egypt it would be hundreds of years before he came back to the land of his inheritance, but eventually God would restore him back to where he belonged.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Genesis 50:22-24

22 And Joseph dwelt in Egypt, he, and his father’s house: and Joseph lived an hundred and ten years.

23 And Joseph saw Ephraim’s children of the third generation: the children also of Machir the son of Manasseh were brought up upon Joseph’s knees.

We here begin a dramatic transition in the biblical narrative. We have just finished speaking of Jacob’s death, and now we rush ahead to Joseph’s, and then the age of the patriarchs will come to a close. 40 of the 50 chapters in Genesis have been dedicated to the stories of these patriarchs. Five of the other chapters are about Adam and Eve and their immediate children, and five of them are about Noah.

When the book of Genesis was composed, which according to tradition was in the time of Moses, its main subjects were already the stuff of myth and legend. And one interesting indicator that we are moving from more epic characters to more grounded ones is their declining longevity. Abraham lived 175 years, Isaac reached 180, and Jacob 147. Now we have Joseph only reaching the age of 110, which, while still ancient, is an age that typical people really are able to achieve. Thus, there are no more demigods, we are finally and fully descended into the mortal realm.

The other thing I want to call out is the image of great-great-grandchildren laying on Joseph’s knees. At one point his life was in a very precarious place. Murder was being discussed and instead he was abandoned to a life of slavery that could have very well been the death of him. The odds were heavily stacked towards his being a tragic victim, but here he is, more than a hundred years old, with his descendants safe and secure in his lap. In his darkest times he was provided for, and then in the country’s darkest time he provided for all of its people. He was saved so that he could save others, and here upon his knees is the reward of it all.