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This edition of Ask the Camp Pastor features Pastors Gary Hashley and Brad Kilthau.
Gary Hashley
Today, the question we're going to think about, talk about, and interact on, I guess would be a good way to put it today is a question that's really at the forefront of many believers minds. And that is, "how should Christians live in the last days?" Now really, the last days I believe started when Jesus ascended back to heaven and said, "I'll be back," and that the clock has been ticking in God's economy toward the time when Jesus returns. I'm convinced the apostles thought it was going to be in their day and age; and that Paul thought it might happen in his day and age; and that Peter's audience he was writing to in first and second Peter thought it was any time. Now, I remember being in high school in the early 1970s and hearing sermons basically saying, "the world is so bad; things can't get any worse. Jesus is coming back any minute." And I remember thinking as a teenager, "would I ever graduate high school? Would I ever go to college? Would I ever get married?" And here I'm not only a grandpa, but come January 1st, I'm due to be a great grandfather. And we have been living in the last days for a long time now. I know what people are thinking, and Brad, you're going to pick up on this in a minute. I know what people are thinking and that is, "well, maybe you thought it was bad in the 70s, maybe you thought it was bad in the 90s. Maybe you thought it was bad in the early 2000s, but this has got to be the tailgate of God's prophetic calendar for humanity." And people are thinking, "this is it." I remember my dad telling me years ago, he said, "Gary, we need to live like Jesus is coming today or tomorrow, but we need to plan like it's going to be another 100 years." And I think that was good advice from my dad, but Brad, let's let you get going on this. How should Christians live in the last days?
Brad Kilthau
Yeah Gary, in the last days, you're right on that. It is, the last days is technically---you look at the Bible, it's the time between Jesus' first coming and his second coming. That's the last days. One of the ways I usually explain it to folks is, they'll talk about the last days. We live in the last days. And you talk maybe about a football game. Your wife's getting tired of watching that game and she looks at you and says, "how long do we have to watch this game? Can't we watch something else?" And I'll say, "well, we're in the last quarter." And she'll look at the screen and say, "Well, there's 15 minutes left." Just 15 more minutes. Well, it might be an hour before that 15 minutes is over. And that's really what we mean when we talk about the last days. It's that last quarter. It's that last period of time. There's no new messengers coming from God. We have the completed word of God now. There's not going to be another time period for the church. It's over. This is it. But it could still go on for an extended period of time. Yet when we look at prophecy in the Bible and we see so many prophecies that had to be fulfilled in order for the second coming of the Lord to happen. We see those are all fulfilled. And so we can say, "yeah, we're living in maybe the last of the last days." But we can't put a time limit on it and we can't act like it has to happen tomorrow. It doesn't have to happen tomorrow, but it might. We're still, as you said Gary, we're supposed to live like it's imminent. It can happen at any time. And again, the disciples, the apostles instructed people, he instructed the churches to live that way. And I'm not sure what passage of scripture you were thinking about Gary, but I was thinking in 1 Peter 4:7-11. Where the apostle Peter, he says, "but the end of all things is at hand." Listen to that word. I mean, it sounded like he was saying to the church, "It could happen anytime." The Lord could come at any time. "The end of all things is at hand. Therefore, be serious and watchful in your prayers and above all things have fervent love for one another. For love covers a multitude of sins. Be hospitable to one another without grumbling. As each one has received a gift, minister to one another as good stewards of the manifold of grace of God. And if anyone speaks, let him speak as the oracles of God. If anyone ministers, let him do it as the ability with God's supplies. That in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ to whom belong the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen."
Brad Kilthau
And I think that passage of scripture, Peter really sums it up well for how we should live in these last days. The first one is: we should be fervent in prayer, obviously. And I'm going to leave that one for you, Gary, but the other one is found in verses 8-9 where he says, "we are to love one another." And I think that's kind of odd when you think about our society today, because if anything, we're a society today that's more hateful towards each other than I think we've ever seen before. The rudeness, the self-centeredness, the self gratifying thing that's going on in people's lives. So what's Peter saying? He's saying, "well, in the last days Christians, you need to be different than the world. You need to love in a way that actually astonishes the world." They look at you like, "how could you love others like that?" And I think we need to step outside of the norm, and the incognito of being blended in with all of the people of the world and show what it means to have Christ in your life and to love people. What does that mean? Well, I guess first of all, get a circle of people that you can love on, that you can express to them love. That you can help them out in their time of need. But don't just have that circle. Put a bigger circle outside of that one, because get out to people who you don't even know and express love to them. And the reason we know that that is, I think the advice of Peter here is, because he said that we are to be hospitable to others. We are to be hospitable. When you look that word up in the original language, it means to love strangers. And man, we have to do better as the church I think Gary, because I think the church is becoming such a little hub and a close knit club. And we can love on each other, but we can't love outside of the walls of our church, and we're in trouble when we do that. I was reading about the Albanians. I guess the Albanians are known for loving people who are strangers. It's called The Albanian Love. And when I was reading through this article, it was actually that the Albanian people will buy extra food and extra supplies and they'll stick it up on a shelf or something and store it away knowing that if there's a stranger that comes into their life, they have it. They just grab it and give those to somebody who they don't even know and help them out. And I think we could learn from that, and we should be living like that in these days. Jesus said, "love one another, that others will know that you are my disciples." That love is a way we can express to the world that Jesus is real. In fact, when Jesus said that he actually gave the world a tool to grade us as Christians by, in other words, it's like the Lord is saying, "go to my children and see how they love you." And that'll be their grade. "Check them out. Look how they love others." And that should be a wake up call, again, to us is the church. Another thing he expresses there is, we need to use our spiritual gifts to the fullest. In verses 10-11 in that passage that I read already. Use it to the fullest; our spiritual gifts. Our spiritual gifts are actually our fingerprint on the things that God has called us to do. And the reason it's a fingerprint is because it's very unique. Even though the spiritual gift list is very short, it is a list that every one of us can say, "one of those gifts is mine as a follower of the Lord." But when it is yours, it's a little different even with the other people who have the same gift. And the reason is because you have a different personality, you have different ability, you have different tendency. And so you kind of color your gift a little bit---in a way that's very unique. And I think we see that when we look at what the Lord said. He said that we were called and designed as workmanship for the Lord since the beginning of time. And God has a unique plan for us each as an individual to do with our spiritual gifts. So, if you're not finding out what your spiritual gift is, you're not living right in the last days because you need to know what your spiritual gift is. You need to use it and use it to the fullest. In fact, if you don't use it to the fullest, the Lord actually tells us through his apostle here. He said here that God may be glorified through Jesus Christ to whom belongs all the glory and the dominion forever. And so if we're not using the spiritual gift, not employing what we have...we're not finding out what it is, then we're not giving God the glory that He is due. And so there's just a couple of things I guess we can look at Gary, and how we should be living in these last days. You want to add to that?
Gary Hashley
Yes, I do. You talked about what Peter wrote in the first letter, 1 Peter, and I had that down and I wrote down some things about that text. He emphasized being prayerful and loving and forgiving and serving and focused. And those are all good things. Then we get to the end of his second letter and what we have is chapter three. Now, they didn't divide their letters into chapters and verses. We did that since then just to help us find things. But he closes out his letter, and the whole third chapter has to do with the second coming of Christ, the day of the Lord showing up. And he talks about the fact that there are those who are scoffing saying, "He probably isn't coming because he hasn't come yet. If he hasn't come yet, he's probably not coming at all." And Peter says, "no, no! Don't think about it that way." And then he uses that statement about, a day with the Lord is like a thousand years and a thousand years like a day. Now, don't fall into the trap of making that a mathematical formula. He's not saying that 24 hours equals a thousand years or a thousand years equals 24 hours. What he's saying is, God doesn't think of time the way we think of time, or function in time the way we function in time. So don't figure, because it's been a while that he's not coming at all. Because God is going to fulfill everything He said He would do. In fact, verse nine, God is in slack concerning His promise. In other words, if God said it, it's going to happen. Then he alludes to the fact, the day of the Lord will come. That's in verse 10, 2 Peter 3, "the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night." Then it talks about the heavens and the earth passing away with a fervent heat. The first time God destroyed things on earth, it was with a flood. The second time it's going to be with fire. And he says everything's going to be dissolved. And he says, "what we should do is look for and hasten the coming of the day of God," because the heavens and the earth will be dissolved. They'll be on fire. And then he says, "beloved," verse 14, "looking forward to these things, be diligent to be found in him, in peace without spot and blameless. And consider that the long suffering of our Lord is salvation. As also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, has written to you." So, as I look at 2 Peter 3, how should Christians live in the last days? Well, we should live looking up, so to speak. Looking for Jesus to come. And it could be today, it could be tomorrow, it could be next week. It could be another a 100, 500, 1000 years from now. We don't know. And if anybody says they know, Jesus said even the son of man doesn't know. So if they think they know, they don't know. It is just a fact. But we ought to be waiting. Waiting for him to come. If we knew a thief was coming, we'd wait. We would watch, and we would wait. But he also talks about winning. He said, "it's salvation!" I think back, if Jesus had come in 1975, the year I graduated from high school, how many people that didn't know Jesus then but know Jesus now, they wouldn't have been ready for Jesus to come back and spend eternity in heaven. I know it's one thing to pray, "Lord come quickly." I mean, we all do it, when at a test or quiz in school wanted Jesus to come because we hadn't studied. But we should be concerned if Jesus were to come today, who doesn't know Jesus yet that needs to know the Lord. Jesus is savior. So if I can sum this all up before we run out of time, I think what Brad and I have been saying is, how should Christians live in the last days? How about three Fs? 1. Focus: We need to be focused on the fact that this isn't going to keep going like it is forever and ever and ever. When Jesus ascended to heaven, the disciples standing there with their mouths hanging open, the angels said, "he'll be back the way he left." He'll come back. So focus on the fact that Jesus is coming and could be any time. 2. Faith. Have faith. It will be at the right time in the right way. And that no matter what happens leading up to it, that as followers of Jesus, our home is heaven. No matter how much we're called to suffer here, and some will suffer greatly here, that our home is heaven. And then the third F is Fear. But it's not for us to fear. It's for us to not fear. I think there are Christians out there and they're stockpiling food and they're stockpiling bullets because we may be in the last days. Trust me, stockpiling food and stockpiling bullets is not how we prepare. It's, how did he say, "be diligent to be found in him in peace without spot and blameless." Live for Jesus today, knowing that he could come at any time. So, I don't know if that answers anybody's questions, but how should Christians live in the last days? Go to the scriptures and find out.