After what just happened in Paris, today is a good day to reflect on the words of Jesus in the Olivet Discourse (Mark 13, Matt 24 and Luke 21). George Eldon Ladd wrote:
The Kingdom is
assaulting the kingdom of Satan. This conflict will last to the end of The Age.
Final victory will be achieved only by the return of Christ. There is no room
for an unqualified optimism. Our Lord’s Olivet Discourse indicates that until
the very end, evil will characterize This Age. False prophets and false
messiahs will arise and lead many astray. Iniquity, evil, are so to abound that
the love of many will grow cold. God’s people will be called upon to endure
hardness. “In the world you have tribulation” (John 16: 33). “Through many
tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14: 22). We must always be
ready to endure the tribulation as well as the kingdom and patience which are
in Jesus (Rev. 1: 9). In fact, our Lord himself said, “He who endures to the end
will be saved” (Matt. 24: 13). He who endures tribulation and persecution to
the uttermost, even to the laying down of his life, will not perish but will
find salvation. “Some of you they will put to death.... But not a hair of your
head will perish” (Luke 21: 16, 18). The Church must always in its essential
character be a martyr church. As we carry the Gospel into all the world, we are
not to expect unqualified success. We are to be prepared for opposition,
resistance, even persecution and martyrdom. This Age remains evil, hostile to
the Gospel of the Kingdom.
…
The visible Church,
we are told, is to be completely leavened by evil doctrine. Apostasy is so to
pervade the Church that only a small remnant will be found faithful to God’s
Word. The closing days of This Age will be the Laodicean period when the entire
professing Church will be nauseatingly indifferent to eternal issues. In such a
portrayal of the last days, God’s people can expect only defeat and
frustration. Evil is to reign. The Church age will end with an unparalleled
victory of evil. Sometimes so much stress is laid upon the evil character of
the last days that we receive the impression (unintended, to be sure) that the
faster the world deteriorates the better, for the sooner the Lord will come. It
cannot be denied that the Scriptures emphasize the evil character of the last
days. In fact, we have already made this emphasis. The evil which characterizes
This Age will find a fearful intensification at the very end in its opposition
to and hatred of the Kingdom of God.
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| George Eldon Ladd - Credit babelio.com |
This does not mean,
however, that we are to lapse into pessimism and abandon This Age and the world
to evil and Satan. The fact is, the Gospel of the Kingdom is to be proclaimed
throughout the world. The Kingdom of God has invaded This present evil Age. The
powers of The Age to Come have attacked This Age. The last days will indeed be
evil days; but “in these last days (God) has spoken to us by a Son” (Heb. 1:
2). God has given us a Gospel of salvation for the last days, a Gospel embodied
in One who is Son of God. Furthermore, “in the last days it shall be,” God
declares, “that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh” (Acts 2: 17). God has
spoken for the last days; God has poured out His Spirit in the last day to give
power to proclaim the divine Word. The last days will be evil, but not
unrelieved evil. God has given us a Gospel for the last days, and He has given
a power to take that Gospel into all the world for a testimony unto all the
nations: then shall the end come.
Ladd, George Eldon. The Gospel of the Kingdom: Scriptural
Studies in the Kingdom of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1959) (from chapter
9, titled, “When Will the Kingdom Come?”).
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