The word for this week is "uncivilized". It's not found in the Bible in that form, but it is the title of one of Rick Renner's "Sparkling Gems From The Greek" that I want to use to go along with a new Hillsong Young and Free song called "Best Friends".
Uncivilized
…fierce, despisers of those that are good.… — 2 Timothy 3:3
The material I am about to present concerns a subject that I
normally wouldn’t write about. However, it provides a powerful illustration of
the depravity Paul prophesied would occur during the last days (see 2
Timothy 3:2,3), and I believe it serves as a wakeup call to the Church.
Sometimes we need a stark reminder of the rapid degeneration of society’s moral
fabric that is occurring all around us at an ever-increasing rate so we don’t
grow complacent and just “go with the flow” of society’s downward moral spiral.
As the Church, we have a vital role to play in these perilous times as standard
bearers of truth. So bear with me as I take on that role to share some
disturbing but important information, and you will understand my point.
Several years ago, the Holy Spirit strongly impressed me to
speak on the subject of abortion to my Moscow congregation. I had never once
spoken on this subject in all my years as a minister, yet I knew the Holy
Spirit was compelling me that this was a message my congregation needed to
hear. I didn’t know why the Spirit of God impressed this upon me so strongly
until I began to do research about abortion in the former Soviet Union and the
rest of the world. What I discovered simply stunned and shocked me.
I discovered that there have been nearly one billion
abortions performed worldwide since the 1940s. At the time of this writing, it
is more than the combined populations of the United States, Central
America, South America, Canada, Australia, England, France, Italy,
and Greece.
The greatest and most extensive killing in human history was
not done by Nero, Domitian, Hitler, or Stalin — it was
done by medical doctors who have murdered more than one billion babies
through the act of abortion in the past 100 years. This is mass murder of the
innocent, far worse than any holocaust or genocide. It is the annihilation of
those who cannot scream to be heard, who cannot defend themselves, and who are
thrown in the garbage can or whose body parts are “harvested” for material gain
and other purposes.
When I first read these statistics, I shuddered to think of
the defenseless lives that have been lost and the blood that has been spilled.
But as I continued studying, I was truly amazed at the rationale of those who
are pro-choice. Repeatedly they state that they want the rights of the mother
to be protected — that if she doesn’t want to have a baby, it should be her
“right” to end the pregnancy. I kept wondering about the “rights” of the
infant. What about the infant’s right to live?
What is confusing about this logic is that in the same
hospitals where abortions are performed at one end, surgeries are being
performed at the other end on infants who are still in their mother’s womb. On
one end of the hospital they take a life; on the other end of the hospital they
save a life — both in the womb of a mother. This is completely illogical.
One hundred years ago when common sense still prevailed, no one would have
thought this kind of reasoning to be normal. This is a sign of the times
in which we live.
As I pondered on all of this, my mind went to Second Timothy
3:3 where Paul discussed the attitudes that will be prevalent in society at the
end of the age. As I thought about the brutality of taking innocent lives — and
doing it in such a sophisticated way in our nice, sterilized hospitals — I
thought about the next point on Paul’s list of signposts that we are in the
very last of the last days. He goes on to inform us that society will be
“fierce” in those days. What does the word “fierce” mean?
The word “fierce” is a strange word to describe today. This
word would better be used to describe cannibals or barbarians. It is the
word anemeros, derived from the word nemeros, which pictures
something that is gentle, kind, or mild. But when an a is
fixed to the front of the word — turning it into the word anemeros —
this word changes dramatically. Rather than gentle, kind, or mild,
it means savage, vicious, uncivilized, violent, ferocious,
or inhumane.
When you think about the world today, much of it seems quite
civilized and sophisticated until you remember the one billion babies
who have been brutally ripped to pieces — savagely killed every minute of the
day in beautiful, sterilized hospitals and clinics across the world. This is
savagery of the worst kind; it is legalized murder on a scale so massive that
no fiction writer of yesteryear could have imagined it. But this is not
fiction; this is reality.
Today those who fight for the rights of unborn children are
portrayed as primitive and unintelligent. This is the result of a massive
public relations blitz to annihilate the opposition and reinforce the right to
terminate the life of a child. Thus far, the courts have unfortunately ruled
that a child’s life can be terminated. The law has no defense for the child. I
say all of this because of the next point Paul listed in Second Timothy 3. He
went on to speak about “despisers of those that are good.” What does this
phrase mean?
The phrase in Greek is the word aphiloagathos, and it
is a very strange Greek word. In its oldest and truest sense, it depicts a
society where law is not primarily intended to protect the rights of good
people but rather is used instead to protect and defend the rights of
offenders. This word is so unusual, in fact, that it is never used
anywhere else in the New Testament. Who could ever imagine a world where laws
were used primarily to defend offenders and not to protect the rights of those
who are good? Yet this is precisely what Paul prophesied in this verse.
This teaching doesn’t apply only to abortion; it also could
be applied to a wide range of situations where criminals are so aggressively
protected that they go free while the innocent suffer. According to Second
Timothy 3:3, the world in the last days will be savage and inhumane,
and it will be morally confused as to what is right or wrong. Can
you think of ways that this has application to the world we live in today?
If you have terminated the life of an unborn child — or if
you know someone who has done this — there is forgiveness in Jesus Christ. The
world today has drifted far from what is right on a wide range of issues, and I
did not intend to highlight this one act in order to condemn anyone. Just as there
is forgiveness for every grievance against God, there is forgiveness for you or
for that person you know who made such a wrong decision. If you will ask Jesus
to forgive you, First John 1:9 promises that He will forgive you and cleanse
you from all unrighteousness.
When the world is morally confused about what is right and
wrong, we cannot look to society to set our moral agenda. We must look to the
Bible to be our guide and let it be the standard by which we live. I exhort you
today to make a renewed commitment to live your life according to the truths
set forth by the Bible and to reject any piece of society’s errant moral code
that is in conflict with the Word of God. When this world system is over
and gone, the Bible and its truths will remain — so align yourself with the
eternal and unchanging standards and principles of God!
"Society" is way different than it was when I was young, and I think even than when you were young! There are such confusing standards for right and wrong that are sometimes completely opposite of what God's Word teaches. What I like about this song is that it reflects the attitude of a younger generation of godly young people who no longer want to be dictated to by "society" but want to live for JESUS!
Love and Shalom from the Swoveys!
