In the last days before the return of the Lord, two related cultural movements will occur that will clearly outline the spiritual sickness of our age and the near return of Christ. By tracking these two movements and identifying when they show up, we will know that we are in the final season of the last days. We will also find a course of treatment that will preserve the testimony of the Church in the face of this two-pronged virus that is afflicting us all.

The first movement will affect the general culture and we will see it as the breakdown of society on a large scale. This tendency will be the easiest to identify in that the values that made civilization work for thousands of years will be swept out of the way. The run up to this collapse will be slow and steady, growing in intensity; with the final collapse occurring suddenly and completely. 2nd Timothy 3:1-5 describes this condition in social terms. Jude 6 and 7 uses the two perversions of the created order to define this movement. The angels who fell with Satan abandoned their purely spiritual state and took on flesh to mate with humans (Genesis 6:1-4; Jude 6). The residents of Sodom and Gomorrah abandoned their created sexuality and engaged in same-sex perversions (Jude 7).

The second movement will incorporate the Kingdom of God in its present earthly form, the Church. It will be marked by a falling away from the theological truths that the Apostles established in the Church from the outset. 1st Timothy 4:1ff describes this departure in spiritual terms. Jude 3 describes this apostasy in historical terms.

How do we identify the second movement? We must go back to “the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3) when the Holy Spirit established the Church at Pentecost (Acts 2:1-4). This apostasy founded on being fair to all is theological and centered on a perversion of the Gospel. The increase in the social-justice movement within the Church is symptomatic of this departure. Does this mean social justice is unimportant to God in His Kingdom? Not at all! But social justice came as a result of the spread of the Gospel, and not as a goal in itself.

When social justice becomes the goal of the Kingdom of God, Christ’s Church is no longer much different than the society at large.

These two movements are with us now. It is up to us to discern the times in which we now live. Add these two movements to the chaos in the Middle East and it might just be time to pack your bags.