Cold

 Whether you want to call it Newton’s Third Law or causality, we see a definite pattern of events unfolding during the last days that are like a domino effect of sorts. One of the ones I’ve been contemplating of late is the lawlessness that will trigger or cause the love of many to grow cold and why that is so detrimental.

Jesus never wasted words. Whenever He spoke, whether in parables, to His disciples, or regarding the last days, there was no filler. Some might even say He was overly clinical, not allowing for feelings, emotions, or opinions. These things will happen! Because this will happen, it will lead to this other thing happening!

Jesus never once stopped and asked how His disciples felt about what He was saying or whether they thought He should tweak the message to make it more palatable. Jesus was stating facts! I know facts is a dirty word nowadays because they get in the way of people’s feelings, but no matter how many angry birds squawk about the supremacy of feelings over facts, it doesn’t make it so. Facts are immovable; feelings are irrelevant.

Matthew 24:12, “And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold.”

Given the context of the entire chapter, this seems like an innocuous verse. There’s no talk of suffering, persecution, or being delivered to tribulation, pestilences, or famines. Still, if you understand it, this is perhaps one of the most troubling verses of this entire discourse.

Even at the risk of sounding like a broken record, when Jesus refers to lawlessness abounding, He is not referencing the world but the church. Given all that we’re seeing happening in mainline churches, one can argue that the abounding of lawlessness has already begun. I don’t believe it has peaked, but when major denominations are all-in for everything from homosexual clergy to drag queen story hour in the church, you have to call it what it is. It’s lawlessness. It will get worse. Why? Because Jesus said, it would.

As a direct result of lawlessness abounding, the love of many will grow cold. What most contemporary pastors thought would grow their churches and ministries will be the thing that causes an exodus from their sanctuaries. You’re getting that, right?

It’s the conversation every pastor has with his elder board at least once a month. How can we grow the church? Because, you know, the pastor always has a vision for reaching the nations, watching an acorn seed grow into a glorious tree, satellite sanctuaries, and multi-campus outreaches.

Inevitably, the erroneous conclusion they always seem to come to is that the more libertine the message, the more ears it will reach. Eventually, lawlessness is no longer the exception but the rule. Those who come to hear about God only hear how we need to accommodate, validate, and celebrate the sexually perverted because that’s what Jesus would do, even though He wouldn’t.

If Jesus singled out the love of many growing cold, we must ask why it is so dangerous. I’ve thought about this, and the best analogy I can come up with, running on only three cups of coffee, is disturbing even to me.

Imagine you were in a forest, full dark, with only a fire to keep the howling wolves and predators at bay. It’s what fire does, among other things. Fire keeps you warm, drives out the darkness, and allows you to see. Fire is also a shield when it comes to things that think you are dinner. As long as you have a good fire going, though they may howl and paw at the earth, though they may come close and attempt to intimidate, the predators will fear the flame.

Now imagine that the fire is love. Love for God, love for truth, even love for your fellow man because they’re interconnected, and with each bout of lawlessness, that love shrinks; it grows colder and doesn’t shine as bright as it once did.

The colder the love, the less bright the fire, the darker it gets, and the bolder the predators get. They get closer; they snarl louder; they bid their time and wait for the fire to go out completely, and all the while, a newly minted graduate of the Creflo Dollar school of ministry is whispering in your ear that it’s prosperity that sets you apart from the world, not the fire of love for God in your heart.

It may take a minute, but the fire dies down completely, your overly exuberant spiritual mentor is nowhere to be found, and all you hear is the guttural snarls and the snapping of teeth in the darkness.

That’s the thing. Once there is no more wool to fleece, the fake shepherds will bounce faster than a basketball. Their concern was never your spiritual well-being; it was their bank account.

We are witnessing the exponential growth of lawlessness in the church in real-time. The insanity that was contained to the Universalists has now spread like cancer to every denomination, to the point that even the Southern Baptists are ignoring what the Bible says and going the way of the world.

What follows is what Jesus said would follow; the love of many will grow cold. Once that occurs, the wolves feast, the sheep bleed, and the true shepherds weep. But he who endures to the end shall be saved.

Why would the shepherds weep? Because the slaughter of sheep, even wayward sheep, is something the true shepherds always mourn. They mourn not only for the life that was lost but the realization that their fate is sealed and they can no longer be saved. You can light candles for the dead until you burn your fingers off, and it will do nothing to affect their destination. Now is the day of salvation because tomorrow is guaranteed to no man.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.