SURVIVING THIS PRESENT EVIL AGE

Deception. Counterfeits. Wars. Near-wars. Geopolitical competitions, military collisions. Clashing crowns. Starving bellies. Failed crops. Pandemics. Raging sicknesses. Unpredictable tectonic shifts.

Those are just the “beginning of sorrows.”[1]

Then there’s the family betrayal, bloody violations of brotherhood. Offenses will mount, calloused hearts will abound. Disillusionment will ensnare weary hearts with fatigued faith too tired to be saved.

That’s just the escalation.[2]

And these are just descriptions of the end of this “present evil age.”[3] It’s true all days are numbered, and that season of history itself is even “cut short” for the sake of believers worldwide, just so we have a shot at surviving it.[4]

Jesus’ descriptions of that time, beginning the Olivet Discourse in Matthew 24, aren’t even about the day-to-day we’re all trying to get through now. We know “he who endures to the end will be saved,”[5] the awesome fruit of a mystery Charles Spurgeon described as the intersection between God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility,[6] but I find myself wondering how. I’ve read this Discourse a thousand times, yet the rueful rodeo we find ourselves living through now is painting the text with unexpected color. “Lawlessness will abound,” Lord have mercy, spreading like a wild, wicked cancer as if we haven’t made enough of a mess of things already, so discouraging more than a few Christ-confessing crowds to such an extent, disciples will throw in the proverbial towel en masse.[7]

Do you also want to bail?[8]

Or how do we cling to the crosses bearing down on our shoulders, dragging behind us, cutting our own tracks in the ancient, albeit narrow, way?[9] What can keep us from entertaining the toddlers within us who so desperately want to throw our little carnal tantrums and return to the vomit Jesus plucked us from? Thank Him that He will save the little wretches within us and deliver us from these bodies of death and debauchery, of the kind of deceit that tears a family apart, of the kind of manipulative strategy that engineers and perfects war.[10] He will save us from these bodies so prone to fatigue and cramps and quitting. These bodies so hesitant to run well all the way to the finish line.

In many ways (really, in every way), the cross is the cheat code to the cross. Jesus’ cross necessitates our cross—in that if anybody wants to follow Him, it is a nonnegotiable requirement[11]—but His cross also empowers and enables our own. We are not left without hope or help. David sang it such:

Good and upright is the LORD
Therefore He teaches sinners in the way
The humble He guides in justice
And the humble He teaches His way[12]

That boy from Bethlehem found this confidence: the Good Shepherd[13] enjoys shepherding His sheep. Or Jesus would say it this way: “Do not fear, little flock; it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom.”[14] He enjoys salvaging us from the wreckage of this present evil age and “training our hands for war”[15] such that we “fight the good fight”[16] and enter into “life and life abundant.”[17] We’ll see this in fullness in the ages to come, when He puts the riches of His kindness shown to us in Jesus on full display.[18] In the meantime, however, we are the display:

To me, who am less than the least of all the saints, this grace was given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to make all see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the ages has been hidden in God who created all things through Jesus Christ; to the intent that now the manifold wisdom of God might be made known by the church to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places, according to the eternal purpose which He accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through faith in Him.[19]

As Joel Sorge put it in a recent MATTHEW 24:14 session of our MARANATHA GLOBAL BIBLE STUDY, “the bottom line of the Gospel is obedience.”[20] Our obedience to Jesus, or what He would call our “love” for Him,[21] is made evident when we carry our cross to emulate His cross and die to the things that disparage our souls. It is for freedom He has set us free,[22] and we are bound to that freedom by these splintered planks of bloody wood. This is how we “overcome” by the blood of the Lamb, the word of our testimony, and not white-knuckling our fledgling breath in our feeble lungs on this side of eternity.[23] This is how we become like the One who took on the form of a bondservant, the Word who was God and was with God and is God but took on flesh to live in our neck of the woods, who did not cower in the face of criminal execution.[24] No, He saw the joy on the horizon behind the resurrection and traded His sinlessness for our sinfulness so that we could one day shine just like Him in the Kingdom of our Father.[25]

Do not fear, little flock. It is the Father’s good pleasure….

“Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies….”[26] Something in me needs to die. Paul calls it the “old man,” the thing with the fatal appetite clamoring for power and position and prayerlessness.[27] That thing that leads us into the cesspool of envy and “every evil thing,” every twisted debauchery that once upon a time described all of us.[28] “But,” thank God, “you were washed.”[29] But you were sanctified. But you were washed in the water of His word, in the bloody flood of Emmanuel’s veins; do not, then, return to the mud from which you have been rescued.[30]

In all the grief and fatigue of “lawlessness increasing” and “cares of this world,”[31] we have been given a fireproof plan of preservation to survive this present evil age, and it is the cross that executes the old man of death dwelling in all of Adam’s sons and daughters, that we might die in Jesus’ death so that we can be resurrected to Jesus’ resurrection.[32] So that we can trade the old man for the new man, the old death for the new life, the dying world for the regeneration to come. It is not easy. It is not always fun. But it will forever be worth it.

Do difficult things. Die without regret.[33]

We are all but seeds. Dust we are and to dust we must go.[34] Death in Christ is the only way to live free. And it is for freedom we have been set free. Jesus is the only “way, truth, and life.”[35] He is the only way to survive this present evil age.

Stephanie Quick is a writer/producer serving with FAI. She cohosts The Better Beautiful podcast with Jeff Henderson. Browse her free music, films, and books in the FAI App and at stephaniequick.org.

 
 

Stephanie Quick