This week was different as we focused each day on a specific question and went to God’s Word for the answers. If you missed them, here are the questions and some insight into each:

• What is the Value of God’s Word?
• Are You a New Creation in Christ?
• Are You on a First-Name Basis with the Living God?
• How Can I Love God?
• Why Did God Choose Israel?

For the most part, those are foundational questions, yet ones that are often misunderstood, or dismissed altogether. However, each is critical to how we live in these last days.

• Understanding the value of God’s Word urges us to be in God’s Word, and if we’re in it, we will not stray from it! Scripture tells us that deception will run rampant during the last days, so if God’s Word has lost its value in our lives, we are vulnerable to deception and delusion.
• When we understand that, as believers, we are new creations in Christ, we are free to be who God designed us to be! We are no longer bound by our old sinful nature, but are being conformed to the image of Christ day-by-day. Boy, do we need that assurance as we face the difficult last days.
• Being a believer and being a follower of Jesus are slightly different things. Yes, a true believer is heaven-bound just as followers of Jesus are. However, followers of Jesus have learned to hear the still small voice of our Lord. He knows us and we know Him intimately. Imagine the advantage that is as we navigate the last days.
• Loving God is the outward sign that we belong to Him. We long to please Him. In all the confusion and chaos of the last days, if we cease to seek Him and please Him, we will easily be led astray. The Bible warns that will happen in the last days, so we must commit to loving Him.
• Is it really important that God chose Israel? You better believe it! It was part of God’s plan and, if He had not, we would have no salvation. God chose the Jewish people to bless the entire world by being the vehicle of world redemption…and our Redeemer is coming soon!

So, let’s get to the real question of the day: Are we actually living in the last days?

Here is what we know, and even most secular people will agree: the world as we know it will end one day. Fortunately for us, God’s Word tells us a whole lot about that, though we are adamantly told no one know the day or the hour of Christ’s return. But equally important, it is for us to know and understand the time and season in which we live…and it is hardly arguable that these are the last days.

Authors of our New Testament mentioned “last days” 5 times:

1. 2 Peter 3:2-3 warns scoffers walking according to their own lusts will come in the last days.
2. Hebrew 1:1-2 references the fact that God once spoke through prophets, but in the last days, spoke through His Son (implying that “the last days” actually began while Jesus was on earth!)
3. James 5:3 admonishes those who lay up gold and silver that eats away at our flesh during the last days. (ie – Greed will increase, and is a very dangerous trap, particularly during the last days.)
4. 2 Timothy 3:1 tells us that perilous times will come in the last days. Go on to read the list of perilous things and you will discover it describes our world today to a tee.
5. Acts 2:17 is the precious promise that God will pour out His spirit on all flesh during the last days, causing sons and daughters to prophesy, young men to see visions and old men to dream dreams.

Yes Peter, Paul, James and Timothy thought they were also living in the last days…and they were! To God who sees all eternity as one big NOW, the last days were occurring back when those men were writing Scripture, and they continue to this day. When history pivoted at Jesus’ first coming, the length of time between His first and second coming became known as the last days. We are definitely living in them.

So, are we in the last days? Yes. Is Jesus coming back soon? Yes. How should we then live? In God’s Word, living out the truth that we are new creations, spending “face time” with God, loving Him in new and exciting ways, and understanding the role that God gave Israel and us! Doing so keeps us ready for all the world and the devil throw at us during the last days!

Are you ready?