Does This Sound Familiar?
Jude 1:17-19
“But you, my dear friends, must remember what the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ predicted. They told you that in the last times there would be scoffers whose purpose in life is to satisfy their ungodly desires. These people are the ones who are creating divisions among you. They follow their natural instincts because they do not have God’s Spirit in them.”
Jude 1:17-19 NLT
The Epistle of Jude is the next-to-last book of the New Testament and next-to-shortest book in the Bible. Despite not being very well-known, it does contain a few gems like the seemingly prophetic verses listed here.
Of course, this has probably been true since the earliest days of the Christian church, but the verses seem particularly targeted to our current world. “…scoffers whose purpose in life is to satisfy their ungodly desires” sounds a lot like the woke crowd today, thinking nothing of denigrating God-fearing people while feeling free to do whatever they want to: no respect for property, history, people, and tradition, and no limits on debauchery.
This group also creates divisions between churches and within churches. Think of the United Methodist church, which seems on the verge of becoming dis-united because some churches are disinclined to promote “alternative lifestyles” while others think it’s perfectly OK.
How about the vast and growing rift between the “Evangelical Lutheran Church of American” and the other Lutheran churches for the same reason? The ELCA is “welcoming to all” with transgender bishops and rainbow-colored stoles, while the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod is in line with scripture.
The last line of Jude 1:19 explains it all about the people who are creating divisions: they do not have God’s Spirit in them.
In the end, all we can do is pray that those who are being misled by the scoffers and dividers come to their senses before it’s too late.