Love Has Indeed Grown Cold

"And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of most will grow cold." Matthew 24;12 ESV

This is part of the Olivet Discourse....a primary passage in God's Word describing and preparing us for the time of the end....and the return of Jesus in power and glory....along with His mighty angels. Decades ago we would pass over this verse 12 rather quickly because it was hard to really even imagine what that meant.....but today....this once obscure part of the Olivet Discourse.....seems to me anyway.....to be one of the more pertinent descriptions and warnings. The numbers in evangelicalism are down....and more importantly the essence of what evangelicalism once was has greatly been compromised. As I have posted so often here.....the absence of Christian bookstores....and even good books.....along with Billy Graham crusades....and a weak and paltry age of preaching....have in effect cut our supply lines.....and those coming into the faith today.....are doing so more because of politics....family and liberty issues.....or from a new 'emergent' shallowness in the gospel that puts our own inventiveness and imagination ahead of the gospel of Jesus Christ itself. We need go no further than our 'Christian' response to the pandemic to see that this coldness has now enveloped evangelicalism. We simply do not care anymore about the sanctity of life. John Gill and others saw an extreme vexation in the the church due to an abounding lawlessness in the world as one reason that even the church would 'wax cold' as the King James translates it.....and I believe he was right. So if we see Christians testy with each in church....over masks....or if we happen to notice how we can attack a public servant like Anthony Fauci....who right or wrong or in-between has done his best in an impossible job....just trying to limit pandemic deaths.....and we almost as if pray to see his personal destruction.....or as if we have spittle dripping from our mouths as we try to beat down anyone and everyone who does not support our political agenda.....well.....we might take some time to meditate on Matthew 24:12....and the entire Olivet Discourse.....in all three synoptic gospels.