Things will be hard in the end. People will love themselves! People will love money! People will be proud! People will disobey their parents! People will love pleasure!

Can you believe there will actually be such a time?

We live in such a time.

But I want to point out the end of this list of evils, which is longer than what I have here. It ends with this description: these people have an appearance of godliness but deny its power.

What does that mean?

These people doing all these wrong things think they are good people. They act like they are good people.

But they deny Christ and His transforming power to produce actual godliness.

We’re supposed to avoid people like that. It can be hard at church finding people who will have a conversation about Jesus and the Bible instead of the world. Find the people who love the things of God, not the things of the world. Warning, though — not people who love their own godliness and righteousness, but people who know their every good is from God alone. Otherwise, it’s just another form of loving themselves!

The self-loving, money-loving, disobedient “Christians” are the ones who will persecute you. Jesus was persecuted by the religious leaders. Expect your persecution to come from the church for the most part.

And you will be persecuted if you desire to live a godly life. Misery loves company. They will want to drag you down with them. Stay in the heavenly places with Christ.

Your security in the truth and godliness is God’s Word. Know it. It will make you wise. It will make you ready for every good work, the work of a soldier, the work prepared and assigned to you by God Himself.