Laura Marvin's Library tagged christianity →  View Popular

And now, dear children, continue in him, so that when he
appears we may be confident and unashamed before him at his coming. . . . How
great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called
children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know
us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and
what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears,
we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this
hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure.

1 John 2:28, 3:1, 3

But while we sit around arguing about what it says, the world is falling apart and the time is getting short. The Lord’s coming back and 90% of the Church is distracted by the world and doesn’t have a clue it’s about to happen.

God said, “I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say: My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please … what I have said, that will I bring about; what I have planned, that will I do.” (Isaiah 46:10-11) It’s not that He’s stopped performing on this promise, it’s just that most of the Church has stopped believing it and no longer expects it.

And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets and some as evangelists
and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work
of services, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to
the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man,
to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. 

As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves,
and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by
craftiness in deceitful scheming;

But speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him,
who is the head, even Christ,

From whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by that which every
joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes
the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.  (Ephesians
3:11-16)

“For such are
false prophets, deceitful workers, transforming themselves in the apostles of
Christ. And no wonder; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.
(II Corinthians 11:13-14)

Phil Arms says it well, “It should not surprise us in days ahead when we
discover that some of the most prominent, sought-after preachers and popular
Christian media personalities in the world are among these false apostles and
deceitful workers who are busily transforming themselves into apostles of
Christ. The scope of this deception will devastate millions of people, blinded
for a time, by the dazzling brilliance of a nation overflowing with false angels
of light.” (Arms, op.cit., p. 241)

If these are the last days, how else will we be protected from the
deception that is coming if we don't hold to sound doctrine? God gave us His
Word. We are told to judge what we hear. Judge the spirits.

While God's standard is like an anchor in a storm, man's values shift with
the winds. For--

As Christians in the land of prophetic Babylon,
it behooves us to stay on our knees, not get entangled in the economic and
political system any more than necessary, and to warn others.  It just so
happens that our Lord compares the “last days” to the days of Noah.

 ³⁶"But of that
day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only.
³⁷But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of
Man be. ³⁸For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and
drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the
ark, ³⁹and did not know until the flood came and took them all away,
so also will the coming of the Son of Man be.”  (Matthew 24:37-39)

It was business as usual – eating, drinking and
marrying until the flood came.  Brothers and sisters, the flood is coming.  Our
ark, our refuge is the Lord and our brothers and sisters in Christ.  He will
have a corporate testimony of Christians built together as a spiritual house.

¹⁹Now,
therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with
the saints and members of the household of God, ²⁰having been built
on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the
chief cornerstone, ²¹in whom the whole building, being fitted
together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, ²²in whom you also
are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.” 
(Ephesians 2:19-22)