What Can Believers Do in Days of Apostasy? / Part 3

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Unless noted otherwise, all Scripture references
are from the New Scofield Reference Bible.
Printed in the United States of America
1969, Revised 2005

Not only is it without error, but this Book still has power. Paul writes to the Thessalonians:

For our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in
power, and in the Holy Spirit, and in much assurance, as
ye know what manner of men we were among you for your
sake. (1 Thessalonians 1:5)

This Book has a message for those who will hear it, a message that will transform hearts and lives. The Word of God is not only a chart and compass, but it is our powerhouse. My friend, you cannot be ignorant of the Word of God and live the Christian life!

There is a second thing, Jude says, that we are to do in days of apostasy:

2. Praying in the Holy Spirit…

This is a little different from saying your prayers at night. Paul, in writing to the Ephesians, told them to take the armor of God (you’ll notice that, with the exception of two, every piece of that armor is for defense). Finally he says to them, “…the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (Ephesians 6:17) – that is that offensive weapon. We have no other offense than that plus “praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit…” (Ephesians 6:18). This is the type of prayer that touches the throne of God. It is the type of prayer that gets things from God.

It was my theory, up until the time I was pastor of the Church of the Open Door in Los Angeles, that what we needed to do was multiply numbers in a prayer meeting. I do not hold that view any longer. If you have ten people attending a prayer meeting and they are more or less spiritually asleep, it is not a very effective prayer meeting, I can tell you. But to multiply that number from ten to one hundred hasn’t helped it if you’ve brought in ninety more spiritually dull people.

All you have now is a hundred dead people instead of ten dead people, and that has not helped the prayer meeting!

However, we do need those who will pray in the Holy Spirit. We need prayer that reaches through and touches the heart of God – prayer to which He listens.

I love that prayer in the ninth chapter of Daniel. Daniel said:

And I set my face unto the Lord God, to seek by prayer
and supplications, with fasting, and sackcloth, and ashes;
and I prayed unto the LORD, my God, and made my
confession…. (Daniel 9:3, 4)

And God dispatched an angel with an answer to his prayer. I think God said, “You go down and answer his prayer, but I’m going to listen to him.” Daniel went on praying, and he touched the very heart of God.

Have you ever read any of Martin Luther’s prayers? Oh, I tell you, when that man prayed, it was like storming the battlements of heaven! We hear very little praying like that today. But that is the type of prayer that absolutely transformed Europe – prayer in the Holy Spirit.

There are many times when we don’t know what to pray for. I’ll be honest with you – in my lifetime, I have encountered problems for which I have no solution. I used to be able to give the Lord the best advice He ever had received on just how He ought to handle the thing. But I’ve learned that instead of going to Him with a program all outlined and saying, “Look here, Lord, this is the course You should follow,” now I am more inclined to say, “Lord, I don’t know the answer, but You do; if we get the right answer, it will have to come from You.” Therefore, we can throw this back – and I say it reverently – into the lap of God. That’s the way He wants it.

Years ago a missionary in Venezuela sent me a little card on which was a definition of prayer: “Prayer is the Holy Spirit, speaking in the believer, through Christ, to the Father.” Friend, that is a very good definition of prayer.

Praying in the Holy Spirit means the Spirit of God leads and guides us in our prayer life. A great many folk say, “I pray for a certain thing, and I don’t get an answer.” That ought to tell you something! You are not praying in the will of God. My grandson can ask for more things that he shouldn’t have than any little fellow I’ve ever met! I take him with me to the store sometimes, and he wants everything he shouldn’t have. I think to myself, My, that’s the way I pray! Just like a little child, I say, “Lord, give me this and give me that,” and He doesn’t do it. Why? Because I am not praying in the Holy Spirit. Oh, to cast ourselves upon Him in days like these! In times of apostasy, how we need to pray in the Holy Spirit.

Jude gives us the third thing believers are to do in days of apostasy:

3. Keep yourselves in the love of God…

Notice this exact language. He did not say that we are to do something to win the love of God. You are already in the love of God – just keep yourself there. And, friend, you cannot do anything to merit the love of God, neither can you keep Him from loving you.

Do you remember the rich young ruler who came to Jesus with a question? He wanted to know what he should do to inherit eternal life. The record tells us:

Then Jesus, beholding him, loved him, and said unto him,
One thing thou lackest; go thy way, sell whatever thou
hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in
heaven; and come, take up the cross, and follow me. And
he was sad at that saying, and went away grieved; for he
had great possessions. (Mark 10:21, 22)

He turned and walked away from Christ, but God still loved him!

We need to recognize that God loves the believer. All through the Epistle of Jude he calls believers “beloved.” That doesn’t mean that Jude loves them or that they love him. It simply means they are beloved of God.

You see, you can’t keep God from loving you. You can, however, get out of that love. Let me use the example of sunshine. Where I am today the sun is shining brightly; it’s a beautiful California day. I can’t keep the sun from shining, but I’m not in the sunshine – I’m inside a building. It is possible to put over yourself a roof of sin. You can put over yourself a roof of indifference. You can step out of the will of God so that you will not feel the warmth of God’s love in your life. But you cannot keep Him from loving you. So Jude says in effect, “Keep yourselves out there in the sunshine of His love.” Let His love flood your heart and flood your life. That is needed in days of apostasy.

There are many people today who are going through severe trials. Recently, I have been talking to a family that has been called upon to bear more than its share of trouble. It is a Christian family. The father – candidly, I wondered if he would make it or not – said to me the other day, “If it were not for the fact that I am persuaded that the Lord Jesus loves me, I’d give up the whole thing and walk out.” But he won’t be walking out, because he has kept himself in the love of God.

How you and I need to keep ourselves in the light and warmth of God’s love in these days!

Jude reminds us of the fourth thing we need to do:

4. Looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto
eternal life.

The mercy of God is His concern and care for you. Because of His mercy, He was able to save you – He was concerned about you. He is rich in mercy, He has plenty of it, and we need all we can get because it is by mercy that God would even put up with us.

“Looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ” refers, I believe, to the coming of Christ for His church, the event we know as the Rapture of the church. You see, the reason I believe the church is not going through the Great Tribulation is that we are told to look for mercy, not judgment. I am not looking for judgment or the Great Tribulation. I am looking for the mercy of God.

A long time ago when He saved me, He did it by His mercy. And the very fact that He keeps holding on to me is an evidence of His mercy. One of these days He will take His church out of this world. Believe it or not, I’ll be going along, and I’ll be going because of His mercy. If you meet me a million years from today in eternity and you find I’m still in heaven (and I will be there), I will tell you now what I’ll tell you then: I’ve been here a million years, because He is merciful to me.

I am looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ. In days of apostasy we need to look for that, my beloved. In this day of failure, in this day of compromise, in this day of discouragement, we are to look for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.

The fifth thing is a caution:

5. And of some have compassion, making a difference.

I’ll have to change that translation just a little: “And of some have compassion who are in doubt.” There are a great many good sincere people today who do have their doubts, and we need to be patient with them.

In our Thursday night Bible study several years ago a woman came to me after every service for, I suppose, six weeks with some question. I began to have a feeling she was trying to trap me or trick me, and I became, frankly, a little impatient with her. Always there was another lady with her, one of our church members. So one night I answered her question rather sharply, and she turned and walked out. The lady with her came to me and said, “Dr. McGee, just be patient with her. She is a very brilliant woman. She’s in ‘Who’s Who,’ and she has been in practically every cult there is. She is really mixed up! Now she is trying to make her way out. Please be patient with her.” So after that I would really answer her questions the best I could. About three months later she accepted Christ as her Savior. And I had a wonderful letter from her when she was back in Ohio, telling me of how the Lord was leading her.

We are living in days when there is so much doubt cast upon the Word of God. Remember that we are in the apostasy. Though the creeds of all the great denominations were sound creeds (they differ a little in some points, but on the great basics there was no difference at all), the church has been taken over by liberals who totally reject the great doctrines their denominations were founded upon. Folk in these churches have been so brainwashed over the years that though they want to believe, they are having their problems. We would do well to be patient with them.

Now the sixth thing:

6. And others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire…

These are folk whom we would judge to be hopeless sinners. It seems to us that nobody could reach them. I have been amazed at some of the people who have come to the Lord through the medium of radio. People that I have known, and frankly have given up, have come to Christ by hearing the Word taught on radio. “And others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire!” What a tremendous thing!

A letter has come to me from Fairbanks, Alaska, which illustrates this:

…Because KJNP is the loudest voice in the Arctic,
hundreds of bush pilots lock onto the station to guide
them into the city of Fairbanks and they must listen to
what is on the air at the time. Just a few weeks ago, one
of the pilots was locked onto KJNP and, behold, you
were broadcasting! By the time he reached Fairbanks he
had repented and was wonderfully born again by the
Spirit of God. He is now attending a fundamental
church and doing well. Praise God!

May I say to you, friend, there is somebody around you today whom you can pull out of the fire. If there were a house on fire with somebody inside of it, you would do your best to get him out. But just think of the people around you today who are on the way to a lost eternity, and some of them you can reach. I don’t think you can reach them all. I don’t recommend you go out on the street and hand a tract to everybody who comes along, but I do say there is somebody you can reach. And the interesting thing is, you are the only one who can reach them – they would never listen to this preacher, but they will listen to you. They have respect for you. They have confidence in you. Yet you have never told them about the Savior who has saved you. That is the type of witnessing we need in days of apostasy.

Now the seventh and final admonition of Jude is:

7. Hating even the garment spotted by the flesh.

The word “flesh” does not necessarily mean only that which is licentious, although it includes that. The “flesh” refers to this old nature that we have, and this old nature does not always go in the direction of licentiousness. There are a great many people today who are art lovers and music lovers. There are cultured folk who would never rob anyone or engage in immorality. But without Christ they are lost people, and they are living in the flesh – as much in the flesh as any drunkard on Main Street. In God’s sight they are just as lost. God says that “all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). All come under that category.

You and I today are to hate the garment that is spotted by the flesh. May I make it personal? Pride is of the flesh. Gossip is of the flesh. Harsh criticism is of the flesh. And there is a lot of the flesh manifested in our churches. This pious pose that many have toward “spirituality” is of the flesh and not of God at all. Even Paul the apostle, a religious man who was converted to Christ, said, “Oh, wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Romans 7:24). This is not a lost man asking for salvation. This is the cry of a saved man who was living in the flesh. Anything that Vernon McGee produces of the flesh, God hates. Regardless of how religious it is or how pious it might be or how much Bible it has in it. If it is of the flesh, He hates it. Only that which the Spirit of God produces through us can He use. We should learn to hate “even the garment spotted by the flesh.”

These are the seven things we are to do in days of apostasy.

Dwight L. Moody said, “I look upon this world as a wrecked vessel. Its ruin is getting nearer and nearer. God said to me, ‘Moody, here’s a lifeboat. Go out and rescue as many as you can before the crash comes.’” And up until the ministry of Billy Graham, Moody looked into the faces of more people than any man who ever lived, and he reduced the population of hell by 200,000. My friend, if God could use Moody, He can use you and He can use me in these days of apostasy.

The little Book of Jude concludes with a glorious benediction. Let me give you a literal translation:

Now unto Him who is able to keep you from stumbling,
and to present you (make you stand) before the presence
of His glory blameless with great rejoicing, to the only
God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory,
majesty, might, and authority, before all time both now
and forever. Amen. (Jude 24 and 25, as translated by
Dr. McGee)