Now that everyone carries professional video equipment with them everywhere they go (my equipment of choice is an iPhone 15 Pro Max), the number of criminal acts that flood our social media feeds has skyrocketed. I’m sure that crime has increased, but the age of technology that we live in has made me feel the increase even more.
Sometimes, there is just so much of it that I find myself tuning it all out. That is, until I hear something or see something that happened in New York City, and specifically in the Brooklyn part of the city. That’s because one of my sons lives there, and when we have someone we love living in an area that is under attack, we lean into the news, not away from it.
So you can imagine what I was feeling when I saw video after video flooding my feed on X (the app that will forever be known as “the social media app formerly known as Twitter”) about a fatal shooting on a subway train as it pulled into a station in Brooklyn (he’s fine, by the way — thanks for asking), and I immediately had this verse go through my mind:
Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold… (Matthew 24:12, emphasis mine)
Did you know that the word used here for “increase” is used 12 times in the New Testament, and all the other 11 describe good things? It means “to multiply” and describes numerical growth in the church (Acts 6:1, 7; 7:17; 9:31), the growing influence of God’s word (Acts 12:24), and an increase of God’s blessings in our lives (2 Corinthians 9:10, Hebrews 6:14).
These are all good things, and I do pray for God to multiply disciples and the kingdom in our world. But if we keep reading past the verse about the growing evil, we may find that we need something else to multiply even more.
Notice that the initial response — maybe we’d be better off to say, the majority response — is to see a decrease in our love in response to the increase in wickedness. But look what Jesus says in the next two verses:
…but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come. (Matthew 24:13-14, emphasis mine)
Plenty of people are fascinated with the end times right now, and that’s not a bad thing. In fact, I believe that there is a shared sense of urgency right now in the global church that should wake many believers out of their slumber about the days in which we’re living. These are “sound the alarm” days more than “kick back and rest” days, and I’m thankful for the ministers and ministries God is raising in our time to provoke us to “wake up and strengthen what remains” (Revelation 3:2).
But waking up isn’t all that’s required. The ver next verse says that our works are incomplete. Translation? We’ve got things to do, and so we also need to understand why we’re awake. It’s so we can live as an end-time army for the Lord, with an increased courage that enables us to stand firm and preach hard in a culture of increased wickedness.
We're called to live with an increased courage that enables us to stand firm and preach hard in a culture of increased wickedness. Click To TweetCan I suggest that a supernaturally bold and courageous Church might be the greatest — and most underrated — sign of the end times? We talk about wars, and earthquakes, and astrological events, but maybe what we should be pointing to is the growing army of believers that will not back down, and whose love will not grow cold.
Make no mistake, that brutal attack on a crowded subway isn’t just “life as usual” in New York, and the fact that it can be reported as such only proves the truth of Jesus’ prophetic words about cold hearts. But it also highlights that this is the time for a sold-out, fired-up, end-time army of believers filled with a passion for compassion to rise up.
These are the days we were born in, and made for, and it’s time to fan the flame hotter and brighter, and carry it into the darkest places.
It’s time to stand firm and preach hard, until the gospel is preached in every people group, and having been to New York numerous times, I can tell you that a lot of those people groups can be found on the subways. As fear rises and people run from them, there are everyday missionaries who will run to them.
Let’s be those missionaries. Here we are, Lord. Send us.
