Verses 17-19: But you, beloved, ought to remember the words that were spoken beforehand by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, that they were saying to you, “In the last time there will be mockers, following after their own ungodly lusts.” These are the ones who cause divisions, worldly-minded, devoid of the Spirit.
Jude carefully shifts the focus of his message from the apostates to the recipients of his letter: beloved fellow believers in Jesus Christ. He begins by commanding that they ought to keep firmly in their memory the words spoken by the apostles. The word ‘ought’ is derived from the Greek mood of the verb to remember. It would be better translated must since ‘ought’ in today’s language doesn’t seem to communicate the vital necessity of observing this command.
What exactly must be remembered is outlined by the words which were spoken by Our Lord’s apostles, His duly appointed leadership of the Church. But not just idle words; these are words with a specific content that pertained to their day and will resonate throughout this present Church Age. They were to be lodged in the memory center of the believers in Jude’s day, as well as in ours today, and by every believer in the future until Christ comes for His Church.
In verse 18, Jude conveys for the benefit of his readers the urgent warning that the apostles were repeatedly saying, that it was an absolute fact that these apostates will be present in the last time. He virtually quotes 2 Peter 3:3 with some variations. Peter wrote that they will come “in the last days.” The Apostle John wrote at the end of the 1st Century “that many antichrists have appeared; from this we know that it is the last hour” (1 John 2:18). The phrases last time/last days/last hour all refer to the same time frame, specifically “in the last age of the Church,”1 from Pentecost to the Rapture of the Church. This warning to be on our guard applies to us today. The Apostle John went on to state how we can identify these apostates:
And every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world. (1 John 4:3)
These passages (Jude 18; 2 Peter 3:3; 1 John 4:1-32) should challenge us to evaluate the present day teachings in our churches today. Both Jude and Peter maintain the absolute certainty that in these last days there will be mockers, meaning men who will scoff and distort the tenets of the Christian faith. Peter said that they will ridicule the “promise of His coming” (2 Peter 3:4), while Jude had already mentioned that they deny Jesus Christ as their “only Master and Lord” (v.4). And again, Jude repeats what motivates them (cf. v.16), they are in pursuit “after their own ungodly lusts.” Not sexual lust, but power lust and the desire to fulfill the directives of their evil master—Satan—as detailed in the next verse.
First, Jude explains the objective of these apostates—that they are the ones who cause divisions. We should be mindful of the success they have had during this present age of the Church. The Center for the Study of Global Christianity estimated that in 2019 there were 45,000 Christian denominations globally.3 Granted, many share the same basic theology of Biblical Christianity, but then, many do not because of false teachers. From this we see the realization of Peter’s statement that false teachers “secretly introduce destructive heresies” (2 Peter 2:1). This accounts for the breakup of various denominations because of attacks upon the inerrancy and authority of Scripture, sexual issues (i.e. gay marriage), and the Biblical role of the pastor-teacher. There is sufficient evidence of those who cause division, striving to obliterate the unity of the universal Body of Christ. The Apostle Paul described the truth of Christian unity:
There is one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all. (Ephesians 4:4–6, emphasis added)
Second, these apostates are worldly-minded. This Greek word infers “one who lives on the purely material plane, without being touched by the Spirit of God.”4 They derive their beliefs subjectively from the natural world about them—rejecting the objective revelation of God’s Word. The 19th Century German philosophy, zeitgeist, the spirit of the age, perfectly describes the mindset of these apostates. This zeitgeist philosophy purported that there was an invisible force that governed the ever changing world—it’s views of every facet of life. These views are considered ‘indisputable truths’, having been dictated by the prevailing cultural fads and crazes, utterly rejecting any Godly influence. This is the wisdom of the world which James maintained was not from God but is demonic (James 3:15).
Just as the worldly-minded 1st Century apostates took their cue from their culture, they do so today: indulging in ungodly deeds, in pursuit of ungodly lusts, believing that anything goes!
Third, these apostates are devoid of the Spirit. This is a continuously persistent fact and is sufficiently corroborated by what has already been stated. Jude dogmatically states that it is impossible for these apostates to possess any aspect of the Holy Spirit and at the same time derive their mindset from demonic wisdom. If these apostates had at one time believed in Jesus Christ, then what the Apostle Paul wrote exposes them for who they are:
But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons, by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron. (1 Timothy 4:1–2)
Today, apostates are still at work teaching their doctrines of demons—not doctrines about demons—but doctrines that originate from deceitful demonic spirits, the minions of Satan. Concerning this primary source of their deceitfulness, Satan, Our Lord declared that “there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44b).
It is undeniable that within our culture Biblical Christianity has become a fading memory. It is true that there are an overwhelming number of Christians and Christian churches in the world. But few maintain the true beliefs of Biblical Christianity; and fewer believers strive to achieve spiritual maturity, capitulating to the false emphasis and teachings of a ‘Christianity’ perpetrated by the ‘father of lies.’
[1] Alford, Henry (1877). The Greek Testament, Boston, MA: Lee and Shepard Publishers, 4.540.
[2] Note what the Apostle Paul forewarned, Acts 20:29-30.
[3] https://www.gordonconwell.edu/center-for-global-christianity/research/quick-facts/[Retrieved July 25, 2023]
[4] Arndt, W., Gingrich, F. W., & Bauer, W. (1957). A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. 902.
© 2023 David M. Rossi
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