“In the last days there will be difficult times. People will love only themselves and their money. They will be boastful and proud, scoffing at God, disobedient to their parents, and ungrateful. They will consider nothing sacred.
They will be unloving and unforgiving; they will slander others and have no self-control. They will be cruel and hate what is good. They will betray their friends, be reckless, be puffed up with pride, and love their own pleasure more than God. They may act religious, but they will reject the grace that could make them righteous.”
2 Timothy 3:1-5
“The store-house cities [of biblical Israel] are an ancient parallel to the great banks and insurance houses where surplus wealth is kept among us. That surplus wealth, produced by the cheap labor of peasants, must now be protected from the peasants by law and by military force.
We labor and labor and labor for stuff that never satisfies us. The market ideology is now the new form of imperial power and many of us, without any critical reflection, have signed onto that, and organized our lives in that way so we do not have any time, energy or capacity for the things that are rightly important to us, our human-ness.”
Walter Brueggemann, Truth To Power
“And then many will fall by the wayside, and will hate and betray one another. False prophets will arise, and lead the people astray. And because of the increase in wickedness, the love of most will grow cold. But those who stand firm in faithfulness to the end will be saved.”
Matthew 24:10-14
