Q&A—What About Wicked Men Now?

A reader asked a critical question in his comment on the post Acts and the Last Days:

In 2 Timothy 3:1 it says that perilous times shall come in the “last days.” The rest of the chapter describes what that will look like. Is this description limited to the end of the Mosaic age or is there some carry-over into the Messianic age that we can point to?

I had planned for our guest blogger, Jay Chambers, to continue his series on Baptists and Optimism this week. His unavoidable absence allows me to respond to the above question. 

This reader knows inmillennialism¹ says the term “last days” almost always, in Scripture, refers to the last generation of the Mosaic age. In that period, Jesus lived, rose from the dead, ascended to His throne, baptized His followers with the Holy Spirit, and returned to destroy the temple. These events ended the Mosaic age and began the messianic age. The term “last days” rarely refers to the end of the church age, history, or planet earth.

Jesus had foretold the “perilous times” the apostles would face before the temple fell. In His Olivet Discourse (Matt 24–25; Mark 13; Luke 21:5–38), he said, “Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name’s sake” (Matt 24:9). A time of “great tribulation” would come (Matt 24:21). These difficult times would come in their generation (Matt 24:34).

Paul reminds Timothy of this prophecy: “Know this, that in the last days perilous times will come” (2 Tim 3:1). The Apostle then describes the men who would create these dangers:

Men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away! For of this sort are those who creep into households and make captives of gullible women loaded down with sins, led away by various lusts, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. (2 Tim 3:2–7)

This kind of man would create “perilous times” during the “last days” of the Mosaic age.

But what about the reader’s question? Does this passage apply to us?

Yes, it does. Such men live in all generations, so Paul’s admonition—“from such people turn away!”—is always proper. It is not unique to the “last days” as defined by inmillennialism or any of the existing prophetic models. Solomon gave the same advice before the “last days”: “My son, if sinners entice you, do not consent” (Prov 1:10). We know from experience that such sinners exist during the messianic age in which we now live. Christ is now making such evil men His footstool and will continue to do so until He defeats death in the resurrection (1 Cor 15:25–26). This wisdom is timeless.

One fact makes the evil men Paul has in mind different from sinners of other ages. The Apostle says, 

Now as Jannes and Jambres resisted Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, disapproved concerning the faith; but they will progress no further, for their folly will be manifest to all, as theirs also was. (2 Tim 3:8–9)

This “Jannes and Jambres” type of resistance could only occur in the Mosaic age’s “last days.”

John Gill says these two men were

Egyptian magicians, the chief of those that Pharaoh sent for, when Moses and Aaron came before him, and wrought miracles; and who did in like manner by their enchantments (Exod 7:11), upon which place the Targum of Jonathan has these words: “and Pharaoh called the wise men and the magicians; and Janis and Jambres, the magicians of the Egyptians, did so by the enchantments of their divinations” … and this shews from whence the apostle had these names, which are not mentioned in any place in the Old Testament.²

These evil men opposed the Exodus when God led His people out of Egyptian bondage and into the land He had promised them. They were active in the “last days” of Israel’s Egyptian slavery.

Inmillennialism stresses the typology God built into the Exodus.³ Paul speaks of the Exodus as a type (1 Cor 10:6 YLT): “All these things happened to them as examples [“as types” YLT], and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages have come” (1 Cor 10:11). Paul’s “end of the ages” here is the same as his “last days” in 2 Timothy 3:1. Both refer to the last generation of the Mosaic age.

Jannes and Jambres resisted Israel’s transition from slavery to freedom. The evil men in Paul’s day were fighting Israel’s move from law-slavery (to sin and death) to grace-freedom under Christ. The magicians opposed physical liberation in Moses’ generation. The evil men Paul has in mind were opposing Israel’s spiritual freedom in Jesus’ generation. They were resisting Christ as Jannes and Jambrees had resisted Moses. Their resistance would increase in Paul’s day and bring the “perilous times” he (and Jesus) predicted. 

Another statement in this context reinforces the inmillennial view of 1 Timothy 3:1–9. The Exodus under Moses showed the folly of Jannes and Jambrees and ended their opposition to Israel’s transition. Paul says the evil men in his generation “will progress no further, for their folly will be manifest to all, as theirs also was” (2 Tim 3:9). 

The Apostle elsewhere said that apostate Jews were the chief enemies of age-transition in his day (cp. 1 Thess 2:14–16). He knew that Jesus had said to them, 

I send you prophets, wise men, and scribes [like Paul and Timothy—MR]: some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city, that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. Assuredly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation. (Matt 23:34–36)

Their opposition to Christ met the same end as Jannes and Jambrees’ opposition to Moses.

So, we still need to follow Paul’s advice regarding evil men who resist the truth. But wicked men of our day cannot oppose the transition from the Mosaic age to the messianic age. Christ has already destroyed those that did.

1. I documented this perspective in Michael A. Rogers, Inmillennialism: Redefining the Last Days (Tullahoma, TN: McGahan Publishing House, 2020). This book is available here in hardcopy and here as a PDF. A free summary PDF document of inmillennialism is here.
2. John Gill, An Exposition of the Old and New Testaments, 9 vols. (1809–10; repr., Paris, AR: The Baptist Standard Bearer, 1989), 9:334.
3. See Typology and Inmillennialism. Also see Rogers, Inmillennialism, 265–80.