Watching or reading the news is depressing. When you fear to let your children out of your sight, or you hear of parents killing their children, you wonder what is going on. I do not understand why parents would even harm, much less murder, their own child. And then there are the murderers who go about a college campus and kill, or to a shopping mall and kill, or even to a church and kill.

There is turmoil and chaos all around us. It is in the political world, the economic world, the geo-physical world and even in the spiritual world.

Of course, the Word of God has the answer but it sometimes takes a genuine Bible language scholar to find the answer. Brother Gary Stearman, in Prophecy in the News Magazine, notes that in Paul’s warning to Timothy (Second Timothy 3:1-5) he tells Timothy that in the Last Days there will be perilous times. Many of us are familiar with this passage. However, Brother Stearman found that the Greek word used for “perilous” is chalepos (pronounced ‘kalepos’), and it is used only one other place in the Bible.

In the story of the demon-possessed man in Matthew 8:28-34, the man is described as “exceedingly fierce” (King James Version) or “violent” (New International Version). In our time we might describe this man as insane. In the Mark 5:1-13 instance of the story, the man is described as being so strong that he could break the chains and irons with which the people tried to bind him. In the Matthew account, the word fierce or violent is chalepos, and this is the only other usage of that Greek word in the Bible.

This may help us to understand what we see going on around us. We see a great deal of insanity about us. It appears that we live in fierce, violent and insane times. I suspect that we live not only in perilous times, but also in the Last Days. Praise be to God for His watch-care and protection over us. Come! Lord Jesus!