{"id":52932,"date":"2025-08-29T16:08:42","date_gmt":"2025-08-29T20:08:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.markmallett.com\/blog\/?p=52932"},"modified":"2025-08-30T14:18:35","modified_gmt":"2025-08-30T18:18:35","slug":"the-timothy-prophecy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markmallett.com\/blog\/the-timothy-prophecy\/","title":{"rendered":"The Timothy Prophecy","gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"rendered","format":"text"}]},"content":{"rendered":"

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Often it seems that God does not exist:
\nall around us we see persistent injustice,
\nevil, indifference and cruelty<\/strong>. <\/span>
\n\u2014POPE FRANCIS,\u00a0Evangelii Gaudium<\/em><\/a>, n. 276<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\nA<\/span>nother day. Another mass murder. It’s become so commonplace that massacres have become a “normal” part of our culture. Except there’s nothing normal about it. Even fifty years ago, mass shootings were utterly rare. When they occurred, they were the subject of deep collective thinking, numerous documentaries and public inquiries. Now, they’re simply part of the weekly news roll.<\/p>\n

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Major “sign of the times”<\/h5>\n

But there is something much, much deeper going on here. Whether it’s the continued Islamic butchering of Nigerian Christians or the North American slaying of school children as they pray in their pews, the words of St. Paul to Timothy are screaming off of the Bible’s pages at this hour:<\/p>\n

…Understand this: there will be terrifying times in the last days. People will be self-centered and lovers of money, proud, haughty, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, irreligious, callous, implacable, slanderous, licentious, brutal, hating what is good, traitors, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God…<\/strong> (2 Tim 3:1-4)<\/span><\/p>\n

Do I really need to list dozens of news stories and examples? No, you’re no doubt fully aware through your social media and the news that there is something terribly off in the collective and individual consciences of our times. Sure, there have been brutal cultures and generations in the past. What is different about our times is the near universal<\/em> explosion of narcissism and the “me” culture. We have literally nurtured a culture of self-centeredness to the point where we are watching St. Paul’s admonition unfold in real-time, every day, on reel after reel of bizarre behavior utterly detached from any sense of moral compass. It is not only widespread lawlessness but the displacement of God by ego. <\/em>Could\u00a0this not be a foreshadowing of that other related passage of St. Paul’s?<\/p>\n

[The day of the Lord] will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God.<\/em>..<\/strong> (2 Thessalonians 2:3-4)<\/span><\/p>\n

The Antichrist is essentially the incarnation of ego \u2014 the summit of a “me” culture.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Culture: Shaping Narcissists<\/h5>\n

As we hit the newest film festival cycle this summer, we see that what is proposed as “art” and “entertainment” is really nothing but the next lowest level of gore, violence, and sexually explicit images \u2014\u00a0 a level that has reached the very bowels of Hell. In fact, I’m incensed by it. Do we really think that the daily fare of violent video games, violent films, anti-Christian themes, and atheistic education doesn’t shape and inspire the minds of mass murderers like Robin Westman?[1]<\/sup><\/a>The 23 year old killer in the Minnesota Catholic school shootings.<\/span><\/span>