Do Not Fear the End Times Part 84: No God = No Hope

(13) So are the paths of all who forget God.
Hope perishes for the godless.
(14) whose confidence is a fragile thing,
their trust, a spider’s web.
(15) He leans on its web, and it doesn’t stand;
grasps it, and it can’t remain in place.

Job 8:13-15 (CEB)

---

Previous End Times Post

Part 50 Recap Post

---

Hello Readers, hope all’s well. Time for another End Times post.

In the previous post I wrote about an impressive passage from Job 2. I said that I’d been reading the Book of Job in January/February, which is a great time to read this book. As for winter being the best time to read Job, I said this:

Why is winter the best time to read the Book of Job? Well, in most parts of the world winter is cold, bleak, harsh, and depressing. The leaves are gone from the trees and bushes, so the environment appears dead and void of life. The world looks grim. People tend to stay indoors and look sadly at the bleak world outside. Although there are some joys of winter that are unique to the season, it’s not an easy time of year. The bleak background atmosphere of winter is great for reading the Book of Job, which is about suffering.

And there’s a lot going on in the Book of Job, so I’m going to continue writing about it. Today’s topic comes from Job 8, and another one of my favorite lines in the Bible: “Hope perishes for the godless.”

If we don’t have God in our life, we don’t have any Hope.

Hope Perishes for the Godless

After Job suffers the tragedies inflicted on him by Satan, some of Job’s friends come to comfort him. But they aren’t very good at this whole “comforting” thing. In fact, they make things much, much worse by accusing Job of having sinned. In their minds, God would never make a Righteous person suffer like this. So they think Job must have done something seriously wrong to deserve this.

Naturally, Job’s friends didn’t have the full Holy Bible to refer to. This very book that they appear in, Job, teaches the lesson that our suffering in life is not connected with our sins, and is not really a punishment from God. (Although calamity can be a natural and expected consequence of some certain sins, that doesn’t make it a punishment from God. And in Job’s case, this does not apply.) A passage in the Gospel of John teaches the same thing.

Anyway, Job’s friends never had the chance to read either the Book of Job or the Gospel of John. So instead of comforting their friend Job, sitting in misery atop a pile of ashes, they urged him to confess his sins that he must have committed to be “punished” like this. Job defends himself over and over, maintaining his innocence before God. This back-and-forth makes up most of the content of Job’s 42 chapters.

In chapter 8, Job’s friend Bildad from Shuah takes his turn telling Job to confess his sins. If Job turns to God and admits his wrongs, surely God will act on Job’s behalf, Bildad says. As he keeps talking, Bildad mentions those who don’t have God in their life. They have no Hope, he says. Nothing to lean on, nothing to trust in. Job 8:13 is another one of my favorite lines in the whole Bible: “Hope perishes for the godless.”

(11) Does papyrus grow apart from a marsh?
Does a reed flourish without water?
(12) While still tender, uncut,
it will wither before every other grass.
(13) So are the paths of all who forget God.
Hope perishes for the godless,
(14) whose confidence is a fragile thing,
their trust, a spider’s web.
(15) He leans on its web, and it doesn’t stand;
grasps it, and it can’t remain in place.

Job 8:11-15 (CEB)

In verse 11, Bildad explains that God is our source of life; He is the Life Water we need to flourish. If we turn away from God, we’re turning away from the source of life we need. If we turn away from God, we will be like a reed without water. We will wither up and die (verse 12), without God, our life source.

And this is what happens to all who forget God. Hope perishes for the godless (verse 13). When we go through times of suffering in our life, like Job, our Hope in God is all that can get us through. Our Hope and Faith that God is in control, If we lose our Hope in God, we’ve got nothing left. Without Hope in God and the knowledge that He will bring us out of our suffering, all we have left is despair.

Hope in God is what empowers us to endure our times of suffering, like Job. Without Hope in God, we can’t do it; we won’t make it through.

But that’s not all. People who forget God have no one to lean on, and nothing they can trust. Their confidence is a fragile thing, as solid as a spider’s web (verse 14). Whatever the godless trust in will break as easily as a spider’s web. They lean on their spider’s web, their worldly hope, but it doesn’t support them (verse 15). What they thought they could hope in, what they thought they could fall back on, fails them when they need it most.

God is the only one we can ever trust in! He is true confidence for us, someone we can truly lean on and know that He will support us. He will never leave us, He will never break on us. But the godless don’t have this support, which is sad for them.

Some things people put their confidence in instead of God are: Money, fame, people, government, and so on. These are things they think they can fall back on in times of need, things that’ll support them. But money and fame come and go—they don’t last forever. People aren’t reliable like God is reliable—they can abandon us when we need them most. Governments and empires rise and fall, they don’t last forever either.

We must never put our hope (little ‘h’) in any worldly person or thing. None of those things last forever, and they will let us down one day. They aren’t strong enough to support us in times of need—they’re spider’s webs. We must put our Hope (big ‘H’) in God and only God. He is our true confidence and support. If we don’t have Him, we don’t have Hope.

The Ultimate Hope

I said that without Hope in God, we won’t be able to make it through our suffering. With nothing to support us, nothing to fall back on, all we have left is despair. We won’t see any light at the end of the tunnel and our situation will look lost. Futile. Hopeless. But when we have real Hope in God that He will deliver us, then we have a reason and a means to endure. But I’ve said this already.

Now, of all the suffering we could ever endure in life … what could ever be worse than “The Great Suffering?” The End Times. The Great Tribulations. The End of the world—what suffering could be more painful than that??

In Matthew 24, Jesus warns us of what we’ll see when the End is near. Earthquakes. Famines. Wars, and rumors of war. But all this suffering isn’t even the End! It’s only the beginning of the End!!

The Book of Revelation shows even worse things happening. Pestilence, famine, war, the destruction of the environment. The waters drying up. Horrible monsters from the abyss. The two beasts, and of course we can’t forget the mark of the beast. Without that mark in the forehead or hand, no one will be able to buy or sell anything. People who refuse to worship the beast from the sea will be horribly persecuted.

Countless people will be killed. Countless people will be imprisoned and persecuted. Like Jesus said, it will be the worst suffering humanity has ever seen, and nothing like it will ever be seen again.

But for those with true Hope in God, not even The Great Suffering can make us despair. Because we know that after all this death, horror, and chaos, God will destroy this fallen world and create His new, perfect world. He will come to live on earth with us as our God, and He will wipe every tear from our eyes. There will be no more crying or pain (Revelation 21:3-4).

(3) I heard a loud voice from the throne say, “Look! God’s dwelling is here with humankind. He will dwell with them, and they will be his peoples. God himself will be with them as their God. (4) He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more. There will be no mourning, crying, or pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

Revelation 21:3-4 (CEB)

This is the Hope we have. The ultimate Hope. We know that all proceeds according to God’s Plan, which includes the horrible End Times. But after that, God will bring the tragedy to a perfect resolution. The chaos and destruction of the End Times leads to the true Paradise of God’s new world. When things are at their worst during the End Times, we still have our Hope in God. It’s all we’ve got. But luckily for us, it’s all we need, and it will never fail.

But if we don’t have Hope in God, we have nothing to support us, nothing to get us through the End Times. And we won’t make it to the End. We’ll look for something, anything, to save us. But anything else we put our confidence in, like money or people, will fail us then. Nothing except God is enough to save us in the End Times.

Any worldly thing or person we put our confidence in is a fragile spider’s web—when we need to lean on it, it will break. When we reach out for it to save us, it won’t be there. Hope perishes for the godless. We need to have God in our lives, now more than ever. God is our only true Hope—our Hope that will never fail us.

Imagine the idea of trying to survive through the End of Days with only a spider web to fall back on. When we don’t have God in our lives, that’s the exact situation we’re in: Precarious, Hopeless, and dying. We’re dying because we’re cut off from our source of life, like a reed without water. And we’re Hopeless because we don’t have hope in anything that will endure.

Hope perishes for the godless. That goes first; next, the godless die. And so it goes with all who forget God, like a reed without water, they wither and die.

But things don’t need to be this way. If we put God in our lives, then we have something True, Real, and Eternal to Hope in. Our Hope in God will never fail us—it won’t break like a spider’s web. When we need God, He will be there for us. He will save us.

We need to have this strong, enduring, Eternal Hope in God right now, during the End Times. Any other hope is a spider’s web. And that’s not enough to get us through the suffering that’s coming our way.

---

Well that’s all for this week. If you enjoyed today’s post, be sure to Subscribe using the link below. And please consider Supporting My Blog using the Tip Jar. Any amount is much appreciated!

Until next time, be strong and do good!

Your new best friend in Christ,

99:9

<<<EXALT THE LORD OUR GOD AND WORSHIP AT HIS HOLY HILL; FOR THE LORD OUR GOD IS HOLY>>>

---

Follow My Blog

Subscribe to my FREE Substack newsletter so you never miss any of my posts!
https://999f64.substack.com/

Support My Blog