“The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons” 1 Timothy 4:1 (NIV)

Beloved ones, above is a sentence, an order that those accustomed to travelling by plane most often hear. That order is often given at three key moments of the time of a flight: before take-off, prior to landing and when the aircraft enters a turbulence zone. In any of those cases, a voice would remind passengers “Fasten your seat belt!”

Let’s here liken the Church to an aircraft of which Christians are the passengers. God Himself is the Captain, Jesus-Christ, the Pilot and the Holy Spirit, the hostess, who makes it a point to provide us with reminders. Just as not everybody is authorized to access an aircraft, except those who first got a visa of the destination country and who have enough means to buy themselves a flight ticket, in the same way, except those who are saved and thus consider themselves as travellers to heaven, it is not given to everybody to enter God’s church.

Like the aircraft, the Church is going through a turbulent zone because the world made its way into the church and is making unprecedented damages. Today, the society is in crisis: families are divided, members of the same family kill one another; children rebel against their parents; households are in crisis for the God’s normal order has been put upside-down; foundations are overthrown and values have disappeared. It is chaos at all levels. All these events are indicators of the forthcoming landing of the aircraft in which we are, signs that foreshadow the second coming of Christ. Christ’ coming back is indeed more and more imminent, today more than yesterday and actually more than ever before.

It is therefore now more than ever for us to fasten our seatbelts for those events not to splash us and take us away. Those phenomenon include apostasy which means forsaking faith.

But what seatbelts should we, as Christians, fasten to be out of trouble in those evil days? They consist in our salvation, our faith, our daily sanctification, the daily reading and meditation of God’s word and eventually God’s service