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Begin wherever your curiosity leads. The studies will be here when you’re ready. When I shared my first Matthew study on Facebook today, I mentioned that I planned to post daily, though I might not share every post on Facebook. As I continue setting up this blog, I’ve realized that what matters most to me is making my past studies available for anyone who wants to explore them. For now, I’ll be adding posts to my heart’s content as I work through those studies. Some days that may mean one post; other days it may mean several. I’ll continue reading through and preparing each one before sharing it. There is no need to keep up with everything as it appears. This blog is becoming a place you can browse at your own pace—begin with a book, a question, or a study that interests you, and follow from there. The Bible Books page gathers studies by book, while Study Threads helps connect topics that travel through more than one book. The labels on individual posts also bring related material to...
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5. Matthew 24: When Love Grows Cold


As I continue through Matthew 24, my attention turns toward what happens among people under pressure.

This part of the chapter has stayed with me personally. It brings suffering, betrayal, deception, love, and endurance into the same passage.

I want to consider those details together, including what they ask me to examine in my own life.

Read along: Matthew 24:9–14 — LSB.

Pressure and Response

In verse 9, Jesus tells His disciples they will face tribulation, death, and hatred because of His name.

The following verse describes people falling away, betraying one another, and hating one another.

The relationships draw my attention. The account concerns both what people suffer and how they respond to one another.

That gives me a question to carry through the study: what happens to a person’s faithfulness when the cost of remaining faithful becomes greater?

Deception Appears Again

Verse 11 returns to false prophets and the deception of many.

I want to keep this warning beside the surrounding pressures. When I am distressed or looking for an explanation, I need to examine what I hear carefully.

Does an explanation help me attend to Scripture, or am I accepting it because it gives a quick answer to something painful?

For me, discernment includes being willing to leave a question open while I continue reading.

Love Growing Cold

Verse 12 connects increasing lawlessness with love growing cold. The LSB’s main text says “most people’s love,” while its footnote gives the more literal wording, “the love of many.”

I want to preserve that wording distinction. It helps me avoid turning the statement into a claim that everyone responds identically.

This is also where the passage reaches into my own experience.

I have seen people appear to change, then return to earlier ways. I have experienced rejection that was openly harsh and rejection expressed politely. Those experiences have made me think about the difference between loving words and what someone’s conduct communicates.

Yet I do not want hurt to become the measure by which I judge every person I encounter.

The question I need to keep before myself is what those experiences are doing within me. Am I allowing disappointment to harden the way I respond?

What Does Endurance Look Like?

Verse 13 speaks of the one who endures to the end being saved.

I want to keep that statement beside what precedes it. My study question is how endurance relates to continuing in faithfulness when deception, hostility, and the cooling of love surround a person.

I do not want to reduce endurance to being certain that my interpretation is correct.

For my own examination, I also need to consider how I live, how I treat others, and whether I remain willing to receive correction from Jehovah’s Word.

The challenges described in this passage make that question more searching.

Proclamation and Witness

Verse 14 describes the gospel of the kingdom being proclaimed throughout the inhabited earth as a witness to all nations, followed by the coming of the end.

I want to preserve the scope, purpose, and stated sequence without filling in details this sentence does not supply.

This gives another thread to carry alongside our earlier studies of messengers, hearing, and response.

What I Am Carrying Forward

This passage reminds me to examine what remains within a person as circumstances become difficult.

In my own life, I want to remain attentive to both truth and love. Pain can make that difficult, which is part of why these words matter to me.

I can continue asking questions, maintain necessary boundaries, and still examine whether my response reflects the faith I profess.

As the study moves forward, I want to keep that personal examination beside the larger questions of timing and fulfillment.

Threads to Follow

  • Pressure and faithfulness: What becomes visible when remaining faithful is costly.

  • Betrayal and hatred: Following the relationships described.

  • Deception: Keeping discernment beside endurance.

  • Love growing cold: Preserving the wording and examining my own response.

  • Endurance: Considering what it means to remain faithful.

  • Witness and response: The proclamation described in verse 14.

Next, I’ll follow the reference to Daniel, the instruction to flee, and the distress described in Matthew 24:15–28.

The books were opened…

🌿 By Maria Emilia

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