THIS little epistle has been put into the very last place in the canon of the New Testament, because it reveals prophetically the final conditions which will prevail in the professing church on earth. The end will be apostasy from the faith delivered once and for all to the saints. Believers are therefore called upon by the Spirit of God to contend earnestly for that faith. Twice Jude mentions the Spirit of God.

Verse 19. "These be they who separate themselves, soulical, having not the Spirit." Here is a picture of the Modernist. He separates himself from the true church by his infidelity and denials of the doctrine of Christ. But the trouble with the modernist is that he has not the Spirit. He may be an educated man, a moral man and very "soulical" and religious, as any natural man may be, but he has not the Spirit of God, and that is why he is a modernist. He has not the Holy Spirit because he never was born again.

Verse 20. "Praying in the Holy Spirit." Again we attention to the fact that there is no exhortation or command after Pentecost to pray for the gift of the Spirit.