2 Thessalonians 2 - Trust God Alone

        The problem is not God.  He’s faithful and just.  God goes so far as blotting out sin for His own sake.  The problem is with God’s people - right from the beginning (Isaiah 43:25-28).

        The good news is that God loves all people so much that He wants to make people part of His family.  God does not want a dead, empty, or merely intellectual body.  He expects a live, vibrant body.  Real church.

        At heart, we, as God’s people, know that we have to follow the Spirit of Christ shown in His word.  Not man-made rules, legalism, and tradition for the sake of it.  We want much more than entertainment.  As good as it is, a lecture from a guru once a week is dead.  Empty.  We want to be part of God’s body, healthy, alive, active, and powerful.  A family where we can love others and be loved.  Be done with dead church.  God is calling for us to live worthy lives in fellowship with His body and be obedient to Him.

        God is not done.  Thank God!  Right here on this earth, He is building His Kingdom as He sees fit.  His Providential hand is protecting those who live and trust Him.  Just as He is exposing false prophets as liars, making fools of fortune tellers who think they know the day of God’s return and who think they know the signs of Armageddon, and shaming the so-called wise of this world (Isaiah 44:25).

        So let’s follow Paul’s example.  Let’s keep on praying.  And let’s live worthy lives through God’s power.  It is God’s power that enables us to accomplish the good things that God planned for us to do and that He will prompt us to do today.

        And let’s trust the avenging power and justice of the Lord Jesus.  

        We do not know who this “man of sin” or “man of lawlessness” is in this chapter.  It could be Emperor Nero.  Or a first-century man named John Levi of Gischala.  Or it could be carnal man, humanity as a whole in its human condition.

        I continue to learn in this area.  I'm just a babe.  But I am ready to move on to real food, Pablum gets old fast.  I was once a futurist, but I never totally bought into the cottage industry of dispensationalists.  I am open to God’s leading and teaching here.  My opinion is that Paul was talking of a time of persecution that would come from Nero - the enemy of God.  And the total Victory of Christ.  In everything.   Indeed within 16 years Paul and Peter and many other saints would lose their lives at the hands of Nero.

        So what is Paul talking about here?  Paul is certainly not talking about the antichrist.  In the last 150 years, Christians have been so programmed by futurist thinking that they equate the man of lawlessness referenced by Paul here to the antichrist.  The word antichrist is only referenced by the Apostle John in 1 and 2 John.  Never in the Book of Revelation (also written through the hand of John) and nowhere else in the Bible.  Sorry to disappoint those hell-bent on coming up with pre-trib and post-trib hypotheticals.

        When John wrote of the antichrist he was explicitly addressing Gnostics like Cerinthus - those who led so many astray with false teaching.  Just like so many false teachers do today.  The Gnostics denied Jesus’ deity.  They denied that Jesus was the Christ (John 2:22).  John was right to fight those liars and to expose them.

        In 1 John 4:1-3 John makes plain that many such false teachers had gone out in the world.  The antichrist, never mentioned in the book of Revelation, is not the beast mentioned in Revelation.  I know, shocking if you’ve been brainwashed with futurist teaching for years.  The beast of Revelation is the Roman Empire.  And yes, the antichrist is not the person mentioned in Daniel 9:27 who put an end to sacrifice and grain offerings.  Again, the antichrist is not even mentioned in Daniel 9:27 (again, shocker).  It is Jesus Christ, our Lord and our God who puts a stop to sacrifices and the Old Covenant.  God alone is our Rescuer and the Author of Salvation.  God alone replaces the Old with the New.

        So yes, the day of Jesus Christ, our God and our Lord will come.  As sure as you were born.  And as sure as you and I will die.  God is not slow in His return.  He is patient.  This world is corrupt and evil.  It is hard to imagine more rebellion against God than what is already displayed in history and on any given night in modern media.  But make no mistake.  The yeast of Christ permeates the entire batch of dough (Matthew 13:33).  God's yeast is much different than that of the Pharisees (Luke 12).

        This is the age of the New Covenant.  Of God’s Kingdom.  These are not the end times, they are the new times, the church age.  The time when the church grows and replicates and multiplies.  Until Jesus returns the church will continue to advance.  She will make believers who know and obey Jesus and who live to please Him.  God is glorified and honored when his children accomplish all the good things their faith prompts them to do.

        Jesus shamed the evil powers by His victory on the Cross of Calvary.  And yet evil persists as part of this world.  Lawlessness is at work in this world today.  Just as it was 2,000 years ago.  But just as Jesus dealt with Nero, Jesus will deal with the proud, the idol worshipers, and the godless in our generation.  One day (our Father in Heaven alone knows the day) Jesus will bring an end to lawlessness.  A day when His body is full and complete.  Thank God for His promise of splendor of Christ's return.

        Do not enjoy evil.  Instead, stay away from it.  Believe the truth of the Bible.  Let’s love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.  We have no excuse not to do so.  Desire God and His goodness.  You and I have experienced the salvation that came through the Spirit that makes us holy and through our belief in the truth.

        May what we say and do today give honor to Jesus Christ alone.  Amen.

Throwback to when the kids were little (circa 2004).