Let No One Deceive You

July 16

“Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition,” II Thessalonians 2:3

“The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie, that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness,” II Thessalonians 2:9-12.

Anyone who has a mind and heart to love and serve the Living and Eternal God, who desires to discern the times and seasons, cannot but be aware that the day in which we live is fraught with extraordinary signs of Christ’s imminent return.

While on one hand, things continue as they have ever been as Jesus stated in Luke 17:26, 27, “And just as it happened in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man: they were eating, they were drinking, they were marrying, they were being given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. It was the same as happened in the days of Lot: they were eating, they were drinking, they were buying, they were selling, they were planting, they were building and sudden destruction came upon them,” yet on the other hand there is a sense that man has gone too far in the pursuit of his rebellion.

Yes, man has always pursued sin. Since Adam and Eve fell, jealousy and theft and murder have been in the hearts of our species, but there is a distinction to be made regarding sinners of old and sinners of our day. Once, even the most hardened of men would say, “Don’t do as I do.” There was recognition of his own fallen condition and he counseled the young to avoid his pitfall.

Today’s sinner, however, denies his sinful condition and demands respect for and acceptance of his depravity. The law, which was once anchored in the eternal and immutable law of God, has now become corrupted in its accommodation of the foibles of men.

The Word tells us, “Woe unto those who call evil good and good evil; who put darkness for light and light for darkness; who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter,” Isaiah 5:20. We have become so drunk with our sin that we are self-deluded, we are deceived. The evil one has made us complicit in our own decent into the pit!

So lawlessness swallows our once-great land as evil men rule over us and impose ever more of their diabolic perversion of God’s truth upon us and we are so numb in our own foibles and proclivities to sin that we complacently accept their corrupt legislation.

Perhaps our downfall began in 1973 when it was ruled by the wisest men among us that a woman had the ‘right’ to murder the baby in her womb. As we have accepted that fallacious perversion of the liberty we hold dear, we have also embraced to ourselves myriad departures from God’s immutable truth.

As we have done so, we have made ourselves ripe for an age of delusion, an age of perversion, an age of lawlessness. So when that “man of perdition” II Thessalonians 2:3 is among us, we will see him as a miracle worker, as god among us.

As we see the evil day approaching, may we repent of our sin, may we seek the Living Christ in the fullness of who He is and what He has done for us. May we “know His unchanging truth that sets us free,” John 8:32; may we “study to show ourselves approved of the Lord, as workmen that need not be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth,” II Timothy 2:15.

May we not be “overcome of evil but may we overcome evil with good,” Romans 12:21.