2 Thessalonians 2:1-12 - The Holy Spirit and the Unholy Antichrist

Hello, and welcome back to Tabernacle Talk. We are continuing our study in Second Thessalonians.

We are in Second Thessalonians 2 today, and we've been looking at this young church. They've been going through some persecutions and trials. paul and Silas and Timothy, they're writing to them again.

They're encouraging them, letting them know that God is with them, that Jesus will return one day, and that there is going to be great joy when that happens. They will glorify Jesus. Jesus will actually glorify them, and it will be a wonderful day.

But now, paul takes Chapter 2, and he's wanting the Thessalonikans to remember number one, what he had said to them about Jesus' return, and number two, he wanted to specifically refute some things that people were saying to these believers.

So we're going to dive in, and I think we're going to do verses 1 through 12 today, and we'll see where that puts us for time.

Certainly, this is a very, very big topic, and hopefully, we can learn some things together today, both about God's Word and some practical things that we can do even as we serve the Lord and follow Him today.

Verse number 1, Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to Him, we ask you, brothers and sisters, not to be easily upset or troubled either by a prophecy or by a message or by a letter supposedly from us, alleging

that the day of the Lord has come. They say, OK, someone wrote to you guys saying, here's the message from paul. This is not what I believe. This is not the day of the Lord.

This is not God's final judgment, this hard time that you're going through. Jesus is not back yet.

Verse number 3, Don't let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come unless the apostasy comes first and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction.

He opposes and exalts himself above every so-called God or object of worship so that he sits in God's temple proclaiming that he himself is God.

Okay, so he gives here a very specific thing to look for, that he says, guys, unless this happens, you know that it's not the end.

This is not the day of the Lord until you have this person exalting himself above all other gods that is sitting in Jerusalem, in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God.

He says, that's when you can know, oh yeah, this is the day of the Lord. This is what was prophesied in the Book of Daniel. I remember what God's word says and that is that particular day.

So, in kind of our common Christian parlance now, until you see the Antichrist doing these particular things that were prophesied in Daniel and in Matthew 24 and in the Book of Revelation and here in 2 Thessalonians, until you see that, know that

you've still, like you've still got time to share the Gospel. You've still got time to do all of these things.

And by the time the day of the Lord rolls around, we will, again, I've talked about eschatology things before, so I'll just briefly say it this way. We will, from my current understanding of scripture, will be gone, will have been raptured out.

We won't even see these events. And so here, paul is not saying this as in like a, hey, you guys, you guys are worried that the day of the Lord has already passed, but I want you to know when you should be worried. No, no, no, he's not saying that.

He's comforting them with the fact that that is not what this particular day and age, especially as he's writing to them there. This isn't it. Like this isn't the end.

This is just regular run of the mill persecutions and trials for the children of God.

So don't fear because it's not going to be a thief in the night type of situation, just as he told them in 1 Thessalonians 5, where he said that the day of the Lord, it will come suddenly on people, but it will not come secretly.

There is going to be an obvious difference when God has stepped in in a dramatic, drastic way into human history to bring the world to its end. It's not going to be a mystery. Everyone will know what's going on.

So he says, and this is the big clue. Frankly, it's what scripture in Daniel and what Jesus in Matthew 24, it's what they said. So he says, don't be confused about the end times.

Know that it is an obvious, clear thing when it happens. Verse number five. Don't you remember that when I was still with you, I used to tell you about this.

And you know what currently restrains him so that he will be revealed in his time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work, but the one now restraining will do so until he is out of the way.

OK, tons of speculative stuff has been said about some of these verses over the years.

The basic gist that paul is getting at is, I told you guys about Satan's ultimate plan to have his false messiah, his anti-Christ, to borrow a phrase from 1st John, among other places.

He says, right now, Satan, as he works in the world, he is working lawlessness, he is working through leaders and rulers. They are not aware that they are a part of that going on, but Satan knows.

You can look at the Book of Daniel, you can look at Satan's interactions with even Peter as kind of an image of what that kind of looks like in people's lives. You can look at even Pharaoh.

Isaiah and Ezekiel both highlight some of these things, because of human rulers, they do their wickedness, they are against God, against God's plans, and they are operating in a godless way, but they don't realize that they're accomplishing

everything that Satan wants them to do. And paul here says, there is going to be a person that is the ultimate embodiment of this, that this person, this man of lawlessness, this antichrist will be the ultimate human ruler, that he will position

himself in opposition to Christ, the antichrist, if you will. And as he does that, as he sits himself on the temple in Jerusalem and proclaims that he is God, not Jesus, that as Satan is doing all of his work in the world, Satan doesn't know the

timetable. So he's always, this has been something that Christians have looked at in light of this passage, especially over the past like 500, 600 years, and have said, well, Satan doesn't know the future, other than what God has said like, hey, this

is going to happen. And so Satan's always trying to prep someone that would be a worker of great lawlessness, of evil.

And so it's been thought before, even as you look at many of the different popes that did incredible evil, you can see the different persecuted Christian groups during some of those times writing.

And they're like, hey, like this guy is saying that he's like speaking for God and he's persecuting these people that are saying, no, like we believe in Jesus and that is how salvation comes. It doesn't come through a church or works or giving.

It comes through faith in Christ. And so they said, oh, we think this person, this pope is the anti-Christ.

You had different people that surmised that, you know, Hitler was going to be the anti-Christ or something like that, that you've had people going, OK, I wonder if Satan's always kind of got someone in the wings because he's always wanting domination

and control. You can see that even in how he interacted with Jesus, that he told him, hey, you know, just bow down to me and I'll give you all the kingdoms of the world. He is looking for someone that he can install as ruler.

And paul tells the Thessalonians, yeah, Satan is trying to, you know, set up rulers to set up this anti-God government that is worldwide. He says, but there is someone that's preventing him from being able to do that.

And it's long been assumed that that is the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit's work that he says, hey, it's not time yet. That's not going to happen. But there will be a time when God will allow Satan to bring that lawless one to power.

And in that time, then we will know, okay, yeah, it is the day of the Lord. It's, if you will, the final countdown. Okay, I'm going to read from verse number seven again and jumping into verse eight.

The mystery of lawlessness is already at work. It's not a new type of thing. It's not a new type of ruler.

It's the same generic things that have already been happening, but it'll happen in kind of a different way. It says, but the one now restraining will do so until he is out of the way, and then the lawless one will be revealed.

So after here, this one that is restraining is out of the way, then the lawless one will be revealed. Okay, well, who can restrain Satan?

As we look throughout scripture, as you look at the Book of Daniel, as you look at the Book of Jude among other places, you don't really see like an overpowering of Satan happening by perhaps individual angels.

You can see some like lower level ones that are like really struggling with different principalities. So you can look at Daniel Chapter 7 or 8 for some of that, of like, you know, the lower level angels are fighting.

You can look in the Book of Jude at when Michael the Archangel and Satan are arguing over the body of Moses.

And Michael there doesn't just like overpower him, but it's through the like invocation of the authority and power of the Lord that he is able to basically lay claim to Moses's body to be able to say like, hey, this is one of God's children.

This isn't one of yours. And so there's no indication of scripture of regular angelic beings overpowering Satan. So who can restrain him?

Well, the Lord, the Holy Spirit, the one who is preventing all lawlessness from breaking out on earth. Well, why in the world would the Holy Spirit be moved out of the way, so to speak?

Well, that's why many people have held to a pre-tribulation rapture. That is, that moment, that twinkling of the eye that is spoken about in 1 Corinthians 15 and in 1 Thessalonians 5, that we will be taken up with the Lord.

And because the Holy Spirit is the seal on the church until the day of redemption, that in that day of redemption, his people are taken up.

We are not children of wrath or of the tribulation, but instead, we go to enjoy the marriage supper of the Lamb. That's the church's time with its husband, with its groom, and it is Christ's time with his bride.

So, that occurs, and then this tribulation work begins. Continuing in verse number 8, the Lord Jesus will destroy him with the breath of his mouth and will bring him to nothing at the appearance of his coming.

That is, when Jesus returns, he comes and this antichrist, this one who has lifted himself up, called himself God, sat in the temple of God, Jesus destroys him and brings him to nothing.

Verse number 9, the coming of the lawless one is based on Satan's working with all kinds of false miracles, signs, and wonders, with every wicked deception among those who are perishing.

They perish because they did not accept the love of the truth and so be saved.

For this reason, because of their refusal of God's truth, God sends them a strong delusion so that they will believe the lie, so that all will be condemned, those who did not believe the truth, but delighted in unrighteousness.

So here, I growing up had heard verse number 11 preached as, maybe not even preached, taught in specific circumstances as people during the tribulation are unable to be saved unless they are Jewish because, or unless they had never heard the gospel

prior to the rapture. But if they had heard the gospel prior to the rapture, then they couldn't be saved afterwards. And I don't believe at all that this is what this particular scripture is teaching.

This is saying that those that rejected God, those that did not believe in him, they're not just going to remain like neutral to the Antichrist, but those that reject God will wholeheartedly believe Satan's working in this, in this human ruler who

will do false miracles and signs and wonders, just as was done in Egypt when Moses was doing the ten plagues on Egypt. I say Moses, you guys know it's God, but as they were bringing the ten plagues on Egypt, the first three or four of them, the

magicians in the court of Pharaoh were able to replicate the same types of things. They turned some water into blood. They brought some frogs into, or they made some frogs. They had the rods that turned into snakes.

They did those things, but it wasn't as good as God's, and it wasn't able to counter what God was doing. It could only like reinforce or add to what God was doing. We've got frogs everywhere in Egypt.

Oh no. Well, just to prove how great the Egyptian gods are, we're going to make even more frogs. Great.

I didn't take away any frogs. That just made our problems even worse. So that kind of false miracle, signs and wonders, that's what's occurring there.

The biggest downside of the particular belief that I had mentioned previously, that those that had heard the gospel prior to the rapture could not be saved during the tribulation period.

It gave a specific view of God and a specific way of salvation that isn't replicated anywhere else in scripture. There's always a, like, while you are alive, while you are breathing, there is still time to repent.

You can see that even from the fact that there were Egyptians that left Egypt with the Israelites. In the Exodus and journeyed with them. You can look at, you know, Ahab, the wicked king of Israel, one of the wickedest ones that they ever had.

But when he repented, God hurt him and lengthened his life. So everywhere that we look in scripture, we can see as long as someone's still, like, alive and breathing, there is a chance for them to turn back to the Lord.

And so, it would be very odd for this to be the one moment in human history where there would be no possibility of repentance or salvation even with a desire.

So because of some of those things and because the phrasing in the verses doesn't lend itself to say that these are people that would perhaps want to believe the gospel, but can't, this is those that willfully reject the gospel, will willfully accept

this false Messiah. It is not that God makes it so that they are unable to hear the gospel, but that having rejected the gospel, they do believe in something much more sinister and foul, that perhaps they might have been just like indifferent to the

Antichrist, but a rejection of God during that time period will mean that they fall wholesale into the Antichrist trap, that they will take his mark, worship him, bow down, that they will buy and sell in his name, like giving this false Messiah, this

false Jesus, the worship and authority that only Jesus deserves. So, much more could be said about much of this, but I want to remind us of what paul's point is in 2 Thessalonians 2. It is not, hey, I want you to think of these like particular dates,

and I want you to write a book saying 88 reasons Jesus is coming back in 1988. It's not so that you would be freaked out if you see a person that, you know, becomes the head of the European Union. And they're like, oh no, the end has come.

No, no, it's not the same. You can look for like the Matthew 24, the abomination of desolation that Jesus talked about referencing Daniel. You can look for this man of sin sitting in the temple of God here in 2 Thessalonians 2.

When you see those things, yeah, then you know the day of the Lord is here. Otherwise, we still got time, we still have work to do sharing Jesus with others, proclaiming the gospel.

So, I want to encourage you today, don't let the knowledge of what's happening in the future, don't let that just like either scare you or comfort you in a way that you just go, okay, everything is going to work out in the end, everything's amazing.

No, like use the life that God has given you right now to share your faith, to help love people and care for people, that they may see your good works and glorify your father who is in heaven.

Let it motivate you to have a care and compassion for those that are trapped up in sin, that they are just enamored with this world's rulers and they think that, you know, Biden or Harris or Trump or RFK, like, oh yes, these are the ones that are

going to save us and these will make our world great again and these will help stave off fascism. No, don't rely on this world's rulers. This world's rulers are unwitting tools of Satan, that they do what he wants to do.

He's the prince of the power of the air. He's the one that reigns over this world's earthly kingdoms.

You can look at the Bible Project has a really great podcast series called the Chaos Dragon Series, which looks at how the Old Testament authors and then the New Testament authors use an illustration of like the seas and the dragons, kind of the

chaos creatures from the Old Testament and from the ancient Near East, how they use those illustrations to talk about this world's kingdoms and rulers and how you shouldn't put your trust in man, and put your trust in God. because this world's

rulers, like they do the best they can, but they are imperfect and they more often than not end up serving the ends of Satan. So pray for them, pray that they would be saved. Don't put your trust in them.

Don't certainly don't talk about them more than you talk about Jesus with other people. Don't post about politics more than you post about your faith. Way more could be said, but the main point is this.

Focus on Jesus. Draw attention to Jesus. Share Jesus.

Love people because Jesus commands us to. And I hope that you would do that.

And we can know that the day is coming when we are gone and we are worshiping in the presence of our holy Savior and our Lord that we enjoy that communion marriage supper of the Lamb with Him. And what a day that will be when my Jesus I shall see.

Thanks for tuning in and hope that would be an encouragement to you today.