(Music playing) PASTOR MIKE: Shalom, Pastor Mike Golay here,
Director of Operations with Behold Israel covering the topic of "The Great Apostasy,"
as mentioned in 2 Thessalonians Chapter 2. I just want to start out today by telling
you a little story that happened to me. A few years ago
I noticed that my car was leaking oil. Now of course,
that's not good when your car leaks oil, and it's never good when you
have to constantly add oil because that means there's a breach in the
integrity of the seals and the engine and the gaskets. And what started out to be a few drops turned
into a massive leak. So I was putting in probably a quart a week. And after some time, I got used to that. It was a nuisance,
it was very frustrating. But I didn't want to take it to the
shop because it was an old vehicle. I didn't want to put a
whole lot of money into it. But one day, folks,
one day one of these seals broke. And there was oil coming out, and I couldn't even get
several miles without stopping at the gas stations along the way putting oil in
my car just to keep it going. And I'd wake up the next day and
there would be huge puddles of oil. The first thing I have to do is put
quarts in there, quarts, and then drive it. And in a very similar way I want
to draw off this illustration that in 2 Thessalonians and even throughout
the New Testament period, there were leaks, there were breaches, there were exploits,
there was a lot of fake teaching. There was a lot of misguided information,
and it was a threat to the church. We see evidence of this
throughout the New Testament to be constantly adhering to
good doctrine and the truth. The apostles adamantly placed
emphasis on this. but the Bible says here in this passage, and this is why I'm
giving this illustration to you for context sake, Paul is saying that
there is a day coming. That although we've had many,
many leaks many, many fake doctrines, many, many falling away, many rebellions from
good doctrine that have really cost our engine, they have really done a
damage to the body of Jesus, but there will be a day where there will be
a massive falling away, a massive rebellion even. And I'm gonna talk about that
rebellion against God's truth, a resistance, a departure from good doctrine. The Thessalonians, just to give you a picture of what
was actually going on at the time Paul wrote this, they were very excited,
they had come to faith. Paul had talked about the coming of the Lord. He had addressed the rapture and the
excitement of meeting Jesus in the air. And these people were selling things off. Probably some of them were even waiting
for Jesus on the roofs of their homes. If you read some of the scholarly literature there's
evidence that some of them were quitting jobs and rallying their
entire lifestyles around the Day of the Lord. We know that's an extreme reaction to some of the
teachings, and Paul brings balance to that. But these people now when the second letter is
written had still confusion about the Day of the Lord. In fact, friends, you're going to see in a minute
that they believed that they were actually in the Tribulation. And they thought that they had missed out on the
rapture and they were fretting, they were nervous. And to make things worse,
they got this from false teachers. They got this from bad teaching. And I want to cover what that looks like for them and
I want to give you and I an orientation of where we're at today and where
the Bible says that we're going. As we open up this topic, I'd really encourage you to grab
your Bibles and open them up to 2 Thessalonians Chapter 2. The first point today is that there
will be a surge in false teachings, a surge in false teachings similar to the
surge in oil falling out of my engine. Now there have always been leaks
in my engine but not like this. There have always been false teachings but not
like the one that is to come upon the world. As it says in 2 Thessalonians
Chapter 2 verses 1 and 2. "Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and
our being gathered together with Him, we ask you, brothers,
not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by a spirit or a spoken word, or a letter seeming to come from
us, or be from us to the effect that the Day of the Lord has come." Well, there you see, friends,
that there were fake teachings. There were already in those days people saying,
"Did you know that you're in the time period?" And like tractor beams that have a
magnetic ability to suck people in, so also a lot of these charismatic charlatan teachers often using
the names of actual apostles to get the people to listen to them. They used whatever means necessary
to get the attention of the people. So the people were confused. Who should I believe? Should I believe this report or this
report, this teacher or that teacher? This person seems to make sense. This person speaks with
great conviction over here. Who should I believe? Well, the reason Paul is writing this is
to bring a peace and a rest to their souls so that they know that they
can be confident in God's truth. Now they falsely believe that they
were already in the Tribulation period. In other words, that the Day
of the Lord had already come. And as you already may know, the Day of the Lord and
the End Times refers to the second advent of Jesus, which starts with the rapture
and ends with the second coming. They viewed that as one
event as one concept, and so they believed that
they missed the rapture. How horrible. How horrible to be in that position where you look
around and you see that you're still here on earth. And you're wondering, "Did I miss this?
I've worked so hard." I mean, some of them had put so much of their
time, they'd quit jobs and investing their lives in this whole doctrine of the Day of the Lord and
they can't miss it, and many of them felt like they did. I don't know if you've ever been shaken or
stirred like we see here, or be made to waver. The Greek word "Distazo" is simply to be made to waiver,
to waffle, to doubt, to question, to be insecure about something. I know that, for me, there are all kinds of
YouTube videos sometimes that we watch. For me, people forward me no shortage of videos on
Facebook, Instagram; Pastor Mike, you need to watch this, this is critical. And I'll watch some of them. Some of them are quite long, and a lot of
these videos give compelling evidence for their case. A lot of them are interpretations of
the Scripture, and sometimes I waffle. And I wonder is this person
speaking the truth? Years ago when I lived in Israel, I met with some
rabbis, and I wanted to share my faith with these rabbis. And I opened up to Isaiah Chapter 52 and 53 which
talks about the suffering servant of the Lord, whom I believe is none other than Jesus
the Messiah, the suffering servant. And they looked at me and they laughed and they
said, "Hah, hah, hah, hah, this is not Jesus. If you look back in to the previous chapters,
you will see that it is the nation of Israel. It's the nation of Israel that suffered." And I looked at this. And it said that in the
previous chapters, and I was wavering. I was wavering, I was shaken. I didn't know how to respond. I was young; I didn't know
much Hebrew at the time. And I just said, all I could say was, "Well, I believe it's
Jesus, and you've given me some things to think about." So I walked away not evangelizing
them, but they were evangelizing me. And I walked away like a dog with his tail
between his legs feeling defeated, ashamed. But I started studying. I started reading the
Scripture and lo and behold, I found out that the
suffering servant is Jesus. That he starts out with a theme of Israel and that from
Israel, he pulls out the ultimate servant. Although Israel was a servant,
Jesus was the ultimate servant, the Messiah. It says specifically that,
"He would give His life for His people." And I became so thrilled that I
could see with my own eyes the truth. And I wish I would have
taken their phone numbers. It was kind of one of those spontaneous
meetings that we had right there on the street. I didn't know where they lived,
I didn't know where they worked. There was no way for me to follow up. My faith was no longer shaken
because I read the Word of God and I also consulted with some very
close, godly Bible-believing teachers. It's ironic how we experience the same
things today that they did back then, and we need just as much as they
did, a confidence in the Word of God, especially in terms of what's gonna happen
in the world with the great apostasy to come. Having said that, there are three ways the Bible says here that
this fake news, this fake teaching, this fake guidance was coming. Paul says that Number 1: Spirit. He says right here, "Not to be quickly shaken in mind
or alarmed either by a spirit, spoken word, or a letter." Let me look briefly at a spirit. The spirit is the Greek word "pneumatos," and it's
where we get pneumatic in English for "air." Like if you've ever had a pneumatic nail gun,
it operates off of compressed air. This same word is used in 1 Corinthians Chapter 12:10 to refer to
the gift of prophecy or the Spirit of God speaking through you. In this case, it was
a foreign spirit. There were foreign spirits using people to
communicate fake prophecies, fake pneumatos. And so that was one means in
which people were getting fake doctrine. It's interesting; if you go
over to 1 John Chapter 4:1-3, he says, "Beloved do not believe every
spirit, every pneumatos, but test the pneumatos, the spirits, to see whether they are
from God for many false prophets have gone out into the world." So that is a perfect illustration
of what's going on here. False prophets were disseminating
false news about the Day of the Lord. And then there is: Word. There is a "Spirit," "Word," and the term "Word"
is the classic Greek word "Logo" or "Logos" as it's determined by its grammatical
conjugation, which in a variety of contexts, the message itself, the actual content itself that
is being preached or in a teaching perhaps, maybe a discourse, but it is actually
the word or the content itself. And so they were receiving
content, words that were false. And there was another means that's
very disturbing, and that is "Letter." One of the primary ways that people would communicate
in that world at that time was through epistles and through letters. And there were many fake epistles and fake letters
using the good names of the apostles to gain a hearing. I have to laugh because here at Behold
Israel, I think on a weekly basis, we are finding counterfeit Behold Israel sites,
counterfeit sites about my brother-in-law Amir. And to shut some of these things down is generally
a straightforward process but it can be painstaking. But what really is painstaking is a
lot of people are duped and fooled. And these sites sometimes, some of them actually
appeal for money or teach something that we don't. And then we get all of the
mail of concerned people. Well, there you go; you don't
need Internet to have that effect. These people had it 2000 years ago,
so they're upset, they're frustrated. In fact, at the very end of this epistle in
Chapter 3:17, Paul says this, "I write; I, Paul write this
greeting with my own hand. This is the sign of genuineness
in every letter of mine. It is the way I write." He's giving that information to them
so that they know this isn't a fake. This is authentic. So my friends, our first point today is that
there is going to be a surge in false teachings. And they were experiencing them
as far back as the first century. I had oil leaks, but there was a time
there would be a massive oil leak. And I want to come to now point number 2, which is there
will be a great apostasy and the Antichrist will be revealed. Here in 2 Thessalonians Chapter 2:3-4, it says,
"Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day -- that's the Day of the Lord and us meeting
Him -- will not come unless the rebellion comes first." And I'm using the ESV here. There's different renderings of that
and I'm gonna get to that in a minute. "Unless the rebellion comes first and
the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself against
every so-called God or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the Temple of
God, proclaiming himself to be God." Well, if it's not obvious,
that is the Antichrist. Now here is where you really
going to see the dilemma. They thought they were in the Tribulation,
but the great apostasy, or rebellion, had not happened yet. It was very similar to the past. Not only that, but the lawless
man hadn't been revealed. So they're looking around trying
to see who is it, who is it? If we're in the middle of the Tribulation,
then we should have seen this by now. And they had forgotten this. Paul had been there teaching them. He wrote the first epistle of Thessalonians covering
many of these themes which we'll look at later. And there they were. And Paul reminds them; he's saying if you were in the Tribulation
period, then where is the great apostasy and the man of lawlessness? Remember this has to take place. There has to be a massive apostasy
and the revelation of the Antichrist. And he's a real piece of work,
believe me, look what he does. He opposes, exults himself against every so-called
god or object of worship, takes a seat at the temple, proclaims himself to be God. And of course, that will
happen in the middle of the Tribulation. But we know that he's gonna make a peace
treaty with Israel at the beginning of the Tribulation. So he has to have at least been
obvious, but they didn't see him. So how could they be
in the Tribulation? He's doing them a kind of shock treatment to say hello,
wake up, wake up, you're not in the middle of it. You've been misguided. On some of our forums on Behold Israel
when we do some of our teachings, sometimes people say, we're
already in the Tribulation. So you can see that the same thing that we struggle with, some of
us, today is the same thing that the Thessalonians struggled with. Now I want to get to this word that he refers to
here, at least in the translation I'm using, "rebellion." Other translations
say "falling away" or "departure." And the Greek word here is actually
"apostasia" in Greek, apostasia. And I wanna throw this up on slides right now. I want to walk you through this. And I want to demonstrate and make a case for why
I believe this actually means apostasy. Why apostasia means apostasy,
which means a "turning away," a "departure," or in this case an outright rebellion saying
no, I don't want anything to do with that. I'm going the opposite direction,
even in a protest. So A) One of the first reasons I believe that this
is an actual apostasy is the context of the passage. Look, we've already established that
they were deceived and misled, okay? If they didn't get it right after the first letter
and after personal conversations with Paul, we talked about them getting a slap
in the face with this rebuke. And maybe it's too harsh to say "rebuke,"
maybe a harsh reminder that wait a minute, these are the events that are going
to transpire within the Tribulation, a great apostasy and the revealing
of the Antichrist who will start it. If you're in the middle of it, then you would
have known that already; you would have seen that. But since you don't, then
you aren't. Later on in verses 9-12 which will look
at because of the context, this is talking about
a massive deception. In the same chapter, verses 9-12,
he talks about the deception. In fact, I'm just gonna
go there and read that to you. "The coming of the lawless one is by the activity
of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing
because they refused to love the truth and be saved." That's where we can get the
translation "rebellion"; it actually works. "Therefore God sends them a strong delusion -- because they
made that choice -- so that they may believe what is false in order that all may be condemned who did not believe
the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness." So the context here is
demonstrating that it is an apostasy. Now let me pause real quick. There are those who are my brothers in the Lord, I love them,
we hang out, we go bowling, we do activities together that actually believe
apostasia means simply "departure." And instead of "falling away" or
"rebellion," they believe it is the rapture. Now I'm a pre-Tribulation rapture guy, and it would
be exciting to be able to say that this word -- would be exciting for me to say if
this word actually meant rapture. See what the logic is, is that if it means "departure," you could say
that the church is departing before the great apostasy, before the revelation of the
Antichrist and then the Tribulation. You could see how that
fits, right? Now as much as a pre-Triber as I would love to
interpret it that way, I can't with good conscience. And you already know the first reason which is the
context of the passage is talking about deception, lies, being duped, and a massive resistance to the
truth later on as revealed through the Antichrist. Now I respect that view. I can see how they would
come to that conclusion. But it's not the only reason of context
why I believe that apostasia means apostasy. B) Apostasia occurs in other places,
by the way, not only in the Bible, but also in some other documents
that I want to quote here. First, of course, the Greek New Testament in Acts
Chapter 21:21, the word apostasia occurs there. And the apostles were being accused
by some of the Jews that they were teaching people to forsake
the law of Moses, which wasn't true. And that word apostasia was to depart from or to move away from
the teachings of Moses, to resist, to fall away, even to go against. That's the only place besides here that the
word apostasia occurs in the Greek New Testament However, it's interesting that if you look at the Septuagint,
which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, in the Old Testament the word
apostasia is actually used. And there in the Septuagint,
in Joshua Chapter 22:22 -- it's interesting in this passage of Joshua Chapter 22:22, if you read
it in Greek in the Septuagint, it talks about the outright rebellion. It uses the word apostasia to
translate the Hebrew word for rebellion. And in 2 Chronicles King Ahaz resisted the utensils
of the Lord while they were trying to have a revival. And they're saying these are the utensils that he
resisted, and they were bringing them back. In the Greek in the Septuagint,
it says apostasia. And we even find in Jeremiah
Chapter 2:19, it says, "Your evil will chastise you
and your apostasy will reprove you." And he's translating it as a
resistance, falling away from the Lord. And interestingly enough because the Septuagint
actually originally did have the apocrypha; they're not Scripture,
but they are historical books. And in 1 Maccabees it says in Chapter 2:15,
it's the word apostasia they used at that time. This was about 200 BC when
they wrote the Septuagint. It says, "And they that were sent from King Antiochus came
thither to compel them that they were fled into the city of Modine to sacrifice and to burn incense
and to depart from the law of God." And that again shows you
from at least the Septuagint the way the word is used in Greek
and the Greek New Testament. Friends, also there is not only
that, but also Greek literature. If you go to Liddell and Scott's Lexicon of Classic
Greek and you look up the word apostasia, it simply says its first definition
is actually "revolt' or "defection." As if again, there is a truth,
and you're turning away from it, you're departing. Now departure is not a
false or bad translation. It's a great word and it's used as well in
different places with different translations. But departure is also a secondary
definition in Liddell and Scott's Lexicon. Lampe's Patristic Greek Lexicon also
defines it as a "revolt" or a "defection." And so we have the context of the passage,
we have apostasia appearing in different places. And then just interesting; C) the Latin
word "Discessio," which is in the Vulgate, which was a Latin translation a
few 100 years after Christ. Isn't it interesting that they
do have this word "Discessio" and it's a "voluntary action" in Latin,
which means "to depart from," to depart from, to go, to leave. And it's not a passive occurrence
like you would find in the rapture. With the rapture, we get the idea that we're living
our lives and then boom, all of a sudden, we're taken. It's not necessarily something
that we choose to do. It's something that happens to us. So this word seems to be
far more active than passive. And I'm just saying that even in the Vulgate
you have these occurrences. And of course, "Discessio" translates Acts Chapter 21:21 as
"Apostasia" from the Greek, and also here (1 Thess. 2:3) it does as well. D) English translations that
predated the King James version because it's the King James version that
was the first major English version that uses the phrase "falling away" directing the
interpretation of going against established teaching. And so fair enough, these English translations that do
contain the word "departure," such as the Geneva Bible and many others that went before the King
James Bible used the word "departure." And those who believe that this is
referring to the rapture will say, "See here; these English translations that predate
the King James actually used the word departure." But isn't it interesting I just said that the Geneva
Bible was one of those and it has actually a note, and I've seen it, of course, and
you can actually look at this yourself. In the Geneva Bible, it has a side note that says that the believers at the
time that they translated this understood "departure" to mean "falling away." They did not use an incorrect
word; departure is a correct word. It's an active departure
from good teaching. So friends, that's some of the things that I wanted to
throw out there of why I believe this is a great apostasy. Now why do I spend so much time on this?
What's at stake? What's at stake is this,
and I want to come back to the leak in my car. We could always say there's been apostasies and
people walking away from the faith. I mean who amongst us doesn't know
somebody that started out well and they were walking and all of a
sudden, they changed their mind and they moved, the devil snatched the seed, or
it wasn't planted in good soil, or whatever, and then they departed from the faith,
some of them even outright rebelled. Because I think, folks, that we're already seeing the beginnings of
this, just like I saw the beginnings of an oil leak. But I don't think we're at the great apostasy yet. And although I believe with all my heart that the
church will be taken out before all of this, I believe there will be a day when the church is taken out,
where there's no restraining force of the Holy Spirit in the church on all levels of social strata, where the world, like my
car, will just go all in with fake, false teaching. It will pave the perfect
platform for the Antichrist. He'll have a heyday, so much so that he will get to conquer Jerusalem
and erect himself as God at the temple in Jerusalem that they will build. And the Thessalonians were thinking
they were already in the Tribulation, and Paul's saying proof that you aren't is there hasn't
been a great apostasy or the revelation of the Antichrist. These events were
critical to understand. I mean even Jesus warned the believers right at
the end of His ministry in Matthew Chapter 24. I want to throw that up on the screen. It says, "And Jesus answered them -- because
they were wondering about the end times -- 'See that no one
leads you astray. For many will come in my name, saying,
'I am the Christ,' and they will lead many astray. And you will hear of
wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed,
for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, kingdom against kingdom,
and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are but a
beginning of birth pangs." And He goes on in verse 9, "Then they will deliver
you up to tribulation, and put you to death, and you will be hated by all
nations for My name's sake. And then many will fall away and betray
one another and hate one another." You see? "And many false prophets will
arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased,
the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures
to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the
whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come." I believe Jesus is telling this to people everywhere, not just
to the apostles, not just to you and me, but to the whole world. The Bible will stand in the Tribulation. The Bible will be read in the Tribulation. There will be salvation in the Tribulation. I believe that this is going to
happen within the Tribulation period. Do I believe the
church will be there? No, because He's addressing any believer in that
period of time that can see these things going on. But we know from the teachings of Paul and also Jesus
later on that the rapture occurs first. Because if we were in the Tribulation, then we would have fallen into
the deception of what Paul is speaking to the Thessalonians against. But the events will occur, and notice that in the Tribulation,
the great falling away, I mean he really unpacks that. Jesus gives us a vision of what's
gonna be happening in the Tribulation. So let the reader understand. Paul reiterated this, by the
way, in 1 Timothy Chapter 4:1 where it says, "Now the Spirit
expressly says that in latter times, some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves
to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons." And he continues. So my friend, there will be
in my view a great apostasy. I believe there are many false teachings right
now leading up to that, just like my oil leak. But there will be a time after the church is removed, boom, where
there will be false teaching and people will embrace it everywhere. Even so-called "believers;"
you even see that today. Look how many churches today are selling
out to cultural values and beliefs. We are taking the Bible and we're dissecting it and
taking only those verses we like and leaving the ones that we don't
and claiming no one knows for sure what that means. There are many interpreters that
believe this way or that way. Things like moral issues, sexual confusion, ethical issues,
giving people a license to do things that were never there before. And instead of experiencing freedom in Jesus,
now we're in bondage and we're calling that freedom. It's a deception. So my friend, I believe that there will be a great
apostasy and leading up to that many, many false teachings. And we come to point number three, and this is
where I'm going to make a case for the rapture. And that is that the Restrainer, quote
unquote, will be taken out beforehand. Let me pick up right where we left
off in 2 Thessalonians Chapter 2:5. "Do you not remember that when I was
still with you I told you these things?" I kind of like his
Jewish manner here. I could just see him if
he was there in person. Do you not remember that when I was still with
you I told you these things, how could you forget? How could you forget, I
mean, there's a lot at stake. Verse 6, "And you know what is restraining him
now so that he may be revealed in his time." What is restraining him? Who's restraining
the lawless one? What is it? "For The mystery of
lawlessness is already at work." Course, we know that; Satan's always been the prince
and power of the air, he's always been on the move. "Only he who now restrains it will
do so until he is out of the way. And then the lawless
one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of His mouth
and bring to nothing by the appearance of His coming." So Paul does not specifically identify who the
Restrainer is but he assumes that the reader does. Verse 6, "And you know what
is restraining him," he says. You know we talked about it. What power is strong
enough to restrain Satan? I mean, he's very powerful. Look how he is manipulating nations and leaders, the
education system, political system, social system. Look how he's manipulating
the entertainment industry. Various views have been
put on the table for this. Some people have said, "Well,
it's the Roman government, that was the Restrainer. The Roman government was no
saint and often very, very pagan. And maybe Roman laws; do you really think a
human government is more powerful than Satan? It just doesn't add up, and it doesn't contextually
contribute to the final equation here of Jesus. Some people say it's
the gospel preaching. Well, certainly the gospel preaching is part of a
restraining force, but that alone is only the method. But I'm looking for the actual
Restrainer, the person. Some have said it's a kind of ethereal
binding of Satan, but from who, from what? Some people say it's
the Jewish state. Well, wait a minute, if it was the Jewish state, we know that
the lawless one will betray them halfway through the Tribulation and he will have more power
over them until Jesus comes back. I mean you could make a case
for these but isn't it -- if you just take a plain view of this in context
with other passages around the Scriptures, isn't it more plausible to say the Restrainer is the Holy
Spirit indwelling, the body of Jesus here in this land? Think through this. Remember, if the Spirit of God who is more
powerful than Satan living in the believer that is connected to every level of social
strata, believers are in the military, they're in the government,
they're in educational systems, they're in politics, they're in
shops, they're in communities, they're in homes, believers are everywhere,
in every country, in every language group, in every level of social strata
giving the society influence, sharing the gospel, voting for their conscience and their
values, advising educational system what works best, advising financial people of what works
best, believers are in every level of social strata. If you were to take that away, poof, it's gone. You can see how a great apostasy
would immediately occur. I believe the church indwelt by
the Holy Spirit, that alliance, the Holy Spirit using the body
of Christ is the Restrainer. I think he's simply just reiterating
what he said in 1 Thessalonians that the church has to be taken out before
the great apostasy and the lawless one. "Only he who now restrains it will do
so until he is taken out of the way. And then the lawless one will be
revealed whom the Lord Jesus will kill." I'm excited about that because if that is true,
and I believe it with all my heart that it is, we can expect a lot of false
teaching, we always have. But the next thing to
expect is to be taken out. Our eyes should be focused
on Jesus now and in the air. Because once He comes and all the
believers are removed from the earth, the military won't have any more believers. Politics won't have any more believers. The medical institutions won't have any more believers. The financial system won't have any more believers. I could go on all day. Poof; they're gone. Now you can see why a great
apostasy is gonna occur. People will embrace whatever;
they're gonna be desperate. They're going to run after the most
charismatic, comfort-giving, Christ-like person. That's why we call him the Antichrist with
lawless, lawless because everything goes. If you want to live your
life like this, that's great. If you want to live it like that, great. You have control over your life
as long as you worship me. Lawlessness. Well, point number four, and as we start
to draw this to some final conclusions, number four, the power behind the deception
is actually orchestrated by Satan himself. Now we pick up in verse 9, which really
gives you the context of the passage. "The coming of the lawless one is by the activity
of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing
because they refused to love the truth and so be saved." There's that rejection,
there's that rebellion, right? "Therefore God sends them a strong
delusion -- cause they made their choice -- so that they may
believe what is false." He gave them over as it says in Romans, "In order that they may be condemned
who did not believe the truth but had pleasure and unrighteousness." Now you look at all those words and it contributes to the
context of a great apostasy after the Restrainer is removed. And he can do what he
wants, he is the lawless one. He does what he wants.
Who's gonna regulate this guy? He regulates himself and he has no boundaries. I want to come to this question,
"the spin question," as I call it. We know there is truth and we know there is lies. If I was to ask you how you would define
truth, what would you say? if I was to ask you to define
lie, what would you say? The truth as I see it, and I'll get to the passage later
which you may already be thinking the John 14 passage, but truth is reality. Truth is everything that God is and
has done, and is clearly displayed. It is His Word. It is reality. It's real. Lies are not reality; they're
fantasies constructed by anybody. They are the denial of what
people may want to believe. A lot of addictions are started because of lies. If you take this chemical or if you drink enough, you
can escape and you can have peace. But what you're trying to do is escape from reality. The reality may be of
pain, a struggle. Trying to escape reality; we all
have our mechanisms in this life. The truth is reality. I don't know if you've ever been
to some of these houses of mirrors, and some of them are wavy and you look yourself in the
mirror, and you look really you know caught up. Some of them make you look really fat,
some of them make you look really thin. And the church that I pastored for 17 years in the bathroom
in one of our campuses has this mirror and it's kind of concave. It's a delightful mirror because every time you
look into this mirror, you look thin and tall. And here I am washing my hands and I look in the
mirror and I look great, I look thin, I look amazing. But then they do a video of you and
they do a promo maybe for a different ministry, and you see yourself in a video, and I see
the chubby cheeks and I see the reality. I don't like the reality,
so it either will force me to do something about it or I could always go back to the un-reality and
look at the mirror and have a false image of myself. And this is the temptation that we all have is
that the Antichrist will offer false realities. They'll look true. They'll make sense. But they're not reality;
they're not truth. So in concluding, let me offer a few more
passages of Scripture for your consideration. We know that there are a lot of
people even now before the Tribulation that have departed from the truth,
rebelled against good, sound doctrine. And you could easily conclude that the
apostasy has been going on all the time. And of course it has; the Bible talked
about it as early as the first century. But I'm saying and I believe the Bible is saying there's
gonna be a great apostasy after the church is removed. There's gonna be no
Restrainer. Nothing will compare to this level of apostasy. There will be a mark of the beast; you couldn't
even buy or sell without this mark. And everybody will be required to
have it or you have to go run away. What are you gonna you eat,
where are you gonna live, what are you gonna do? You can't participate unless you subscribe
to the Antichrist and his teachings. Can you imagine the pressure? I don't want you to be put in that position
because you may have been saying no to God's truth. I want you to look at the Bible and accept the gift
of eternal life and a relationship with Jesus now because the great apostasy
is gonna be a horrible thing. Christians will be singled out. We know that from the Book of Revelation. It's gonna end with
an all-out war. In John Chapter 14:1-7, Jesus says,
"Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God;
believe also in Me. In my Father's house
are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you
that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go to prepare
a place for you, I will come again and take you to
Myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way
to where I am going." Verse 5, "Thomas said to Him, Lord, we
do not know where you're going. How can we know the way?" This is one of my favorite
verses of the Bible. "Jesus said to him, 'I am the
way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the
Father except through Me. If you had known Me, you would
have known my Father also. From now on you do know
Him and have seen Him." Why is that? Because he is God! He is truth, He is the
way, He is the life. He is somebody that is knocking on your life
asking if He could come in. My friends, that is the Holy Spirit,
His Spirit that comes into you and activates your salvation, your rescue, your forgiveness of
sins, your status with Him as a child. I love in that passage in
2 Thessalonians, Chapter 2. It says, "And you know what is restraining the lawless one." It's used as a topic, and later on verse 7, "Only he -- it's a pronoun
-- who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way." He is a Restrainer, He
is the Spirit, He is Jesus. He is the way, He is the truth,
and He is the life, and He is the only one. And this is distinguished from false teaching that
there are many ways; He is the one way to the Father. I want to add this encouragement
and then we will close. Going back in time to 1
Thessalonians Chapter 4, Paul knew that they knew this because he wrote them a
letter, he had a conversation with them. "But we do not want you to be uninformed,
brothers, about those who are asleep." I love how he terms believers that have passed
away, not died, but he says asleep. They're asleep
'cause they will rise. "That you may not grieve as
others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again,
even so, through Jesus -- because He's the way -- God will bring with Him those
who have fallen asleep." Verse 15, "For this we declare
to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive and who are left until the coming of the
Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command,
and with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ
will rise first." All of those who are believers that
have passed on will be raptured first. "Then, verse 17, we who are alive,
who are left, will be caught up together caught up -- raptured together -- with them
in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always
be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one
another with these words." They had forgotten that for some
reason, and maybe not had forgotten it, but they were thinking that they may have missed
it, but they didn't miss it. Proof of it was is that they didn't witness the
great apostasy or know who the Antichrist was. So they couldn't have. Some of you may think
you've missed something. Don't miss that Jesus is the way, the
truth, and the life; don't miss that. That's the thing you
should worry about missing. I'm gonna conclude with a prayer and those of you watching this right
now, my encouragement to you is that you pray with me this prayer. Lord Jesus, I want to come clean right now and
ask for Your forgiveness for my sins. And I want Your forgiveness and peace. I'm asking; I also want You to come into
my life as my Savior and Lord and guide me. Guide me into all truth,
show me, in Jesus name, Amen. Folks, remember you can always go
to our website, BeholdIsrael.org. You can always go to our Facebook, YouTube
channel, Instagram, Twitter to get connected. We're constantly disseminating teachings of the Bible And
God's word as a means to equip you and to encourage you. With that said, thank you, and God bless.
(Music playing)
