Time gets away, doesn’t it? I looked back at the date of my last Revelation post, and holy moley, it was June 26th. I think it is time to get back to our study of The Revelation. I would love for you to go back and review what we have studied thus far about two topics: The Rapture and The Day of the Lord. Here are links that will allow you to do that:
Go HERE to find every single post in this Revelation series.
Go HERE to find the first post on The Rapture.
Go HERE to find the first post on The Day of the Lord.
Go HERE to find the second post on The Day the Lord.
In the last post I wrote I said that in our next time together we would finish our look at 2 Thessalonians 2 and the Day of the Lord. Hello! Here we are. Let’s refresh our memory about this passage.
1 Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we ask you, brothers,
2 not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by a spirit or a spoken word, or a letter seeming to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come.
3 Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction,
4 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.
5 Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you these things?
6 And you know what is restraining him now so that he may be revealed in his time.
7 For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only he who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way.
8 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.
9 The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders,
10 and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.
11 Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false,
12 in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
There are three things that must happen before the Day of the Lord:
- A restraining influence is removed (we dealt with this in our last post)
- The rebellion
- The man of lawlessness is revealed and responds
Let’s consider the rebellion. The Greek word used here for rebellion is ‘apostasia’ and it means defection from truth, falling away, forsake (Strongs).
Okay, so I see someone’s hand waving wildly in the air. Yes, you are right! We just might be living in the apostasia because we are living in a culture that calls good, evil and evil, good. Our culture has fallen away from, or forsaken, the truth of God’s Word. Even the church of the Living God has succumbed to the temptation to approve of things that the Scripture clearly calls sin. Paul said these days would come in 2 Timothy 3. Let’s take a gander at what they might look like. People will be:
- Lovers of self
- Lovers of money
- Proud
- Arrogant
- Abusive
- Disobedient to their parents
- Ungrateful
- Unholy
- Heartless
- Unappeasable
- Slanderous
- Without self control
- Brutal
- Not loving good
- Treacherous
- Reckless
- Swollen with conceit
- Lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God
- Having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power
It does kind of make one wonder if we are living in the rebellion, doesn’t it? However, I don’t think we have seen anything yet. I think the world will grow more and more evil. I know. Aren’t you glad you stopped in today?
Let’s turn now to the third thing that must happen in order for The Day of the Lord to come.
The man of lawlessness must be revealed and respond. 2 Thessalonians 2:4 tells us that this man, whom we believe to be the antichrist, will exalt himself above every other person, god, and thing. He will set himself up on a throne in the Temple in Jerusalem and demand to be worshipped as God.
There currently is no Temple in Jerusalem, so we can be assured that this prophecy is yet to be fulfilled, but only after a temple has been built in Jerusalem. Guess what? Preparations are being made daily in Jerusalem to build another temple. The Jewish people do not know when that will happen, but they are prepared.
Let’s put a bow on this next time and see if we can figure out when the Rapture MIGHT take place in the whole scheme of the Revelation. Mind you, I am NOT saying that we can pinpoint a date. Nope, only God knows that, but we can watch for the signposts along the way. I’ll see you back here next time.
