All Aboard the Anti-Christ Train
By Jeff Maples - Posted at the Pulpit & Pen:
Take heed, this is Paul’s warning to the Thessalonians, who were in serious error concerning the imminent return of our Lord Jesus. Many had either misunderstood him or purposely misrepresented his teachings on this. Paul admonishes the church to not be deceived by those spreading untruths, as there were many things that must happen before Christ’s return. But in his exhortation also comes a great prophetic warning–the coming of the lawless one, and what he will bring.
What we see in Paul’s warning is exactly what we see unfolding in front of our eyes in the Church today. During the Protestant Reformation, Christianity was salvaged by God after centuries of suppression by the hands of Rome. There were great men of faith that have been persecuted and even martyred countless times for defending what they so strongly believed in. In an extravagant display of hatred, John Wycliffe’s bones were dug up forty years after he died and burned for translating the Bible into English and speaking out against the Papacy. Martin Luther, a monk who nailed the 95 Theses to a church door in Wittenberg, was excommunicated from the church. William Tyndale, who also famously translated Bibles into English though it were illegal, remained faithful until his strangling death, and body burned by the King of England. Thousands upon thousands of Protestants gave their lives during the Reformation era, and against all odds, through all of the persecution, and against the evils of the Roman Catholic Church, Christianity prevailed.
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. – (2 Thessalonians 2:3-12)
Take heed, this is Paul’s warning to the Thessalonians, who were in serious error concerning the imminent return of our Lord Jesus. Many had either misunderstood him or purposely misrepresented his teachings on this. Paul admonishes the church to not be deceived by those spreading untruths, as there were many things that must happen before Christ’s return. But in his exhortation also comes a great prophetic warning–the coming of the lawless one, and what he will bring.
What we see in Paul’s warning is exactly what we see unfolding in front of our eyes in the Church today. During the Protestant Reformation, Christianity was salvaged by God after centuries of suppression by the hands of Rome. There were great men of faith that have been persecuted and even martyred countless times for defending what they so strongly believed in. In an extravagant display of hatred, John Wycliffe’s bones were dug up forty years after he died and burned for translating the Bible into English and speaking out against the Papacy. Martin Luther, a monk who nailed the 95 Theses to a church door in Wittenberg, was excommunicated from the church. William Tyndale, who also famously translated Bibles into English though it were illegal, remained faithful until his strangling death, and body burned by the King of England. Thousands upon thousands of Protestants gave their lives during the Reformation era, and against all odds, through all of the persecution, and against the evils of the Roman Catholic Church, Christianity prevailed.
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