The Great Deception
2 Thessalonians 2:1–5 It’s easy to become discouraged and misled by false reports. That’s why it is so important to be able to discern between truth and error. In 2 Thessalonians 2:1–5, the apostle Paul corrected false doctrine that apparently was spreading via a letter forged in Paul’s name. The letter claimed believers were already living in the Day of the Lord. The news shocked anGet More Articles—Subscribe Today!
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What will be the role of the Church, the Body of Christ, when Christ is reigning on the earth? Do you believe that all those on the earth at that time will have a heavenly citizenship and bodies fashioned after the Lord’s glorious body?
Phil 3:20 For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: 21 Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body,
Will it be after the second coming that God will show us the exceeding riches of His grace?
Eph 2:7 That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.
I do get confused about a lot of this stuff. I feel that the most important thing is always to hold onto, be completely obedient to, have faith and just follow our Saviour Jesus Christ!
Things come and go. Jesus just wants us to follow Him.
This universal false religion we are witnessing sweeping the church is looking very much to me like the falling away described. My concern is the deception is very cunning, don’t underestimate the entity behind this. He is the master at deception and lies. Seems to me the masses are falling away, following false teachings. The non Roman and Roman churches are loaded with man made false teachings and are all Coalescing-emerging as one massive false church.
In reading though The Great Deception I kept saying, check, check, check. But then as Mr. Levy addressed 2Th2:3, “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.” and afterwords makes a declarative statement about apostasia, he never addresses what Paul writes in 2Th 2:6-8 “And now you know what is restraining, that he may be revealed in his own time. 7 For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only He who now restrains [will do so] until He is taken out of the way. 8 And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will consume with the breath of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming.” – 2Th 2:6-8
Now Mr. Levy does mention 1Thess 4:16-17, “For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.” However, Mr. Levy forgot to point out that The Church will never know, let alone see, who the Antichrist is. We will be taken away by the Holy Spirt, just as Paul says in the second half of verse 7 of 2Th Chapter 2, “only He who now restrains [will do so] until He is taken out of the way.” And so it is only then that the Antichrist will be revealed. And since the “He” that Paul is speaking of is The Holy Spirit, Paul is clearly showing that when He goes, WE GO! That is when “the Church,” the “Bride of Christ,” is snatched from off the earth.
And this fact Paul had written to the Ephesians, and shared and taught to all the Churches, that we are sealed, we are guaranteed, until the redemption of the purchased possession. “13 In Him you also [trusted], after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, 14 who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory.” – Eph 1:13-14 Come quickly, Lord! And until then… God bless Israel, and God bless Israel My Glory!
Thank you for this timely teaching. I have been been meeting with a professed brother in Christ who has decided the body of Christ must go through the Great Tribulation. He now believes that the church will be taken up from the earth to meet Jesus the Christ in the air as He comes in His Second coming. And after meeting Him in the air the church will immediately turn around and return to earth with Christ. My heart breaks for my friend because he has a tendency to follow any strange doctrine taught by man. I have been praying for him because he seems to be a double minded man. Your explanation is what the Holy Spirit has convinced me concerning the Rapture as I have been studying Scripture. And I saw the hand of God at work to reassure me of my teaching on the subject thanks to your article on the subject. May the Lord of Heaven and Earth, the Lamb of God, the Lion of Judah continue to bless your ministry. Sincerely, Ken Keslar
My Heart breaks as Well Ken.
Let’s unpack this from an assertion in the article.
“But this interpretation doesn’t fit with the congruity of the Rapture, when Christ will snatch away believers to meet Him in the air and take them to heaven (1 Th. 4:16–17).
The scripture quoted that implicitly asserts”meet them in the air and take them to heaven ” in fact implicitly does Not say that. You added heaven. The word Meet is the word used to meet a dignitary on his way into a town. Nowhere in scripture does it ever say Christ raises the dead who are asleep, comes down and then turns around and goes back to heaven. It says that in a book you may have read or the long winded twisted meanderings of someone who pieced together a hundred verses to build a Truth out of guesses, but it says that No Where in God’s clear teachings.
Now, in the light of the fact that virtually every Professional Theologian throughout all of church history sees the clear and overt meaning of the texts -that we are waiting for the Return of Jesus Christ at the second coming, which is preceded by the rebellion and the lawless one.. let’s see the fruit of error.
Ken
“My heart breaks for my friend because he has a tendency to follow any strange doctrine taught by man. I have been praying for him because he seems to be a double minded man. ”
OK…. Feel free, in your accusations, to include virtually every single theologian, teacher pastor, virtually every single solitary Christian since the ascension until a very short time ago when this poor amateur scholarship started to spread.
This is the fruit of error. You absolutely, positively have read your man-made taught doctrine from books, sermons, videos, and articles, and it has become so entrenched in your thinking – that you literally see what’s not there.
You see others do it with their convoluted matrix, trying to be prophets, yet you cannot entertain, in the slightest way, that you are doing precisely the same thing. There is no trip back to heaven. Every metric applied to the text comes out exactly as everyone has always seen the text. Wishing a trip back to heaven with those who have already fallen asleep breaks every rule of hermeneutics and is downright silly.
I suggest honest prayer and humility as you close the supplemental resources that taught you this convoluted idea and let the truth flow directly from the text through the Spirit. If you literally do this : you’ll kick yourself, seeing there is nothing clearer than these passages. They are simple and require no charts or graphs.
Peace
Amen