Well, let’s take our Bibles. We’ll turn to the Lord’s Table before we’re done here this morning, but we’re going to finish an exposition we started last Sunday on 2 Thessalonians 2:1–12. If you’re visiting, we’re in a series on biblical prophecy, and we’re looking at the events of the future. Things to Come is what we have given the series as a title.
We have looked at the signs that are all around us. We’ve looked at the hope of the rapture of the church prior to the Tribulation. We’ve looked at the Tribulation. And now we’re looking at this man, this figure called the Antichrist or the man of sin, who will emerge at the beginning of the seventieth week prophecy of Daniel. Jesus talked about him in Matthew 24, and now Paul talks about him in 2 Thessalonians 2.
Remain seated. We will refresh ourselves by the reading of God’s Word. I’m reading from the New King James translation of Scripture.
“Now, brethren, concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to Him, we ask you, not to be soon shaken in mind or troubled, either by spirit or by word or by letter, as if from us, as though the day of Christ…” Or, as we said last week, another rendering of that would be, from some of the earlier manuscripts, “though the day of the Lord had come. 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, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.
“Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you these things? And now you know what is restraining, that he may be revealed in his own time. 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. 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. The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie, that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.”
So reads God’s Word, and we pray that the Spirit of God will open our minds to understand it and move our hearts and wills to obey it.
I remember reading the story of a lady who had always something nice to say about anybody and everybody. She argued that if you look long enough, you’ll find some good quality in every individual. So, one of her friends decided to test her theory and asked her what she would say about the devil. The lady paused, thought, and then she replied, “Well, you have to say this about him. He works hard.”
It’s true. The devil is hard at work to usurp the will of God, to sow discord within the body of Christ, to discourage the servants of God, to blind the minds of unbelievers, to spread lies, and to replace Christ through human philosophy and religious falsehood. Martin Luther, the Protestant Reformer, said this about the devil: “The Devil takes no holiday; he never rests. If beaten, he rises again. If he cannot enter in front, he steals in the rear. If he cannot enter at the rear, he breaks through the roof or enters by tunneling under the threshold. He labors until he is in.” What a statement. “He labors until he is in. He uses great cunning and many a plan. When one miscarries, he has another at hand and continues in his attempts until he wins.”
One thing you can say about the devil: he’s hard at work. He’s hard on your heels. He’s standing on the door of your home. He’s seeking to torpedo any advance you make in the Christian life.
Now, if you go back to last week and our look at the Antichrist, we would remind ourselves that the devil will be hard at work until Jesus comes. He’d be hard at work seeking to prevent His coming. As the last day is dawned, the devil will make a furious and final attempt to gain power and establish his rule upon the earth. What would that look like? Well, the devil’s a copycat. I hope you know that. The devil’s a knockoff merchant. He’s a cosmic plagiarist. He knows nothing more and nothing better than to imitate God.
You see, goodness has an originality in it, which evil never does. All evil can do is distort the good, twist the good, corrupt the good, copy the good, in some lesser form. It can’t ever be original. The devil and his demons can never be original, which leads to this conclusion. In the last days, as they attempt to cancel God, they will copy God. The last days will be marked by the advent of an unholy trinity: the devil, the Antichrist, and the false prophet. Donald Grey Barnhouse, a former expositor of a former generation, said this: “Since God has succeeded by means of an incarnation and then by means of the work of the Holy Spirit, the devil will work by means of an incarnation in Antichrist and by an unholy spirit [the false prophet].” How interesting. The devil is a con man and a copyist, and he will spend the last days imitating God through an unholy trinity: himself, the Antichrist, and the false prophet.
So, we started to look at the Antichrist last week in our series Things to Come, and we saw that the devil will be hard at work. Look at verse 9: “The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders.” He will work right up until Jesus comes, trying to prevent Jesus’ coming.
Now, we outlined the text in three headings: the rise of the Antichrist, the reign of the Antichrist, and the ruin of the Antichrist. We covered the first one, the rise. We looked at the timing of his rise. It will be at the beginning of Daniel’s seventieth week, which is a seven-year period. So, the Antichrist’s rise will coincide with the beginning of that period of time.
Then, we looked at the triggering of his rise. What will occasion his rise? What will rise that will allow him to rise? We saw four arguments. Remember, Paul is dealing with a false notion peddled among the Thessalonians that they were in the day of the Lord—something that he had taught them is not the church’s destiny back in his first letter. In fact, he tells us in verse 5, “Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you these things?” In 1 Thessalonians 1:10, 4:13–17 and 5:9, he lets them know that they have not been appointed to wrath, that they’re destined to salvation, and that Christ will come and catch away His church. They’re not children of the night. They are children of the day.
And here, he reminds them that before the Antichrist will rise, you’ll have the gathering of the church to Christ. You’ll have the great falling away—theological departure, religious deception. You’ll have the removal of the restrainer, who we identified as the Holy Spirit indwelling the church. And then, you’ll have the rebuilding of the temple and the restoration of Israel, because this man, according to verse 4 of our text, will oppose God, exalt himself above God, and call the world to worship him while he says he is God in the temple of God—which we take to be a reference to a third Tribulation temple, not a reference to the church metaphorically. That ties in with Daniel 9 and the abomination of desolation, and that’s related to Daniel’s people and the holy place. It’s tied into Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 24 and the Olivet Discourse and the ruination of the temple.
Now, here’s a sidebar to that. We concluded from what we studied last week that the Thessalonians were being told by Paul that they were not in the day of the Lord. And I would make an argument, given those four markers, we are not in it either. Our gathering to Christ hasn’t taken place. The great falling away hasn’t yet happened—that final rebellion in the kingdom of the Antichrist. The removal of the restrainer hasn’t taken place. However, we are beginning to see Israel in the land and attempts, at times, to restart the rebuilding of the temple.
What’s the point? If we’re not in the day of the Lord, that means the Antichrist hasn’t yet appeared, which means that it’s a futile exercise to try and identify him within the church age. Now, that hasn’t stopped some trying to do it. There’s been this game within the church akin to pinning the tail on the donkey, trying to find out who the Antichrist is. Now, there’s been all kinds of candidates, certainly historically. As a prototype, Antiochus Epiphanes, the Syrian king, would fit the bill in destroying Jerusalem, violating the temple, calling himself God, slaughtering a pig in the holy of holies.
Some have argued Judas Iscariot, and some would still argue that to this day because in the Gospels, Jesus said, “There’s one among us who’s a devil.” We read in John 13 that Satan entered the heart of Judas. It’s interesting. He is called the son of perdition, and that’s what the Antichrist is called in our text, the son of destruction. Then you have this statement in the book of Acts, where he went “to his own place” (Acts 1:25). So, there’s an argument that he’s in his own place and Satan’s going to resurrect him or he’s going to come back in some form. Very interesting. Not where I’m at.
You’ve got Roman emperors who have often seemed to fit the bill.
Within Protestantism, and since the time of the Reformation, a majority of Protestants have seen the papacy as the Antichrist. They haven’t seen the Antichrist as a person but a system. I know that jars with some ears today, but there’s some merit to the thought. Although I don’t embrace it, I can see where they’re coming from.
Here’s the argument: the popes, the papacy, claim jurisdiction over all of Christendom—like the man of sin. They take the temple in this passage to refer to the church, the spiritual temple. And the man has stood up within the church and declared that he’s Lord and he’s master over all of Christendom. He’s got the keys to the kingdom. That’s what Peter has, according to Catholic dogma.
Then, you could add to that further. He has taken to himself the three titles of the Godhead. Have you ever thought about that? I know they pretend to be humble, but every pope has been arrogant, proud, and pompous in the fact that he calls himself the Holy Father. He calls himself the pontiff. And he calls himself, most of all, the Vicar of Christ. So, he calls himself Father. He calls himself pontiff, which is a Latin term for bridge builder between man and God, mediator so to speak. And then, he calls himself the Vicar of Christ. You know what the term Vicar means? Hold on to your seat. “In the place of.” So, the pope is Jesus’ representative. He’s in the place of Jesus right now on earth. What did we say about the prefix of the Antichrist? “Anti” means “in the place of.”
So, that’s where our Protestant forefathers were coming from. Here we have an individual within the temple of God taking the place of Jesus. I don’t take that position. Neither does A. W. Pink, and he gives several good arguments that I’ll encourage you to go and look at—that while the papacy is certainly an aberration and certainly against the gospel and biblical ecclesiology, none of the popes fit the bill for the true Antichrist. One of the Puritans said something I chuckled at one day. He said, “If the pope be not [the Antichrist], he had ill luck to be so like him.” So, we’ll go as far as that.
Antiochus Epiphanes, Judas Iscariot, Roman emperors, Catholic popes, Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin, Mikhail Gorbachev, or anybody you don’t like. That’s kind of where we’ve gone in trying to pin the tail on the donkey. In fact, this might surprise those of you who vote Republican. At one point, several people were arguing that Ronald Reagan was the Antichrist. Now, you’re thinking, “He was the savior!” Here’s where they came from. It’s kind of nonsense, to be honest about it. He had three names—Ronald Wilson Reagan—and they all had six letters, so 666.
Okay, let’s move on. That’s how crazy prophecy can get in some quarters. Here’s another shock this week I got in a little bit of my study about a man I respected greatly—certainly the evangelical church has celebrated him. Lord Shaftesbury of England was a social activist on behalf of the poor. He advocated in the English Parliament for labor laws and employment rights, getting children out of cleaning chimneys in Victorian houses. He was a good man, and he helped the poor. But you know what? After a study of the Scriptures, he came to the conclusion that the Salvation Army was the Antichrist—and William Booth to boot. Just some crazy stuff.
I don’t know how that helped you this morning, but there you are. Other than, there’s been all kinds of attempts to unmask this man, and yet Paul says, “Hold on a minute. Don’t do that. I don’t want you to be disturbed. Do you not remember what I told you? Remember the doctrine of the church’s catching up and the fact that we are not part of the day of the Lord?” (see 1 Thessalonians 5). Now, he’s not coming. You won’t see him. You won’t be able to recognize him because we’re not part of that day, and these four things haven’t happened.
Then, we looked at the tracking of his rise. Remember, we made this point out of verse 6, that he will “be revealed in his own time.” And we saw more than a hint of the sovereignty of God. While this man will someday stand up within world history and claim to be God and show himself to be God within the temple of God, he’s not. And our God will remain sovereign even in the midst of his rebellion. Remember, we said that’s the Greek word kairos, which means a turning point within history, a moment within the unfolding of moments that changes every other moment. In fact, it could be translated that he will be revealed “in the season of him.” And God’s going to allow a season, seven years, Daniel’s seventieth week, the Tribulation—when all hell will break loose but heaven will rule. Amen. Always remember that. When hell breaks loose, heaven still rules. There’s no panic in heaven, only plans. Adrian Rogers said that the Trinity never meets in emergency session. Even when the unholy trinity is at work, the Trinity will not be panicking.
In fact, I didn’t get to do this, but I’m going to do it for a moment. If you go to Revelation 13, we believe this is a passage that deals with the Antichrist and his rise. He’s described as a beast that comes from out of the sea, and the symbolism of sea is often Gentile nations and powers. But I want you to notice about this man—again, just in terms of the sovereignty of God . . . Look at verse 5: “And he was given a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies, and he was given authority to continue for forty-two months.”
That’s three and a half years. That may be a reference to the fact that at the midpoint of the Tribulation, according to Daniel 9, he breaks his covenant with Israel, and he declares himself to be God in the temple. And it says here that authority was given to him to do that. And when he speaks, he was allowed to speak. Scroll down to verse 7: “It was granted to him.” Notice that language. “It was granted to him to make war with the saints.” Who granted him to do that? Who gave him authority to reign for three and a half years, forty-two months? God did because God is sovereign, my friend. If we look at that at the macro level, I don’t know what disorder, chaos, or trouble is going on in your life, and I don’t know who’s troubling you. It may be that a world infected with the spirit of the Antichrist is on your case. But God is sovereign, and all the tangled threads of your life are being woven together in a wonderful tapestry. Don’t lose faith in God’s sovereignty.
I think it was Bob Jones who said, don’t forget in the dark what God teaches you in the light. Here’s the light of Scripture. And whenever life gets dark and when history turns the corner to this time of great evil, God is sovereign. Erwin Lutzer said this: “The devil is just as much God’s servant in his rebellion as he was God’s servant in the days of his sweet obedience.” It’s quite a statement. “Even today, he cannot act without God’s express permission; he cannot tempt, coerce, demonize, nor make so much as a single plan without consent and approval of God.”
You say, “Pastor, I’ve never heard that before. Where would I even begin to study that?” Why don’t you study Job 1 and 2, when the sons of God, the angelic beings, appear before God, and Satan is among them. And he has to get permission to touch Job. He’s complaining that God’s got a hedge around him. God’s acting as Job’s bodyguard. He can’t get a shot off. And God gives him permission. That led Martin Luther, whom we quoted earlier, to say that “the devil is God’s devil.”
Okay, we will pick up now where we left off. The reign of the Antichrist. The ruin’s not going to be very long, so this is where we’re really going to camp. And I’ll tell you why we’re not going to spend a lot of time on the ruin. Next week we’re going to look at the battle of Armageddon and then sometime after that the coming of Jesus. So, we’re going to come back to the idea of Jesus coming and destroying the false christ.
But here we have the reign, his administration, and we’re going to go back to our passage in 2 Thessalonians for that. If you take what I’ve said today and match it to last week, his reign will last seven years, the seventieth week of Daniel (Dan. 9:24–27). He will emerge from a revived Roman Empire centered in Europe. You say, “Pastor, where do you get that?” Well, we could go to Daniel 2 and Daniel 7 and Revelation 13, but one verse I think helps us simplify it is Daniel 9:26. Remember what Daniel said about the prince who is to come from the people who will destroy the temple? So, the prince to come is a reference to the Antichrist, we believe, and he emerges from among the people who will destroy the temple. Who destroyed the temple? Romans under Titus.
And so, he will reign for seven years over a revived Roman Empire centered in Europe, which leads me to believe he’s a Gentile. Some think he’s a Jew. Some think he’s a Muslim. I believe he’s a Gentile, emerges out from among the revived Roman Empire. I’ve got arguments for that, which I’m not going to go into today. Although his base of operation is within Europe, he will seek global domination, and he will call for worldwide worship. I mean, if you declare yourself to be God, who should worship you? Everybody. And we read in Revelation 13:8 that the false prophet calls on the world to worship the beast.
So, what does his reign look like? Now, we’ve already made clear that we don’t know who he is. We can’t put a face to the name, but we can certainly build a profile. We don’t know the “who,” but we can know the “what.” And there are several characteristics about him in our text.
Number one, he will be a dynamic leader. That’s implicit in our text here in 2 Thessalonians more than explicit. There’s several things said about him. He claims to be God. He will set himself up within the temple of God and call the world to worship him. He will fill the vacuum that the rapture and the removal of the church creates. He’ll have to explain that in some deceptive, lying manner. But, you see, according to verses 7¬¬–9, there will be signs and lying wonders that will mark this satanic superman. So, when you add that all together, he’s got to be a demonstrably dynamic leader. He will be the complete package.
If you study him further¬—which we don’t have time to do—as John Phillips says, “He will be all things to all men: a political statesman, a social lion, a financial wizard, an intellectual giant, a religious deceiver, a masterful orator, a gifted organizer. He will be Satan’s masterpiece of deception, the world’s false messiah.” And think about that. The devil’s had a lot of practice. I mean, for the last 6,000 years, he’s tried this and tried that. He’s used this person and that person. He sees what has worked best and most among people. So, he’ll take all of that knowledge, and there’ll be one final, fierce attempt to oppose God and set up a satanic kingdom within human history. And the Antichrist will indeed play that role.
Here’s a statement that many preachers have quoted. It’s many years old, but it’s worth quoting. This was made by Paul-Henri Spaak, who was the first president of the United Nations General Assembly. And he was the key planner in the formation of the EEC in 1957. Here’s what he said. Listen to these words: “We do not want another committee. We have too many already. What we want is a man of sufficient stature to hold the allegiance of all people, and to lift us out of the economic morass in which we are sinking. Send us such a man and, be he God or the devil, we will receive him.”
That was some years ago. That was the head of the United Nations General Assembly. “Send us such a man and, be he God or the devil.” God’s going to allow the devil to send them a demonic figure who will tick all the boxes. He will mesmerize the world. He will draw them in. He will fix their problems. He will organize the world—its money markets, its political alignments. The world’s ready for that kind of figure. We saw some of that emerging under COVID, the talk about world government and world leaders and the need to align and prepare ourselves for the next emergency.
He will be a dynamic leader. Number two, he will be a defiant leader. This man will be bloated with pride. This man will be inflated with arrogance. Look at verses 3 and 4 of our text: “Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day [the day of the Lord] will not come unless the falling away comes first [the rebellion takes place], and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition . . .” These words are striking: “. . . who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God . . .” (Talk about an anti-Christ figure.) “. . . or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.”
That’s a staggering statement, isn’t it? The pomposity and arrogance and self-inflation that stands behind that statement is unequaled, and it’s surprising that any man would think to fill that kind of role. But then, it shouldn’t be surprising, because remember, verse 9: he comes “according to the working of Satan.” And what was Satan’s original sin? “I will rise up, and I will ascend, and I will be above God.” He’s just a chip off the old block.
Remember, there’s no originality to evil. You can only find that in good. You can never find that in evil. All evil can do is copy, corrupt, distort. And so, this man is of his father the devil (John 8:44). The Antichrist will seek to take the place of Christ. And that’s staggering. He’ll do it within a rebuilt temple. We had that dry run with the Syrian king Antiochus Epiphanes, who set himself up within the temple and slaughtered a pig on its altar and declared the end of Judaism and himself to be God-like. That’s going to happen in a future day.
Now, what we’ve got here is this figure setting himself up in competition with and in contrast to God Himself. Let me draw some of those contrasts for you. I got this from a book on the Antichrist by Ron Rhodes, whose writings, along with Mark Hitchcock and Ed Hindson, I commend on these subjects. Think about this. Christ performs miracles, signs, and wonders, and so does the Antichrist—signs and lying wonders. Christ appears in a millennial temple (Ezek. 43). In a future day, this man will sit in a Tribulation temple (2 Thess. 2:4). Jesus is God, the Word made flesh. This man claims to be God. Jesus is the lion of Judah (Rev. 5:5). Revelation 13:2 tells us that the Antichrist speaks with the mouth of a lion. Jesus makes a peace contract with Israel in Ezekiel 37:26. This man makes a peace contract with Israel in Daniel 9:27. Christ causes the world to worship God and His Father. This man causes the world to worship Satan. Jesus seals His followers in the Tribulation period on the forehead (Rev. 7:4; 14:1). So does the Antichrist; his mark must be received on the forehead or the right hand (Rev. 13). Jesus has worthy names. This man has blasphemous names. Jesus is crowned with many crowns. This man emerges with ten crowns in Revelation 13. Jesus is the King of kings. This man is called “the king” in Daniel 11:36. Jesus rides on a white horse to victory (Rev. 19). This man emerges in a white horse (Rev. 6:2). We could go on. Jesus suffered a violent death. This man suffers a violent death. Jesus was resurrected from the dead. According to Revelation 13:3–14, this man will be resurrected from the dead. I’ll leave it there. There are more contrasts that can be made.
But this is the lie. This is the all-unrighteous deception. It will all come to a head in the advent, the appearance, of this man. He’s a defiant leader. According to southern Baptist theologian Millard Erickson, the essence of sin is the “displacement of God.” It’s probably the best definition you’ll ever come across on “What is sin?” What is sin? It’s the displacement of God as God. It’s man throwing off God’s authority, man throwing off God’s rule, man not submitting to God’s law, man making himself the center of his attention and love. And we have that throughout human history. That’s why Jesus calls us, as His disciples, to deny ourselves.
Today we’re being told that we don’t love ourselves enough. That’s a lie. We love ourselves too much. That’s why we’ve got conflict in marriages and conflict in homes and broken relationships and nations at war, and it’ll all come to its greatest expression in the man of sin. History starts with man sinning and throwing off the authority of God, and it finishes with a man of sin throwing off the authority of God and having the audacity to call himself God. Sin is the displacement of God as God.
Watch out, my friend. I speak to myself. I speak to you. Let’s watch out for anything that pushes God and His agenda in our life out to the suburbs or the city limits of our lives. You can displace God, can’t you, in so many ways—letting others and other affections and other things get in the way of truly loving Him.
He will be a deceptive leader. The lawless one is sponsored by the god of this world who loves to blind the minds of those who believe that. So, we read in verses 9–11, “The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan”—notice—“with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception.” Notice that: “With all unrighteous deception.” Whatever tool of deception or delusion the devil and the kingdom of darkness has used across history, they’re going to use the full arsenal. Every weapon at their disposal, every trick, every deception, every lie, every false miracle, or anything they can do to bamboozle, blind the mind of the unbelieving soul—they’re going to do it.
And so, this time will be a time of great seduction, a time of great deception. That’s why Jesus, in the Olivet Discourse—which we looked at a few weeks ago when we looked at the Tribulation—three times, says this: Do not be deceived.
And, on top of that, according to our text, when those final days unfold and the kingdom of Antichrist emerges, God’s going to allow strong delusion to take place. My friend, this is a warning to you who have not yet put your trust in Jesus Christ. You keep doing that, and God will ratify your choice and leave you in your sin and in your hardness and in your lack of love for the truth. That’s the danger of sitting in a church like this and hearing the gospel week in and week out.
That’s the blessing and, in some ways, the curse of living in a Christian home where your mom and dad teach you the gospel. You’re so accountable for what you know and what you hear, and every rejection puts you in eternal danger. Old Adrian Rogers said that the more we wait, the more we put off that decision, the more sins we’ll have to repent with, the less time we’ll have to repent in, and the harder heart we’ll have to repent with.
So, these days are going to be days of deception and delusion. It’s going to be a scary time. They’re going to be prefaced by a period of time in church history and leading up to the day of the Lord when the world will deal with false prophets and false christs who can be found in their thousands. Against the backdrop of the false prophets will come the false prophet, and against the backdrop of the many false christs will come the one Antichrist.
In fact, his greatest deception will be his resurrection. If you go to Revelation 13:3 and verses 12–14, the beast emerges from the sea. The Antichrist will be mortally wounded, and then he will be healed. Then, the false prophet will call the world to worship the one who’s had his own resurrection, like the true Christ.
Now, there’s the whole debate about whether he truly died or it just seemed that way. It was in such a manner that the world was deceived into thinking that he was mortally wounded, and then he’s healed. Or did he really die? The challenge is the language used in Revelation 13 is the same language used back in earlier chapters in Revelation of Jesus’ actual death and Jesus’ actual physical resurrection. So, many argue that he really did die and that he really was resurrected, which raises the question “Well, how can Satan raise the dead?” That’s only within the power of God. Maybe God gave him permission to do it because of the extraordinary nature of those days and the fact that God was willing to send strong delusion. And part of the sending of strong delusion is to allow the Antichrist to be raised from the dead.
I’m not sure a ton of issues hang on whether he actually did die, but this we know. As that happens, the world will get a sense that it’s something supernatural, something stupendous, something unlike anything else that has taken place—which will bring this man’s stature to a place unrivaled within human history. Can you imagine? Breaking news at CNN: He’s been shot! Remember, he’s on the world stage. He’s made a peace treaty with Israel. He’s aligned the nations. He’s brought economic prosperity. He’s brought peace to the Middle East. And then he’s shot! But then he’s healed—power, signs, and lying wonders. And it just reinforces the mystery and mystique and menace of this character.
The false prophet. He’s going to aid and abet him. I’m not going to get into this side too much. You can read about that in Revelation 13:13–15. I’ll read it for you. Another beast emerges who points to the first beast and the authority that the first beast has. And we read in Revelation 13:13, this person, this false prophet, this second beast who points to the first beast, he “performs great signs . . .” (That’s our language in 2 Thessalonians 2:9–11.) “. . . so that he even makes fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men.” That’s reminiscent of the false prophets in Elijah, isn’t it? “And he deceives those who dwell on the earth by those signs which he was granted to do.” Sovereignty of God again. God sending strong delusion, reinforcing the choices that men are making. Well, if you don’t love the truth, then here’s a lie you can believe unto your own damnation. That’s where we’re at. He will be “granted power to give breath to the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak and cause as many as would not worship the image of the beast to be killed.”
I’m moving on. I want to pause and make this point. Satan is not frightened of you being spiritual. Satan’s not frightened if you moved from being secular to being religious. He’s not frightened at all. He’s got all kinds of synagogues and mosques and churches for you to attend where you’re going to hear false christs and false gospels, and you may even be deceived by pretend miracles. Can I remind us, in the day of charismatic mania, that miracles are not always a sign that God is present? Remember the magicians in Egypt matching Moses blow for blow? It’s a very deceptive world, my friend.
No, Satan’s not worried about you getting religious, getting a little churchy, spiritual. He can play to your every taste. The only thing that gets him anxious is you hearing the gospel like you’ll hear it here, of the true Christ, the incarnate son of God, the sinless one, the blood-atoning Savior, the one who rose from the dead and sits at the right hand of God. And God has given Him a name under heaven whereby men might be saved.
My friend, when God drops the hook in the water and seeks to draw you to Himself, embrace that. Don’t fight the truth. Don’t postpone a decision for Jesus Christ—because there’s a man coming. Then, there’s a moment coming marked by deception and strong delusion. There will be an act of God’s judgment on a Christ-rejecting world.
Someone has said that in China the religion is Confucian, but in the United States it’s the religion of confusion. That’s true. Don’t we live in very confusing days? The religion of the Antichrist will be the religion of confusion, lies, and deception.
Final thought: he will be a demonic leader. Did you notice that in verse 9? We’ve referenced it several times now in our text, that “the coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan.” That’s the New King James. The Greek word is the word that gives us our English word “energy.” Here’s how we can translate that. The coming of the lawless one will be energized by Satan. This man will be employed, energized, and used by Satan himself.
Now, if Satan is working through him, and he takes on the nature of the evil one, one of the things we can know about him is that he will be an anti-Semite. He will be a Jew-hating Gentile who emerges out of a revived Roman Empire. Satan has always hated the people of God, and he has a particular hatred for the woman who gave birth to the male child, according to Revelation 12. Remember what we read back in Genesis 3, that God said, “Hey, there’s going to be enmity between the serpent and the seed of the woman”? Israel was the means by which the Messiah would come, and Satan has always had a particular hatred for the Old Testament people of God and the New Testament people of God. He hates Israel. He tried to annihilate them through the pharaohs of Egypt. He tried to annihilate them through Herod, an apostate Jewish king. He used Hitler. We’ve seen time after time after time this attempt by Satan to destroy the Jewish people. And his superman—the man he energizes, his servant—will have a heart flooded with animosity toward the Jewish people.
He will be an anti-Semite, according to Revelation 12:1¬–2, 6, 13–17. Remember what we saw in Matthew 24, when Jesus said, look, there’s going to come a time in the future, leading up to my return, when there’ll be an abomination of desolation in the holy place, spoken of by the prophet Daniel. I believe that’s the Tribulation temple, and it’s the future day. And when that happens, what does Jesus say? For those who are in Judea, they need to flee. And let’s pray that their flight is not in winter or that the woman’s not carrying a child to slow her flight up—because at this point (Zech. 14), the Antichrist will have gathered the nations against Jerusalem. Remember, he signs a peace treaty, but in the midway of the Tribulation (Dan. 9), he breaks the peace treaty. And we see that.
David Jeremiah says this about him: “The Bible says he will persecute the saints (see Daniel 7:21–25), kill the two witnesses (see Revelation 11:7), and but used to lead all the nations against Jerusalem (see Zechariah 14:1¬–3). His heart will be filled with a murderous hatred for the Jewish people and the believing Gentiles.”
Satan, through this man, will organize a worldwide, all-out campaign to eliminate Israel. Now, we don’t need to try to pin the tail on the donkey; we’ve already said that. But is it not interesting? Have we not said that we might see the shadow of the man who is to come cast into the church age? May we not see an alignment of signs spoken of by Jesus that will mark that time beginning to emerge in our time? Is anti-Semitism not seeing a revival today? Have we not watched in horror about the events of October the 7th and then the chants across the world, from parliaments to university campuses to the streets of New York and Los Angeles: “Death to Israel.” And there’s the desire to move that people from the river to the sea, which is just code for the elimination. That’s the intent of Hamas. That’s the intent of Hezbollah. That’s the intent of Iran. That’s the hidden secret of many within the Arab and Muslim world. There’s a hatred. The political waters are ripe for the Antichrist to go wading into.
We’re certainly not whitewashing Israel’s sins or the failures of the Israeli government, but as we read history, big history, how do you explain this hatred? I mean, even Mark Twain, the agnostic, said, someone explain to me the survival of the Jew. There’s something supernatural about it. God made covenants with this people that are forever. They’re not going away. This is the nation that won’t go away. And the hatred toward them is satanic. I mean, the day they emerged as a nation, five Arab nations attacked them on the day of their Declaration of Independence, and it hasn’t stopped.
The issue isn’t the size of Israel. If Gaza was annexed and the West bank was given back, you think the fight might stop? I’d like to believe so, but I don’t believe so—because it’s not the size of the nation. It’s the existence of the nation. I mean, look at the statistics. The Arabs possess 300 times more territory than the nation of Israel, and yet they still want to obliterate it. There are 40 times more Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East than Jews. Forty! And yet they’re made out to be the bully in the neighborhood? No, we know what’s going on. The Bible’s prophesied it.
In 2011, I was in Israel. I was in and around the City of David and Jerusalem. I was with Living Waters. We were doing a shoot called Heroes of History, and one of the people we were looking at was Churchill. I ended up talking to our Jewish guide, Donnie, and I said, “Donnie, I just don’t understand the weakness of the West in the face of militant Islam. Where are the Churchills preparing us for what we’re dealing with and the evil that surrounds us and the consequences that could come?” And I remember him saying to me, “Philip, it’s 1938 again.” 1938 again.
His point was, Israel understands the danger and the menace that faces them, America, and the Western world influenced by Christianity. But most don’t. Most are naive. We have a generation of young people brought up in schools that don’t even believe in the existence of evil. Many of them don’t believe the Holocaust happened. Its memory is fading. The water temperature is just right for the one who will come in, historically speaking, 1938, and he’ll promise peace. Remember Chamberlain? Some Hitler? But then war will come.
The ruin. I told you we’re not going to really deal with it. And time’s gone. Verse 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.” We’ll see next week at the battle of Armageddon. It’s not really a contrast. The Antichrist will speak great blasphemies. The armies of the world will gather in the Valley of Megiddo. The Lord will appear and say, “Drop dead.” And that’ll be it—all over—because He’ll speak out of His mouth like a sword. Here we’ve got the breath of His mouth: “Drop dead.” It’s not even a contest.
What’s ironic about the coming of Jesus and the destruction of Satan’s superman here is that God, given what we’ve said about God’s sovereignty, will use the Antichrist and the false prophet. He will grant them authority. He will use them to bring strong delusion on a world that doesn’t love the truth. And God will confirm the world in its rebellion. God will have had enough. The day of grace will be coming to an end.
And then, when God has used them as an instrument of judgment, God will judge them and destroy the false prophet and the Antichrist and consume them with His breath. The breath that brought the world into existence will breathe the Antichrist out of existence, and the man who plunges the world into the darkest night of its history will be banished by the startling appearance, the brightness of the coming of the Son of God.
Julian the Apostate was an emperor over the Roman Empire who initially embraced Christianity and then rejected it, and he became known as Julian the Apostate. He tried to remove the empire of all Constantinian advances for Christianity. There’s a story told that some of his soldiers got a Christian and persecuted that man and beat him. And as he laid there, a helpless victim in a pool of blood, they said with scorn, “What now is your carpenter God doing?” To which he replied, “He’s building a coffin for your emperor.”
My friend, when the church is bloodied and persecuted and pushed to the margins of society, and someday when the world turns dark, we need to remember. And we want you to remember, if you’re listening, that our God is building a coffin for every king and every lord that has usurped His authority as King of kings and Lord of lords. I hope you’ll bow the knee today out of love and out of a free choice rather than be found among an unbelieving world when Jesus comes, when every knee will bow and confess him as Lord.
Father, thank You for our time in the Word this morning. We could say in one way that it’s a sobering text and disturbing text. But, if we flip it, we take from it this joy that we will be gone before it comes. We’re not looking for the Antichrist. We’re looking for the Christ. And we’re not appointed unto wrath but unto salvation.
Thank You for the joy of being in You, the righteousness we have in Christ, and the promise of no condemnation. Lord, make us cognizant of the danger our loved ones and friends and country are in. We see they’re ripe for this kind of deception. We could see a man emerging on the international front that the world could follow and would follow, given enough reason to do so, given enough emergencies to make it happen.
So, the hour is laid. That doesn’t mean we don’t put our kids to bed tonight with a story. It doesn’t mean we don’t go to work in the morning. It doesn’t mean we don’t rest and play when appropriate. It just means we’ve got to live purposeful lives in the light of the moment we’re in, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.