God's fix for those 'not of us'

One of the most humbling, frightening passages in all of Paul’s epistles, by Richard Jordan’s perspective, is in II Thessalonians 2. He says, “When I read this thing I stand next to mute. I look at it and say, ‘Whoa, man.’

“The passage is about the Antichrist. Starting in Verse 8, it says, “And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming.

[9] Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders,
[10] And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.
[11] And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:
[12] That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

“You see how ‘wicked’ is capitalized? It’s the Wicked one. It’s a title. Over in II Peter 3:17 it says, ‘Ye therefore, beloved, seeing ye know these things before, beware lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own stedfastness.’

“When the Antichrist comes, he’s going to come as a religionist. He’s going to come as the Great Peacemaker, but when he does, he’s going to come with powers, signs, miraculous demonstrations.

*****

“Notice who he deceives. Verse 10 says it is those who ‘received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.’ That’s WHY they were able to be deceived.

“You know who the ‘strong delusion’ is that God sends them? It’s the Antichrist and his program. It’s the doctrine that goes back to Romans 1 and Genesis 3. It’s the deification of the creature.

"They ‘worshipped and served the creature more than the creator,’ so the ultimate form of that comes in the personage of the Antichrist and God literally sends him on the scene.

“You go back and read Isaiah 10 where God says to Israel, ‘The Antichrist is going to do this, that and the other to you, but he’s going to do MY work, ‘purging out the rebel’; identifying the unbeliever. Now, he won’t mean it to be so; he’s going to think he’s doing that, but I’m going to use the wrath of men to praise me.’

“By the way, that’s what that verse in Psalms is talking about. It’s not talking about if your neighbor gets mad at you, God uses that to honor him.

“The Lord Himself becomes the author of falsehood for those who reject the truth. You know what that means? That means God will give you what you want.

“God says, ‘Everybody wants to go that way, so here, let me fix it where you CAN’T resist it. You don’t love the truth, you don’t want the truth, you don’t want what I got, so I’ll fix it where you go out from us.’

*****

“That’s what I John 2:19 means when he writes, ‘They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.'

“They went out from us because they were not of us. Because if they had been OF us they wouldn’t have gone out FROM us.

“If the people who left, if what they had loved was the truth, where would they have stayed when the lie showed up?

“That’s what happened to Israel when Jesus Christ came. He said, ‘I’m the Word of God. If you’d have believed what Moses wrote; if you’d have been believing God’s Word when I showed up, what would you have done? You’d have been believing me. Why? Because I’m the WORD! I’m the one who said that stuff back there!'

“That’s how Paul explains what happened to Israel in Romans 9 and 10; how he explains why the things that happened to the nation Israel happened to them when they rejected Christ.

*****

“Again, II Thessalonians 2 says that God will ‘send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.’

“That’s why I say to you that when you pick up this Book, you better be careful about how you pick it up and read it and study it because that Book—the Word of God ‘is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.’

“That Book reads you and will give you back what you want out of it. The heart attitude with which you approach the Book is going to determine the answers that you get out of it.

“The Bible’s the only Book in the world that, when you come to it, it will give you a different answer depending on your heart-attitude condition. It’s a two-edged sword. It’s not a Book you mess around with. It’s not a Book you make a living with.

“That’s how you watch things test people’s heart about where they are. I’m not talking about their intellect. You can make a lot of mistakes with your noggin--I mean look at me; I make mistakes all the time.

*****

“You know the difference in the Old Testament between King David and King Solomon? People talk about, ‘Well, I wouldn’t want that guy around; he was a drunk.’ Why, if King David walked in here right now and you evaluated his life and career, most of you wouldn’t want him around. He was a drunkard; a drunken murderer, an adulterer, a polygamist.

“He had a family of kids and every one of them was a brat. He didn’t have one kid you’d like to have around in your neighborhood. If he moved into your neighborhood, you’d be calling the law every night. Rowdy bunch of no-goodniks. He was a ruffskullian (sp?). One guy called him a ‘bloody man’ and he was.

“For all the mistakes he made, he was one of the Bible’s lousiest fathers. He couldn’t qualify to be an elder in this church according to I Timothy 3. He didn’t know how to rule his house well.

*****

“Did you ever really think about David like that? The Bible tells the truth about its heroes. You think about the psalms and this great king in Israel and he was. Did you know the Bible calls him ‘a man after God’s own heart’?

“You say, ‘How could he be such a rascal in so many areas?’ You know what, there’s one thing David never did. He made a lot of mistakes, a lot of sins of the flesh, but his heart never turned away from the Lord. He never went after other gods. His heart was fixed right on the Lord. ‘A man after God’s own heart.’

“Solomon, on the other hand, was born with a golden spoon in his mouth. A man who God said, ‘What do you want?’ and he said, ‘Make me wise,’ and God made him healthy, wealthy and wise, and yet if you go to II Chronicles 9:13, you’ll find at the paragraph mark that verse where Solomon becomes a type of the Antichrist for the rest of his career.

“How in the world could he do that? You know what he did? He went after other gods. Solomon’s the one who wrote the Book of Ecclesiastes. He tried all the sins of the flesh, everything the world had to offer, but his dad did that, too. You know what Solomon’s problem was? Nehemiah calls them ‘outlandish women.’

“That doesn’t mean the Madonna pop-star types. He’s talking about women from outside the land. Who was THAT? Gentiles. What was the problem with that? They brought in their gods! Solomon forsook God and God’s Word and God’s instructions and went after the idols. He went after Baal and became a Baal worshipper. It’s a heart problem.

*****

“That was the difference between King Saul and David, and Samuel identifies it that way. I’m just saying to you, when you come to that Book, the way you better come is to say, ‘Lord, whatever you say, you speak and whoever you contradict and whoever you mess up, it’s okay.’

“Now, that’s hard because, sooner or later, it’s going to be your friends and your family and your professors and your religion. I’m not talking about being nasty and unkind and arrogant and independent and can’t get along with anybody—I’m talking about being willing not to be run by anything. Be like Martin Luther who said, ‘My conscience is bound by the Word of God and here I stand.’

“Then if you make a mistake, if you just keep studying, the Word of God will correct your mistake. That doesn’t mean you’re going to be right every minute; it just means you know what’s right and you trust it. That’s why I John 2 says what it does when he says ‘they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us.’

“God sends the rod of testing to Israel in the person of the Antichrist and his program and God sends ‘a strong delusion’ that everybody who wasn’t of the truth is seduced into following the lie. I John gives them all the information 

they need to know so as not to be seduced.

“They’ll never be able to stand before God and say, ‘Well, if we’d have just known better, we’d have done better.’ He’ll be able to pop open I John and say, ‘See there, you knew better.’ "

(to be continued tomorrow)