2 Thessalonians 2 • Perspective on the Great Tribulation
Are you unsettled or alarmed by any teaching concerning the Antichrist and the Great Tribulation? God in His mercy has given us enough information to know what will happen and the confidence that we who are alive now will not face that horrible time. Yet, we have a responsibility now to stay alert to the danger of deception and avoid it. In the last post, we gained the biblical perspective on God’s justice and mercy. This is post #11 in the Thessalonians series. In this post, we will gain some biblical perspective on the Great Tribulation, including the Antichrist and his effect on humanity.
Listen to this blog as a similar podcast from the Perspective Bible Study of 1 and 2 Thessalonians:
Judging the Times
Current events
Recently, I watched a rocket owned by SpaceX deliver a payload of communication satellites into orbit around our planet. Over time, they will be delivering enough satellites so that the earth will be completely connected through cyberspace. That excited me because I thought of how Jesus might use such capability as He reigns from Jerusalem after His Second Coming. He is our Creator and has given us the gift of creating. So, all the technology advances of the past decades belong to Him, whether the designers recognize it or not.
Is the time for Jesus’ coming for believers getting closer? Yes. Every day it gets closer. But sitting around waiting for it to happen is not pleasing to God. Obsessing on end times prophecy is also a waste of time.
The puzzle
Trying to understand all the prophecies about the end times is like having similar puzzle pieces without the picture on the box top to tell you how to arrange them. We can recognize the border pieces and put the four sides of the puzzle together. Those are events we know will definitely happen but not when or how the rest of the pieces fit inside the border. They are introduced to us in 1 and 2 Thessalonians.
- The Rapture takes place. One day, Jesus Christ will appear as Savior to gather His own together in the clouds. (1 Thessalonians 4:13-17)
- The Great Tribulation begins. Known as “the day of the Lord,” it is a time during which God’s wrath against sin is directed toward earth. (1 Thessalonians 5:1-3)
- The Antichrist is revealed. The man of lawlessness or Antichrist takes over the world with force and deception. (2 Thessalonians 2:3-12)
- Christ’s Second Coming. Christ is coming to exact justice against unbelievers and set up His kingdom on earth. (2 Thessalonians 1:7-10)
Those are the 4 sides to our puzzle. We have covered 1, 2, and 4 so far. In this post, we will look more closely at 3—the revealing of the Antichrist and his effect on humanity.
Identifying the Antichrist
Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction. He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God. Don’t you remember that when I was with you I used to tell you these things? And now you know what is holding him back, so that he may be revealed at the proper time. For the secret power of lawlessness is already at work; but the one who now holds it back will continue to do so till he is taken out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendor of his coming. (2 Thessalonians 2:3-8)
It is pointless to try to figure out who the Antichrist is or will be. As the Bible clearly states, the Antichrist will not be revealed until after the restrainer is removed. The restrainer is likely a reference to the Holy Spirit’s presence in all believers. The Rapture of living believers will remove His presence in their lives throughout the earth.
You cannot figure it out!
Yet, it helps to have a biblical perspective of the end times as we read and study the New Testament. Then, we can more readily understand their expectations and the terminology used. That teaches us what the writers meant by their word choices and what the readers understood. From there, we can find ways to apply the Scriptures to our lives today as we have been doing throughout our study of 1 and 2 Thessalonians.
The Expectation
Prophecies
The Jews of Jesus’ day had certain expectations about the Messiah and the resurrection. Their thinking was this: when the Messiah comes, God would begin a new age—His kingdom—first by resurrecting and judging all the dead, then giving the Holy Spirit to the righteous, and finally righting all the wrongs on planet Earth. The Messiah would reign as king over the whole earth from Jerusalem.
All those things were true expectations. They just did not know that God’s plan would be a two-stage process—first, a dead Messiah would be resurrected, then later everyone else when the Messiah comes back.
Recommended: Read “Daniel 9-12: Rest Then Rise to Receive Your Inheritance” for more understanding of the future resurrection of believers.
Jesus came
When the early Christians spoke of Jesus being raised from the dead, they were claiming that something happened to Jesus, which had never happened to anyone else—yet. The resurrection declared that what Jesus did in His life and in His death was the work of God’s son—the Messiah Because of Jesus’ finished work on the cross, God could give His Spirit to faithful believers.
Recommended: To understand Jesus’ finished work on the cross, read “The Gospel: God’s Cure for Our Fatal Sin Disease” series of blogs.
Prophecy is not only like puzzle pieces that all look alike. I heard it also described as being like a mountain range. From a distance, the peaks look so close together. But when you get up close, you realize that one peak may be 20 miles away from the other. Often in the Old Testament, references to the first coming of Christ and the second coming of Christ are found in the same paragraph, sometimes in the same verse.
What the Jews expected was their best guess. Jesus fulfilled the first part and promised to come back to finish the job.
The UNTIL Time of Waiting
The promise of restoration
Jesus was taken up to heaven before witnesses in a cloud of glory. Two angels declared to His followers that He would return in the same way—bodily and visibly.
After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.” (Acts 1:9-11)
UNTIL then, Jesus is in heaven as the God-Man, instantly recognizable to us as a man. There, He waits as king-designate in His glorified human body UNTIL the Father says it is time to return in the same way to set up His earthly kingdom on David’s throne in Jerusalem. We are living in this UNTIL time.
This is what Peter said in Acts chapter 3 about God’s timing,
that he may send the Messiah, who has been appointed for you—even Jesus. Heaven must receive him until the time comes for God to restore everything, as he promised long ago through his holy prophets. (Acts 3:20-21)
To restore means to go back again and set in order. It is used of restoring estates to their rightful owners or restoring someone to good health. The Bible says that creation is groaning in pain because of sin and God’s curse on it. God will restore His creation to its initial glory. Jesus’ resurrection began the process.
Recommended: Read “Resurrection…What Does It Really Mean?” for more understanding of the meaning of the resurrection.
During the waiting
Until the time comes for God to restore everything, there is waiting involved. We are waiting until God acts. This UNTIL time is also called the “time of the Gentiles” in Scripture.
Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled. (Luke 21:24b)
God’s Church began as mostly Jews. Because of Israel’s rejection of their Messiah, the gospel of God has primarily gone out to the Gentile nations. God has been adding Gentile believers to His Church for 2000 years. According to the New Testament, this UNTIL time will last until the fullness of the Gentiles is reached—whatever that means in the mind of God. It is futile to speculate on what that means. The graphic below is by H. Wayne House.
On earth, the Rapture of the believers is the signal that the time of God’s grace to the Gentiles ends. Judgment of all the nations happens during a period of seven years called “The Great Tribulation.” Most of the book of Revelation covers this time period. But we also see references to it in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2. It sounds awful!
The Day of the Lord Has Not Happened Yet
Security blanket—we will not be here
Paul had words for them and for us beginning in verse 1.
Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to him, we ask you, brothers and sisters,not to become easily unsettled or alarmed by the teaching allegedly from us—whether by a prophecy or by word of mouth or by letter—asserting that the day of the Lord has already come.Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction … For the secret power of lawlessness is already at work; but the one who now holds it back will continue to do so till he is taken out of the way.” (2 Thessalonians 2:1-3, 7)
Don’t be unsettled or alarmed by any teaching concerning the day of the Lord. If you are a believer in Jesus Christ now, you will not be here then. Okay? In the last post, I likened that truth to a security blanket.
Three signs it has not happened yet
Paul wrote so confidently in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 that the three signs declaring the day of the Lord had not happened yet.
- The restrainer of evil had not been removed (verse 7).
- The religious rebellion had not occurred (verse 3).
- The man of lawlessness had not been revealed (verse 3).
That is still true today. The day of the Lord has not happened yet.
None of this is brought about by humans. God does not need our help to force changes on earth to meet His plan. God is in complete control of the timing.
Restrainer removed
I mentioned this earlier. Until God makes this move, nothing happens regarding the Great Tribulation (the “day of the Lord”). It seems likely that the restrainer is somehow related to the Holy Spirit’s presence in all Christians alive. That is a best guess, though. Paul knew what he was talking about and had shared that with the Thessalonians. It is just not completely clear to us. We do not need to know for sure. God’s got it!
The rebellion occurs
It may seem like wickedness is having an unrestrained playdate in our world. But it has not gotten as bad as it will be when all Christians are removed from the picture. God will take His hands off and let those who reject Him enjoy the fruit of their decision. God does that now to individuals who totally reject His goodness. He gives them over to the wickedness that they want to do (Romans 1:24, 26, 28). He allows sinful people to experience the sinful behaviors that they want to enjoy. As one writer put it,
[God] withdraws from the wicked the restraints of His providence and grace, and gives them over to the dominion of sin. (Charles C. Hodge, Romans, p. 40)
In 1 Timothy chapter 4, Paul wrote this warning,
The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron. (1 Timothy 4:1-2)
The picture is of someone whose conscience or convictions have been desensitized. Through repeated exposure to evil, their sense of right and wrong becomes numb to the point that they can no longer easily distinguish between good and evil. That has been going on since sin entered the world in Genesis chapter 3. It got so bad within less than 2000 years that God decided to start over with just eight humans in a ship (Genesis 6 and 7).
The man of lawlessness revealed
But this will get much worse during the Great Tribulation, enhanced by the revealing of the man of lawlessness who will be a counterfeit Christ in many ways.
He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God. … The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie, and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing. (2 Thessalonians 2:4, 9-10a)
This man of lawlessness, also known as the Antichrist, is described in many places in the Bible, especially in Daniel 9, Mark 13, Luke 21, and Revelation chapters 6-18. He is introduced in Revelation 6:2 when the first seal is broken, and the antichrist is given control. He fills a power void when the Church is gone and begins his domination of the earth as an intellectual, military, political, and financial genius. He impersonates Christ in performing signs and wonders, but they give no credit to God.
This Antichrist serves the lies that humans want to believe about not needing God. Paul wrote about this happening,
They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lieand so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness. (2 Thessalonians 2:10b-12)
Humans make the choice against God. They choose to not believe the truth. They choose the delusions so God gives that to them. They choose to delight in wickedness. God does not make that choice for them. But for everyone who digs in their heels and refuses God, He declares them guilty of punishment. He lets them have what they want—life apart from Him and every bit of love and goodness and grace and mercy and joy and hope that He is.
Yet, He continues to offer eternal life to anyone who repents of their sin and trusts in Him, even during the Great Tribulation with the Antichrist doing his thing. The book of Revelation describes how people will believe and be saved. Many Jews will believe during that time as well as some Gentiles. That is God’s grace and mercy. The fact that He has limited the worse aspects of His wrath directed toward sin on earth to just forty-two months (Revelation 13:5) is also God’s mercy.
Truth for Now
We will not know the complete prophetic picture, but we can know some things for sure that will help us now. These give us biblical perspective for the time in which we live. We get this information from the gospels, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, 2 Peter, and the book of Revelation.
Dear reader, here are four things you and I can know for sure:
#1 What We Can Know for Sure — 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17
Jesus is coming back to gather His own, and not one believer is going to miss it—whether you are dead, sleeping in your bed, or taking a shower. You will not miss His coming. Isn’t that good news? We just do not know when He is returning.
#2 What We Can Know for Sure — 2 Thessalonians 2:3-12; Mark 13:7-8
Jesus said conditions on this planet are not going to get better but worse! We can forget the whole idea of world peace until He comes back. Although believers are encouraged to individually live in peace with each other and with unbelievers, we humans can never bring about world peace. Only Jesus as king on earth can.
#3 What We Can Know for Sure — Mark 13:14-23
Jesus described a great time of worldwide, massive tribulation. This Great Tribulation has not happened yet. The destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. was not the worst that had happened before that or even since that time. It is still to come.
#4 What We Can Know for Sure — 2 Thessalonians 1:7-10; Revelation 19-20
Jesus is returning to planet Earth with His angels to defeat the evil forces against Him and set up His Kingdom in Jerusalem. We live in a world of people who are at war with God. The war will continue in this direction until the King ends it, which He will do.
Watch Out That No One Deceives You
The danger of deception
Jesus gave all of His followers certain responsibilities. To them and to all of us, He says, “Stay alert.” In Mark chapter 13, Jesus warned His disciples eight times—8 times—to “watch out,” “be on guard,” and “stay alert.” We saw the same words in 1 Thessalonians 5:6, 8. Stay alert. Stay alert to what?
I looked at all Jesus’ teaching as well as what is presented in 1 and 2 Thessalonians. My conclusion is this: A Christ-follower’s greatest danger is not war, not calamity, not suffering, not persecution, and not even betrayal. It is deception. That is Jesus’ warning to them and to us as He says in Mark 13:5, “Watch out that no one deceives you.”
Recommended: Read a more detailed explanation about Jesus’ warning in this blog, “Mark 13: Avoiding Deception Trails.”
Deception feeds apostasy
Apostasy is an aggressive and positive revolt against God by so-called religious people. It is falling away from truth that you once believed. Apostasy has been with us since the first century. The apostles wrote about apostasy growing worse and worse through the years before the Lord comes.
Apostasy is driven by people who may even call themselves “Christian” but who have not personally put their faith in Jesus Christ for their salvation. They are imposters, influential fakers, who draw people away from Christ, especially when they claim to no longer believe in Him.
Remember that all genuine Christians who have trusted Christ and are indwelt by the Holy Spirit will go to be with the Lord in the Rapture so you won’t be affected by this rebellion (1 Thessalonians 1:10). The unbelievers who are left behind will be enticed to join this universal rebellion against God. Perhaps the Rapture will draw some to finally put their faith in Jesus Christ and be saved, though they must live through the Tribulation.
Deception feeds apostasy. At least 33 New Testament verses warn believers about being deceived or led astray from our sincere and pure devotion to Christ.
Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians chapter 11 verse 3,
But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ. (2 Corinthians 11:3)
This verse has nothing to do with gender. It has everything to do with being deceived. Both men and women are equally vulnerable to deception. Notice what deception does. It takes you away from sincere and pure devotion to Jesus Christ.
Recognizing manipulation to believe a lie
We have a spiritual enemy, and deceiving us is one of his best means for making us ineffective at pursuing Christ completely. Deception affects the direction our minds are going and our bodies follow. We put all our energy going in the wrong directions.
The further we get into the last days and the more complex society gets, the easier it is to be deceived today. You can get instant information from social media, websites, and digital streaming. How do you know when your mind is being manipulated to believe a deception? You know it when you are drawn away from confidence in and focus on Christ alone for your motivation and power to live.
As 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 ends,
But we ought always to thank God for you, brothers and sisters loved by the Lord, because God chose you as firstfruits to be saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through belief in the truth. He called you to this through our gospel, that you might share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. So then, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold fast to the teachings we passed on to you.” (2 Thessalonians 2:13-15)
Christian, you are beloved (also in Ephesians 5:1 and Colossians 3:12). You are chosen—an old Greek term that means to lift up, to move something toward the sun. You are lifted up and saved and will one day share in the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Hold fast to the apostolic, authoritative teachings in the Bible.
Recommended: Read “1 Thessalonians 2:13-16 • Perspective on God’s Word” to see why the Bible is completely trustworthy and reliable.
Don’t let other people’s thoughts be a replacement for the Bible or your dependence on Christ. Compare what you are being told with what God’s Word says. Jesus said, “Watch out that no one deceives you.”
The next post will help you gain the biblical perspective on life in the waiting UNTIL Jesus comes for us.
Let Jesus satisfy your heart with His perspective on life in the present and in the future. Then, live securely in Him during this time of waiting.
The above information is covered in our Perspective Bible Study of 1 & 2 Thessalonians.
Related Resources:
- Satisfied Series 13 Podcasts on 1 and 2 Thessalonians
- Daniel 9-12: Rest Then Rise to Receive Your Inheritance
- Mark 13: Avoiding Deception Trails
- Resurrection…What Does It Really Mean?
AI was not used to generate this post.
