Disobedience Against God

Shepherdess Edermira Cruz

STUDY #1177 CHURCH IN THE HOUSES Wednesday, March 24, 2021

"Disobedience Against God" 2 Thessalonians 2:7-12 Paul writes that the antichrist had not arrived. Paul had been writing about the coming of the Lord in the first letter and some began to speak that the Lord had come.

I. Paul clarifies the foolish comments.

A. (2 Thessalonians 2:3) The apostle explains why they could not be there on that day.

1. First there will be apostasy.

2. What is it? A massive abandonment of Christianity. A rejection of the Christian faith. Then a great world figure will emerge.

3. His character is the man of sin or iniquity; that is, the very embodiment of sin and rebellion.

4. As for his fate, he is the son of perdition; he is sentenced to eternal damnation.

5. Some commentators believe that the man of sin will be a Jewish, or Roman antichrist, the great rulers of the end times: (2 Thessalonians 2:3, 1 John 2:18) the antichrist; (Daniel 7:8; 24b-26) the little horn; the stern-face king (Daniel 8:23-25) the prince to come (Daniel 9:26) the willful and conceited king (Daniel 11:36); the useless shepherd (Zechariah 11:17); the beast rising from the sea (Revelation 13:1-10); etc. ...

6. The man of sin has had a variety of identifications over the years.

7. (V.4) He will violently oppose any form of divine worship and enthrone himself in God's temple in Jerusalem.

8. Paul used to explain this to the Thessalonians when he was still with them.

9. However, with those contradictory teachings they were receiving that seemed to unfairly describe the fierce persecutions they were then enduring, they had forgotten what the apostle had said.

10. We all forget too easily and need to be reminded again and again of the great truths of the faith.

11. (V.6) They knew what stopped this sinful man's full and open manifestation and what would continue to hold him back until the appointed moment.

12. It is Something and Someone who, in a conscious way, with purpose and design, stops him with a view to ensuring that the man of iniquity manifests himself at the appropriate time.

13. The Holy Spirit and the true church (V. 7) as it is the in dwelling of the Spirit.

14. (2 Thessalonians 2:7) Already when Paul was writing, the mystery of iniquity was already in action.

15. By this, we understand that an enormous spirit of disobedience against God was already stirring beneath the surface.

16. It was working in the form of mystery (not that it was something mysterious, but it was not yet fully manifested). It was still in embryonic form.

17. What has been hindering the full manifestation of this spirit?

18. We believe that the presence of the Holy Spirit dwelling in the church and in every believer has been the restraining power.

19. And it will continue to exercise this function "until in turn it disappears from the middle, that is, in the Rapture."

20. He is a person of the Deity (Holy Spirit), is the Omnipresent One and is always in all places at once.

21. And yet, there is a different sense in which He came to earth on the Day of Pentecost.

22. (John 14:16, 26; 15:26; 16:7) Jesus had repeated over and over again that He and the Father would send the Spirit. The Holy Spirit came as the permanent inhabitant of the church and of every believer.

23. Until Pentecost, the Spirit had been with believers, but since Pentecost He has dwelt in them. (John 14:17).

24. (Psalm 51:11b) And do not remove your Holy Spirit from me; until Pentecost it was known that the Spirit could depart from believers.

25. After Pentecost, the Spirit abides forever in believers in the Church Age. (John 14:16)

26. The Holy Spirit, we believe, will leave the world in the same sense that He came at Pentecost; that is, as the permanent dwelling place of the church and of every believer.

27. He will continue to be in the world, convincing people of sin.

28. There will be saves here.

29. But these people will not be members of the church, but will become subjects (subjects, underneath, subject to authority) of Christ's glorious kingdom.

30. (2 Thessalonians 2:8) After the church has been raptured into heaven, then that wicked one will be revealed to the world. He points out that he will not do so in his time, the apostle overlooks the career of the Antichrist and describes his final condemnation.

31. Then his crazy disobedience to God, his iniquity and ambition to want to be like God will last him in the Tribulation Period.

32. (Revelation 19:15; Isaiah 11:4) "The Lord Jesus will kill him with the spirit of His mouth" and reduce him to helplessness with the manifestation of His life.

33. When He returns to earth to take the throne and reign for a thousand years.

34. (2 Thessalonians 2:9) Wicked whose "advent" (arrival) is in conformity with "the action of Satan."

35. His career resembles "Satan's" because he receives his energy from Satan.

36. (V.2 Thessalonians 2:10) It will carry all kinds of miracles, signs and lying wonders.

37. The Antichrist will present himself unscrupulously, with all kinds of evil to deceive those who perish; to those who despise the Gospel during the Age of Grace but had no "love" for the "truth."

38. (2 Thessalonians 2:11) God will really "send" them a deceptive power of error so that they believe the lie.

39. The lie is naturally the Antichrist's claim to be God.

40. (2 Thessalonians 2:12) If it were now, the one who has not believed in the Age of Grace, it will be difficult to believe later with the Antichrist: God will send a deceptive power.