This document discusses the rise of the Antichrist according to passages from the Bible. It explains that the Antichrist will oppose God and exalt himself, leading people into rebellion against God. Currently, the spirit of the Antichrist is already at work in the world, moving societies away from Christianity. Eventually, the Holy Spirit will no longer restrain the spirit of lawlessness, paving the way for the Antichrist to come to power through deceptions and false miracles. He will convince the world to worship him instead of God. However, true believers will be saved from experiencing this time through the rapture before the Antichrist is revealed.

1. 9/27/09 AM Meet the Anti-Christ 2 Thessalonians C (2 Thess 2:1-12) The young Christians who lived in the city of Thessalonica were very anxious about THE DAY OF THE LORD. They thought that it had already come and gone. In his second letter to these confused people Paul has already mentioned in 1:7 that on that day, the LORD JESUS CHRIST will be revealed from heaven in a blaze of glory. Since all would agree that this glorious coming of Christ had not yet happened the church cannot have missed it. In chapter 2, Paul now brings up another event that had not happened yet, which the LORD says MUST HAPPEN before the Second Coming of Christ; this is the rise of the “Man of Lawlessness.” We also know him as the Antichrist. There are some, who spend more time thinking about this than I do, who think that President Obama is the AntiChrist…. His meteor-like rise to power out of no where; his alleged lack of a birth-certificate; his thin veneer of Christianity overlaying his Moslem roots, his charisma, his incremental moves to pull American support away from Israel are all cited as reasons to think so. I think I would like to answer this question in an upcoming message. It would be good for us to remember that President Clinton, Boris Yeltsin, Henry Kissinger, Mussolini, Stalin, and Hitler all were touted as possibly being the AntiChrist in their days. Before we turn to current world events though we need to do what we always should do…. start with the Bible. I. 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12 Intro- (read it) In our culture we tend to tell things in the order they happened or sometimes we save the most important part of the conversation until the last. Both Jews and Greeks tend to put the most important news at the beginning. The information Paul gives us about the Anti-Christ in chapter 2 is not a timeline of events. Paul deals with it by theme. He first explains in 3-4 most importantly how this person will set himself up in opposition to God. Then, in 5-7 he explains why the Anti-Christ has not yet arrived. In vs 8 we learn of his ultimate defeat. And lastly, in 9-12, we focus upon his grab for followers. If chapter 2 was in chronological order verse 8 would be where verse 12 is. Because we are who we are, I think we will understand better if we trace this out from beginning to end so I we will not be taking the verses in order. II. The Anti-Christ in the Now In verse 5 Paul reminds them that in the short 3-week period of time he was with them, he taught them about the coming of the lawless one. I’m guessing that the main reason for this was his wanting them to be aware that the Spirit of Anti-Christ was already among them (vs 7a). He calls it “The secret power of lawlessness!” It was obvious to Paul that behind the coming of the ‘man of lawlessness’ there was a powerful ‘spirit of lawlessness’ and that the ultimate arrival of the man only comes after the spirit has worked and worked to make the world ready for him. The Apostle John is actually the only Bible writer who uses the word ‘antichrist’ (5X). I want you to see what he says, “Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come.” (1 Jn 2:18). “but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.” (1 John 4:3) So, here we have the apostle John saying over 1900 hundred years ago that the Spirit of Antichrist was already present and busy. The entire purpose of the Antichrist is summarized in vss 3-4. He opposes God and exalts Himself above Him. His goal is to lead the whole world in a rebellion against the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ. There is a day when a Great Rebellion will set the whole world ablaze with a hatred for God (vs 3) but leading up to that time of open global defiance, the spirit of antichrist will conduct covert work in people, in families, in churches, in denominations, in communities, and in nations to cause them to neglect Christ, to forsake His authority and His Word, to deny the power of His shed blood and His resurrection to attempt to find happiness, purpose and meaning APART from Him. It is by the spirit of antichrist that a man says, “Jesus, YOU will not rule over me. I will be the captain of my own life. I will do as I please, I will be the boss of me!” This hidden, behind-the-scenes activity, will have all the drama of a colony of termites at work on the floors and supporting walls of a house. We see this kind of steady downward action at work in the world today. See what has happened in Europe! Most major universities in this country were established as schools to train Christians to do ministry…. Another example I could cite is the way that the Bible has now been thrown out of schools and the American court system. I was born again when I heard the Gospel preached in GR in Second Baptist Church in 1972. One day I asked where 1st Baptist Church was? I was told that many years before, First Baptist Church (on the East side of the Grand River) started Second Baptist over on the West Side of GR. But in the 1950’s 1st Baptist gradually stopped believing the Bible. Today the church is called Fountain Street Church and the Gospel Message is completely lost. What I am saying is this: the Spirit of antichrist is continually at work in the world today and he is constantly moving people and society toward rejection of the Bible and rebellion against Jesus Christ, the Son of God; All of this sounds pretty grim. So, is there any hope for Jesus and His people in the face of such power, determination and hate? --There is one at work in the world today that wields a power that is greater than the antichrist. It is the Holy Spirit. Look at the 2nd half of verse 7. Someone is holding back the power of lawlessness so that it can not accomplish what it wants to by bringing forward the Antichrist. Look at verse 6. Do you see the words, “at the proper time”? Within the timetable of God’s grand design there is a proper, appointed time for the antichrist to hit the world scene and that absolutely will not happen until God says the time has come! Not only does the Holy Spirit currently have a collar around the neck of the Devil that limits His activity but the Holy Spirit is continually working in the world to set more people free from Satan and sin. The Devil may work to kill the church and shut down all Gospel and it may look like he is gaining the upper hand. But then after a while the Holy Spirit opens an area back up and millions more are saved. ROMANIA, Africa, China, many Moslem countries… They were closed, but now in our day the Gospel is again being proclaimed in these areas. ---The Devil must feel like he is playing a game of capture the flag where the other team keeps setting free the people he just put in jail. III. The Antichrist Revealed I do not have time to prove it this morning, and-- to be frank—it is a point of dispute… but I believe that when the Holy Spirit is ‘taken away’ and ‘the secret power of lawlessness’ is unleashed into the world, that simultaneous with that, will be the removal of all truly born-again people from the earth. To use my definition of faith from last week—all those who have a relationship of trust and dependence upon Jesus Christ will be miraculously taken out of this world in what we have come to call the Rapture of the Church. With the Holy Spirit and all Christ followers gone, the Antichrist will rocket into world-wide prominence like a comet. Verses 9 & 10 report that the ‘lawless one’ will employ counterfeit miracles, signs, and wonders and great works of evil to convince everyone to believe a ‘great lie’ (vs 11). We will look more carefully at this later but the Bible says that the whole world will go after him; the entire world will be astonished at him and will follow him. It says that he will lead the whole world astray. In His teaching about this, Jesus says that the lies and deception will be so convincing that even true believers would be fooled if that were possible. In verse 11 & 12 we have a very important contrast. A lie is mentioned in vs 11 and the truth is mentioned in vs 12. The Antichrist is the promoter of a ‘Great Lie.’ The Great lie is described in vs 4 in a clear and plain manner (read it). The purpose of all the deception and trickery and the astonishing works of wonder is to convince people that the antichrist is a god who is worthy of worship. Of course, he is NOT GOD and is not worthy of the worship of any of God’s creatures but, then, that is what the ‘great lie’ is all about! The shocking thing about antichrist’s claim to be god is that the world will believe it! Remember that the Holy Spirit will not be here to guide people toward the truth; the true church will be gone; every born-again person will be gone; and every Bible probably will have been thrown into the fire. The main goal of the antichrist won’t really be to get people to worship him as god—it will be to get people to rebel against the true God (vs 3). Verse 10 & vs 12 both mention the TRUTH! Here is the truth—Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the 2nd person of the Godhead, come to earth as a human being. Jesus, the God-Man, lived a perfect life, and then died on the cross to pay sin’s guilt-price Hebrews 2:17 “… He had to be made like His (human) brothers in every way, in order that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that He might make atonement for the sins of the people.” Jesus Christ rose from the dead and now sits at the right hand of the Father, waiting for the moment when He returns in glory, wrests the world away from those who would deny Him and, finally receives the glory and honor and praise that is due to Him. To believe in Jesus is to accept Him as your forgiver and leader now! Our passage makes it as clear as it possibly could be, that to believe this truth means salvation (10c) but to reject God and believe in the lie means condemnation (vs 12). Allow me a moment to explain why all who believe the lie will be condemned. It is not so much that God is angry because people have believed in someone else instead of Him (like a girl that is upset that she didn’t get asked to the dance). It is because of the sins of the people who have rejected Him. Jesus is the one who has paid sin’s debt—what then will be the fate of those who have no savior? They will answer for their own sin and THAT is the reason for their condemnation. This is precisely what John 3:36 says, “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on him.” Why are we studying this? I believe that a thinking, Bible believing person could reasonably conclude that world conditions could be headed in THIS direction. We will see. There is much more to be learned and analyzed in the weeks ahead. I DO KNOW THIS: The Spirit of antichrist is already here and he wants to lead people away from the truth. If you are here this morning and have yet to embrace Jesus as your savior and leader I plead with you to put off your decision no longer……