2 Thessalonians 2:3 tells us, ”Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day (the return of the Lord) shall not come except there come a falling away first...” That verse and chapter continue on, bringing to light some important warnings which will be touched on in a bit, but first let me share a recent an insight regarding this “falling away” stuff.
It seems to have been happening, at least in the Western world, for more than a century. Faith in the Gospel of Jesus Christ has greatly diminished in recent decades. Masses of people have been falling away.
The new insight is that this falling away was inevitable ever since Christ put His social changes into motion. In fact, this great falling away is mostly just the latest iteration of man's most common failing, that of worshiping the work of his own hands.
Jesus Christ, and those who followed in his path, initiated a spiritual and social movement that has changed the world. Male and female, slave and free, Jew and gentile, black and white, are all equally welcome in Christ's mystical body. With that intention at the base of the movement, and aided by the grace visited on each sincere believer, Christians have been able to overcome the divisions thrown at us by unregenerate human nature. With that growth in unity, fellowship and understanding, Christendom, as a culture, has risen to unprecedented heights of beauty and truth. In many ways, this cultural growth has been a centuries long reversal of the fracturing of human culture which occurred at the tower of Babel.
You remember the story. Humanity was all together at the time, and started building a tower that was to reach unto the heavens. Then, in Genesis chapter 11, verses 6,&7 it says, “and the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do; and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down , and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.”
Since the advent of Christ, that fracturing has been getting reversed, but there is a big problem with the process. The problem arises because along with sincere believers (the living wheat seed) there has also grown up a large number of evil, wicked hearted non believers (the noxious weeds, or tares). God has always known they are there, having grown up along side and in the midst of a Christian culture, and like the parable says, the angels will sort out the wheat from the tares in the last days.
Until then, we have a problem. Because of the wonderful achievements of Western culture such as science, industry, human rights, medicine, modern agriculture, and all that, many voices have been raised against continued faith in Christ and God. Their basic idea is that we don't need God anymore because we have science. They foolishly say this while ignoring the fact that science as we know it could not have arisen except in the fertile soil of a Christian culture.
Nonetheless, many boldly proclaim their faith in a Godless existence. God didn't create the universe, or the Earth, or life. They have scientifically investigated it, and even though they have no idea how to replicate creation, they are sure that everything just kind of happened; no God needed thank you very much.
We certainly don't need to rely on some bronze age fictitious character for providing rain and sunshine for food. We have irrigation, and bio-engineered crops. If people have deep emotional problems, we certainly don't want to see them as spiritual problems, but rather they are emotional problem curable by the science of psychology. Or at least the symptoms can be held in check by using the proper drugs. Most of the time.
In that way, science and the high tech culture we have built on the movement of Christ has been co-opted by the wicked hearted tares. Now we worship science, the work of our own minds and hands (gifts from God), and leave any gratitude toward or worship of God out.
Even Christian morals are seen as distinct from Christ. The ideas of equal justice, freedom, mercy, concern for the poor and working for peace have been so (nominally) accepted all over the world that Christ has been relegated to being just a good moral teacher. But the fact is that without the grace that comes with faith in Christ, most folks don't really, can't really, live those moral values out in the real world. Additionally, outside of the Gospel, those values have been merely glued on to other faiths and beliefs, and the glue will not hold in time of stress.
So that is why, in my opinion, the great falling away was inevitable, and therefore predictable. God knew that we would, in following the way of Christ, gain tremendous powers, and many would then start worshiping those powers. Now, let's consider the rest of the thought, which tells us where this falling away leads us.
2 Thessalonians 2;3-11 “Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God. Remember ye not, that, when I was yet with you, I told you these things? And now ye know what withholdeth that he night be revealed in his time. For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way. 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; even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they receive not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall 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.”
Sound like anyone you know?
