Man has two natures within him, the first is that of the seed of grace that remains hidden while the second is predominate it is evil and is in subjection to the god of the world, the prince of the power of the air and is no more than ones own selfish will and desire. It is manifest in the will of man or the selfish nature of willful disobedience; this is shown in covetousness, pride, anger or wrath and envy. The other thing is that we have two kingdoms at work around us both are invisible one reaches into the universe and contains life and love for eternity. The other only governs this world and is known as the spirit of the world (or the prince of the power of the air) and in it are all manors of evil, wrath and death. Mans fall placed man and this earth under a curse and is subject to this nature which is temporal because it will end in death and great fire. All those who choose to walk in rebellion or disobedience are known as the lawless ones, for they choose not too willingly surrender to God’s revealed will, when they know His will but do not fall into His will, they are called the wicked ones.
It matters not what denomination or religious group that people are affiliated with for all man fall short of the revealed requirement for entry into the kingdom of God. Mankind walks in sin and are demonic no exceptions. Those who of their own free will choose, as Christ said “I came only to do my Fathers will”, to put their will into His hands completely will become sons of God again. Just as it says in another place “the earnest expectation of the world awaits the revealing of the sons of God” for after this happens creation will go through the process of regeneration back to what it was at the first, though only for a short period of time [7 years], then the one thousand years reign of the King of Israel.
This can be also noted with Matthew 12: 30-32 in the introduction that was entitled “The Intolerance of Jesus”. Here again: “He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathers not with me scatters abroad. Wherefore I say to you, all manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven men. And whosoever speaks a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaks against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come.” Many do not know nor are they aware of their actions because of the veil that covers them as was shown in both our studies on Israel’s blindness (Romans 11:25) and the veil that covers the gentiles’ minds (2 Corinthians 4:3-4) causing unbelief and blindness in them as in Israel. Those to whom God will give a reprobate mind to believe a lie just as He did Pharaoh.
See also the papers on the "Unveiling of Satan", "Lawless, iniquity, evil and wickedness" and through this is the last of the secrets or mysteries found revealed to Paul by the risen Lord. This is not the end of the teachings that the Lord reveals to us by His Spirit in us as we sit under God listening. He reveals to His people, who He is, what He's doing today through His New Covenant of Grace, His development of God's character within those who remain receptive to His teaching. He reveals the Gospel of Grace and His continuing work within us to the perfect and mature man, as He fills us all in all.
2Thessalonians 2:1-15
Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to Him, we ask you, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by a spirit or a spoken word, or a letter seeming to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord* has come. Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, (defiant rejection of God, wickedness) the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God. Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you these things? You know what is restraining him now so that he may be revealed in his time. For the mystery of lawlessness (transgression, wickedness, and unrighteousness) is already at work. Only He who now restrains it will do so until He is out of the way (the more correct word is “departure”, the mystical Body of Christ). Then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of His mouth and bring to nothing by the appearance of His coming. The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved**. Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness. But we are bound to give thanks to God always for you, beloved of the Lord, for that God chose you from the beginning to salvation in sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth: whereto He called you through our gospel, to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. So then, stand fast, and hold the traditions which you were taught, whether by word, or by epistle of ours.
[This is a new and living way in that one chooses to pass from death [natural life] into life by way of regeneration [spiritual] a thing that the flesh of man can not accomplish in it’s self it is a sovereign action of God and solely done by Him in us when we choose to in trust to obey the revealed word. The spirit of the world has been working what seems to be over time now for the past 6000 years deceiving many through another gospel, it is not the Gospel of Grace nor is it anything to do with the New Covenant of God's Grace.]
* The day of the Lord is the starting of the tribulation period with mans wrath and judgment [which has building up upon him] on
all disobedience, lawlessness, bestial natural and unbelief (the pagan church, and all blasphemers).
** Truth and so be saved: Christ’s death, burial and resurrection for our redemption and salvation by His blood through faith (1 Cor. 15.1- 6, Rom. 10.9-10, 1 Thes. 4.14; Rom. 3:25) the finished work of the cross, they are therefore called the enemies of the cross and blood of Christ and the footstool of Christ.
Can any one imagine the gross cause that will beset the known churches of this day when the hundreds of thousands will still be seating in their pews looking for the few who will be the called out. We feel that the grossness of the err that has hold on the church world and that is causing the blindness needs to be warned of in a much stronger fashion it is for this reason that these papers and studies are being done.
The revealing of the Lawless
2 Thessalonians 2:1-15
To know the purpose of Jesus Christ, and what the New Birth is all about we need to understand and know what was lost in the fall of Adam, what was given away or thrown away by his action of free will. What he fell into by taking this action of self will and what we then are to recover through our action of free will back into God. When we know this we can know what the lawlessness is and whether we are a part of it and what action we must take to come out of its influence and control, to this end is the rest of this to reveal. Jesus told His disciples to take heed how you hear and to what they heard or listened to; it would do us all well to heed to the same caution. There is at times more revealed by what is not said in the scriptures than what is said, so hear or listen closely.
“They have awakened something in me which I never felt before, something much deeper than any of my reasoning’s, and over which I have no power; it glows in my soul, like a fire, or hunger, which nothing can satisfy, but a further view of those great truths, which I this day expect from the opening of them to us the mysteries of heaven revealed”.
This quote is taken from a book by William Law 1686-1761, this so nicely fits me that I had to include it here.
In The Beginning the starting point.
Genesis 1:27-28 God created Man in his image and in His likeness, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. (a.) God blessed them; and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the heavens, and over every animal that moves on the earth.
(a. The first mystery is that man was complete within himself, he had both male and female reproduction capability.)
[Man is given authority over all of this renewed creation and is put over it to keep it under his feet, to subdue it and have dominion over it. He is created as a mirror image, having a portion of each member of the triune Godhead, Elohim in his nature (they are fire, light and Spirit) or Christ in him (conjoined to God). A perfect, complete person, immortal, Holy, Righteous, and Just, a spirit being clothed within glory and having a body of flesh which was made of the dust of the earth. He is crowned with glory and honor and walks with God as a divine spirit being a little higher than the angels, a true son of God.]
[John 1:1-5 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him; and without him was not anything made that hath been made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness; and the darkness apprehended it not.
Colossians 1:15-17 He who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in Him were all things created, in the heavens and upon the earth, things visible and things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things have been created through [in] Him, and to Him; and He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.
Ephesians 1:4-6 Even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us for adoption as sons through [in] Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace, with which He has blessed us in the Beloved.
Ephesians 2:10 We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.]
Genesis 2:7-9 Elohim formed Man, from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and Man became a living soul. Elohim planted a garden in Eden eastward, and there put Man whom he had formed. Out of the ground Elohim made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; and the tree of life, in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
[The Life force, the vary nature and character {Grace, Righteousness, Holiness, Justice, Love} of God, a spirit being, in love, in light, living in the glory and the kingdom of God that was within him and that was the vary realm of his divine being. A love creature created to respond to the God of love in perfection. Adam was born into the Divine life, he has the position of being in both heaven and earth. A spirit being, breathed into man the breath of lives and he became a living soul, made a little lower than the angels made out of the earth in order to multiply and bring in sons of like nature of perfection, in contact with his creator in both heaven and on earth. The ground: The elements of the earth are wind, earth, water and fire. The materials of the earth are darkness, fire, death, wrath, sickness, and thickness. These relate to pride, selfishness, wrath, and envy. Nature is broken off from God. All this was caused by the fallen angels of the rebellion when they hit the earth and took possession of the earth, prior to the renewal of the earth, in eternity past.]
Genesis 2:15 The Lord God took man, and put him into the paradise of pleasure, to dress it, and to keep it.
[This is heaven on earth, in the goodness, and pleasure of the kingdom of God.]
Genesis 2:16-17 Elohim commanded man, saying, of every tree of the garden you shall freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat of it; for in the day that you eat of it you will certainly die.
[This is a spiritual separation from the nature and character {Grace} of God and the putting of man on the level of the animal life with the animals fearing man and man having the bestial nature or nature of all that is evil. To choose to have the eyes of man opened, to the flesh and blood and the nature of the natural life that all the rest of creation experienced or lived in. This is the first command of God with a condition or promise given to humanity (do this and then this will happen). This command and its condition holds to all even today.]
Genesis 2:19-20 The Lord God having formed out of the ground all the beasts of the earth, and all the fowls of the air, brought them to Adam to see what he would call them: for whatsoever Adam called any living creature the same is its name. Adam called all the beasts by their names, and all the fowls of the air, and all the cattle of the field: but for Adam there was not found a helper like himself.
[Adams first signs of craving or desiring through reasoning for the nature of the animal, something more within himself, the spirit of the world is given seed, than his normal relationship with God and His love. This desire is a flaw of mans will and proves to become his down fall, just as it did the fallen angels. The animals have no ignorance of what concerns them, they have a sensible intuitive knowledge of everything that is required for food, shelter, and reproduction and Adam desired this knowledge. It is better known as the knowledge of the world.]
Genesis 2:18 The Lord God said: It is not good for man to be alone: let us make him a help like to himself. [Woman is mans first line of salvation, for Adams turning from God and His love, to desiring what he saw in the animal kingdom in the pairs and in the plant life. Woman is mans completion or help meet, being taken from Adam to carry the seed. As man is Christ’s help meet being taken from Him and will be reunited within Him again.]
Genesis 2:21-23 Then the Lord God cast a deep sleep upon Adam: and when he was fast asleep, he took one of his ribs, and filled up flesh for it. The Lord God built the rib which he took from Adam into a woman: and brought her to Adam. Adam said: “This now is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man.”
[Woman now carries the seed [asleep deep within awaiting the word] of mans redemption within her. (John chapter one)]
Genesis 3:1-7 The serpent was craftier than any animal of the field which Elohim had made. It said to the woman, is it even so, that God has said you shall not eat of every tree of the garden? The woman said to the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, God has said, you shall not eat of it, and you shall not touch it, lest you die. The serpent said to the woman, you will not certainly die; but God knows that in the day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be as god, knowing good and evil. The woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a pleasure for the eyes, and the tree was to be desired to give intelligence; and she took of its fruit, and ate, and gave also to her husband with her, and he ate. The eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. They sewed fig-leaves together, and made themselves aprons.
[The chief angel, Satan, that lead the rebellion, who took with him his regiment when thrown out of heaven and fell to the earth, being the spirit of the world that corrupted it, and everything on it and in it. Questioning the vary word of God and causing doubt, reasoning {unbelief} that birthed lust in the mind of the woman. The seed of self will, the desire or lust for the thing the bestial nature is given root in mans nature. Adams free will choice separates him from being a little below angels, a spiritual being, that God had made him to be, changed into the bestial nature of the serpent, animal life, subject to the worldly spirit and all manor of evil, demonic and made him a slave to that nature. The nature and character of God and the glory of God dies and becomes a seed (this seed, made of righteousness, holiness, and justification draws man to desire God) the size of a mustard seed within man, this seed then is passed on through woman. The blood is defiled, for the life of man is in the blood. This seed contains all the nature and likeness of God but requires the operation of God upon it to come to life again. An action of mans free will of choice, that allows the light of God to begin life again in that seed, as a seed of grain has to have the out ward husk (this is the evil that sealed the good of God) to die before the ovule can bring forth new life, God in man again in regeneration and redemption.]
Genesis 3:9-13 The Lord God called Adam, and said to him: Where are you Adam? He said: I heard your voice in paradise; and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself. He said to him: And who has told you that you are naked, but that you have eaten of the tree whereof I commanded you that you should not eat? Adam said: the woman, whom you gave me to be my companion, gave me of the tree, and I did eat. The Lord God said to the woman: Why have you done this? She answered: the serpent deceived me, and I did eat.
[The second encounter with deception and again the choice is turned to self will above that which was commanded the vary thing that caused Lucifer to fall in the first place. Now man is the slave of the bestial nature and all of its ugly components, the thing that the earth is made up of i.e. darkness, fire, thickness, death, wrath, disease and all the offspring of them.]
[Ephesians 2:4-9 God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together within Christ--by grace you have been saved---and raised us up within Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. By grace you have been saved through faith. This is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
1Corinthians 15:22 In Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.]
Genesis 3:14-20 The Lord God said to the serpent: because you have done this thing, you are cursed among all cattle, and beasts of the earth: upon your breast, belly shall you go, and earth shall you eat all the days of your life. I will put enmities between you and the woman, and your seed and her seed she shall crush your head, and you shall lie in wait for her heel. To the woman he said: I will multiply your sorrows, and your conceptions: in sorrow shall you bring forth children, and you shall be under your husband's power, and he shall have dominion over you. To Adam he said: because you have hearkened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded you, that you should not eat, cursed is the earth in your work: with labor and toil shall you eat thereof all the days of thy life. Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to you, and you shall eat the herbs of the earth. In the sweat of thy face shall you eat bread till you return to the earth out of which you were taken: for dust you are, and into dust you shall return. Adam called the name of his wife Eve: because she was the mother of all the living.
[The serpent; is the spirit of the world, its worldliness with its desires for more and of self hatred or wrath and their evil offspring. The establishing and the placement of the seed of redemption to reestablish the kingdom of God in the soul of man, the way is made for the death of mans self will and slavery to all evil in his fallen nature to be dealt with. The promise of a coming redeemer that will destroy the evil nature contained in fallen man by the destruction of the flesh. God is setting up the wrath to come in the enmity of the two seeds as contained in the flesh of man.]
Genesis 3:21-23 The Lord God made for Adam and his wife garments of skins, and clothed them. He said: behold Adam is become as one of us, knowing good and evil: now therefore lest perhaps he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever. The Lord God sent him out of the paradise of pleasure, to till the earth from which he was taken.
[The first action of atonement with the shedding of blood, the covering with skins to cove mans sin. This is the required first action for recovery or redemption of man to a place of at-one-ment with his creator. Notice the Lord God took the first step toward mans redemption.]
1Corinthians 15:45-49 It is written, "The first man Adam became a living being"; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. It is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.
Genesis 5:3 When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth.
[Seth is the father of Noah, Noah is the father of Shem, Shem is the great grand father of Eber and a cousin to Abram, [who will become known as Abraham] as found in the book of Jasher in it, and it is told that Abram [at the age of ten] stayed with Noah and Shem to learn the ways of the Lord for twenty-nine years. Shem is the king of Salem and the high priest of the Most High God.]
“The will of the creature is the only opener of all evil or good in the creature. The will stands between God and nature and must in its entire workings unite either with God or nature. The will totally resigned and given up to God is one spirit with God and God dwells in it. The will turned from God is taken prisoner in the wrath, fire, sickness and darkness of nature.” A quote taken from “The Spirit of Prayer” by William Law 1686-1761
Luke 1:26-35 The angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin's name was Mary. He came to her and said, "Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!" She was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name [Emmanuel] Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end." Mary said to the angel, "How will this be, since I am a virgin?" The angel answered her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy--the Son of God.
Luke 1:37-38 Nothing will be impossible with God." Mary said, "Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word." And the angel departed from her.
[Mary was a yielded vessel for the Lord, He already had the seed in her from Adam, and this seed contained all of the nature and character of God. The Holy Spirit brought the Light of Life into this seed and the Son of God was then conceived. This same seed is in us all and the life of God is still contained in it, within us, we just have to be a yielded vessel.]
Words and their meanings:
Apostasy: An abandonment of what one has professed; a total desertion, or departure from one's faith or religion.
Apostate: One who has forsaken the church, sect or profession to which he before adhered. In its original sense, applied to one who has abandoned his religion; but correctly applied also to one who abandons a political or other party.
Beastliness: [from beastly] Brutality; coarseness, vulgarity; filthiness; a practice contrary to the rules of Humanity, mans fallen nature taken the from the devil or serpent. Beastly: Like a beast; brutal; coarse; filthy; contrary to the nature and dignity of man. Having the form or nature of the beast.
Conjoin: To join together, without any thing intermediate; to unite two or more persons or things in close connection; as, to conjoin friends; to conjoin man and woman in marriage. To associate, or connect; let that which he learns next be nearly conjoined with what he knows already.
CONJOIN, v.i. To unite; to join; to league.
Counterpart: [help meet] The correspondent part; the part that answers to another, as the two papers of a contract or indentures; a copy; a duplicate. Also, the part which fits another, as the key of a cipher. In music, the part to be applied to another; as, the base is the counterpart to the treble. To be in one accord or in harmony with.
Covetousness: A strong or inordinate desire of obtaining and possessing some supposed good; usually in a bad sense, and applied to an inordinate desire of wealth or avarice. Out of the heart proceeds covetousness. Mortify your members--and covetousness which is idolatry. A strong desire; eagerness.
Crafty: Cunning; artful; skillful in devising and pursuing a scheme, by deceiving others, or by taking advantage of their ignorance; wily; sly; fraudulent.
Cunning: Knowing; skillful; experienced; well-instructed. It is applied to all kinds of knowledge, but generally and appropriately, to the skill and dexterity of artificers, or the knowledge acquired by experience. Art; artifice; artfulness; craft; shrewdness; the faculty or act of using stratagem to accomplish
a purpose. Hence in a bad sense, deceitfulness or deceit; fraudulent skill or dexterity.
Darkness: Obscurity; want of clearness or perspicuity; that quality or state which renders any thing difficult to be understood; as the darkness of counsels. A state of being intellectually clouded; ignorance. Infernal gloom; hell; as utter darkness. Great trouble and distress; calamities; perplexities.
Enmity: The quality of being an enemy; the opposite of friendship; ill will; hatred; unfriendly dispositions; malevolence. It expresses more than aversion and less than malice, and differs from displeasure in denoting a fixed or rooted hatred, whereas displeasure is more transient. The carnal mind is enmity against God. (Rom 8.) A state of opposition between two natures. The friendship of the world is enmity with
God. (James 4.)
Harmony: a setting together, a closure or seam, agreement, concert, to fit or adapt, to square. The just adaptation of parts to each other, in any system or composition of things, intended to form a connected whole; as the harmony of the universe.
Infidel: Unbelieving; disbelieving the inspiration of the Scriptures, or the divine institution of, the divine origin of Christianity. One who has no religion.
Iniquity: Injustice; unrighteousness; a deviation from rectitude; as the iniquity of war; the iniquity of the slave trade. Want of rectitude in principle; as a malicious prosecution originating in the iniquity of the author. A particular deviation from rectitude; a sin or crime; wickedness; any act of injustice. Original want of holiness or depravity.
Lawless: Not subject to law; unrestrained by law; as a lawless tyrant; lawless men.
Contrary to law; illegal; unauthorized; as a lawless claim.He needs no indirect nor lawless course. Not subject to the ordinary laws of nature; uncontrolled. He, meteor-like, flames lawless through the void.
Lawlessness: The quality or state of being unrestrained by law; disorder.
Leaven: Any thing which makes a general change in the mass. It generally means something which corrupts or depraves that with which it is mixed. A little leaven leavens the whole lump, to taint; to imbue.
Taint: To imbue or impregnate, as with some extraneous matter which alters the sensible qualities of the substance. More generally, to impregnate with something odious, noxious or poisonous; as, putrid substances taint the air. To be infected or corrupted; to be touched with something corrupting. Infection; corruption; deprivation. Keep children from the taint of low and vicious company.
Hypocrisy: Simulation; a feigning to be what one is not; or dissimulation, a concealment of one's real character or motives. More generally, hypocrisy is simulation, or the assuming of a false appearance of virtue or religion; a deceitful show of a good character, in morals or religion; a counterfeiting of religion.
Simulation; deceitful appearance; false pretense.
Idolatry: to worship or serve. The worship of any idols, images, or any thing made by hands, or which is not God. Idolatry is of two kinds; the worship of images, statues, pictures, &c. made by hands; and the worship of the heavenly bodies, the sun, moon and stars, or of demons, angels, men and animals. Excessive attachment or veneration for any thing, or that which borders on adoration.
Idolatrous: Pertaining to idolatry; partaking of the nature of idolatry, or of the worship of false gods; consisting in the worship of idols; as idolatrous worship. Consisting in or partaking of an excessive attachment or reverence; as an idolatrous veneration for antiquity.
Idolater: A worshiper of idols; one who pays divine honors to images, statues, or representations of any thing made by hands; one who worships as a deity that which is not God; a pagan. An adorer; a great admirer.
Malice: Extreme enmity of heart, or malevolence; a disposition to injure others without cause, from mere personal gratification or from a spirit of revenge; unprovoked malignity or spite.
Rectitude: In morality, rightness of principle or practice; uprightness of mind; exact conformity to truth, or to the rules prescribed for moral conduct, either by divine or human laws. Rectitude of mind is the disposition to act in conformity to any known standard of right, truth or justice; rectitude of conduct is the actual conformity to such standard. Perfect rectitude belongs only to the Supreme Being. The more nearly the rectitude of men approaches to the standard of the divine law, the more exalted and dignified is their character. Want of rectitude is not only sinful, but debasing.
Sin: The voluntary departure of a moral agent from a known rule of rectitude or duty, prescribed by God; any voluntary transgression of the divine law, or violation of a divine command; a wicked act; iniquity. Sin is either a positive act in which a known divine law is violated, or it is the voluntary neglect to obey a positive divine command, or a rule of duty clearly implied in such command. Sin comprehends not action only, but neglect of known duty, all evil thoughts purposes, words and desires, whatever is contrary to God's commands or royal law of Love and Grace, known as God's divine law. (1 John 3. Mat 15. James 4.) Sinners neither enjoy the pleasures of nor the peace of piety. Among divines, sin is original or actual. Actual sin, above defined, is the act of a moral agent in violating a known rule of duty. Original sin, as generally understood, is native depravity of heart to the divine will, that corruption of nature of deterioration of the moral character of man, which is supposed to be the effect of Adam's apostasy; and which manifests itself in moral agents by positive act of disobedience to the divine will, or by the voluntary neglect to comply with the express commands of God, which require that we should love God with all the heart and soul and strength and mind, and our neighbor as ourselves. This native depravity or alienation of affections from God and his law, is supposed to be what the apostle calls the carnal mind or mindedness, which is enmity against God, and is therefore denominated sin or sinfulness. Unpardonable sin, or blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, is supposed to be a malicious and obstinate rejection of Christ and the gospel plan of salvation, or a contemptuous resistance made to the influences and convictions of the Holy Spirit. (Mat 12.)
Sin differs from crime, not in nature, but in application. That, which is a crime against society, is sin against God.
To depart voluntarily from the path of duty prescribed by God man; to violate the divine law in any particular, by actual transgression or by the neglect or non-observance of its injunctions; to violate any known rule of duty. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Rom 3. Against thee, thee only, have I sinned. (Psa 51.)
Perdition: Entire loss or ruin; utter destruction; in this sense, the word is now nearly or wholly obsolete. The utter loss of the soul or of final happiness in a future state; future misery or eternal death. The impenitent sinner is condemned to final perdition. If we reject the truth, we seal our own perdition.
Unrighteousness: Injustice; a violation of the divine law, or of the plain principles of justice and equity; wickedness. Unrighteousness may consist of a single unjust act, but more generally, when applied to persons, it denotes an habitual course of wickedness. (Rom 1:6. 2 Cor 6.) Every transgression of the law is unrighteousness.
Wickedness: Departure from the rules of the divine law; evil disposition or practices; immorality; crime; sin; sinfulness; corrupt manners Wickedness generally signifies evil practices, wickedness expresses also the corrupt dispositions of the heart.
Now the work of revealing lawlessness:
We have to take it from the beginning to show where the source of all evil came from and how it came to be in man. Israel thought that it was above the evil of the Gentiles or nations and therefore missed the whole of the law and the prophets. Because of the first captivity and scattering of Israel the word of God was contaminated by their leaders before their return. The teachings of Moses and the script was altered, this angered the Lord, and Israel began the caring on with the pagan practices in the Temple and the high places of the land. The Baalim and Molack type of worship was all over the place and the leadership of the Temple were the main parties to it. Its religious leaders actually kept the people from gaining entry into the kingdom of heaven because of the twisting of the word, by their not knowing the signs of the Lords entry and the time of His visitation and of their completion or the end of the times. The Gentiles were envied by the Jews because they did not have a Law to answer to, a Law that did not give repentance or forgiveness to those who broke it. As it was in the Lords day, today there are many who do not know the word or the Gospel of God’s Grace, they are part of the description that was warned of by the Lord Jesus, Paul, Peter and the others. They are blending the old into the new and the new into the old, they like Israel before are teaching Jewish history, instead of rightly dividing the word of truth and the dispensations of Gods dealing with man, Israel and mankind again. God being a Spirit and all goodness in light is seeking those who would turn from their own, evil, selfish, wicked ways to Him in love from a sincere heart of their own free will and accord. The first and the second commandments are a free will action on all our parts. Man has wrath and all manor of evil in him, just as he is capable of having the nature and character of God or the kingdom of God within him. It is mans free will choice as to which he will bow his knee and choose to serve for we can not serve two masters, though he has two natures within.
There were two kings in Israel’s history that were the epitome of Satan, we show them in “the Unveiling of Satan” a paper that will follow this one. They can be found in Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 for those that may wont to get a sneak peak.
2Thessalonians 2:3-4 Let no man beguile you in any wise: for it will not be, except the falling away (departure, is the more correct word of usage here) come first, and the man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition, 4 he that opposes and exalts himself against all that is called God or that is worshiped; so that he sits in the temple of God, setting himself up as God.
2Thessalonians 2:8 Then the lawless one will be revealed, (this person is a Gentile a vary wicked person or is he?) whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of his mouth and bring to nothing by the appearance of his coming.
2Thessalonians 2:9-12 He, whose coming is according to the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceit of unrighteousness for them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. For this cause God sends them a working of error, that they should believe a lie: that they all might be judged who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
In the above scripture passages taken from our text we have the nature of all fallen man described, mans evil nature revealed, the church or institutions of religious worship and ceremony, their evil nature is revealed. He that sits in the temple of God is the self, self-love, wrath, covetousness, pride, selfishness and all manor of evil that is in the heart of natural, carnal, practical, reasoning, earthy, and worldly man. And all are enmity before God. The following reveal more of this nature.
The Nature of Natural Man revealed
Matthew 16:6 Jesus said to them, see and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees [though not mentioned the scribes are apart of this group].
Matthew 16:12 Then they comprehended that he did not speak of being beware of the leaven of bread, but of the doctrine [teaching] of the Pharisees and Sadducees.
Mark 8:15 He charged them, saying, take heed, and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the leaven of Herod. [The craftiness of the spirit of the world and its enmity toward God.]
Luke 12:1 In those times , the myriads of the crowd being gathered together, so that they trod one on another, he began to say to his disciples first, Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.
1Corinthians 5:6-8 Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Purge out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, according as you are unleavened. For also our Passover, Christ, has been sacrificed. Let us celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, nor with leaven of malice and wickedness, but with unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. [Humility]
1Corinthians 3:3 For you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you of the flesh and behaving only in a human way?
2Corinthians 12:20 I fear that perhaps when I come I may find you not as I wish, and that you may find me not as you wish--that perhaps there may be quarreling, jealousy, anger, hostility, slander, gossip, conceit, and disorder.
1Peter 2:1 Put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander.
Ecclesiastes 9:3 This is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that there is one event to all: yes also, the heart of the sons of men are full of evil, and madness is in their heart while they live, and after that they go to the dead.
Luke 12:15 He [Jesus] said to them, take heed, and keep yourselves from all covetousness: for a man's life consists not in the abundance of the things which he possesses.
Ephesians 2:1-3 You were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience-- among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
2Timothy 2:16-18 Shun profane babblings: for they will proceed further in ungodliness, and their word will eat as does a gangrene: or whom is Hymenaeus an Philetus; men who concerning the truth have erred, saying that the resurrection is past already, and overthrow the faith of some. [The simple distortion of the word of scripture.]
Galatians 5:19-21 Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
Titus 3:3 We ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another.
James 1:14-15 Each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.
James 4:1-4 What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? [This spirit of the world that put us all into sin, the nature of the evil one, the lawless one, the every nature or make up of man. That is heaping upon its self its own wrath onto the day of wrath.] Therefore whoever wishes [This is a free will chose of each individual as it was with Adam.] to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
Mark 7:20-23 He [Jesus] said, "What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person."
Matthew 13:20-22 He that was sown upon the rocky places, this is he that hears the word, and straightway with joy receives it; yet he has no root in himself, but endures for a while; and when tribulation or persecution arise because of the word, straightway he stumbles. He that was sown among the thorns, this is he that hears the word; and the care of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches, choke the word, and he becomes unfruitful.
[The every day pressures of life do this and natural man is over come by it.]
1Thessalonians 2:15-16 Who both killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove out us, and pleased not God, and are contrary to all men; forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they may be saved; to fill up their sins always: but the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost.
[These are the false disciples of the Lord, the hireling, the wolf in sheep’s clothing, those who climb up and enter the sheep pen another way.]
1John 2:16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the vain glory of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.
2Timothy 3:1-5 Know this, that in the last days grievous times shall come. Men shall be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, haughty, railers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, implacable, slanderers, without self-control, fierce, no lovers of good, traitors, headstrong, puffed up, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God; holding a form of godliness, but having denied the power thereof: from these also turn away.
2Timothy 3:8-9 Even as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also withstand the truth. Men corrupted in mind, reprobate concerning the faith. But they shall proceed no further. Their folly shall be evident to all men, as theirs also came to be.
Matthew 24:4-10 Jesus answered and said to them, Take heed that no man lead you astray. Many shall come in my name, saying, I am the Christ; and shall lead many astray. You shall hear of wars and rumors of wars; see that ye be not troubled: for these things must needs come to pass; but the end is not yet. Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; and there shall be famines and earthquakes in divers places. But all these things are the beginning of travail. Then shall they deliver you up to tribulation, and shall kill you: and you shall be hated of all the nations for my name's sake. Then shall many stumble, and shall deliver up one another, and shall hate one another.
Matthew 24:11-13 Many false prophets shall arise, and shall lead many astray. Because iniquity shall be multiplied, the love of the many shall wax cold. He that endures to the end, the same shall be saved.
Revelation 17:1-6 There came one of the seven angels that had the seven bowls, and spoke with me, saying, Come here, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot that sits upon many waters; [waters refers to the nations of the earth] with whom the kings [political, educational and religious leaders] of the earth committed fornication, and they that dwell in the earth were made drunken with the wine of her fornication. [The kings mans wisdom, reasoning, knowledge, mother nature, mother earth, new age, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam ..i.e.] He carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness: and I saw a woman sitting upon a scarlet-colored beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and decked with gold and precious stone and pearls, having in her hand a golden cup full of abominations, even the unclean things of her fornication, 5 and upon her forehead a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, and THE MOTHER OF THE HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. And when I saw her, I wondered with a great wonder.
Isaiah 24:1-6 Behold, Elohim makes the earth empty, and makes it waste, and turns it upside down, and scatters abroad the inhabitants thereof. It shall be, as with the people, so with the priest; as with the servant, so with his master; as with the maid, so with her mistress; as with the buyer, so with the seller; as with the creditor, so with the debtor; as with the taker of interest, so with the giver of interest to him. The earth shall be utterly emptied, and utterly laid waste; for Elohim has spoken this word. The earth mourns and fades away, the world languishes and fades away, the lofty people of the earth do languish. The earth also is polluted under the inhabitants thereof; because they have transgressed the laws, violated the statutes, broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore has the curse devoured the earth, and they that dwell therein are found guilty: therefore the inhabitants of the earth are burned, and few men left.
Matthew 25:31-34 When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the angels with him, then shall he sit on the throne of his glory: and before him shall be gathered all the nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats; and he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. Then shall the King say to them on his right hand, Come, you blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
These are but a few of the warnings available to us in the word and just the start to the scriptures that reveal the nature of the lawless one(s?).
This is the spirit of the world that filled Adam the moment that he surrendered all to the evil nature, the bestial nature of flesh and blood with eyes turned inward and brought the curse on all nature and man. The flesh that was made from the earth and that which contaminated it, it was also the part that made man different from the angels, a living soul with the seed of God encased in the inside of its soul. Now wrath is at work against wrath or enmity against enmity both are at work within man. Mans fallen nature is hostile and is against the truth and the light of Gods nature of love and the regenerated life of Christ in His creation. Christ a spirit being in the flesh of sinful man put to death that nature of man and by doing that put an end to sins influence over man, man is freed from the slavery to sins influences which is revealed by the law, thereby bringing in reconciliation to all who would receive Him [light, truth and love] into themselves.
The quality of a true Shepherd
John 10:1-21 Truly, truly, I tell you, He that enters not by the door into the fold of the sheep, but climbs up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber.
[Those that have taken on the form of a pastor or teachers role, someplace they are called angels of light, with out first becoming a disciple of Christ and the discipline of the cross.]
[2Corinthians 11:14-15 No wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds. Study Revelations chapter 17 and the scarlet woman {this is the religions of the world Jewish, Christian and Islamic} riding the on the beast.] But he that enters in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. [Those that have willingly been disciplined by the cross and the putting to death of the flesh and the desire of the world contained in that flesh. Who have followed the pattern of Christ and Paul as their example.] To him the porter opens; [Saul of Tarsus could be this porter. For to Paul alone were the mysteries revealed from the risen Lord, the revelations of those secrets that had been hid in God from before the foundation of the world, which is the voice of the risen Lord or the Light contained in the truth.] and the sheep hear his voice: and he calls his own sheep by name, and leads them out. When he has put out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him: for they know his voice. [They are His disciples and willfully subject themselves to the operation of the discipline of the cross.] A stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him: for they know not the voice of strangers. [His disciples have put to the death the flesh because to follow the Lord it is a required activity. For the flesh of regenerated man can not be composed of two natures.] This parable spoke Jesus to them: but they understood not what things they were which he spoke to them. Jesus therefore said to them again, truly, truly, [of a truth] I tell you, I am the door of the sheep. [I am the entry point through which all that follow me must come. This is speaking of His death, burial, resurrection and ascension that is to come.] All that came before me are thieves and robbers: the sheep did not hear them. I am the door; by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and go out, and shall find pasture. [This is the garden of paradise or the kingdom of God within the regenerated divine, spiritual being gained in only one fashion. Through the discipline of the cross, which is an operation of the Holy Spirit, who has given life in the regenerated seed of God, these find the rest of God deep within their souls.]
[John 3:5-7 Jesus answered, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water [word] and the Spirit [Spirit to spirit seed], he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, 'You must be born again.' [Eph 5:26 He sanctified the church [not to be confused with the church as it is seen now] having cleansed it by the washing with the pure water of the word of life.] The thief comes not, but that he may steal, and kill, and destroy: [This action took place in the garden when Adam ate of the fruit and became a sense ruled human being on the same level as the animals and has been being carried on in natural reasoning man ever since.] I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly. [The restoring of the kingdom of God back into man and the regeneration of mans spirit to what it was, God’s Spirit within man. That realm in which Adam first lived, as a spirit being with all the fullness of the Godheads nature within him, and the abundant life in the garden of God’s paradise and the kingdom of God. That he was to have total dominion over and to subdue.] I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. [The shepherd that follows Christ in the regeneration does just that, he lays down his life as Paul did his in response to the Lord’s request.] He that is a hireling, and not a shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, beholds the wolf coming, and leaves the sheep, and flees, and the wolf snatches them, and scatters them: he flees because he is a hireling, and cares not for the sheep. [The action of scattering the sheep has been taking place at least three times in Jewish history but none like the last for this one has been carried on for the past two thousand years or so. Since Jerusalem and the Jewish Temple were destroyed in 70 AD by the Romans.] I am the good shepherd; and I know mine own, and mine own know me, even as the Father knows me, and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice: and they shall become one flock, one shepherd. [The body of Christ that has one body, one faith, one love, one hope, one Lord, and one spirit and one God. Eph 4:4-6 One body and one Spirit: as you are called in one hope of your calling. There is One Lord, one faith, one baptism, One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in us all.]
[1Corinthians 15:48-49 As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.] Therefore does the Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I may take it again. No one takes it away from me, I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment I received from my Father.
Colossians 2:15 He despoiling the principalities and powers, has exposed them confidently in open show, triumphing over them in Himself.]
John 10:19-21 There arose a division again among the Jews because of these words. Many of them said, He has a demon, and is mad; why hear you [lesson to] him? Others said, these are not the sayings of one possessed with a demon. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?
John 10:24-30 The Jews therefore came round about him, and said to him, how long do you hold us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly. Jesus answered them, I told you, and you believe not: the works that I do in my Father's name, these bear witness of me. But you believe not, because you are not of my sheep. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: and I give to them eternal life; and they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand. I and the Father are one.
2Corinthians 3:18 We all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. This comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.
2Corinthians 4:10-11 We are always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. We who live are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.
The parables of the Lord reveal much about the church and the nature of natural man. As He has said, we are to be careful on how we hear and to what we lesson. Our eternal future depends on our own choice of understanding and our response to His truths and His callings for He is the light of all men’s hearts [souls].
John 13:18 I speak not of you all: I know whom I have chosen: but that the scripture may be fulfilled: He that eats my bread lifts up his heel against me. [Those under the influence of the spirit of the world are those who lift their heels against the Lord and are the enemies of the cross and the blood of Christ. These are to become His foot stool. They are the ones on whom the wrath that has been stored up will have the great tribulation poured out upon.]
A shadow and a type of those who lift their heel against Him
2Samuel 15:12-14 Absalom sent for Ahithophel the Gilonite, David's counselor, from his city, even from Giloh, while he was offering the sacrifices. The conspiracy was strong; for the people increased continually with Absalom. There came a messenger to David, saying, the hearts of the men of Israel are after Absalom. David said to all his servants that were with him at Jerusalem, arise, and let us flee; for else none of us shall escape from Absalom: make speed to depart, lest he overtake us quickly, and bring down evil upon us, and smite the city with the edge of the sword.
[Absalom is pure evil and covetous of the title and prestige of King because he was the first born, he thought that he deserved it. This is an example of the four elements of the spirit of the world, selfishness, pride, envy and wrath. The elements that are so easily over looked in our selves. As reviled in Ephesians 6:12 as principalities, powers, rulers of darkness, and spiritual wickedness.]
Job 19:13-19 He has put my friends far away from me, and mine acquaintances are wholly estranged from me. My kinsfolk have failed, and my familiar friends have forgotten me. They that dwell in my house, and my maids, count me for a stranger; I am an alien in their sight. I call to my servant, and he gives me no answer, though I entreat him with my mouth. My breath is strange to my wife, and my supplication to the children of mine own mother. Even young children despise me; if I arise, they speak against me. All my familiar friends abhor me, and they whom I loved are turned against me.
[Job is a good example of being dead to self for the union with God and the turning of our back on the things of this world.]
Psalm 55:10-15 Day and night they go about it upon the walls thereof: [Jerusalem or in the streets of any city.] iniquity also and mischief are in the midst of it. Wickedness is in the midst thereof: oppression and guile depart not from its streets. For it was not an enemy that reproached me; then I could have borne it: neither was it he that hated me that did magnify himself against me; then I would have hid myself from him: But it was you, a man mine equal, my companion, and my familiar friend. We took sweet counsel together; we walked in the house of God with the throng. Let death come suddenly upon them, let them go down alive into Sheol; for wickedness is in their dwelling, in the midst of them.
[Man that though he thinks himself very religious in that religion is an enemy of God and has turned his back on God and said to God no thank you my religion, church membership, or denomination will save me.]
Psalm 55:19-21 God will hear, and answer them, even he that abides of old. The men who have no changes and who fear not God. He has put out his hands against such as were at peace with him: they have profaned his covenant. His mouth was smooth as butter, but his heart is at war: his words were softer than oil, yet they are drawn swords.
[Man that has not turned around and gone the other way even though he repents of his errors every day there is no change. To have changed there has to be a change of heart the seed of God within man has to receive the truth and the light of the word of God in order for the Spirit of God to work on that seed. The letter kills and only the spirit can give life to the word, no spirit on life.]
John 3:19-20 This is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people love the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. Everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.
Matthew 26:23-24 He answered and said, He that dipped his hand with me in the dish, the same shall betray me.
The Son of man goes, even as it is written of him: but woe to that man through whom the Son of man is betrayed! Good were it for that man if he had not been born.
John 13:21 When Jesus had thus said, he was troubled in the spirit, and testified, and said, truly, truly, I say to you, that one of you shall betray me.
[The churches all dip their hand with Him but they are like Judas though a politically motivated person is a good candidate to stand in for today’s politically correct denominations and non-denominations and those who oppose themselves in them. They are all filled with malice who will run the other way and have already denied the Lord in their ceremonies, customs and religious rituals, an all in the name of piety.]
All the above are for our learning for when the hour is come that no man knows and God has not yet revealed, that day will start the tribulation or Jacobs seventieth week, the vexation of Israel. When this man or the evil of man is revealed, and the wrath of mans storehouse is released upon him. People as we know them and the institutions of religious ceremony and worship as they are at this time all meat the requirements as out lined. See also Daniel 9:23-27
Matthew 24:3-14 As he was sitting upon the mount of Olives the disciples came to him privately, saying, tell us, when shall these things be, and what is the sign of thy coming and the completion of the age?
Jesus answering said to them, see that no one mislead you. Many shall come in my name, saying, I am the Christ, and they shall mislead many. You will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you be not disturbed; for all these things must take place, but it is not yet the end. Nation shall rise up against nation and kingdom against kingdom; and there shall be famines and pestilences, and earthquakes in divers’ places. All these are the beginning of throes, birth pains. Then shall they deliver you up to tribulation, and shall kill you; and you will be hated of all the nations for my name's sake. Then will many be offended, and will deliver one another up, and hate one another; and many false prophets shall arise and shall mislead many [false pastors and teachers, even worse than we have now]; and because lawlessness shall prevail, the love of the most shall grow cold; but he that has endured to the end, he shall be saved. These glad tidings of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole habitable earth, for a witness to all the nations, and then shall come the end.
[Parallel passages Mark 13:3-13; Luke 21:7-19 each of these has a sterner warning of encouragement as the period after the Body of Christ is removed, “that which is restraining the false prophet and the anti Christ”, starts what is known as the great tribulation a seven year period. The first three and a half years will be ruff but the last three and a half will be much much worse. This first three and half years will be a period when mans wrath that has been held back by the Body of Christ will be released. Mans wrath taking action on mans wrath, man will become intoxicated by his own wrath and the blood of man. The primary reason I feel will be because so many find themselves still standing here and realize that their part of the deceived ones.]
“These great points cannot be received in any true degree, without seeing the vain contention of all those, who either defend or oppose the gospel without any true and real knowledge of them. The one contend for, and the other oppose, not the gospel, but a system of empty words, and historical facts, branched into forms and modes of dividing one church from another; whereas the gospel is no history of any absent, distant, or foreign thing, but is a manifestation of an essential, inherent, real life and death in every son of Adam; grounded on the certainty of his first angelical nature, on the certainty of his real fall from that into an animal earthly life of the impure, bestial flesh and blood, and on the certainty of an inward redemption from it, by the divine nature given again into him. These three great points, with all the doctrines, duties, and consequences, which are essentially contained in, or flow from them, are the gospel of Jesus Christ,” as given to Paul. Taken from the public domain in a book written by William Law 1686-1761
1Corinthians 15:12-23 Now if Christ is preached that he has been raised from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, neither has Christ been raised: and if Christ has not been raised, then is our preaching vain, your faith also is vain. Yes, we are found false witnesses of God; because we witnessed of God that He raised up Christ: whom He raised not up, if so be that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, neither has Christ been raised: and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is vain; you are yet in your sins. Then they also that are fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If we have only hope in Christ in this life, we are of all men most pitiable. But now has Christ been raised from the dead, the first fruits of them that are asleep. Since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. Each in his own order: Christ the first fruits; then they that are Christ's, at his coming. [*]
1Corinthians 15:48-58 As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy [sense ruled, reasoning, bestial]: and as is the heavenly [spiritually minded], such are they also that are heavenly. As we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly. [Those who put to the death the bestial flesh and its lusts, being identified in Christ.] Now this I say, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither does corruption inherit incorruption. Behold, I tell you a mystery: we all shall not sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible first and we shall be changed with them. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. But when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, and then shall come to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting? The sting of death is sin; and the power of sin is the law: but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ [Having passed from dead into life in Christ]. Wherefore, be steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as you know that your labor is not vain in the Lord. [Be reconciled to God in Christ Jesus, through the discipline of His cross.]
*1Thessalonians 4:16-17 The Lord Himself shall descend from heaven, with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we that are alive, that are left, shall together with them be caught up in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.
*2Thessalonians 2:1-2 Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to Him, we ask you, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by a spirit or a spoken word, or a letter seeming to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come.
Revelation 20:5-6 The rest of the dead lived not until the thousand years should be finished. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he that has part in the first resurrection: over these the second death has no power; but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years.
Matthew 3:7 But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, you offspring of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
John 3:36 He that believes on (into) the Son has eternal life; but he that obeys not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath that abides on him.
Romans 5:9 Much more then, being now justified by His blood, shall we be saved from the wrath through Him.
1Thessalonians 1:10 To wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, Jesus, who delivers us from the wrath to come.
1Thessalonians 5:9-10 God appointed us not into wrath, but to the obtaining of salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, that, whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with Him.
Now the Bible Study
1. The revealing of the false thing that people have been following to their shame and destruction.
1John 2:18 It is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many anti-Christs have come. Therefore we know that it is the last hour.
1John 4:1-4 Beloved, believe not every spirit, but prove the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets are gone out into the world. Hereby you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh [those who have received Him and His Word, born from above engrafted in Him] is of God: and every spirit that confesses not [Every spirit which destroys (sets aside, or does away with) Jesus (Christ).” That is that He is in the flesh of the regenerated, born again from above doer of the word.] Jesus is not of God: and this is the spirit of the anti-Christ, whereof you have heard that it is come; and now it is in the world already. You are of God, and have overcome them: [the false prophets] because greater is He that is in you than He that is in the world.
1Thessalonians 5:19-22 Quench not the Spirit; despise not prophesying; prove all things; hold fast that which is good; abstain from every form of evil.
2Thessalonians 3:1-3 Finally, pray for us, that the word of the Lord may run and be glorified, even as also it is with you; and that we may be delivered from unreasonable and evil men; for all have not faith. But the Lord is faithful, who shall establish you, and guard you from the evil one.
1Corinthians 15:50-58 Now this I say, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither does corruption inherit incorruption. Behold, I tell you a mystery: we all shall not sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. When this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting? The sting of death is sin; and the power of sin is the law: but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Wherefore, be steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as you know that your labor is not vain in the Lord.
2John 1:7 Many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Such a one is the deceiver and the anti-Christ.
2Peter 2:1-3 But there have arose false prophets also among the people, as among you also there shall be false teachers, who shall privately bring in destructive heresies, denying even the Master that bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. Many shall follow their lascivious doings; by reason of whom the way of the truth shall be evil spoken of. In covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you: whose sentence now from of old lingers not, and their destruction slumbers not.
Ephesians 6:10-12 Finally, be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. 12 For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.
to the effect that the day of the Lord* has come.
2. Matthew 24:4-5 Jesus answered and said to them, take heed that no man lead you astray. For many shall come in my name, saying, I am the Christ; and shall lead many astray.
Matthew 24:23-24 If any man shall say to you, Lo, here is the Christ, or, Here; believe it not. For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders; so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect.
Matthew 24:10-12 Then shall many stumble, and shall deliver up one another, and shall hate one another. Many false prophets shall arise, and shall lead many astray. Because iniquity shall be multiplied, the love of the many shall wax cold.
John 5:43 I am come in my Father's name, and you receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him you will receive.
1Timothy 4:1-3 The Spirit says expressly, that in later times some shall fall away from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of demons, through the hypocrisy of men that speak lies, branded in their own conscience as with a hot iron; forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by them that believe and know the truth.
1John 2:18 It is the last hour: and as you heard that anti-Christ comes, even now have there arisen many anti-Christs; whereby we know that it is the last hour.
Daniel 7:8, 24-25 I considered the horns, and, behold, there came up among them another horn, a little one, before which three of the first horns were plucked up by the roots: and, behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of a man, and a mouth speaking great things. ….. As for the ten horns, out of this kingdom shall ten kings arise: and another shall arise after them; and he shall be diverse from the former, and he shall put down three kings. He shall speak words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High; and he shall think to change the times and the law; and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and half a time.
Daniel 11:36 The king shall do according to his will; and he shall exalt himself, and magnify himself above every god, and shall speak marvelous things against the God of gods; and he shall prosper till the indignation be accomplished; for that which is determined shall be done.
Revelation 13:11-12 I saw another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like unto a lamb, and he spoke as a dragon. He exercises all the authority of the first beast in his sight. And he makes the earth and them dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose death-stroke was healed.
Daniel 11:21, 23, 28, 30 In his place shall stand up a contemptible person, to whom they had not given the honor of the kingdom: but he shall come in time of security, and shall obtain the kingdom by flatteries. After the league made with him he shall work deceitfully; for he shall come up, and shall become strong, with a small people. Then shall he return into his land with great substance; and his heart shall be against the holy covenant; and he shall do his pleasure, and return to his own land. For ships of Kittim shall come against him; therefore he shall be grieved, and shall return, and have indignation against the holy covenant, and shall do his pleasure: he shall even return, and have regard unto them that forsake the holy covenant.
Revelation 17:8, 11 The beast that was, and is not; and is about to come up out of the abyss, and to go into perdition. And they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, they whose name have not been written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast, how that he was, and is not, and shall come.…..The beast that was, and is not, is himself also an eighth, and is of the seven; and he goes into perdition.
2Timothy 3:1-7 Know this, that in the last days grievous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, haughty, railers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, implacable, slanderers, without self-control, fierce, no lovers of good, traitors, headstrong, puffed up, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God; holding a form of godliness, but having denied the power thereof: from these also turn away. For of these are they that creep into houses, and take captive silly women laden with sins, led away by divers lusts, ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.
2Timothy 4:3-4 For the time will come when they will not endure the sound doctrine; but, having itching ears, will heap to themselves teachers after their own lusts; and will turn away their ears from the truth, and turn aside unto fables.
Let no one deceive you in any way
3. Daniel 11:36-37 The king shall do according to his will; and he shall exalt himself, and magnify himself above every god, and shall speak marvelous things against the God of gods; and he shall prosper till the indignation be accomplished; for that which is determined shall be done. Neither shall he regard the gods of his fathers, nor the desire of women, nor regard any god; for he shall magnify himself above all.
1John 2:18 It is the last hour: and as you heard that anti-Christ cometh, even now have there arisen many anti-Christs; whereby we know that it is the last hour.
Luke 23:12 Herod and Pilate became friends with each other that very day: for before they were at enmity between themselves.
Acts 17:5-9 The Jews, being moved with jealousy, took unto them certain vile fellows of the rabble, and gathering a crowd, set the city on an uproar; and assaulting the house of Jason, they sought to bring them forth to the people. When they found them not, they dragged Jason and certain brethren before the rulers of the city, crying, these have turned the world upside down are come here also; whom Jason has received: and these all act contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, one Jesus. They troubled the multitude and the rulers of the city, when they heard these things. When they had taken security from Jason and the rest, they let them go.
Daniel 9:26-27 After the threescore and two weeks shall the anointed one be cut off, and shall have nothing: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and even unto the end shall be war; desolations are determined. He shall make a firm covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease; and upon the wing of abominations shall come one that makes desolate; and even to the full end, and that determined, shall wrath be poured out upon the desolate.
Zechariah 13:8-9 It shall come to pass, that in all the land, says Elohim, two parts therein shall be cut off and die; but the third shall be left therein. I will bring the third part into the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried. They shall call on my name, and I will hear them: I will say, it is my people; and they shall say, Jehovah is my God.
Zechariah 14:2 I will gather all nations against Yerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city.
Revelation 17:16-18 The ten horns which you saw, and the beast, these shall hate the harlot, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and shall burn her utterly with fire. For God did put in their hearts to do his mind, and to come to one mind, and to give their kingdom to the beast, until the words of God should be accomplished. The woman whom you saw is the great city, which reigns over the kings of the earth. [see Rev. 17:8 above]
1John 2:22 Who is the liar but he that denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the anti-Christ, even he that denies the Father and the Son. 2John 1:7 For many deceivers are gone forth into the world, even they that confess not that Jesus Christ comes in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the anti-Christ.
1Corinthians 8:5-6 For though there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or on earth; as there are gods many, and lords many; yet to us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we to him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through Him. [see Dan. 7:25 above]
Acts 12:21-23 Upon a set day Herod arrayed himself in royal apparel, and sat on the throne, and made an oration unto them. The people shouted, The voice of a god, and not of a man. Immediately an angel of the Lord smote him, because he gave not God the glory: and he was eaten of worms, and gave up the ghost.
4. Mystery of Lawlessness:
Luke 18:7-8 Will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?"
2John 1:9-12 Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God. Whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son. If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house or give him any greeting, for whoever greets him takes part in his wicked works.
Colossians 2:18-23 Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism (rigid self denial) and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God. If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations----"Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch" (referring to things that perish as they are used)—according to human precepts and teachings? These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self- made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh. (Isaiah 29:14, 47:10; Jeremiah 4:22; Ezekiel 28:4; Romans 1:22; 1 Corinthians 3:19-20 [1 Corinthians 1:19, 2:6; 2 Corinthians 1:12]; James 3:15)
1Timothy 4:1-3 Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.
1John 2:18 Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that anti-Christ is coming, so now many anti-Christs have come. Therefore we know that it is the last hour.
1John 4:3 Every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the anti-Christ, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already.
1John 4:6 We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error.
1Corinthians 15:34 Wake up from your drunken stupor, as is right, and do not go on sinning. For some have no knowledge of God. I say this to your shame.
Until He is out of the way:
Matthew 3:13-15 Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, "I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?" But Jesus answered him "Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill (restore) all righteousness." Then he consented.
(What Christ was and did for us by His suffering and dieing was to give Him full power to be a common life to all that died in Adam. Christ being the second Adam as the seed of woman caring the seed of grace that was in woman and restore all righteousness, Holiness, justification through sanctification, that was in man in the beginning.)
Matthew 9:29 Then he touched their eyes, saying, "According to your faith be it done to you."
John 3:3 Jesus answered him, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God."
Matthew 11:27-30 All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."
John 12:24-26 Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him. [Gen. 1:11]
Matthew 10:38-39 Whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
Matthew 16:24-25 Then Jesus told his disciples, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. [Mk. 8:34; Lk. 9:23]
Luke 14:26-27 "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.
1Corinthians 1:17-18 For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
1Corinthians 15:1-4 Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you--unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.
2Corinthians 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
1Corinthians 1:30 Because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption (regeneration to restore all righteousness, holiness, justness and sanctification the bringing back to before that which was lost).
Romans 6:3-7 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into death; in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father; we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with Him in a death like His, we shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His. We know that our old self was crucified with Him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin.
Galatians 6:14-16 But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. As for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them, and upon the Israel of God.
Ephesians 2:14-16 For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.
Colossians 1:19-20 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.
Colossians 2:13-14 You, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.
Galatians 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. The life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
1Peter 2:24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed (receive salvation).
Galatians 5:24-25 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.
1Peter 1:22-23 Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God.
Colossians 3:11 Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.
Hebrews 12:1-4 Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.
1John 4:2 By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.
1John 3:9 No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God.
1John 5:18 We know that everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning, but he who was born of God, God protects him, and the evil one does not touch him.
Ephesians 4:4-7 There is one body and one Spirit--just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call-- one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift.
1Corinthians 12:11 All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills.
Philippians 4:19 God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.
Hebrews 7:25 Consequently, He is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them.
they refused to love the truth and so be saved
5. 1Timothy 3:16 Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness: He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.
Ephesians 3:4-5 When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to His holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit.
Zechariah 5:9-11 Then I lifted my eyes and saw, and behold, two women coming forward! The wind was in their wings. They had wings like the wings of a stork, and they lifted up the basket between earth and heaven. Then I said to the angel who talked with me, "Where are they taking the basket?" He said to me, "To the land of Shinar, to build a house for it. When this is prepared, they will set the basket down there on its base."
[Shinar: the capital of the God oppressed world order, Babylon the great, the building of houses implies a permanence of wickedness, the anti-christs true state.]
Daniel 12:1-3 "At that time shall arise Michael, the great prince who has charge of your people. There shall be a time of trouble, such as never has been since there was a nation till that time. But at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone whose name shall be found written in the book. Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above; and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever.
Matthew 12:43 "When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, but finds none.
2John 1:9-11 Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God. Whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son. If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house or give him any greeting, for whoever greets him takes part in his wicked works.
Colossians 2:18-23 Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God. If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations---"Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch" (referring to things that all perish as they are used)--according to human precepts and teachings? These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.
1Timothy 4:1-3 Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.
Hebrews 10:13 waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet.
6. all may be condemned who did not believe the truth
Proverbs 1:7-14 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction. Hear, my son, your father's instruction, and forsake not your mother's teaching, for they are a graceful garland for your head and pendants for your neck. My son, if sinners entice you, do not consent. If they say, "Come with us, let us lie in wait for blood; let us ambush the innocent without reason; like Sheol let us swallow them alive, and whole, like those who go down to the pit; we shall find all precious goods, we shall fill our houses with plunder; throw in your lot among us; we will all have one purse"
Proverbs 2:11-15 discretion will watch over you, understanding will guard you, delivering you from the way of evil, from men of perverted speech, who forsake the paths of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness, who rejoice in doing evil and delight in the perverseness of evil, men whose paths are crooked, and who are devious in their ways.
Romans 16:17-18 I appeal to you, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine [teaching] that you have been taught; avoid them. For such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naive.
2Corinthians 11:13-15 For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. No wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds.
2Corinthians 4:3-4 If our gospel is veiled, it is veiled [hid] only to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the Gospel of the Glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
John 8:42-45 Jesus said to them, "If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me.
Romans 1:24-32 Wherefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts unto uncleanness, that their bodies should be dishonored among themselves: for that they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.
For this cause God gave them up to vile passions: for their women changed the natural use into that which is against nature: and likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another, men with men working unseemliness, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was due.
Even as they refused to have God in their knowledge, God gave them up unto a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not fitting; being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, hateful to God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant-breakers, without natural affection, unmerciful: who, knowing the ordinance of God, that they that practice such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but also consent with them that practice them.
[Here is Gods view of natural mans evil nature and His charge against such things.]
Isaiah 6:9-12 He said, go, and tell this people, hear indeed, but understand not; and see indeed, but perceive not. Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and turn again, and be healed. Then said I, Lord, how long? And he answered, until cities be waste without inhabitant, and houses without man, and the land become utterly waste, and Elohim has removed men far away, and the forsaken places be many in the midst of the land.
Romans 2:8-9 To them that are factious, and obey not the truth, but obey unrighteousness, shall be wrath and indignation, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that works evil, of the Jew first, and also of the Greek.
Psalms 50:16-21 To the wicked God says, What have you to do to declare my statutes, and that you have taken my covenant in thy mouth, seeing you hate instruction, and cast my words behind you? When you saw a thief, you consented with him, and have been a partaker with adulterers. You give your mouth to evil, and your tongue framed deceit. You sit and speak against your brother; you slander your own mother's son. These things have you done, and I kept silence; you thought that I was altogether such a one as yourself: I will reprove you, and set them in order before your eyes.
Psalms 52:3-4 You love evil more than good, and lying more than speaking what is right. You love all words that devour, O deceitful tongue.
John 3:19-20 This is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.
Romans 8:7-8 The mind that is set on the flesh [worldly, natural, earthy, and practical] is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. Those that are in the flesh cannot please God.
2Peter 2:12-15 These, like irrational animals, creatures of instinct, born to be caught and destroyed, blaspheming about matters of which they are ignorant, will also be destroyed in their destruction, suffering wrong as the wage for their wrongdoing. They count it pleasure to revel in the daytime. They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions, while they feast with you. They have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin. They entice unsteady souls. They have hearts trained in greed. Accursed children! Forsaking the right way, they have gone astray. They have followed the way of Balaam, the son of Beor, who loved gain from wrongdoing.
Jude 4-5 For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe.
Deuteronomy 32:35 ‘Vengeance is mine, and recompense, for the time when their foot shall slip; for the day of their calamity is at hand, and their doom comes swiftly.'
Proverbs 8:20-23 I walk in the way of righteousness, in the paths of justice, granting an inheritance to those who love me, and filling their treasuries. "The LORD possessed me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth.
Isaiah 46:8-10 "Remember this and stand firm, recall it to mind, you transgressors, remember the former things of old; for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, 'My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose.
Hebrews 1:10 And, "You, Lord, laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning, and the heavens are the work of your hands.
Romans 8:33 Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies.
Romans 8:37 In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
Romans 9:11 though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad--in order that God's purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of him who calls.
Ephesians 1:4-6 Even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace, with which He has blessed us in the Beloved.
2Timothy 1:9-10 Who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of His own purpose and grace, which He gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, and which now has been manifested through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through this Gospel.
1Peter 1:2-5 According to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with His blood: may grace and peace be multiplied to you. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to His great mercy, He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
John 14:6 Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through [in union with] me.
Galatians 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. The life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.
Acts 13:48 When the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord, and as many as were appointed to eternal life believed.
2Timothy 2:15 Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. [This is like a builder cutting a straight line, a true line, to delineate: Figuratively, to describe; to represent to the mind or understanding; to exhibit a likeness in words.]
Ephesians 2:8-9 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
Colossians 1:5 Because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. Of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, this Gospel.
9. John 17:22-24 The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.
Romans 8:16-17 The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs--heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with Him in order that we may also be glorified with Him.
Romans 8:29-31 For those whom He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, in order that He might be the firstborn among many brothers. Those whom He predestined He also called, and those whom He called he also justified, and those whom He justified he also glorified. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?
1Peter 5:10 After you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.
1Thessalonians 5:9 God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.
2Timothy 1:8-10 Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me His prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God, who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of His own purpose and grace, which He gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, and which now has been manifested through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through this His gospel.
A quote from William Law 1686-1761: “It is His will to all goodness that brought forth angles and the spirits of men so He can will nothing in their existence but that they should live and work and manifest that same spirit of love and goodness which brought them into being. Everything therefore but the will and life of goodness is an apostasy in the creature and its rebellion against the whole nature of God.”
"The Loss of this Love, was the Fall of Man, as it opened in him a Kingdom of Self, in which Satan, the World, and the Flesh, could all of them bring forth their own Works. If therefore Man is to rise from his Fall, and return to his Life in God, there is an absolute necessity that Self, with all his Brood of gross Affections, be deposed, that his first Love in and for which he was created, may be born again in him. Christ came into the World to save Sinners, to destroy the Works of the Devil. Now Self is not only the Seat and Habitation, but the very Life of Sin. The Works of the Devil are all wrought in Self, it is his peculiar Workhouse, and therefore Christ is not come as a Savior from Sin, as a Destroyer of the Works of the Devil in any of us, but so far as Self is beaten down, and overcome in us. If it is literally true, what our Lord said, That his Kingdom was not of this World, then it is a Truth of the same Certainty, that no one is a Member of this Kingdom, but he that in the literal Sense of the Words renounces the Spirit of this World. Christians might as well part with half the Articles of their Creed, or but half believe them, as really to refuse, or but by halves enter into these Self-denials.
Our Redemption is this new Birth; if this is not done, or doing in us, we are still unredeemed. And though the Savior of the World is come, He is not come in us, He is not received by us, is a Stranger to us, is not ours, if His Life is not within us. His life is not, cannot be within us, but so far as the Spirit of the World, Self-love, Self-esteem, and Self-seeking, is renounced, and driven out of us.
Hence we may also learn the true Nature and Worth of all Self-denials and Mortifications. As to their Nature, considered in themselves, they have nothing of Goodness or Holiness, nor are any real Parts of our Sanctification, they are not the true Food or Nourishment of Divine Life in our Souls, they have no Quickening, Sanctifying Power in them; their only Worth consists in this, that they remove the Impediments of Holiness, break down that which stands between God and us, and make Way for the Quickening, Sanctifying Spirit of God to operate on our Souls. Which Operation of God is the one only Thing that can raise the Divine Life in the Soul, or help it to the smallest Degree of real Holiness, or Spiritual Life. As in our Creation, we had only that Degree of a Divine Life, which the Power of God derived into us; as then all that we had, and were, was the sole Operation of God in the Creation of us; so in our Redemption, or regaining that first Perfection, which we have lost, all must be again the Operation of God; every Degree of the Divine Life restored in us, be it ever so small, must and can be nothing else but so much of the Life and Operation of God found again in the Soul. All the Activity of Man in the Works of Self-denial has no Good in itself, but is only to open an Entrance for the one only Good, the Light of God, to operate upon us.
Hence also we may learn the Reason, why many People not only lose the Benefit, but are even worse for all their Mortifications. It is because they mistake the whole Nature and Worth of them. They practice them for their own Sakes, as Things good in themselves, they think them to be real Parts of Holiness, and so rest in them, and look no further, but grow full of Self-esteem, and Self-admiration, for their own Progress in them. This makes them Self-sufficient, morose, severe Judges of all those that fall short of their Mortifications. And thus their Self-denials do only that for them, which Indulgences do for other People, they withstand and hinder the Operation of God upon their Souls, and instead of being really Self-denials, they strengthen and keep up the Kingdom of Self.”
The above is taken from books written by William Law (1686-1761)
Now, nothing wills and works with God but the Spirit of Love, because nothing else Works in God himself. The Almighty brought forth all Nature for this only End, that boundless Love might have its Infinity of Height and Depth to dwell and work in, and all the striving and working Properties of Nature are only to give Essence and Substance, Life and Strength, to the invisible hidden Spirit of Love, that it may come forth into outward Activity and manifest its blessed Powers, that Creatures born in the Strength, and out of the Powers of Nature, might communicate the Spirit of Love and Goodness, give and receive mutual Delight and Joy to and from one another. All below this State of Love is a Fall from the one Life of God, and the only Life in which the God of Love can dwell. Partiality, Self, Mine, Thine, are Tempers that can only belong to Creatures that have lost the Power, Presence, and Spirit of the universal Good. They can have no Place in Heaven, nor can be anywhere but because Heaven is lost. Think not, therefore, that the Spirit of pure, universal Love, which is the one Purity and Perfection of Heaven, and all heavenly Natures, has been, or can be carried too high, or its absolute Necessity too much asserted. For it admits of no Degrees of higher or lower, and is not in being till it is absolutely pure and unmixed, no more than a Line can be straight till it is absolutely free from all Crookedness.
Purification therefore is the one Thing necessary, and nothing will do in the stead of it. But Man is not purified till every earthly, wrathful, sensual, selfish, partial, self-willing Temper, is taken from him. He is not dying to himself, till he is dying to these Tempers; and he is not alive in God, till he is dead to them. For he wants Purification only because he has these Tempers, and therefore he has not the Purification which he wants till they are all separated from him. It is the Purity and Perfection of the Divine Nature that must be brought again into him; because in that Purity and Perfection he came forth from God, and could have no less, as he was a Child of God that was to be blessed by a Life in Him, and from Him. For nothing impure or imperfect in its Will and Working can have any Union with God. Nor are you to think that these Words, the Purity and Perfection of God, are too high to be used on this Occasion; for they only mean, that the Will of the Creature, as an Offspring of the Divine Will, must will and work with the Will of God, for then it stands and lives truly and really in the Purity and Perfection of God; and whatever does not thus, is at Enmity with God, and cannot have any Union of Life and Happiness with him, and in him.
Who is the lawless one? Those who are part of the world system, the false church of which there are many, the economy and the political systems of the world and all that store up wrath in themselves onto the day of the Lord, all who trample underfoot the blood and the cross of Christ and grieve the Holy Spirit of God. So the lawless are those who follow their own course of self-love and worship the created thing, and the lovers of the spirit of the world, which is self-will and self-love.
Matthew 15:1-11 Then there come to Jesus from Jerusalem Pharisees and scribes, saying, why do your disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? For they wash not their hands when they eat bread. He answered and said to them, why do you also transgress the commandment of God because of your tradition? For God said, Honor your father and your mother: and, He that speaks evil of father or mother, let him die the death. But you say, whosoever shall say to his father or his mother, that wherewith you might have been profited by me is given to God; he shall not honor his father. And you have made void the word of God because of your tradition. You hypocrites, well did Isaiah prophesy of you, saying, “This people honors me with their lips; but their heart is far from me. In vain do they worship me, teaching as their doctrines the precepts of men.” He called to him the multitude, and said to them, hear, and understand: it is not that which enters into the mouth that defiles the man; but that which proceeds out of the mouth, this defiles the man.
This is an instance of their hypocrisy that they teach for doctrines the commandments of men. The Jews then, as the papists since, paid the same respect to oral tradition that they did to the word of God, receiving it pari pietatis affectu ac reverentiâ - with the same pious affection and reverence. Conc. Trident. Sess. 4. Decr. 1. When men's inventions are tacked to God's institutions, and imposed accordingly, this is hypocrisy, a mere human religion. The commandments of men are properly conversant about the things of men, but God will have His own work done by His own rules, and accepts not that which He did not Himself appoint. That only cones to Him, which comes from Him.
The doom of hypocrites; it is put in a little compass; In vain do they worship me. Their worship does not attain the end for which it was appointed; it will neither please God, nor profit themselves. If it be not in spirit, it is not in truth, and so it is all nothing. That man who only seems to be religious, but is not so, his religion is vain (James 1:26); and if our religion be a vain oblation, a vain religion, how great is that vanity! How sad is it to live in an age of prayers and sermons, and sabbaths and sacraments, in vain, to beat the air in all these; it is so, if the heart be not with God in them. Lip-labour is lost labour, Isaiah 1:11. Hypocrites sow the wind and reap the whirlwind; they trust in vanity, and vanity will be their recompense. Thus Christ justified His disciples in their disobedience to the traditions of the elders; and this the scribes and Pharisees got by their caviling. We read not of any reply they made; if they were not satisfied, yet they were silenced, and could not resist the power wherewith Christ spoke.
2Thessalonians 2:7 here we’ll look at two words often used they are: “of iniquity” and “of lawless” and “lawlessness”
Thayer's Definition: “iniquity”
1) the condition of without law
1a) because ignorant of it
1b) because of violating it
2) contempt and violation of law, iniquity, wickedness
Part of Speech: noun feminine
Now a related word form
Thayer's Definition: “lawless”
1) destitute of (the Mosaic) law
1a) of the Gentiles
2) departing from the law, a violator of the law, lawless, wicked
Part of Speech: adjective
Now a related word form
Thayer's Definition: also “lawlessness”
1) anything established, anything received by usage, a custom, a law, a command
1a) of any law whatsoever
1a1) a law or rule producing a state approved of God
1a1a) by the observance of which is approved of God
1a2) a precept or injunction
1a3) the rule of action prescribed by reason
1b) of the Mosaic law, and referring, acc. to the context. either to the volume of the law or to its contents
1c) the Christian religion: the law demanding faith, the moral instruction given by Christ, especially the precept concerning love
1d) the name of the more important part (the Pentateuch), is put for the entire collection of the sacred books of the OT
*I might add the letters written by Paul for our understanding and training or reproof
Part of Speech: noun masculine
The “lawless” or “lawlessness” are all who willingly disregard the word not only that of the Old Testament but also that of God’s Gospel of His Grace as written and taught by Paul. It is in it that we hear the warnings addressed for all that who disobey this revealed revelation given to us by the risen LORD from glory. The sternness of the warning is not understood or taken to heart but by a very few. It is for this reason that mans wrath which he has been building up for the past 6000 years or so will be allowed to be released upon his ignorance and in many cases willful disobedience.
All scripture is from the KJV, Weymouth New Testament, American Standard and English Standard Versions of the Bible. With our standard referenced credits to quotes used within this study.
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