During morning prayer, I asked the Lord what I should study next…and a scripture popped into my head…one I hadn’t thought of in a long time. That verse was, “Let no man deceive you by any means…” Other verses about deception have been on my heart, but this one was kind of forgotten until now… I even had to google it to find the book and verse… 2 Thessalonians 2:3.

2 Thessalonians, Chapter 2

¹ Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him,

• This is the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ when he gathers his believers up at the end of the tribulation, as the following verses will clearly show.

² That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand.

• They were being lied to by false teachers who claimed to have gotten messages directly from God. There may have also been false letters being sent that contained a forged signature of Paul. In spite of this warning to not believe these false teachers, people in AMERICAN Christian churches still hold on to a false teaching of the imminent coming of Jesus to rapture people out prior to the tribulation. This false doctrine comes from a 15 year old girl 300 years ago by way of a dream she had. John Nelson Darby latched on to this deception and began promoting it…then one of Darby’s followers Cyrus Ingerson Scofield wrote the Scofield reference Bible promoting this false doctrine even further. Since the Scofield Bible was mostly promoted and used in the American Churches, the doctrine is only in American churches, those that were established by American evangelist and those who relied heavily on the teachings of Scofield. The cost to American Christians caught up in this false doctrine is they have lost their ability to objectively look at what they believe against the actual word of God and what it says. I challenge anyone to prove the rapture before tribulation using only the scripture, no explainations or outside teachings… and with each assumption be able to explain why the assumption is biblically correct. No one, not one single person, can accomplish this. The doctrine of the pretribulation rapture relies on outside teachings to understand. The standard fall back is that God has not appointed us to wrath. I agree, which is why we are removed to be with Jesus before the wrath of God is poured out, this happens when the vials are poured out at the end of the Tribulation. People think the whole tribulation is the outpouring of the wrath of God, but this isn’t scriptural. Wrath comes with Judgment… and judgment comes when the time of grace runs out. When grace runs out, no one else will be saved. So, the tribulation is a time of trials and testings designed to bring people to repentance…. and wrath is a judgment when the time of grace is over… so… we aren’t appointed to wrath and that verse just proves even further that the rapture comes at the end of the tribulation, not the beginning. Lastly, what I believe lines up so perfectly with and in the word I don’t need any outside doctrine to teach it… just rightly dividing the word of truth. People holding on to the false doctrine of the pretribulation rapture are bound to it by fear…and that’s another clue…if the thought of going through the tribulation induces fear and you then double down on the belief of the pretrib rapture… you might want to look at that. Some of the comments I’ve gotten from pretribbers is, “Well the rapture is going to happen whether you believe it or not…and then what you believe won’t matter.” Ok… I’ll be raptured and embarassed… good deal… but, what if…I’m right and there is no pretrib rapture. All ten of the virgins in Matthew 25 were symbolic of Christians…5 didn’t make it. They had no oil for their lamp because they didn’t expect the Bridegroom to arrive when it was dark…they expected to go before the darkness.

³ Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;

So, the coming of the Lord to gather the saints is given a timeline and placement here… the rapture does not take place until a falling away of many believers and the antichrist is revealed.
Look at the wording, “Let no man deceive you by any means:” This is important… the deception that is coming at us is a profound deception unlike any other. The danger is that a person can read the word and still be deceived if they read it to prove a bias…this is how apostate churches manage to preach from the bible and still get it wrong…because they mishandle the word so that it says what they want it to say. When I was part of the Word of Faith movement, I quoted scriptures… but never did I go back to those verse and compare the verse with the surrounding text. I deferred my authority over what I believed to people I thought were more educated in the word than I was… and those people were teaching false doctrines. Let me also say that because so many were challenging their doctrine, I became defensive and that defensiveness caused a doctrinal bias that blinded me to the truth for a long time. I loved Jesus, I loved God… I wanted to be led by the Holy Spirit in my life… I was so sincere in my intentions….but as they say, I was sincerely wrong. It wasn’t until I laid everything I thought I knew down and began again to read the word with this one mission, I will only believe what is clearly written in the word. I can say there are several things still on the shelf that the word has not shown me was true or even taught in the word. And still, I know I’m not so perfect as to ever believe I am beyond falling…I trust in the mercy and grace of God to keep me upright. Above all we must remain humble before God.

Heed the warning in this verse… LET NO MAN DECEIVE YOU BY ANY MEANS. Stay before God and in the Word.

⁴ Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.

The antichrist opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God and worshiped. He stops sacrifices and entered into the temple.

• Matthew 24:15 ¹⁵ When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:)
• Daniel 9:27 ²⁷ And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.

⁵ Remember ye not, that, when I was yet with you, I told you these things?

Paul reminds those who he is writing to that he already told them all of this when he was with them. This is to confirm to them that this letter is from him. One of the deceptions I see today, more and more, is the people who are challenging the authenticity of the writings of Paul. They tend to say that either he wasn’t an actual disciple or that the writings were counterfiets. I’ve seen this with the Hebrew Roots deception and people trying to defend the homosexual lifestyle. They do this because the teachings of Paul confront the sin in their life and their false doctrines.

⁶ And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time.

This is a verse that destroys the idea of imminence…the belief that the Lord Jesus is coming back at any second. There are events that must occur first… like the ones listed above.

⁷ For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way.

⁸ And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming:

Once the antichrist is revealed, the Lord Jesus is going to destroy him.
This chapter speaks first about the coming of the Lord Jesus to gather his saints after the antichrist is revealed. Then it says that when he is revealed, the Lord Jesus will destroy him. The sequence is straight forward and clear… Paul made it plain and easy to understand.

⁹ Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders,

I think of Moses and Aaron facing Pharaoh and his magicians…. when Moses and Aaron did a miracle, the magicians were able to recreate nearly all of the same wonders. The antichrist will undoubtable do even more atonishing wonders than the magicians did.

¹⁰ And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.

The people who are going to be taken in by these wonders and lies of the antichrist are those who don’t love the truth. We see churches filled to the brim with people who want to believe in their version of the Bible… and in their beliefs they don’t have to repent for anything… they can have their best life now… they believe they are little gods with the power to manifest things they want. These attributes are the self worshiping, feelings driven spirit of the antichrist… the only god they serve is the one they have made of themselves… They reject the Holy God who calls men to repent and receive Jesus as their Lord and Savior… they reject the God that calls them to take up their cross and follow Jesus.

¹¹ And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:

Because they reject the truth, God allows them to live in their delusions. The thing about being in an echo chamber filled with other people who are deluded in the same way is that you feed one another’s false beliefs. When the liberals wanted to push their agenda and false narrative, they controlled social media so that the truth could not be spoken and when it was, it was flagged as false information. When I would read these woke comments and see only woke statements, I felt isolated and like I was alone with my beliefs. Once Donald Trump was elected and we conservatives were given back our rights to share our opinion, I saw that I wasn’t alone at all… there were thousands and thousands of us all being silenced by the woke, demonic agenda. I also saw the liberals have absolute melt downs when we were given back our rights to speak.
When these kinds of things happen I think back to 30 years ago…these things would be profoundly shocking… unheard of… outrageous. It would have been viewed as some kind of totalitarian overreach….but today people shrug and say, “The liberals hate free speech when their opponient has it.” Hitler knew if he could control the media he could control the people and they would sit by silently when horrific things were happening.
All of this is a symptom of rejecting God.

¹² That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

Choices are made when a person is confronted with the truth. The person can change their behaviors to align themselves with the truth, or reject the truth and continue down a path of distruction.

One sure fire way to be deceived and led astray is by not investing time into learning the word of God. There is a saying that says we give our time to the things we love. When we really believe in God… and we really believe the word is true, we will give our time to learning the word.

¹³ But we are bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth:

The Holy Spirit sanctifies us. Its by the Holy Spirit that our hearts are shaped, changed and sanctified as we walk in submission to Jesus. 1 Peter 1:2

¹⁴ Whereunto he called you by our gospel, to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

¹⁵ Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle.

In my walk with Jesus, there has been numerous times when I was derailed because I didn’t do my due diligence and look into the word… I accepted what was taught to me by people I thought were more educated in the word. I failed to question what they said with the word of God as my guide. They sounded right, they quoted scripture…they all looked so powerful and victorious I was convinced. And yet…these seemingly mighty men and women of God were deceivers. I don’t know the story of every one of them…but I imagine some knew they were deceiving people… others I think got derailed and never went back. Some had good intentions and others not so good…what I do know is had I taken the time to look into what they were teaching, I would not have wasted my time trying to build my faith out of the errors they were teaching. The Holy Spirit tried to rescue me… send me an alert or two… I dismissed it…the teacher I was learning from taught me how to do that right away.

¹⁶ Now our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God, even our Father, which hath loved us, and hath given us everlasting consolation and good hope through grace,

¹⁷ Comfort your hearts, and stablish you in every good word and work.