EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/26/2024 11:21 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-4 “Introduction to Antichrists”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: 1 John 2:18
Message of the verse: “Children, it is the last hour; and just as you heard that antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have appeared; from this we know that it is the last hour.”
It is my desire to conclude this introduction to 1
John 2:18 in this evenings Spiritual Diary as there is one more series of
verses that we have to look at and some commentary and then we will be done.
Now we ended the last SD by quoting from 2 Thessalonians 2:1-2 and so we begin
by giving some commentary on those verses as Paul declared that those climactic
events would not occur until “the apostasy comes first.” The word “apostasy” is the transliteration of
apostasic MacArthur writes “(‘a
falling away,’ ‘a forsaking,’ ‘a defection’).
Theologically, it is the deliberate abandonment of a formerly professed
position. But in this context the word denotes more than a mere general
abandonment of God and Christ.
Throughout redemptive history a certain general apostasy will always be
occurring in the churches, in keeping with the ever-present Laodicean spirit
(Rev. 3:14-16; cf. Heb. 10:25-31; 2 Peter 2:20-22). In fact as time passes there will be an
escalating defection from the truth:
‘But the Spirit explicitly says that in
later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful
spirits and doctrines of demons, by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in
their own conscience as with a branding iron, men who forbid marriage and
advocate abstaining from foods which God has created to be grateful shared in
by those who believe and know the truth. (1 Tim. 4:1-3; cf. Matt. 23:12; 2 Tim.
3:1-9; 2 Peter 2:1-3; Jude 4, 17-19).”
Paul wrote to the Thessalonians about a unique, identifiable,
historical event—the apostasy. Now
before the day of the Lord comes there will be a climactic act of apostasy led
by the man of lawlessness, or son of destruction. Now that man who is the Antichrist will
openly defy God’s rule and live without regard for His law cf. 1 John 3:4 “Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness; and
sin is lawlessness.” The only thing that
“restrains him [the final Antichrist] now, so that in his time he will be
revealed” (2 Thess. 2:6) is the Holy Spirit, whom God, in His perfect timing,
will take out of the way, and I believe that this event will happen after the
rapture of the Church for in that event all who are raptured are the ones who
have been indwelt with the Holy Spirit, and in the Tribulation period I do not
believe that will be true. So thus Satan’s
man of sin and destruction cannot arrive apart from the divine timetable. That timetable as I understand it will be
after the rapture of the church. You see
in the 490 years that Daniel writes about in the 9th chapter of
Daniel 483 years of that prophecy has already been fulfilled and soon after the
rapture that seven years will begin when the Antichrist signs a peace treaty
with the re-born state of Israel, which if I understand it correctly that will
be like Old Testament times and the Holy Spirit did not indwell all OT
believers like He does in the Church age.
11/26/2024 11:44 PM
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