This is His return to the earth in glory and judgment, the event described in 2 Thessalonians 1:5–10 and Revelation 19:11ff. It will occur at the end of the seven-year tribulation period when the “mystery of iniquity” (Satan’s evil program) will have ended with the battle of Armageddon. It is important that we distinguish His rapture of the church from His return to the earth. The first event is secret, as the church is caught up to meet Him in the air. The second event is public, when the church returns with Him to defeat Satan and his hosts.
His judgment of Antichrist (vv. 8–9). Nobody on earth will be able to overcome the Antichrist and his forces, for he is energized by Satan. “Who is like unto the beast? Who is able to make war with him?” (Rev. 13:4). Satan will enable his false messiah to perform “power and signs and lying wonders” (2 Thess. 2:9). This, of course, is in imitation of Jesus Christ who performed “miracles and wonders and signs” (Acts 2:22).
Satan has always been an imitator. There are false Christians in the world who are really children of the devil (Matt. 13:38; 2 Cor. 11:26). He has false ministers (2 Cor. 11:13ff) who preach a false gospel (Gal. 1:6–9). There is even a “synagogue of Satan” (Rev. 2:9), which means a gathering of people who think they are worshipping God but who are really worshipping the devil (1 Cor. 10:19–21). These false Christians have a counterfeit righteousness that is not the saving righteousness of Christ (Rom. 10:1–3; Phil. 3:4–10). They have a false assurance of salvation that will prove useless when they face judgment (Matt. 7:15–29).
During the apostolic age, miracles were given to verify the message (Heb. 2:1–4). God’s chosen apostles used miracles as their credential to prove they were sent by God (2 Cor. 12:12). However, miracles alone never prove that a man is sent from God: his message and his character must also be considered. John the Baptist was “a man sent from God” (John 1:6), yet “John did no miracle” (John 10:41).
Satan can perform miracles that seem to rival those of the Lord. This is how he opposed Moses in the court of Pharaoh (Ex. 7:8–12, 20–22, 8:5–7). In the final judgment, some people who performed miracles in the name of Jesus will be rejected by the Lord because they were never saved (Matt. 7:21–23). Judas performed miracles, yet he was never born again (John 6:66–71; 13:11, 18).
The purpose of God’s miracles was to lead people to the truth; the purpose of Antichrist’s miracles will be to lead people to believe his lies. Paul called them “lying wonders” (2 Thess. 2:9), not because the miracles are not real, but because they persuade people to believe Satan’s lies. The world would not long follow a leader who practiced cheap trickery (see Rev. 13:13–14).
When Jesus Christ returns, He will judge Antichrist by “the spirit of his mouth … and the brightness of his coming” (2 Thess. 2:8). The verbs “consume” and “destroy” do not mean annihilate, for Revelation 20: indicates that Satan and his associates will be tormented in the lake of fire forever. You could translate this statement: “whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of His mouth, and bring an end to his operations by the outshining of His presence.”
As the coming of the Lord for His church draws near, Satan’s operations in this world will intensify (read 1 Tim. 4; 2 Tim. 3). Since Satan is a liar, we must resist him through the truth of God’s Word (Eph. 6:17). It was this sword that our Lord used when He defeated Satan in the wilderness (Matt. 4:1–11). Satan is a liar and a murderer (John 8:44). God gives life through His truth; Satan slays with his lies. We are encouraged to know that one day Jesus Christ will completely overthrow Satan and his system.
His judgment of the unsaved (vv. 10–12). We have noted that a great number of Jews and Gentiles will be saved during the seven-year tribulation period. But the vast majority of the world’s population will be lost. Many will die in the terrible judgments that God will send on earth (see Rev. 6:7–8; 8:11; 9:18; 11:13). Others will perish in judgment when Jesus Christ returns and separates the saved from the lost (Matt. 25:31–46).
It is important to note that these people did have opportunity to believe and be saved. God has no delight in judging the lost (Ezek. 33:11). God is “not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). These people will be judged and will suffer forever because they would not receive and believe the truth. In fact, their hearts will be so evil that they will not even have any love for the truth. Those who love lies and make lies will be excluded from the heavenly city (Rev. 22:15) and sent to the lake of fire.
In this paragraph, Paul taught a sobering truth: a person can so resist the truth that he finally becomes deluded and has to believe a lie. There can be no neutral ground: either we believe the truth or we believe a lie. To reject the truth means to receive the lie.
Does this mean that God is to blame for a man’s rejection of Christ? No more than God was to blame for Pharaoh’s spiritual condition when Moses was bringing the plagues on Egypt. Pharaoh heard God’s Word and saw God’s wonders, yet he refused to bow to God’s will. Pharaoh occasionally relented and gave lip service to God’s will, but he always resisted in the end and refused to obey God. He hardened his heart so that he could not believe the truth, and this led to God’s final judgment of the land of Egypt.
Second Thessalonians 2: reads literally, “That they should believe the lie.” What is “the lie”? Satan is the liar and has foisted many deceptions on the human race. But there is one “lie” that, from the beginning, has led people astray. Satan first spoke it to Eve: “You shall be as God!” The lie is the idea that man is his own God and therefore can do whatever he pleases and better himself by his own human efforts. The process is described in Romans 1:18ff. Note especially Romans 1:25: “Who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator” (literal translation).
All of which means that Satan appeals to man’s pride. It was pride that turned Lucifer into Satan (Isa. 14:12–15; Ezek. 28:11–18). It is pride that traps men into doing Satan’s will in this world (see 2 Tim. 2:24–26).
A friend told me about a church officer on the mission field who was causing great problems in the church. Whenever the missionary was in the village, the officer lived a godly life, but no sooner did the missionary leave than the man began to behave as though he were controlled by Satan. Finally the missionary and several church leaders confronted the man in the name of Jesus Christ, and they discovered the truth: Satan was using pride to control the officer’s life.
“When I was ordained an elder,” the man explained, “I heard a voice say to me, ‘Now you are somebody important.’ I yielded to that voice, and Satan took over in my life.” He confessed his sin, the church prayed, and God delivered him.
“Now you are somebody important!” “Worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator.” This is Satan’s lie, and I fear it is what rules the world today. God originally made man in His own image. Today, man is making God in his own image.
The people Christ will judge not only do not love the truth, but they have “pleasure in unrighteousness” (2 Thess. 2:12). Read Psalm 50:16–21 for one description of this kind of person, and also Psalm 52. The chief priests actually were glad when Judas promised to help them kill Christ (Mark 14:10–11). I mentioned before that this process of believing the lie is described in Romans 1. The closing verse of that section (Rom. 1:32) states this truth clearly: “Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.”
Does this mean that those who have heard the gospel before the rapture of the church cannot be saved after the rapture? Not necessarily. If that were true, then our witness to the lost is condemning them, should Christ return. However, it does mean that no lost sinner can afford to treat God’s truth carelessly or reject God’s Son repeatedly. The human heart becomes harder each time the sinner rejects God’s truth; and this makes it easier to believe Satan’s lies.
How much better it is to follow the example of the Thessalonican believers who received the Word of God “not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God” (1 Thess. 2:13). They received the truth and were saved.
Have you received the truth?