The 70th Week: Lost in Delusion

As I interpret biblical prophecy, during Daniel's 70th Week, often styled The Tribulation, absolutely no Gentiles will be coming to Christ. In fact, none will even hold on to him. After the full number of Gentiles has come in, the 70th week which follows exists redemptively for the Jews and Jerusalem alone. Gentiles will not be "left behind" and get saved, not even one. You may be wondering about how such such a thing could be so, I think Paul explains it quite well in 2 Thessalonians 2, so let's explore.

This passage makes a few things clear:

1) Even now, during the Age of the Gentiles, there is a generally imperceptible effort being made to produce lawlessness in people (i.e. an unwillingness to accept restraint). 

2) That effort is being held down (hindered, restrained) by someone Paul assumed that the average Christian in Thessaloniki would understand the identity of from his prior talks with them. 

3) At some point in time, that restraining influence would be moved out from the midst of the people it was operating among, which would in turn loose (send) that which would produce the effect of wandering (i.e. delusion).

4) The delusion would culminate in ALL the affected in the world believing THE lie.  

5) That lie is that the man of lawlessness (the Antichrist) is god.

The Devil is at work as I type and as you read this article. His work can be summed up succinctly as murder, marauding, and mayhem. His tools are fear and deception. He seeks to alienate and destroy what God has made for his own pleasure. His efforts are opposed by the active work of the Holy Spirit, the servants of Christ and the finitude of his own limits.

Ultimately, he seeks to personally replace God as the rightful object of mankind's worship through a carefully prepared human shill called the Antichrist.

If the Holy Spirit was no longer poured out on all flesh, and God's servants (the church with its angels) were moved out from the midst of people and gathered together unto Christ in the air, how would anyone get saved? They could not. The Jews are the outlier in the scenario, God specifically pours the Spirit out on them. So how long would it take the Devil to succeed in his plot to compel THE lie?

Just about three and a half years is the biblical answer.

The Devil's efforts from the beginning of time have been directed at getting people to cast off the restraint of God over us. In such lawlessness we are estranged from God and easy pawns for the Devil's wiles. Lawlessness (iniquity) will increase amongst mankind as we near the end of time, but Christians must not let that disillusion us. There is coming a day when we will be gathered unto Christ in glory, while the world that refused to believe the gospel will, instead, be lost in delusion.