8 Then that lawless one will be revealed whom the Lord will slay with the breath of His mouth and bring to an end by the appearance of His coming; 9 that is, the one whose coming is in accord with the activity of Satan, with all power and signs and false wonders, 10 and with all the deception of wickedness for those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved. 11 For this reason God will send upon them a deluding influence so that they will believe what is false, 12 in order that they all may be judged who did not believe the truth, but took pleasure in wickedness. 2 Thessalonians 2:8-12 (NASB)
As I stated in yesterday’s post, I have been doing a great of research on the “order of things” Paul was referring to in 2 Thessalonians 2. I have been lining up those things with our Lord’s Olivet Discourse and, of course, the Apostle John’s account in Revelation. Why?….
I said yesterday that I simply cannot get past this and when this happens I know God is working. Also, our enemy knows this and I have been hammered from every direction with “doubts” about doing this and thoughts like, “if you continue to pursue this you will lose all your friends or may even have to change to another church!” Now, would God put those sorts of thoughts in my mind? Of course not! That is not how God works. I have been sifting through all sorts of articles, sermons, videos, and scripture pertaining to this topic along with the “Mark of the Beast,” “who is the Beast,” “who is the False Prophet,” and I assure you this data gets mucky in a hurry. Then I listened to a sermon where the preacher was addressing whether the Covid-19 vaccinations were the Mark of the Beast and whether a believer could take the Mark unintentionally. While I didn’t listen to the whole sermon I did agree with what he said right up front. He stated that genuine believers are saved by Grace through Faith and are sealed by the Holy Spirit at that point with the Mark of God and so could never receive the Mark of the beast. I rejoiced when I heard that, but why?