2 Thessalonians 2:8 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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2 Thessalonians 2:8

Comments

The figurehead or the climax of whatever is coming – a movement like scientific humanism, or an individual – is after the working of Satan with all power. That does not mean he has all power, only God has all power. It means it has power beyond human capability. He has unusual power, but not all power in the strictly literal sense; that belongs only to God. Satan cannot come himself, he is not allowed to become incarnate. So this figurehead will have strange power, and he will use signs and lying wonders. What signs? What will be his signs? Miracles, if you like, if we may call them that or extraordinary feats which will authentic him, but only in the eyes of unbelievers, the passage goes on to say. He will not deceive believers. Whatever apparent sign or miracle he does, the believer will see through it. The unbeliever who wants to be deceived will be completely taken in by it.When Christ returns, he will destroy Satan immediately and without delay and with overwhelming power. The brightness of his coming will shine into the kingdom of darkness and expose all the malice and wickedness and cunning that was concealed there for so long, and long fight between Christ and the devil, light and darkness, good and evil will be finished. But it will be done in such a way that evil is demonstrated to be inferior, weak, and foolish. No shred of justification or honour or credibility will be left to any of the works of darkness.

Application

What are these signs and miracles? Well, I do not know but I can only offer you some guesses just to give an idea of what might be. The kind of sign that will be heralded – worked by scientific humanism and supremely its figurehead, the man of sin – may be the alleged discovery of say a homosexual gene, which will be paraded and heralded and apparently proved. And the unbeliever will grasp at it – there you are, biblical morality has been wrong all along. We have found (they cannot find it at the moment), we found the homosexual gene. The believer will instinctively say, no you have not. He will be supremely cynical because he believes the book of God, the word of God.

Perhaps they will claim to excavate something from the earth which completely disproves the historical integrity of the Bible, utterly convincing to the unbeliever. The believer believes the book of God. ‘No, says the atheist, there is an explanation for this; this religion is completely phoney.’ That is the idea that he will produce his signs, whatever they are. Signs and lying wonders. They are lying wonders, because they are wonders used to deny God and assert a lie.

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2 Thessalonians 2:8 Commentary and Bible Study