Renew The Church! – website and Blog

This passage in St. Paul’s Second Letter to the Thessalonians is, I believe, very important to understanding our times.  These times are difficult!  In the West we are seeing a very troubling cultural wave of surprising speed and ferocity, deforming in the name of “reforming” religion, secular power/government, even the military, even our school systems, everything, everywhere.  It is a force attacking human foundations – of faith in God, of human nature, of marriage, of the natural moral law as God has placed it in human conscience, indeed a force seeking to redefine humanity, God, government, right and wrong, truth and lie, life itself.  I would say it is a force attacking reason and upending it, to leave in the wake and “normalize” insanity.  It is the force, I would say, of satan unleashed.  It is death, seeking to trample into the dirt all that is good, noble, and true.

Let’s listen to this brief but penetrating passage in 2nd Thessalonians:

2 Thess 2:1 We ask you, brothers, with regard to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our assembling with him,
2 not to be shaken out of your minds suddenly, or to be alarmed either by a “spirit,” or by an oral statement, or by a letter allegedly from us to the effect that the day of the Lord is at hand.
3 Let no one deceive you in any way. For unless the apostasy comes first and the lawless one is revealed, the one doomed to perdition,
4 who opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god and object of worship, so as to seat himself in the temple of God, claiming that he is a god—
5 do you not recall that while I was still with you I told you these things?
6 And now you know what is restraining, that he may be revealed in his time.
7 For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. But the one who restrains is to do so only for the present, until he is removed from the scene.
8 And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord [Jesus] will kill with the breath of his mouth and render powerless by the manifestation of his coming,
9 the one whose coming springs from the power of Satan in every mighty deed and in signs and wonders that lie,
10 and in every wicked deceit for those who are perishing because they have not accepted the love of truth so that they may be saved.
11 Therefore, God is sending them a deceiving power so that they may believe the lie,
12 that all who have not believed the truth but have approved wrongdoing may be condemned.
13 But we ought to give thanks to God for you always, brothers loved by the Lord, because God chose you as the firstfruits for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in truth.
14 To this end he has [also] called you through our gospel to possess the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
15 Therefore, brothers, stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught….

The “New World Order” that progressives of today want to establish is a dystopia of insanity.  I’m not trying to insult anyone; I’m merely stating the fact.  They are literally insane, because they blindly reject truth and instead embrace, hunger for, and believe in what is false.  This is the current culture war that we wake up every morning now to see and hear and have to wonder “how did it get this bad so quickly?  St. Paul saw it coming to this in the beginning, 2000 years ago.  

1. The time would come when many would reject – to the point of loathing – the Truth of God.  Thus, verses (10-12) explain why these times require, in justice, God’s respond to these persons: “they have not accepted the love of truth so that they may be saved. Therefore, God is sending them a deceiving power so that they may believe the lie, that all who have not believed the truth but have approved wrongdoing may be condemned.”
2. Thus, the horrible insanity of these dark days!  The minds of men and women in willful flight from holy Truth generate, in their minds and hearts, the antitheses of things good, noble and true.  They become persons lusting for more, for all things evil, inhuman, and false.  They become children of the father of lies, the slaves of satan, the servants of death.
3. The ever-darker path of the progression away from God and His will, has a finality that God will show us in His time.  He will not allow the evil one to continue past a point of finality that will occur after – only after – “the apostasy comes first and the lawless one is revealed, the one doomed to perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god and object of worship, so as to seat himself in the temple of God, claiming that he is a god” (verses 3-4).
4. So we see that God has restrained the works and powers of satan: “the mystery of lawlessness is already at work” (verse 7) even as Paul was writing this letter!  The Last Days began before the Cross, before the first days of the Church, when Judas left the Assembly to betray his Lord Jesus.  The destructive work of satan was allowed to proceed, but he was restrained in God’s mercy, until the final Days could come.  And then, only then, “the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord [Jesus] will kill with the breath of His mouth and render powerless by the manifestation of His coming” (verse 8).

What are we to do? The mortal danger is made clear in this passage.  There are those perishing and there are those to be saved, to be gathered into His peace, His love, His Truth, eternally.  The mortal danger is to be among those who “have not accepted the love of truth so that they may be saved” (verse 10).  The dying world is rejecting Truth, and is seeking fantasy!  

Gender dysphoria is perhaps the most blatant and clear example of the bold-faced denial of undeniable reality, in these days.  A man is simply not a woman, and cannot ever be.  No matter the outward dress, the lipstick, the chemicals, the surgeries, the wishes or demands or laws or pretenses, a man will never become a mother, he will never conceive new life within himself and bear a child.  God and God alone creates a child, a new and unique human person, through the generative powers He placed in a man of His creation and a woman of His creation, by His intention and design.   

Gender dysphoria is a very clear example of the rejection of God’s design and will – in whose will our vocation to holiness and happiness is to be found and fulfilled.  But in our times we see so many ways and examples of modern man’s rejection of God, and supplanted by his own self-obsessed will, and wishes, and concerns, and ideas.  Not seeking the saving Truth of God, but seeking instead the Self according to one’s own imagined “self”, modern mankind has continued step after step to further and further distance himself from God, His will and ways.  Thus same-sex unions and even “marriages”, even “adoptions” of children, thus contraception and abortion, thus crimes against humanity of every sort: murders, rapes, enslavement, stealing, lying, hating, … , man against man, man against God, man against himself.  The road away from God is the road to death.

What are we to do?  Seek Truth in the love of Truth; embrace Truth in the communion of divine holiness, our vocation, our destiny.  Rest in Him in the works of every day.  He is coming, and soon.  Remain faithful, in Him, until the end:

2 Thess 2:13 But we ought to give thanks to God for you always, brothers loved by the Lord, because God chose you as the firstfruits for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in truth.
14 To this end he has [also] called you through our gospel to possess the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
15 Therefore, brothers, stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught….