To Encourage You

2 Thessalonians 2:9-12 “The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.”

Have you ever wondered why in the world someone would believe something that was false in the face of large amounts of evidence to the contrary? Take Creation for example.  The Bible tells us that “the whole earth is full of God’s glory” (Isaiah 6:3).   It says that “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims His handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard” (Psalm 19:1-3).  In other words, no matter who you are, no matter what language you speak, no matter what country you live in, and no matter when you were born, God has filled your life and mine with massive evidence of His existence through the Creation in which “we live and move  and have our being” (Acts 17:28).  Yet, many people, indeed most in our day and age, reject this truth. They reject that God created anything. They believe the falsehood that the world and everything in it came to be by itself, or by some random process of a “big bang” and evolution that supposedly followed.  They question or even reject the notion that God created the world in the face of the very evidence replete in the Creation that screams out to us that God did just that. Many, in fact many very educated men and women, choose to believe that everything came from nothing. Shouldn’t it be obvious that nothing is in fact no thing, so nothing can’t do anything?!

So, why is this? When God has told us that it is obvious to anyone who has ever lived that He created the world, why would anyone choose to believe something totally to the contrary?  Well, to this question the Bible tells us that it is not a matter of the human intellect. It’s not that someone won’t believe it because it’s too difficult to wrap their head around.  It’s not because the arguments that science puts forth to the contrary are so unquestionably superior to what the Bible says that people reject what the Bible says because they are so intelligent. No, the Bible tells us in the verses from 2 Thessalonians 2 above that the reason people reject the obvious truth of the Bible is not an intellectual one, but a moral and spiritual one. It says that people “did not believe the truth” (i.e., the truth of the Bible, which includes what the Bible says about not only the Creation, but anything else, such as the gospel) because they “had pleasure in unrighteousness.”  In other words, for someone to accept the truths laid down in Scripture they are placed in a position of acknowledging that they are sinners (because the Bible says they are), and that because of that sin they are condemned to hell unless they believe the gospel and by that belief are saved (again, because that’s what the Bible says).  It is because people love their sin (i.e., the pleasure of unrighteousness) so much that they will turn away from anything, including the truth of the Word of God, if it threatens to impede that pleasure, regardless of the fact that that pleasure will be very short lived, again, according to the Scriptures.  It’s a tragedy, but it’s the truth, as the Bible tells us over and over again. And although God often waits for us to come to our senses, repent, and turn to the Truth to be saved, that waiting will not be forever, for death is certain for each and every one of us. 

Not only is this true, but it is also true that God will eventually turn some people over to the sin that they so resolutely crave. As a result, they won’t be able to turn away from it.  Romans 1 tells us this about such people: “God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever!”  This is reiterated in 2 Thessalonians 2 above by telling us that because “they refused to love the truth and so be saved” that “God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth.” What a tragedy this is, to believe what is so obviously false.   But again, the root of such deception is not an intellectual one, it is a moral and a spiritual one.

So, what about you?  Are you one who believes that what the Bible says is false? Are you going along with the crowd when the crowd is so sadly given over to deception?  If so, while there is still time, the Bible warns you to turn from “the pleasure of unrighteousness” which will ultimately lead to the eternal destruction of the unbeliever, to the “love of the truth” which will ultimately lead to eternal life.  God’s message to each one of us is the same as His message to Israel at the time of the Old Testament: “Why will you die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Lord God; so turn, and live” (Ezekiel 18:31-32).