The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie, and all the ways of wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.
2 Thessalonians 2:9-12 The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie, and all the ways that wickedness dece | New International Version (NIV) | Download The Bible App Now
Hmmm, it sure looks like today’s America.
Trump has manipulated his devote followers with his pathological lies, his outlandish behavior that sucks in his devote followers and wows them with his lawless powers.
You can't believe everything you read:
In his book
Forged, New Testament scholar
Bart D. Ehrman puts forward some of the most common arguments against the authenticity of 2 Thessalonians. For example, he argues that the views concerning the
Second Coming of Christ expressed in 2 Thessalonians differ so strikingly from those found in 1 Thessalonians that they cannot be written by the same author:
The author of 2 Thessalonians, claiming to be Paul, argues that the end is not, in fact, coming right away. Certain things have to happen first. There will be some kind of political or religious uprising and rebellion, and an
Antichrist-like figure will appear who will take his seat in the Temple of Jerusalem and declare himself to be God. Only then will the "Lord Jesus" come to "destroy him with the breath of his mouth" (2:3-8)... But can this be by the same author who wrote the other letter, 1 Thessalonians? Compare the scenario of Jesus's appearance in 2 Thessalonians, according to which it will be a while yet and preceded by recognizable events, with that of 1 Thessalonians, when the end will come like a "thief in the night," who appears when people least expect it. There seems to be a fundamental disparity between the teachings of 1 and 2 Thessalonians, which is why so many scholars think that 2 Thessalonians is not by Paul.
—
Bart D. Ehrman,
Forged, pg. 121-122
[24]
Ehrman also argues that the self-referencing signature at the end of 2 Thessalonians was likely used by the forger of the epistle to authenticate what he had written. If Paul had actually written the letter, Ehrman reasons, he would not have needed to include such an autograph:
At the end of the letter the author insists that he is Paul and gives a kind of proof: "I, Paul write this greeting with my own hand. This is the mark in every letter of mine; it is the way I write" (3:17)... What is peculiar is that the author claims that this is his invariant practice. But it is not how most of the undisputed letters of Paul end, including 1 Thessalonians. The words are hard to account for as Paul's, but they make sense if a forger is trying to convince his readers that he really was Paul. But perhaps the queen doth protest too much.
—
Forged, pg. 122-123
[24]
Many modern scholars agree with Ehrman that 2 Thessalonians was not written by Paul but by an associate or disciple after his death. See, for example,
Beverly Roberts Gaventa,
[25] Vincent Smiles,
[26] Udo Schnelle,
[27] Eugene Boring,
[28] and Joseph Kelly.
[29] Norman Perrin observes, "The best understanding of 2 Thessalonians ... is to see it as a deliberate imitation of 1 Thessalonians, updating the apostle's thought."
[30] Perrin bases this claim on his hypothesis that prayer at the time usually treated
God the Father as
ultimate judge, rather than Jesus.
