Dark Freedom
The Rise of Western Lawlessness
by C.W. Steinle
Copyright 2015 by C.W. Steinle
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Part I - Pulling Down Strongholds
Deciphering the Mystery of Lawlessness
It is appropriate to begin this
investigation into the meaning and consequences of lawlessness by reviewing the
most specific biblical reference on this topic, which of course, is the second
chapter of Paul's second letter to the Thessalonians. The first four verses do not speak directly
of lawlessness but they do mention the falling away, which likely refers to a
falling away from God and His law. The
references to the Man of Sin and the Son of Perdition in verses three and four
are linked directly to the Lawless One in the subsequent verses. Because the timing of end-time events is not
the focus of this book, the timing of the rapture and the actual coming of the
Lawless One will not be addressed; although, some puzzling characteristics of
the Lawless One will be discussed in the last chapter.
"Now, brethren, concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and
our gathering together to Him, we ask you, not to be soon shaken in mind or
troubled, either by spirit or by word or by letter, as if from us, as though
the day of Christ had come. Let no one
deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away
comes first, and the Man of Sin is revealed, the Son of Perdition, who opposes
and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that
he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.
Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you these
things? And now you know what is
restraining, that he may be revealed in his own time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at
work; only he who now restrains will do so until he is taken out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed,
whom the Lord will consume with the breath of His mouth and destroy with the
brightness of His coming.
The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan,
with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception
among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth,
that they might be saved. And for this
reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie,
that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure
in unrighteousness." - II Thess. 2:1-12
We can draw six facts from this
Scripture pertaining to lawlessness.
These are listed below and will be examined individually.
1. The epitome of lawlessness
(the Lawless One) opposes God and all that is called God or is worshiped as God;
even presenting himself as a counterfeit God.
2. Lawlessness was already at
work in the world at the time of Paul's letter.
3. Lawlessness will be cloaked
in deception.
4. Deliverance from perishing
will be afforded by loving the truth.
5. The delusion will be strong.
6. The deception is tied to
pleasure in what is unrighteous.
1. The epitome of lawlessness
(the Lawless One) opposes God and all that is called God or is worshiped as
God; even presenting himself as a counterfeit God.
All sin opposes God. This is why, after the murder of Uriah and his
affair with Bathsheba, King David confessed to God; "Against You, You only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Your
sight." - Psalm 51:4 We must recognize that God is a God of law and
order, while Satan is the source of lawlessness and chaos. The word 'lawless' (Gr. anomos) is the
opposite of law (Gr. nomos). Anomos is
used in the Bible to mean both "without law," and "to transgress
the law." Lawlessness is
fundamentally opposed to God, so that we should expect that the lawless leader
would also oppose Him.
Now the fact that the Lawless
One opposes all that is called God and is worshipped indicates his disdain, not
only for God, but for every form of religion.
Religion has historically been considered one of man's basic needs. This assumption has been predicated on the fact
that every culture has sought an object of worship. An awareness of the spiritual realm and of a
cosmic designer is intuitive to the human psyche. As the Nineteenth Psalm states;
"The heavens
declare the glory of God;
And the firmament
shows His handiwork.
Day unto day utters
speech,
And night unto night
reveals knowledge.
There is no speech nor
language
Where their voice is
not heard.
Their sound has gone
out through all the earth,
And their words to the end of the world." - Psalm 19:1-4
The Apostle Paul goes so far as
to say ignorance of God is inexcusable "because
what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to
them. For since the creation of the
world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things
that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead." - Rom.
Mankind has always concluded
that some spiritual force, some invisible hand, must be behind the experiences
of premonitions, coincidences, and the consequences related to unrighteous
behavior. People have sought a variety
of ways to please and appease "the gods." In fact, few individuals, and no
post-deluvian civilizations (other than the Marxist states of the twentieth
century) have been predominantly godless.
But instead of acknowledging the reasonableness of mankind's awareness
of God's existence, the behavioral scientists have only been willing to concede
that all peoples possess some unexplainable need for religion.
Nevertheless, the Lawless One will
deplore man's awareness of God and detest his desire to worship anything called
God - anything, that is, but himself. So
we find in this verse that the Lawless One will prefer either Atheism, or that
he alone should be worshiped as God.
Thus it is clear that the way for the Lawless One will be prepared by
the so-called religion of Atheism. And
if he should have a forerunner to prepare the way, a John-the-Baptist if you
will, we might expect that he is already among us based on the growing popularity
of Atheism.
2. Lawlessness was already at
work in the world at the time of Paul's letter.
When Paul wrote, "the
mystery of lawlessness," he was not using the word "mystery" to
indicate that lawlessness was only a vague term to him, or that it was some indefinable
concept. What is meant by the mystery of
lawlessness? The Bible indicates three usages
of the word "mystery." Jesus
said that His parables were given so that the truths being presented might be
understood by some, and disregarded by others.
We might think of the parables as a type of filter that would enable
people who possess the capacity to receive the truth of God to indeed hear His
words; while at the same time, allowing those who were ambivalent toward God to
entirely miss the meaning of the same words.
"And the disciples came and said to Him, ‘Why do You speak to them
in parables?’ He answered and said to
them, ‘Because it has been given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of
heaven, but to them it has not been given.
For whoever has, to him more will be given, and he will have abundance;
but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him. Therefore I speak to them in parables,
because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they
understand.’" – Matt. 13:10-13
"All these things Jesus spoke to the multitude in parables; and
without a parable He did not speak to them, that it might be fulfilled which
was spoken by the prophet, saying:
‘I will open My mouth in parables; I will utter things kept secret from
the foundation of the world.’" – Matt. 13:34-35
Another example of this type of
discretionary mystery is found in I Corinthians 2:6-8:
"However, we speak wisdom among those who are mature, yet not the
wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery,
the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory, which none
of the rulers of this age knew; for had they known, they would not have crucified
the Lord of glory."
Another usage of the word "mystery"
has to do with God's timing in revealing secret things. When taken in this sense, mysteries do not
depend on individual receptivity. These
mysteries might come through divine revelation or be gradually revealed over
the course of history. Romans 16:25-26
gives an example of this type of mystery.
"Now to Him who is able to
establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ,
according to the revelation of the mystery kept secret since the world began
but now made manifest, and by the prophetic Scriptures made known to all
nations, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, for obedience to
the faith."
A third usage of "mystery"
denotes concepts which are beyond human comprehension and may be so complex
that they can only be known by God. A
sufficient example of this usage is provided by I Timothy 3:16. "And
without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifested in
the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen by angels, preached among the
Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up in glory."
Clearly, the coming of the Lawless
One involves timing because Paul states that the Lawless One will come in his
own time. But the fact that lawlessness
was already working in the world during Paul's lifetime would indicate that
this mystery is only somewhat, and not entirely, dependent on the passage of
time for its revelation. Neither can we say
that there will come a time when lawlessness will become so apparent that it is
no longer a mystery. This conclusion is
drawn from the fact that even when the Lawless One is revealed, the working of
lawlessness will remain concealed to such an extent that mankind will be easily
led to believe in the lie.
So then, the Lawless One will be
revealed in due time, but the mystery of lawlessness will remain sufficiently
veiled as to present a strong delusion.
Therefore, since the working of lawlessness is relatively independent of
time, and because even at the end of the age it will not be easily detected, it
is reasonable to proceed with our investigation of lawlessness assuming that the
working of lawlessness is called a mystery based on its spiritual nature.
Paul's writings contain several
references to evil spiritual forces. He
most often refers to these forces as principalities, powers, and authorities,
which reside in heavenly places; that is to say, these forces are unseen or
lurk in an outer dimension. They are
nonetheless very real and are working dynamically in their efforts to undermine
the kingdom of God
"For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against
principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age,
against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places."
Although Paul discourages man's
search for the hierarchy and lineage of angelic beings, he does, nonetheless, present
here an array of four distinct spiritual enemies. Each of these are represented in the plural: rulers
or principalities (Gr. archas), authorities
or powers (Gr. exousias), world-rulers
(Gr. kosmokratoras), and wicked
spiritual beings (Gr. pneumatika poneras).
The New King James Version has
translated the first term, archas, as principalities. Some insight into this word is provided by
the following selection from the International
Standard Bible Encyclopedia.
"In the New Testament
"principality" occurs for arche, "rule," generally in the
plural, referring to men in authority (Titus 3:1, "Put them in mind to be
subject (the King James Version; "in subjection," the Revised Version
(British and American)) to principalities (the King James Version;
"rulers," the Revised Version (British and American)), and powers"
(the King James Version; "to authorities," the Revised Version
(British and American)); to superhuman agencies, angelic or demonic (Romans
8:38; Ephesians 3:10; 6:12; Colossians 1:16; 2:10,15). Paul was keenly sensible of the dualism of
mind and body and of the law in his members warring against the law of his mind
(Romans 7:23), and of the temporary victory of the evil, residing in the flesh,
over the good of the spirit (Romans 7:14).
This dualism was objectified in Zoroastrianism, and among the
Babylonians the several heavenly bodies were regarded as ruled by spirits, some
good, and some evil. The same belief,
appropriated by the Jews during the captivity, appears also in Greek thought,
as e.g. in Plato and later in the Stoics. The higher spheres, which hold the even tenor
of their way, were in general regarded as ruled by good spirits; but in the
sublunar sphere, to which the earth belongs, ill-regulated motions prevail,
which must be due to evil spirits. The
perversities of human conduct, in particular, thwarting, as was thought, the
simple, intelligible divine plan, was held to be subject to rebellious powers
offering defiance to God."7
Paul identifies the rebellious powers, or subversive authorities, by the second key word in
our text - exousias. The last two terms in our study of spiritual
mysteries from the Ephesians text can only be understood in full by including
their surrounding Greek modifiers.
The most specific translation of
the compound word "world-rulers"
is given by the Scripture4all Online Interlinear8 as: "the system-holders
of the darkness of this age." This
same online resource offers the expanded translation of wicked spiritual beings as: "spiritual forces of wickedness
among the celestial ones."
Now having examined the mystery
of lawlessness and concluded that Paul has deemed lawlessness to be a mystery
because of its spiritual nature, let us go a step further and suppose that lawlessness
is an evil spiritual principle - a unique system with one or more spiritual
beings championing its cause and guiding its campaign to overthrow man's regard
for God and His law. But we receive
consolation in this epistle to the Thessalonians that the Lawless One will,
along with Satan and all of his other demonic agents, be destroyed by the Lord
at His coming. "And then the lawless one will be revealed,
whom the Lord will consume with the breath of His mouth and destroy with the
brightness of His coming." – II Thess. 2:8
3. Lawlessness will be cloaked
in deception.
Christians are obsessed with
identifying the Son of Perdition instead of recognizing the real and present
danger of the insidious spiritual system which is already working to prepare
the way for the Lawless One. Christians
have stretched their imaginations to the limit contemplating a bigger-than-life
Man of Sin, whom they perceive is poised to appear in a future fantasia. Yet they have given little heed to the examination
of the forces of darkness already at work, and which are destroying the real
world around them. The gradual
introduction of lawlessness has been the greatest contributor to man's
oversight. Lawlessness leads to ever
greater lawlessness, as Paul states in his Letter to the Romans.
"For just as you presented your members as slaves of uncleanness,
and of lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as
slaves of righteousness for holiness." - Rom. 6:19
Once received and accepted into
the public mindset, lawlessness grows like a destroying cancer. The Apostle John wrote, "Whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness, and sin is
lawlessness" – I John 3:4. Due
to the fact that all other references in the New Testament to leaven refer to
sin, it is believed by many Bible commentators that He was speaking of the
spread of sin among the people of God when Jesus said: "To what shall I liken the kingdom of God
4. Deliverance from perishing
will be afforded by loving the truth.
Our verses from Second
Thessalonians clearly state that those who perish will do so because they did not receive the love of the truth, that
they might be saved. In His parable
of the sower, Jesus compared the receptive heart to good soil. The good and noble heart welcomes the gospel
message which speaks of God's love toward men.
Although a skeptic might reason that he lacks sufficient evidence to
rely on God's goodness, an unbiased person should nevertheless at least want to
believe he is loved and accepted by his Creator. A predetermination to reject God's love
exposes a problem of the heart. Jesus
said that people reject God primarily because they do honestly believe that God is good, but they also realize that
they have sinned. Furthermore, being
aware of the incompatibility of their sin and God's goodness, they make a
conscious rejection of God so that they might continue in sin.
Here are Jesus' words: "For God so loved the world that He
gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but
have everlasting life. For God did not
send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through
Him might be saved. He who believes in
Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because
he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that the light
has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because
their deeds were evil. For everyone
practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds
should be exposed." - John 3:16-20
In the latter chapters of this
book we will discuss God's grace and the Christian life. But it is sufficient for now to know that the
Holy Spirit leads the believer into all truth so that he might recognize
deception, and cling to what is true.
Paul affirms in Romans 8:1, "There
is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not
walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit." Chapter eight of Romans goes on to give
express assurance that the spiritual forces of wickedness cannot overpower or
undo the saving love of Christ that God demonstrated through the cross.
"For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels
nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to
come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to
separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." – Rom.
8:38-39 (Emphasis added)
5. The delusion will be
strong.
Perhaps the most sobering aspect
of the deception of lawlessness is this warning that it will be powerful. It is one thing to be gullible, but quite
another to be tricked by skillful slight-of-hand. And there is no greater master of deception
than the father of lies.
Just consider some of the
systemic inversions of good for evil, and evil for good, that have already
crept into twenty-first century culture:
- Instead of representing everything excellent, holy, and true; the name of Jesus is offensive, irrelevant, and to be avoided in the public setting.
- The unconditional love that comes only from God, and flows through those who have experienced God's perfect love, has been replaced by the axiom that being non-judgmental is the highest form of love.
- Respecting authority and honoring parents has been replaced by the mindset that all authority is innately evil and authority figures should be ignored or belittled.
- Self-denial is harmful, but wholeness is achieved by building up self-esteem.
- Instead of abundant life through the indwelling Holy Spirit, a zestful biological life is pursued through the exhilaration of experimentation, the anticipation of change, and throwing off the bonds of inhibition and self-control.
- Instead of freedom from sin, freedom is the rejection of every restriction which might limit self-expression.
- Progressive liberalism will lead to freedom, but conservatism will only bind the hands of progress.
- Instead of preparing for eternity with God, individuality is the manifest destiny of the human race.
The deception that lawlessness
is true freedom is both the great appeal, and the foundation stone, of Satan's
strong delusion. The desire to empower
the self-centered soul drives mankind away from God's lordship, and unwittingly
leads him directly into the snare of the devil.
Today, the omnipotent authoritarian government of the Lord God has been
rejected as ludicrous because it is contrary to society's inordinate obsession
with individual freedom. The whole
concept of lordship has become totally unacceptable and even vulgar to the emancipated
Humanist spirit. The strong delusion of
lawlessness will not prevail against the true Church, but it has already overtaken
a majority of the populations of America
and Europe .
6. The deception is tied to
pleasure in what is unrighteous.
Apart from outright Satanism,
two other spiritual systems incline their followers to lust after material
pleasure. One is the anti-religion of Atheism. The other is the philosophical religion of dualism. Both of these systems were at work in the
world before the lifetime of Paul. Atheism
promotes immorality by denying God's existence, whereas dualism inadvertently
encourages immorality by placing God so far from the practical world that His
existence becomes irrelevant.
Because of man's innate
awareness of God, and the observable evidence of a designer-constructor of the
universe, Atheism has historically been rare.
The Romans persecuted the Christians during the first centuries of the
church partially because they considered them to be Atheists who refused to
worship the Roman deities. Atheism and
dualism were both formulated to deal with the disparity between the
philosopher's abstract god of goodness, and the presence of evil and suffering
in the real world. We will review these
philosophies later in this book when we look at their origins and consider
their influence on the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.
But for now, our focus is on how
these philosophies tend to influence morality.
Pure Atheism is never long-lived.
In the absence of any other god, man quickly exalts himself to the
position of god so that Atheism is transformed into Humanism. And as we have already stated, fallen
humanity will always prefer lawlessness.
Nevertheless, because the individual does not live in a vacuum, he must
settle for a "controlled" lawlessness. Godless political engineers have proposed
various utopian states in which man might enjoy the carnal benefits of
lawlessness without being restricted by the law or interrupted by his neighbor.
One of the foremost branches of
Classical Greek philosophy was developed by Epicurus. Epicurus formulated an alternative to Stoicism
that focused on human happiness. The
Epicureans believed that happiness was the greatest virtue. Happiness was to be achieved by applying
reason in order to experience the greatest pleasure, while avoiding as much
pain as possible. Epicurus freely
expressed his rejection of God by posing the following series of questions to
justify the gratification of his flesh.
"Is God willing
to prevent evil, but not able? Then he
is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not
willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and
willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"9
Paul was familiar with ancient
Greek culture and the classical philosophers.
Paul addressed the Epicureans at Mars Hill while in Athens .
While explaining God's answer to the question of evil, Paul combined the
quotes of two different Greek authors when he said; "though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and
move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, 'For we are
also His offspring.'" – Acts 17:27-28
The first citation was taken
from the writings of Epimenides, a Greek philosopher from the Island of Crete
"They fashioned a
tomb for you, holy and high one,
Cretans, always liars,
evil beasts, idle bellies.
But you are not dead:
you live and abide forever,
For in you we live and move and have our being."10
The latter part of Paul's
statement was a line from a poem by Aratus, a poet from Paul’s own country of Cilicia . Aratus
penned these words in 277 B.C.:
"Let us begin
with Zeus, whom we mortals never leave unspoken.
For every street,
every market-place is full of Zeus.
Even the sea and the
harbor are full of this deity.
Everywhere, everyone
is indebted to Zeus.
For we are indeed his offspring ..."11
Paul answered the Epicureans' question
of evil by assuring them that God "has
appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man
[Jesus] whom He has ordained. He has
given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead." - Acts 17:31 So in His own time, and in His own way, the
living God has already resolved the question of evil by appointing a day on
which He will judge evil and restore the world from its corrupted condition.
Idealistic philosophy simply cannot
deal with a real God who has His own plans and purposes. Fallen man is always looking for a loophole
to justify his alienation from God, grasping at any excuse that will mask his
conscience from the guilt of sin. It is
for this reason that "God will send
them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie, that they all may be
condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness."
– II Thess. 2:11 Mankind looks to his own rickety philosophical
arguments with dishonest motives, hoping to rationalize his unrighteous behavior. But God, who knows the true motives of the heart,
will judge unrepentant sinners while they are yet in the act of justifying
their sin, by allowing them to believe in the very lies which they have chosen.
"With the pure
You will show Yourself pure,
And with the devious You will show Yourself shrewd." - Psalm 18:26
Many Christians have imagined
that all things would continue the same, just as they have from the time of our
fathers - right up until the moment of the rapture. But no one can deny at this point, that
religious beliefs, as well as attitudes toward government and God, are in an
unprecedented state of upheaval. A
monstrous admixture consisting of Atheism and the religion known as Humanism
has come to life and suddenly risen to its feet. Atheism, dualism, and Epicureanism are all
manifestations of the mystery of lawlessness.
These spiritual systems had already infiltrated Grecian Judaism, and
were working their way into the church during the lifetime of the
Apostles. Our study will follow the
progress of these religious and philosophical systems over the course of Church
History. Not
only has the world become more susceptible to being deceived by such an
aberrant god; at the same time, the spiritual landscape that was once conducive
to Christianity has become parched and unproductive.
At the time of Christ, the spiritual
soil of the Eastern Mediterranean was made white for the harvest by three important
nutrients: (1) a knowledge of God's historical work among the Jews which was
still common among the nations surrounding Israel, (2) the age-old religious
tendency to acknowledge and worship God helped prepare the hearts of the God-fearers
for the gospel, and (3) respect for authority provided the basis upon which the
law might act as a tutor to lead souls to Christ.
Today in the west these three
ingredients have been nearly fully depleted.
This reduction is not accidental.
It is directly attributable to the principalities and evil forces of
darkness which were assigned to this mission from millennia past. These system-holders have shifted the
paradigm; they have broken the system - in order to prepare the way for Son of
Perdition. Christians must face the
reality that the world has changed
since the time of our fathers; and it has changed drastically. We must also honestly admit that without the
testimony of God (the Bible), without the fear of the Lord, and without respect
for authority - it's not coming back.
