The Signs of the Times (33): Lawlessness

“‘You will not surely die,’ the serpent said to the woman. ‘For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’”
Genesis 3:4-5 (NIV)

Man wants to be like God. The temptation and the fall in paradise are a proof of this. To rise up to divine heights in his own name, in the name of man. Claiming divinity for himself. Just as his new master Lucifer also wanted to rise up in the name of himself to be equal to the Most High, Isaiah 14:12-15, Ezekiel 28:11-17. Incredible and unlimited powers of science and technology must help fallen man to achieve this. And everything and everyone that dares to stand in his way of progress to reach this ultimate goal must be ‘re-educated’, or otherwise mercilessly removed.

No God and no divine laws. ‘Ni Dieu, ni maître’. It took until the mid-1960s before anarchism was reinvented again by a new generation that was born after World War II. There were groups of young people in Amsterdam who labelled themselves as ‘autonomous anarchists’, self-ruling, self-governing, making and following their own laws. No acknowledgement of any authority or laws; whether from God or from man.

It is remarkable that the antichrist in 2 Thessalonians 2:8 is called ‘the lawless one’, the a-nomos (‘nomos’ means law in Greek). 1 John 3:4 says:‘Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness.’

‘…the secret power of lawlessness is already at work…’ says Paul in 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12. And the rebellion will soon occur and the ‘man of lawlessness’, the man who will be the top of the pyramid, will be revealed, who ‘…opposes himself and exalts himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped’. Today this type of mankind is already on the rise all over the world! But this final anti-Christ, the peak of this ultimately totally deprived mankind, is ‘…doomed to destruction.’

Daniel says of this person in Daniel 11:36 that ‘He will exalt and magnify himself above every god and will say unheard-of things against the God of gods. He will be successful until the time of wrath is completed.’

Because that will also happen in the end times: the time of God’s wrath will be completed, and will draw the execution of His final judgement closer. The measure of His patience – in which He is allowing incomprehensible things with great-longsuffering, hoping for repentance, or because the number of His chosen ones, or the number of the martyrs, Revelation 6:9-17, is not yet full. But one-day this will be coming to an end. Enough is enough. Peter says: ‘The Lord is not slow in keeping His promise, as some understand slowness. Instead He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.’ (2 Peter 3:9). One-day time will reach its fullness and judgement will come.

Jesus says: ‘Because of the increase of iniquity / wickedness / lawlessness, [Greek: anomia!] the love of most will grow cold.’ Matthew 24:12

If the law is no longer respected, love also disappears. A new society cold and hard as stone will arise. It’s every man for himself. The laws restrain unbridled selfishness, at least a little bit, and provide for the weak some protection. But if full lawlessness breaks through, the worst must be feared. ‘Homo homini lupus est’ = ‘man is a wolf to man’, the Romans observed. Violence, sex, lying and cheating, doing everything that God has forbidden, even ridicule it. And on top of it all: awards and big money prizes are given to productions in the media, utterances of ‘art’, or literature who are promoting this trend. It happens daily in post-Christian Europe.

Human ‘saviours of the world’ who will be coming in the name of man. They will build new towers of Babel. Ideologists and philosophers of all kinds, types and nature. Big words and political slogans. Right-wing National Socialism and left-wing Communism. Middle of the road democratic ideals. Liberty, Equality and Brotherhood (Liberté, Egalité and Fraternité) as in the French revolution. Revolution in the name of peace and in the name of a new world, a final human paradise that they picture as being within reach. Theology of the Revolution. But it always ends in rivers of blood. Millions and millions are being massacred. Murdered, gassed, destroyed. And all of that in the name of progress. Of survival of the fittest. Leading to a brave new world. The kingdom of man instead of the Kingdom of God.