No. 32 - THE IDENTITY OF THE SON OF PERDITION THAT ABOMINATES AND DESOLATES By: John J. Blanchard Saturday, June 07, 2003 Today’s subject is the identity of the son of perdition which abominates and desolates. In August of 2002 we studied the subject of the abomination of desolation. In that sermon we studied several things of significance. First we studied the sanctity of God’s temple. Secondly, we studied the physical temple and how it foreshadowed God’s spiritual temple. That is, how Solomon’s temple foreshadowed the spiritual temple that God would in the future build. Thirdly, we compared the abomination of desolation of the Old Testament, that is the destruction of Jerusalem and the destruction of Solomon’s temple, to what has happened in God’s Church today. In the physical comparison in the Old Testament we looked at how the events surrounding the Babylonian destruction in 586 B.C., that is the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple, compared to what is going on in the Church today. We also looked at Antiochus Epiphanes and his destruction of the temple and desecration of it and the Roman destruction of 70 A.D. All of these events in ancient history do have application in a spiritual sense to what has happened to God’s Church today. If you recall, we have studied in great depth that the fact is the Church is the spiritual temple of God. Let us review that briefly right now looking at a couple of scriptures just to get it back into our minds. Turn, if you would, to I Corinthians 3, begin in verse 9 and read to verse 17. We are told here without a doubt that the temple of God is composed of human beings, called and spiritually-begotten human beings in which the Holy Spirit dwells. They are built on the foundation of Jesus Christ, and we are informed of Him by the prophets and the apostles. That is how we learn of Jesus Christ and His message. Of course, by His own words recorded by those apostles. Let us turn now, if you would, to Ephesians chapter 2. This is another scripture along the same lines. These should all be familiar to us. Ephesians 2 and read verses 19 to 22. We are without a doubt a spiritual building, a household of God, a holy temple of the Lord. That is what these two scriptures point out very clearly. There are many others that we could use but that is not today’s subject. What happen to it, is. DIALOGUE OF A RABBI I now want to read something I have read in the past, usually around the Day of Atonement. It is the “Dialogue of a Rabbi”. It gives us some insight as to how devout Jews view the physical temple, the temple of Solomon, in their religious life. It shows how seriously they took that temple and the sacrificial system that went on and the priestly order that worked in it. Let us read “The Dialogue of a Rabbi”. Only once a year on Yom Kippur the high priest would enter this room and pray to God on Israel’s behalf. This is a remarkable monologue by a rabbi in the Yiddish. “God’s world is great and holy. The holiest land in the world is the land of Israel. In the land of Israel, the holiest city is Jerusalem. In Jerusalem the holiest place was the temple. In the temple the holiest spot was the Holy of Holies. “There are seventy peoples in the world. The holiest among these is the people of Israel. The holiest of the people of Israel is the Tribe of Levi. In the Tribe of Levi the holiest are the priests. Among the priests the holiest was the high priest. “There are 354 days in a year.” That is a lunar year. “Among these the holidays are holy. Higher than these is the holiness of the Sabbath. Among Sabbaths the holiest is the Day of Atonement, the Sabbath of Sabbaths. “There are seventy languages in the world. The holiest is Hebrew. Holy than all else in this language is the holy Torah. In the Torah the holiest part is the Ten Commandments. In the Ten Commandments the holiest of all words is the name of God. “Once during the year at a certain hour these four supreme sanctities of the world were joined with one another. That was on the Day of Atonement when the high priest would enter the Holy of Holies and there utter the name of God. Because this hour was beyond measure, holy and awesome, it was a time of utmost peril not only for the high priest but for the whole of Israel. For if in this hour there had, God forbid, entered the mind of the high priest a false or sinful thought, the entire world would have been destroyed.” I took this quote from a book on Jewish literacy by Rabbi Telushkin. I think it embodies very well how seriously devout Jews took the temple, the priesthood and the sanctity of what they had to do in that temple and their priestly duties. They felt that if it had been done improperly and anything had defiled the high priest’s mind, even his thoughts, on the Day of Atonement, the world could have been destroyed. The whole world could have been destroyed and not just the people of Israel. Because it would have shown that sin had entered the holiest place on earth, the Holy of Holies, where Christ dwelt above the mercy seat. We cannot have sin there. We have to remember that is what how we are supposed to feel about the temple of God. We are the spiritual temple of God, a far greater significance than that building of wood and stone. That building was a precursor. It was a foreshadowing of what God would do through the spiritual temple, the living stones, through human beings where Christ would actually dwell in the mind and in the heart. THE FUTURE ABOMINATION OF DESOLATION It is a very important concept to understand and never forget. Because when we start to look at scriptures identifying the abomination of desolation like we did in the sermon in August of 2002, then we look at the subject of the son of perdition and we have to realize where did these evil things take place? Did it take place in a sandstone temple in the last days or a temple of God? That is what we want to look at today and determine once and for all. We need a little review to set the stage before we get really in depth here. If you would turn to Matthew chapter 24 we will look at what Christ had to say about the abomination of desolation. Read Matthew 24, verses 15 to 16. That did happen in 70 A.D. when the Romans came in and destroyed the temple. If you hadn’t fled that temple before they got in there and did their final destruction, you probably perished. I have read accounts that as many as one million Jews died at that time! It was a horrible time. Just like in 586 B.C. when Nebuchadnezzar’s army surrounded Jerusalem and the temple, destroyed everything, took people captive and slaughtered many, it was a horrible time to be alive. But Christ is talking about an event here that goes far into the future into our time. He says the ultimate fulfillment will be when the abomination of desolation stands in the holy place at the end time. The holy place, brethren, is the temple of God. It is not a sandstone building. Turn to Mark’s account of the same issue. Turn to Mark chapter 13, verse 14: “‘So when you see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing where it ought not’ (let the reader understand), ‘then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains.’” When you see this abomination of desolation standing where it ought not it says. Where should it not be? It should not be in the temple of God. We are told if we have eyes to see, we will be able to see and understand this. Then we can do something about it. SON OF PERDITION Where is this place where this abomination stands? It is the temple of God. Who will do the standing in that place and be revealed in the last times? The son of perdition, and that is the subject of today. To actually get into the subject of the son of perdition, the logical starting point is II Thessalonians chapter 2. There has been much misunderstanding about this chapter, but we are going to go through it carefully. Before we analyze it, however, I want to just read it. Read verses l through 12 of II Thessalonians 2 for an overview. Then we will go back through it verse by verse and do a scriptural analysis and apply it to our time. It is a very, very sobering set of scriptures. We need to look at it carefully. We need to examine it one scripture at a time, and we need to look at the King James Version as well. Because if you notice, there were a number of words here in the New King James that were italicized, which means they have been added by man. They have been changed around just a little bit, but we have to get the full understanding because this is a significant event in history. When the son of perdition is understood by God’s people, at least who he is, the identity and what he has done to the Church, it is a significant event in history. Let us analyze this now starting in verses 1 and 2. Paul’s purpose in this little dissertation here is to clear up confusion regarding the second coming of Christ. People were confused. They were getting upset and “shaken in mind,” it said. He says to them back in his day, do not be troubled in mind. It even goes further and it says do not be soon shaken. In other words, if you get shaken now in your mind, you are premature in your thinking. Do not do that. Do not be deceived. This was good advice from Paul for that time. As a matter of fact, it was good advice for two thousand years. It was good advice until this very day! If we follow his advice, when you see a few things, we are going to be shaken in mind. That is what it says in verse 3. II Thessalonians 2, verse 3: “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...” So Paul’s advice was very good until the falling away would come. Then he said you better be shaken up, so to speak! That is when we need to be worried. He said do not let it soon shake you because he could see that it was going to be a while. It was going to be quite a while. We will see it was because the son of perdition was being restrained. So you do not get disturbed or shaken in mind until when? The end time. THE FALLING AWAY Now we have had a falling away. Paul said watch for two things. The first, the falling away. We are experiencing that firsthand and have been for almost two decades! So the falling away is well into its maturation, you might say. We are well along the road into a falling away in God’s Church. The evidence is what we saw in the sermon on the “Abomination of Desolation”. The Church has been almost totally destroyed! It has been abominated and desolated. It means it has very few inhabitants, and it is abominated. In other words, it is filthy in God’s sight. So the abomination and desolation are evidence of what? They are evidence of what the son of perdition has done in the Church. THE REVEALING OF THE SON OF PERDITION The next thing we have to watch for Paul said is the actual revealing, the understanding, of who the son of perdition is. Let us drop down to verse 4: “...who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshipped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.” The information that we looked at in the “Abomination of Desolation” is the evidence of what has happened in the Church. It is the evidence of the workings of the abomination of desolation. It has something behind it though and that is the son of perdition. He does what he does, which is he abominates and desolates. We see the evidence. We cannot really see the son of perdition. We see the evidence of what he does. He opposes God. He exalts himself above all that is God. He sits in the temple of God. If you were to look that up in the Greek, it means “sits or hovers over” as Christ did when He hovered over the mercy seat in the Holy of Holies. He shows himself that he is God. Why? Because he has taken Christ’s place! He has put himself into that most holy place on earth, as we saw how the rabbis felt with a physical building. That was the most holy place on earth back then, because Christ dwelt over the mercy seat. They were indeed correct. You cannot approach God and the Holy of Holies and be filthy. If you do, you are worthy of destruction. If you were doing it on behalf of a nation, like the high priest was for Israel and on behalf of the world, you have just doomed everybody if you did it lightly! When God saw that the people were not repenting and that they were letting filth into the nation of Israel and into the temple, He had to leave. We could study that subject in detail, but we won’t today. Christ did leave the temple. When the Babylonians got there, the reason they could overrun the temple and get into the Holy of Holies and take the vessels of the Church away is because Christ let it happen. He was gone. Today we have a situation where the Holy of Holies, the temple of God, has been left to destruction. What has happened? We are going to see here. The restraining one has actually left the Church. Let us go down to verse 5: “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.” Verse 7: “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.” We can see in verse 7 back in Paul’s day, you notice “He” is capitalized because it is Jesus Christ. He, Jesus Christ, was restraining the son of perdition. We are getting some hints here as to what the son of perdition could possibly be. If the son of perdition could be working as a mystery back then two thousand years ago and at the end time actually overcomes the Church and puts himself into the temple, obviously, you are dealing with a spirit being. More on that later. Obviously we are dealing with something beyond human kind, and he is being restrained up until the end time. When the Father tells Jesus Christ, Move aside, Son, Christ obeys His Father. Then the people are left without defense. Continuing in verse 8: “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...” Brethren, that says a lot right there but we have to think about this and analyze it carefully. There are two revealings mentioned here in II Thessalonians chapter 2. The revealing of the son of perdition and the revealing of the lawless one. Did you notice that the “lawless one” there is written in italics? THE REVEALING OF THE WICKED If you read it in the New King James Version it looks like it is one person. A lot of times we look for a single person on the earth and try to cast the blame on that individual. We say there has to be a person in the last days, a human being, who fulfills all of these roles. It is impossible because we are looking for a spirit being that was alive two thousand years ago and is alive today! Let us go back now to the King James Version. I will read it to you. We will see what it says in verse 8. “And then shall that wicked be revealed whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming.” Verse 9: “Even him...” These words are italicized, so they were added. “...whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and lying wonders.” We are going to read this now removing from the King James Version and the New King James Version the words that were added by men and read it straight. Starting in verse 8: “And then shall that wicked be revealed whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of His mouth and shall destroy with the brightness of His coming, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders.” We find here that there are possibly more than one. I will prove to you that there is more than one wicked. This is a generality, the wicked, the people who are working with the son of perdition. In other words, the son of perdition cannot be seen but he works through human beings. These human beings who cooperate with the son of perdition are working for Satan it says here. They are working by Satan’s will, by his coordination and they are using lying signs and wonders to deceive God’s people. Let us remember that. We are dealing with two different revealings here: the son of perdition and the wicked. Let us continue in verse 10 of II Thessalonians chapter 2: “...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.” We do not want to take pleasure in Satan’s lies. If we do, we are in grave danger! Satan is a liar, and we will prove beyond a doubt that Satan is the son of perdition! People who spread his lies to deceive God’s people are in grave danger if they do not repent of that. We all have to get to the point where we can see the lie for what it is and get rid of this strong delusion. How do we do that? Beg God for help! It says here that God allows the strong delusion. If we do not love God’s truth, He will allow that strong delusion to come over God’s people at the end. He will stop restraining Satan from taking over the temple. I am calling a spade a spade, and I am telling you exactly what it says here. We are not blaming human beings and we are not pointing at other religious groups. We are looking at the temple of God ourselves. We are looking at the evidence as we did in the Abomination of Desolation sermon, and we are seeing what has happened to God’s Church and the viciousness and the hatred that is extant in God’s Church. There is a lack of compassion and love, and we are saying God is not the author of (A) confusion and (B) hatred. Who is? We know where that comes from. It comes from Satan. Now we have to prove how this happened. How did he get into the Church? What is he doing here? We know that this is all something that occurs at the end time. Paul said do not worry in our time. But there is a serious situation that develops in the end time when Jesus Christ, the restraining one, stops restraining. There are three overall thoughts conveyed in II Thessalonians chapter 2:1-12. We are going to sum those thoughts up before we continue on. THREE THOUGHTS IN II THESSALONIANS 2 The first thought, Paul says, brethren, do not be troubled or alarmed about reports concerning Christ’s coming and the events surrounding His coming until you see the falling away. He says it will not happen soon. Paul is there helping his people and encouraging them, and by him writing those words for them, we get information that comes down to our time. Because we are in the time of Christ’s return, therefore we will witness the events that surround His second coming. And we are living through the falling away! It is not just coming soon. It is now! It is happening right now. This is the first thought. The second thought: the son of perdition cannot sit in the temple back in Paul’s time because Christ is stopping him. He is restraining him. Paul says to watch out for when the restraint stops because the falling away will then result. How does that occur? It occurs through the abomination of desolation. Where will that be? It will be in the place it ought not to be. When you see the evidence of the abomination of desolation, it should not be there. There should be no abomination of desolation in God’s Church. So when you see that occurring, you know that what Daniel spoke of is happening in the Church. This is what Paul is saying. He is warning us of that time. The third thought that Paul makes clear is once you see the falling away, then the son of perdition will be revealed and the wicked will be destroyed. They are those who deceive in the name of God by the workings of lying powers, signs and wonders. They will be destroyed for what they have done to God’s Church unless they, and we repent. Any of us who have done anything to slander God’s name or harm God’s Church must repent while there is still time. It is a very serious matter. We will talk about that in the next sermon. SIGNS AND LYING WONDERS Today we want to recognize that God’s people are being deceived and they are running around deceiving one another with the powers, the signs and lying wonders. How do we know that? We know this because the abomination of desolation is taking place before our eyes. It is the destruction of the temple so we know it has happened. We cannot see Satan, but we can see the effects of his working through people, tearing this beautiful temple of God apart. Let us go back to Matthew 24. It will be a little clearer to us as to what Christ was talking about. Matthew chapter 24, verse 15: “‘Therefore when you see the “abomination of desolation,” spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place’ (whoever reads, let him understand), ‘then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains.’” When we see this occur, and as we read in Mark, it is standing in a place it ought not, what is it trying to do? We saw in II Thessalonians it is deceiving God’s people. It is broadcasting lies that God has stopped restraining. Those lies are believed by God’s people to their destruction if we do not repent! We must beg God for help to get out of this situation we are in. Drop down Matthew 24, verse 24: Christ says, “‘For false christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect.’” We are warned here, and those warnings about signs and wonders are the same words used in II Thessalonians chapter 2. What are these signs and wonders? Where does the power come from that gives them the ability to lie to God’s people and deceive? Where do they originate? They originate from Satan. How did they come here and what are they? Let us take a look at them, because they are the same words. If you were to look up “signs” in Matthew 24 in your Strong’s Concordance and “signs” in II Thessalonians 2, you will find it comes from the numbers 4591 and 4592. Semeion is the word in Greek which means an indicator, an indication or a mark to indicate. So the signs are indicators. Lying wonders: “wonders” comes from the number 5059 which is teras, which means “a prodigy or omen.” “Power” in II Thessalonians 2 comes from the number 1411, dunamis. It is related and falls right in between 1410 and 1413 which is this. Dunamis means a force, a miraculous power, to enable, a ruler or an officer with authority. Let us now put this phrase together. The power, the signs, the lying wonders that Christ warned about and that deceivers would come preaching these things. What is He trying to say here? When you put it all together, we find that they do mean something interesting. Some ruler enables the wicked who have some authority or position of their own to use signs and wonders to deceive God’s people. These are false signs, false markers and false omens to indicate Christ’s return, and they are spoken of by Jesus Christ. Because Christ said they are going to come in My name saying I said these things. Put that together with II Thessalonians chapter 2, these signs and lying wonders are used in Christ’s name. For what reason? Paul said it early on in II Thessalonians 2, to confuse people regarding Christ’s second coming. So there are false markers, indicators and omens pointing to Christ’s second coming. They are wrong, and they are very dangerous for God’s people because they are pointing us in the wrong direction and they are a delusion. They have very powerful negative effects on God’s people. What are these signs, because we hear all kinds of strange things: You are going to see signs up in the sky. You will see signs in the Middle East. You will see signs all over the earth. What are those signs that we keep hearing about? Wars, rumors of wars, famines, pestilences, earthquakes, disease epidemics, this is a drum beat that not only comes from branches of God’s Church but comes from Protestant churches, established Christian churches around the world and even pagan churches. Many, many millions of people are pointing to these signs as signs of Christ’s second coming. Yet we hear in the true Church of God, the temple of God, that we have some sort of special understanding regarding wars and rumors or wars, pestilences and famines that point to Christ’s return. We better pay heed to all of these signs because they mean Christ is coming. If we do not pay heed, we are going to go into some horrible tribulation and perish by the very act of those signs. Whether it is a famine, a war, whatever the case may be, unless we are with some special group in a place of safety. God hates that thought because we are here for the benefit of mankind. THE REAL SIGN OF CHRIST’S COMING Now I want to look at the signs that Christ would occur and what He warned us about. If you would please turn to Matthew 24, starting in verse 3: “Now as He sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying, ‘Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of this age?’ And Jesus answered and said to them: ‘Take heed that no one deceives you.’” This is the same thing Paul said in II Thessalonians 2:1. “‘For many will come in My name, saying, “I am the Christ,” and will deceive many.’” How will they deceive them? Look at verse 6: “‘And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled...’” These are the same words Paul used. “‘...for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of sorrows.’” Jesus Christ Himself said do not worry about these signs. They are not the sign of My coming. These are the false signs and markers that He was speaking of in verse 24. People will come in My name saying I am the Christ and will point to false markers, omens and signs to indicate My coming. They will trouble many. When they trouble them, they will deceive them because people will believe these lies and not look for the correct signs of My coming. Which He goes on to say, if we were to drop down to verse 14, Jesus Christ gives the sign of His coming. He says in verse 14: “‘And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come.’” Now that is a sign. When we see the gospel preached around the world, that is a sign. We will be near Christ’s coming. Mr. Herbert Armstrong said over twenty years ago the gospel had been preached, and it continued to be preached as long as he was alive but quickly disappeared from the face of the earth. It has almost disappeared. Why? Because the abomination of desolation has turned the Church into devouring itself so there is a famine of the word! If people do not have the truth, what do they have? Lies! We have the world and the Church of God looking at false signs. Christ said you will always have wars. You will always have pestilences. You will always have earthquakes. You will always have disease until we free the earth of this stuff. Do not point at those things. If you look at those things as the signs, you will be taken as a thief in the night. I will surprise you because you are looking at all the wrong markers. If you were to look at the markers (and we are not going to do that today), we would start with the kingdom of God, the gospel being preached around the earth. We would continue on in Matthew 24 and we would see signs in the fig trees. We would continue on looking and we would see signs of the sun, moon and the stars. As we have shown many times in other sermons, the stars represent angels, the sun represents Jesus Christ and the moon represents the Church. If you are looking for physical things to happen like a bomb to get dropped on the Dome of the Rock and another sandstone temple to get built by the Jews, you are looking in the wrong direction. We need to look at what is happening in the true temple of God, the Church. When we look at the Church, we will see the signs of Christ’s return. If you back up in chapter 24 of Matthew, you would see Christ was pointing to the temple and said, you will not see one stone left upon another. They will all be thrown down. That happened to the physical temple in 70 A.D., but what has happened to the spiritual temple since Mr. Herbert Armstrong’s death? It has been thrown down. The living stones are cast about. The spiritual sign was foreshadowed by the physical so that we could understand what is taking place before our very eyes. Yet we have minister after minister pointing to the Dome of the Rock to come down, to nuclear wars to contaminate the earth with pollution, to disease epidemics to ravage the earth and kill the people. And if you want to be spared, you are going to have to end up in a place of safety and be among a small minority that God can manage to save. In the sermon called “Don’t Be A Minimalist” we saw that God is not going to save a few. He is going to save a great multitude that no man can number. He is going to preserve the planet that He loves, and He is going to use His miraculous power to completely devastate Satan and destroy those who have been working for Satan. We all need to pay attention to the correct signs and stop falling for the tricks that Satan has put into the temple of God. That is what we are seeing today. Satan has put himself in the temple of God. He has the Church doing his will and he shows himself I am god. I have taken His temple. Jesus Christ cannot marry the bride because here I sit in the temple! Do you think Christ can come back to a temple with Satan in it? No. But Christ is not going to be defeated, and He will not be mocked. We will go into that later. We can see that spiritual things have happened in the Church that point to the abomination of desolation taking place. Satan is standing in the holy place where he ought not. He should have never entered God’s temple. But because he is there, he is going to bring the wrath of God on himself and anybody who is working along with him. We do not want to inadvertently fall into that situation. EFFECTS OF THE ABOMINATION OF DESOLATION IN THE CHURCH What are some of the effects of the abomination of desolation? How can we tell it is in the Church? Besides the fact that we are scattered and thrown down, there must be spiritual things going on in the Church. What are the fruits of God’s spirit? We could go through the love chapter, we could go through Galatians. We could look at how we are supposed to have love, patience, joy and peace. But there must be the opposite of that in the Church to be pointing to the evidence that Satan is working here. Because Satan does not bring peace, joy, love and compassion. Let us look at I Timothy chapter 4. The Church is finding itself at the end time doing Satan’s will, which is what we are told in II Thessalonians 2:9-12. It says that these wicked are working by the power of Satan. They must be saying and doing what Satan wants them to do. I Timothy chapter 4, verse 1: “Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith...” This is linked in my Bible right in the margin to II Thessalonians 2, this falling away. “...giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron...” Here we see in the latter days some of us will fall for doctrines of demons and deceiving spirits who will sear our minds with a hot iron. The effect of this is a falling away. If you were to look at searing the conscience, you would find it makes the heart insensitive. It turns us hard hearted. That is what it means to sear our minds with a hot iron. Instead of making us loving and compassionate and full of joy and peace like Jesus Christ would have us, the doctrines of demons turn us into very hard-hearted, cruel-minded, vicious people. Living as it were, a form of godliness. Where does that turn you to? If we look like the temple of God but we are spewing Satan’s line, all you have to do is go to II Timothy chapter 3 and you see the effects. You see the fruits of an evil spirit, not the fruits of God’s Holy Spirit. II Timothy 3, starting in verse 1: “But know this, that in the last days...” We see the same phraseology. “...perilous times will come...” (perilous for whom, for God’s Church) “...For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away!” It is describing a Church in the last days that is a pretty harsh place to be a Church member, isn’t it? I will tell you from what I have seen in many of the world’s churches, I see more compassion in the world’s churches than I see in God’s Church! Why would I say that? Because when we become spiritually without self-control, spiritually unforgiving and spiritual traitors, headstrong and brutal, we can sit by and watch six billion people get fried to death and tell them they deserve it! We can point out the false signs and lying wonders and say you deserve this nuclear war that is coming, because you refuse to follow God. You are thumbing your nose at God. You won’t follow us. Therefore, because you do not keep the Sabbath and you don’t do this or that you deserve to get killed in a nuclear war, in a disease epidemic, in an earthquake or whatever the case may be. We are scaring the wits out of people, and what do we know about the people on the earth? Revelation 12:9 tells us they are deceived. They do not know their right hand from their left hand. If you were to go study Jonah, you would see how God feels about that. He says I do not like destroying people that do not know their left hand from their right hand. I do not like to do that. The Church in the last days should be preaching the gospel of the kingdom of how God is going to save these poor deceived people from their captor, Satan the devil. Mr. Herbert Armstrong showed long ago that the world is held captive by Satan. We are here as a temple of God to try to help them. We certainly cannot do it by condemning them. When we condemn them, we are using Satan’s doctrines, and we are allowing our conscience to be seared with a hot iron. I had not planned on reading this, but let us go to Luke chapter 9. You will see it right from Christ’s own mouth. This is an incident that we should take to heart as God’s Church. Luke 9, verse 51: “Now it came to pass, when the time had come for Him to be received up, that He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem, and sent messengers before His face. And as they went, they entered a village of the Samaritans, to prepare for Him. But they did not receive Him, because His face was set for the journey to Jerusalem.” Jesus Christ was on the way to be crucified. Verse 54: “And when His disciples James and John saw this, they said, ‘Lord, do You want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them, just as Elijah did?’ But He turned and rebuked them, and said, ‘You do not know what manner of spirit you are of. For the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives but to save them.’ And they went to another village.” Christ said when you have the viewpoint of condemning the earth to destruction because they are not nice, even to the Savior of mankind, you are working for the wrong spirit! Christ forgave the people who put the nails in His hands and stabbed Him in the side. He said to the Father, forgive them, they do not know what they are doing. Do you think the people on the earth are any different today? They do not know what they are doing. We should not be condemning them. We should be cleansing God’s temple, along with Jesus Christ. We should be asking Him to live in us, cleanse us and help us to become compassionate and loving like He was and is to this very day so that we can help bring about the Millennium. We should want to preserve this earth instead of condemning it. When we condemn the earth and we condemn one another, attacking back and forth in the Church of God, devouring the sheep and devouring one another, we are fulfilling Satan’s purpose! We are proving beyond the shadow of a doubt that the son of perdition is among us. He is dwelling in the temple of God, and the fruits of it are everywhere! The saddest thing is he has brethren and ministry working in concert with him to destroy the body of Christ with lies, lying wonders and false signs. This is the case today in God’s Church. We are seeing the effects but we are also identifying the son of perdition. He is a being that has been around for a long, long time and now sits in the temple of God. Remember, we started out refreshing our memories with I Corinthians chapter 3 and Ephesians chapter 2 proving the temple of God is the people. Therefore, when the son of perdition sets itself up in the temple of God and is showing himself that he is God, it is because the restraining one has stepped out of the way. He has allowed this power to fill the vacuum and deceive us! God said we do not have to stay that way. We need to admit our error. If we in the Laodicean era would let Him into our lives, open our minds, hearts and spiritual eyes so that we can see our condition and repent, there is a very fine reward. But if we refuse and continue to stay hard hearted, we are going to have to answer to Jesus Christ. We have to do something about this. That will be the subject of the next sermon in this series. MAN OF SIN We have seen now that Satan is the son of perdition, and he controls wicked servants right in God’s temple showing himself that he is god. But what did we do with that little section there that he is man of sin? That is what throws people. Because he is called the man of sin, people try to find a human being to cast the blame on. They try to find a physical human being that they can blame for all of the earth’s ills. The most common one in Protestantism and in the true Church is to point to the Pope. I am not saying the Pope is necessarily a good religious leader. Because he is deceived, he cannot be. But he could be a decent man deceived by Satan, the devil, and have a good excuse for it. He never had the Holy Spirit to start with. We in the Church do. We have no excuse! We have to kick the son of perdition out of our individual temples and out of collectively what is God’s temple. We need God’s help to do it. Let us prove why we can call Satan a man. Turn back to Isaiah 14. We are not going to do this with supposition. We are going to use God’s word. The only way to prove something definitively, is to use God’s word. Let us look at verse 3 of Isaiah 14: “It shall come to pass in the day the Lord gives you rest from your sorrow, and from your fear and the hard bondage in which you were made to serve, that you will take up this proverb against the king of Babylon, and say...” In the physical times past, in the Old Testament, the king of Babylon had made Israel serve in harsh bondage, as did pharaoh and a number of other conquerors throughout history. God says when I give you rest and peace, you will take up a proverb against him. Physically I will bet Israel did that when they were allowed to go back to the temple in Jerusalem by Cyrus. I’ll bet they took up a proverb against the king of Babylon. We have shown that what happened to the physical temple and physical Jerusalem would also take place in a far more significant way in the spiritual temple in the last days. So if you continue reading in Isaiah chapter 14, you come down to verse 12. You find the king of Babylon has a little bit different name. Verse 12 of Isaiah chapter 14: “‘How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How you are cut down to the ground, you who weakened the nations! For you have said in your heart: “I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will also sit on the mount of the congregation…”’” The mount of the congregation is spiritual Israel, it is the temple of God. He wanted all that time, for thousands of years, to get into God’s true temple. “‘“...on the farthest sides of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High.” Yet you shall be brought down to Sheol, to the lowest depths of the Pit.’” Here we see a prophecy by Isaiah saying that Satan has always wanted to take God’s throne. He wants to sit on God’s throne. He wants to be like the Most High, but it is not going to work. Yet we saw in the New Testament for a short time it does! He gets into the temple of God and makes a mess of it. But God is not going to tolerate that. Continuing in verse 16 we are going to show that you can call Satan and man. “‘Those who see you will gaze at you, and consider you, saying: “Is this the man who made the earth tremble, who shook kingdoms, who made the world as a wilderness and destroyed its cities, who did not open the house of his prisoners?”’” Satan is called a man. Why? Because he dwells in mankind. He dwelt in the king of Babylon. That is what we are shown here in Isaiah 14. He dwelt in a lot of people since then. He had a lot of people calling his tune. So he is called a man but he is not a man. It is just like Jesus Christ is called the Son of Man and the Son of God, but where is He now? He is heaven at His throne. Satan tried to take His place to be the Son of God, a Son of Man. Satan is a great duplicator. Just as you can call Jesus Christ the Son of Man, in a way you can call Satan a son of man because he has to exist and dwell in human beings! That is where he does his work. Show me the bomb Satan dropped. Show me the gun Satan fired. Show me the army Satan directed. Show me the knife he used to stab someone. You can’t do it. He works through people that he gets to do his evil deeds. That is reprehensible enough, but mankind has been in his clutches for now six thousand years. He should have never gotten into God’s Church, into the temple, but he did. The violence, the evil, the desecration of the temple goes far beyond the physical violence on the earth, because he is doing spiritual violence to God’s people. He is getting us to do it for him. This is what is so awful. God hates this tremendously because He loves His temple. Jesus Christ loves His bride. The Father wants to have a wedding supper and bring about the end of the oppressor, Satan, and his rule and free mankind. Right now we are the only thing standing in the way because we are not getting ready as the bride of Christ. We must get ready so that Satan can be taken off his throne and cast down to the bottomless pit. Now, if you would, turn to Ezekiel chapter 28. We are going to prove this even further. Starting with verse 1. “A Proclamation Against the King of Tyre” my subheading says here. “The word of the Lord came to me again, saying, ‘Son of man, say to the prince of Tyre, “Thus says the Lord God: ‘Because your heart is lifted up, and you say, “I am god, I sit in the seat of gods, in the midst of the seas,” yet you are a man, and not a god, though you set your heart as the heart of a god (Behold, you are wiser than Daniel! There is no secret that can be hidden from you! With your wisdom and your understanding you have gained riches for yourself, and gathered gold and silver into your treasuries; by your great wisdom in trade you have increased your riches, and your heart is lifted up because of your riches),’”’ therefore thus says the Lord God...” He is going to punish the king of Tyre. The king of Tyre was a physical man and Tyre was a physical city. But it says here the king of Tyre thought he was a god just like Nebuchadnezzar thought too much of himself. His son, Belshazzar, thought too much of himself. Here you have the king of Tyre physically in the ancient times thinking too highly of himself, but what happens when you drop down to verse 11? Verse 11 of Ezekiel 28: “Moreover the word of the Lord came to me, saying, ‘Son of Man, take up a lamentation for the king of Tyre, and say to him, “Thus says the Lord God: ‘You were the seal of perfection...’”’” No human being was the seal of perfection except Jesus Christ. Continuing in verse 12: “‘full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God...’” No man could live from the garden of Eden up until the king of Tyre! “‘Every precious stone was your covering: the sardius, topaz, and diamond, beryl, onyx, and jasper, sapphire, turquoise, and emerald with gold. The workmanship of your timbrels and pipes was prepared for you on the day you were created. You were the anointed cherub who covers...’” Now we see this is Lucifer! This is Satan. Satan is called the king of Tyre. Why? Because he dwelt in that king. He took him over at one point. Continuing in verse 14: “‘I established you; you were on the holy mountain of God; you walked back and forth in the midst of fiery stones. You were perfect in your ways from the day you were created, till iniquity was found in you. By the abundance of your trading you became filled with violence within, and you sinned; therefore I cast you as a profane thing out of the mountain of God; and I destroyed you, O covering cherub, from the midst of the fiery stones. Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor; I cast you to the ground, I laid you before kings, that they might gaze at you.’” Ezekiel 28, verse 18: “‘You defiled your sanctuaries by the multitude of your iniquities, by the iniquity of your trading; therefore I brought fire from your midst; it devoured you, and I turned you to ashes upon the earth in the sight of all who saw you. All who knew you among the peoples are astonished at you; you have become a horror, and shall be no more forever.’” It goes back to the human beings that he dwells in. They will turn to ashes! The son of perdition is going to get tossed back into the bottomless pit. He has to live and work, as it were, through people. Just as Christ lives and works through the body of Christ, Satan lives and works through what are called, in different places, the tares, the brambles, the thorns and his seed. That is where he works. God works in the seed of God and Satan works in his people. When that starts to occur in God’s Church though, it is a thing beyond comprehension in its dastardliness. That being has quite an ego in his attempt to fight the very God. He is just reprehensible in every way. You do not need to read chapter 31 and 32. They are rather lengthy, but you can see the same thing occurs talking about pharaoh. Pharaoh was consumed by a king of Babylon as well. We know the king of Babylon is Satan. Everything Satan controls and touches he destroys and that includes human beings. Why? Because he is the embodiment of perdition. Perdition comes from the number in your Strong’s Concordance 684 which means ruin or loss, physical or spiritual. So Satan physically wants to destroy the earth, and spiritually he wants to destroy God’s Church. He wants to destroy everything he touches. His name in Revelation 9:11 is Apollyon which means destroyer or Abaddon in the Hebrew. He wants to destroy. He is a destroying angel. That is his purpose. His purpose is one of destruction. When the son of perdition gets into God’s Church, he wants to destroy it. He wants to make it unusable for God and he wants to use it for his own purposes. Sad to say this has happened in the last days, but we have to stop hiding our heads in the sand. Because when we face reality and we understand what has taken place, we can beg God for help and do something about it. This will be the focus of the next sermon in this series. I would like to read another scripture, from what some call the oldest book in the Bible, and that is Job. If you would turn to Job, chapter 1. God says something here that lends itself to this discussion today. Before Satan is allowed to attack Job, there is a meeting in heaven. Verse 6: “Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them. And the Lord said to Satan, ‘From where do you come?’ So Satan answered the Lord and said, ‘From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking back and forth on it.’” At this point, Satan was still allowed into the throne of God in heaven to discuss things with God. He is called a son of God because God had to give him life too. God gave Satan life. God gives mankind life. All life comes from God. That is why when Satan works through human kind, he can be called a man even though he is a spirit, an angel. Angels can appear as men. He works through people. When we give ourselves to Satan, we become one of the wicked. Down through history you can look at many people. We looked at a few of these kings in the Bible. But there has been Hitler in the last century. There has been Saddam Hussein recently. There is one tyrant after another who looks and acts like Satan in their character. They hate mankind. They try to destroy them. They try to keep them in the dark. They torture their subjects and keep them oppressed. Why? Because they are of their father the devil. But that should never had entered God’s Church, which is why Mark said it ought never have been there. But it did enter the Church, and we now spew his line. We are willing to allow the earth to get condemned and destroyed. We preach at them that they deserve it, when they do not know one end from the other or their left hand from their right hand. We are actually the ones, because Satan is dwelling in the Church now, that are keeping Christ from marrying His bride! Christ is about to fix that. We need to get on the right page with God so that we actually become part of the solution and do not stay part of the problem. The son of perdition is none other than Satan the devil. He has worked down through history through people like pharaoh, the king of Babylon, the king of Tyre and modern tyrants as well. Now, sad to say, he is working in God’s Church, and the evidence is everywhere. The thing is what are we going to do about it? The next sermon will address that issue, and hopefully it will help and in some way please God. Give ourselves to Him so that we will be part of the battle against Satan and not part of his purpose.