Repentance and the Last Days

The difference between repenting of something you are wrong about, and justifying something you're wrong about, is bigger than night and day. In fact it's bigger than life and death. My son and I were watching a Spider-Man movie and the villain of the movie said something that just jumped out at me like 3D. He said, "It's easy to fool people when they're already fooling themselves." Those are very wise words coming from a villain. As soon as he said those words my mind went directly to the following passage of scripture that's written about the end time: “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: Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved...

And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness” (2 Thess. 2:8-12). This is clearly speaking of the Beast of Revelation 13, along with the false prophet who will go before him to deceive the world by great miracles. What we see in this passage of scripture is that the people who have practiced deceiving themselves by justifying things that are wrong in God's eyes, are going to believe what the Beast and the false prophet tell them, and buy into their system. The "deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish," that is mentioned here, is the inclination of the heart to believe a lie; particularly in justifying something that is actually wrong. If we are doing that in our lives now then we are going to believe the report of the beast and the false prophet when they come, and they can't be too far away.

I'm aware that most people will say at this juncture that they're not going to have to worry about the Beast and the false prophet because they're going to leave here in 'the rapture' before those men come on the scene. But the truth is no one's going in the rapture because there isn't a rapture to go in. Not in the Bible and not in reality. The whole rapture concept is just a convenient notion that we are unlike any believers in the history of the world who have had to suffer for the faith, not to mention those who are dying for the faith in the world today. There is one more coming of the Lord, and that is what is called the second coming, at which time the first resurrection of the dead will take place; which is to say the resurrection of the righteous. As the scripture says, the righteous who are alive at that time will be caught up together with the righteous dead to meet the Lord as he comes (1 Thess. 4:15-17). But this is not a post about that topic, as I've covered that topic thoroughly many times before and will do so many times again, but not here and not now.

In moving on I will just say that I had to make the point that most people reading this will be alive when the beast and the false prophet are manifested in the world. Some will not be, but most will be, so the whole supposed rapture topic is relevant. But the more pertinent relevance is the simplistic fact that we're either being honest with ourselves or we're deceiving ourselves, when it comes to doing anything that is out of order with God. If we are honest and truly repentant about things that are not right then we can still be forgiven. If we find reasons to call something wrong something right, then we can't be forgiven. We can't be forgiven for what we do not confess as sin, and repent of; and if we're practicing non-repentance in our lives then we are teaching ourselves how to be ultimately deceived. This is a serious consideration in light of the scripture I've cited above that clearly says God will send a strong delusion to everyone who practices deceiving themselves, so that they will be promptly damned for failing to love the truth. I'm not sure how to make it any plainer than that. 😇😇