The Wiles of Antichrist and Whom He Deceives (2 Thessalonians 2:9–12)

What has been said would already be sufficient to set the Thessalonians at peace. But the Apostle saw the possibility of drawing from it a lesson and an incentive to hold firmly and sincerely to the received divine truth. He therefore continued his discourse on Antichrist, depicting his falseness and the love of falsehood of those who will join him to their own destruction. Here the following questions are resolved: how will Antichrist achieve success? — Through false signs and deception (verses 9, 10). Why will people believe him? — They will believe the lie because in themselves there is no truth and no sincere relation to it (verses 10, 11). What will come of it? — All unbelievers and the unrighteous will receive judgment, will be condemned and punished, and will go to destruction (verse 12). The conclusion from this: rejoice that you have received the truth and hold to it. This alone will deliver you from Antichrist’s stratagems, from being drawn after him, and from the ruinous consequences thereof. Under Christ the Lord you are in a safe haven. Only hold fast.

2 Thess. 2:9, 10. Whose coming is according to the working of Satan, with all power and signs and lying wonders, “and” “with every deception of unrighteousness among those who are perishing, because they did not receive the love of the truth so that they might be saved.”

Such will Antichrist be! He will appear in the full armament of false signs and every kind of deception—in flattering speeches, fabricated tales, in clever juxtapositions of persons and things.

“Whose coming.” The speech is not about the coming itself, but about what it will be like. “Is” stands in place of an assured future. It is a settled matter that his coming will be as it is here depicted. Thus the all-governing God has judged and willed.

“According to the working of Satan”—not his coming itself, for he will appear in the world according to the common law of human birth, but his arming with signs. He will act by the power of Satan. In the Apocalypse as well it is said that the serpent (of old) will give “him his power and” “his great” “authority” (Rev. 13:2). Satan will expend all his power upon him, for his own end is near as well.

“With all power and signs and lying wonders.” All of this is one and the same—illusory, astonishing marvels. He will imitate the Lord and the holy Apostles; only in them everything was true and in the service of truth, whereas in him everything will be illusory and false, and in the service of falsehood, so as to give it currency. In the Apocalypse certain of these marvels are indicated by way of example: “he will make fire come down from heaven before men,” he will make an image of the beast and give it breath, so that it will speak (Rev. 13:13–15), and the like. But all of that will be magical marvels and tricks. St. Chrysostom writes: “He will display great power, but in all this there will be nothing true. “With “lying wonders,” he says—either deceptive (apparent), or leading into deception. The aim of it all will be delusion; the Apostle foretold this, so that those who are to live at that time would not be deceived.” Theodoret adds: “The wonders will not be genuine; such wonders are also produced by those who deceive by sleight of hand, because they show what is not gold at all as gold, and do something else which is soon exposed.” Oecumenius is somewhat more specific: “The signs will be false either because he will show them by illusion and divert the eyes, or because through them he will lead into falsehood—he will represent things in such a way as to be able to deceive even believers.”

“And with every deception of unrighteousness.” This is another kind of his method—deceiving, drawing into deception by words and various artifices and cunning. He will set into motion every kind of seduction, both by word and deed—unrighteous seduction, putting one thing forward while another exists in fact. By his marvels he will produce enchantment, and by these blandishments will dispose people to believe the lie and to abandon the truth. “Deceit is in his hand,” according to the prophet Daniel, “and by deceit he will destroy many” (Dan. 8:25).

“Among those who are perishing.” However great and varied the efforts and methods of Antichrist in seducing and drawing people into his falsehood may be, he will have success only within the circle of those who are of one spirit with him—that is, who have fallen away from God and the Lord, who in their hearts despise His commandments and, knowing that their path leads to destruction, do not leave it, having abandoned themselves to their fate in despair. As he himself is the son of perdition, so he will succeed in drawing to himself only those who are perishing. And these perishing ones will perish not by God’s decree, but because they have loved a ruinous way of life and disposition. God employs every means to bring sinners to their senses and to convert them, and when they can no longer be reached by any means, and there is no prospect that they ever could be, He then delivers them into the hands of their own free will. And in life everyone meets people whom one can say whatever one will, and they remain as they are, as if turned to stone and petrified. In the course of their preaching, the holy Apostles everywhere encountered such people and testified through the mouth of St. Paul that “the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Cor. 1:18), and that they themselves are to some “(the perishing) a fragrance from death to death, but to others” (the saved) “a fragrance from life to life” (2 Cor. 2:15, 16). During the time of Antichrist, his folly will appear to those who are perishing as wisdom, and his ruinous stench as a sweet fragrance. The same will occur then as in cholera epidemics, which seize only those who have a predisposition toward them.

“Because they did not receive the love of the truth so that they might be saved.” This is why they are among those who are perishing! Because they did not receive the saving truth. God saw that people were perishing, having fallen into the abyss of sin and into the ruinous bonds of slavery to the passions and to their sower, the devil. For this reason He sent His Only-begotten Son to open for them a way of escape and to point it out in faith in Him and in the grace received through faith. News of this was carried everywhere by the holy Apostles. Those who received it entered the number of those who are being saved; those who did not receive it remained in destruction. Such were they in the time of the Apostles, such they have remained until now, and such they will prove to be in the last days. All this multitude the apostolic, God-enlightened mind surveys and inscribes with the title: “those who are perishing.” Before the Thessalonians stood these perishing ones, perishing because of unbelief. The Apostle speaks as if to say: it is in this domain of those who have not received our saving word that he will have success, and not among you who have believed, and those who will believe as you have. It is worthy of note that the Apostle’s words embrace not only those who did not receive Christian truth as if they had no wish to hear it; but also those who heard it, understood what it was about, and did not receive it, and even those who received it with the mind but did not come to love it in the heart; they embrace not only unbelievers—non-Christians, but also those who are Christians in name but not in heart, who are indifferent to the faith they profess and do not strive to be obedient to its demands, to become what they are called, who are indifferent to it. For he says: “they did not receive the love of the truth”—they did not come to love the truth, it is not in their hearts, though they see it. They see the truth, yet keep their hearts on the side opposed to truth. Therefore in themselves they are falsehood, and being such, they will love falsehood.

The essential saving truth is that God sent His Son into the world—the Saviour of the world. The holy fathers therefore interpret the words “they did not receive the love of the truth” as follows: they did not receive Christ the Lord. For He is both boundless love and all-perfect truth. St. Chrysostom writes: “By the love of the truth he means Christ. For Christ was both the one and the other, and He came for both—out of love for us and to reveal the true meaning of all things.” Theodoret and all the others say the same. But this is one and the same thing. For one must not only receive the Gospel, but be united with the Lord, or in such union consists the proper receiving of the Gospel truth. Only he is drawn out from the mass of those who are perishing who cleaves to the Lord Jesus Christ, becomes one spirit with Him, is grafted onto Him as the one true living Vine.

2 Thess. 2:11. And for this cause God shall send them the working of delusion, that they should believe the lie.

This is a dreadful moral punishment from God! “He shall send”—not in the sense that He will purposely dispatch something they do not desire, but rather that He will allow to reach them what they themselves have desired and sought. The evil spirit of delusion and falsehood constantly strives to seize hold of everyone, to darken all minds and drag them into the lie; but God does not permit him to do so, as long as among those who do not follow the truth there remain some who still give hope of conversion—who have not yet wholly surrendered themselves to false ways, who sometimes think of turning from the lie and taking their stand on the side of truth. He does not permit it, lest they suffer violence from that spirit in their inmost being, for he is capable of shaking even the firm, to say nothing of the weak. But when at last they entirely let go and abandon themselves to the ruinous path they have chosen, when they align themselves with it and unite their hearts to it, and cease even to think of departing from it—then God will withdraw His restraining hand from the evil spirit of delusion, and he, now let through, will rush upon them, enter into their hearts, and there begin to work the working of delusion, to draw them to the lie—and will draw them. They will receive the lie with their whole heart, and will then manifest it outwardly, visibly joining themselves to Antichrist. But by this, only what was hidden within will be brought to the surface. St. Chrysostom asks: “Why, you say, will God permit all this to happen? — Fear not, beloved, but hear what the Apostle says: (Antichrist) will have power only over those who are perishing—who, even had he not come, would not have believed.” Theodoret adds: “And the words ‘God shall send them the working of delusion’ are spoken by the Apostle in the sense of ‘He will permit delusion to appear, so that lovers of wickedness may be revealed. For God will not send this delusion, but will destroy it with the breath of His mouth.’” Oecumenius: “He shall send”—do not take this to mean that God Himself sends it, but such is the Apostle’s customary way of expressing God’s permission. Theophylact: “He shall send”—stands for ‘He will permit him to come.’ See—first they rejected the truth; and then God abandoned them, and the lie took possession of them.

2 Thess. 2:12. That they all might be judged who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

“That they might be judged”—they will be justly brought to condemnation. God will permit it—their evil moral and religious disposition will be laid bare, and they will ripen for judgment. Falsehood is self-incriminating; and those who follow the lie condemn themselves. They will be without excuse at the judgment, precisely because they believed in a manifestly ruinous lie and refused to believe in a manifestly saving truth. — “All who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” From the Greek—“all” of these, the unbelievers and others who did not receive the truth of the Gospel into their hearts with living faith, who did not order their lives, their feelings, and their inclinations according to its demands—but who, on the contrary, lay with their hearts set on unrighteousness: who found pleasure in every form of unrighteousness, in crooked thinking and crooked morals, who took delight in dwelling and sinking ever deeper into these iniquities.

The clearest proof against them will be that they will have believed in Antichrist. St. Chrysostom writes: “The mouths of those condemned to perdition will be stopped. How? — They would not have believed in Christ even had Antichrist not come; but he will come for the express purpose of exposing them. For, that they might not then say: because Christ (who appeared visibly as a man) called Himself God, for that very reason we did not believe in Him—since we had heard that God is one, from whom are all things, and therefore we did not believe—Antichrist will remove this their excuse. For when he comes, and notwithstanding that he commands nothing righteous but only lawlessness, they believe in him solely on account of his false wonders—then their mouths will be stopped. For if you do not believe in Christ, you ought far less to believe in Antichrist. The former said He was sent by the Father, whereas this latter will say something altogether different. For this reason Christ Himself says: ‘I came in My Father’s name, and you receive Me not; if another shall come in his own name, him you will receive’ (Jn. 5:43). But we, they will say, saw signs? — Many great miracles were also wrought by Christ; therefore one ought rather to have believed in Him. Moreover, much was foretold concerning Antichrist: that he is a lawless one, that he is the son of perdition, that his coming (with pomp) is by the working of Satan; whereas of Christ, on the contrary—that He is the Saviour and will bring innumerable blessings.” — The same thought is found in Theodoret, Oecumenius, and Theophylact.