The Man of Lawlessness 1 UST Now{ I want to write to you} about the time when our Lord Jesus the Messiah will return and will gather us to himself. My fellow believers, I urge you BSB BSB: Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to Him, we ask you, brothers,
2 UST to think calmly about any message that may have come to you that says that the Lord Jesus has already returned to earth. Do not let this kind of message upset you. It does not matter if the message comes from a spirit or if it comes from a person or if it is in a letter that someone claims that I wrote. BSB BSB: not to be easily disconcerted or alarmed by any spirit or message or letter seeming to be from us, alleging that the Day of the Lord has already come.
3 UST Do not allow anyone to persuade you to believe any such message. It is not true, because other things{ that have not yet happened} must happen before{ the Lord returns}. Before the Lord returns, a large number of people will rebel against God. They will accept and obey a certain man who will oppose everything that God has said.(After some time, God will destroy him.) BSB BSB: Let no one deceive you in any way, for it will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness—the son of destruction—is revealed.
4 UST This man will say that he is greater than everything that people consider to be God and everything that people worship. He will oppose both. As a result, he will even sit{ in God’ s place} in God’ s temple to proclaim that he himself is God! BSB BSB: He will oppose and exalt himself above every so-called god or object of worship. So he will seat himself in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God.
5 UST I am sure that you remember that I told you all about these things while I was still with you{ there in Thessalonica}. BSB BSB: Do you not remember that I told you these things while I was still with you?
6 UST You also know what is preventing this man from showing himself to everybody now. He will not be able to show himself until the time that God has set for him. BSB BSB: And you know what is now restraining him, so that he may be revealed at the proper time.
7 UST Clearly, people are already opposing what God has said, for reasons that only believers can understand. But someone is preventing this man{ from revealing himself} now, and he will continue to prevent this man until God tells him to stop preventing this man. BSB BSB: For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work, but the one who now restrains it will continue until he is taken out of the way.
8 UST It is then that God will allow this man who completely rejects God’ s instructions to show himself to everyone.(In the end, Jesus will return. When this man sees Jesus, this man will become completely powerless. Then the Lord Jesus will speak a command that will destroy this man.) BSB BSB: And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will slay with the breath of His mouth and annihilate by the majesty of His arrival.
9 UST { But before Jesus destroys this man,} Satan will work very powerfully through this man. Satan will empower this man to do all kinds of supernatural deeds that look like the miracles that God does. BSB BSB: The coming of the lawless one will be accompanied by the working of Satan, with every kind of power, sign, and false wonder,
10 UST This man will be very wicked and will deceive very many people. These people will perish because they did not accept the true message about Jesus as highly valuable, so God will not save them. BSB BSB: and with every wicked deception directed against those who are perishing, because they refused the love of the truth that would have saved them.
11 UST Because these people reject the true message about Jesus, God enables them to think falsely so that they will believe this man’ s lies. BSB BSB: For this reason God will send them a powerful delusion so that they believe the lie,
12 UST God does that so that he may justly condemn all those who refused to believe the true message about Jesus, people who instead preferred to do things that are wicked. BSB BSB: in order that judgment may come upon all who have disbelieved the truth and delighted in wickedness.
Stand Firm 13 UST But we should always thank God for you, our fellow believers, you whom our Lord Jesus loves. We should do this because God chose you to be among the first people to believe the true message about Jesus. God chose you to be among the first people that he would save and set apart for himself by means of his Spirit. BSB BSB: But we should always thank God for you, brothers who are loved by the Lord, because God chose you from the beginning to be saved by the sanctification of the Spirit and by faith in the truth.
14 UST God invited you to belong to him as we proclaimed to you the good news about Jesus so that God might honor you in some of the same ways that he honors our Lord Jesus the Messiah. BSB BSB: To this He called you through our gospel, so that you may share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
16 UST God our Father loves us. Because he is extremely kind to us, he will continue to encourage us forever, and we can expect to receive good things from him. We pray that he and our Lord Jesus the Messiah himself will encourage you and make you able to continually do and say every kind of good thing. BSB BSB: Now may our Lord Jesus Christ Himself and God our Father, who by grace has loved us and given us eternal comfort and good hope,
Select verses for actions: Enter goes to them and Escape comes back.