All of us are observing the rapid unraveling of the day and age in which we live. We stand amazed that in a week things we hold so very dear are done away with. Man delights in things against nature and finds pleasure in them while those who stand on the Word of God are made to feel like "bigots." Our "heads are spinning" at the anarchy, deceit, riots, and the lying! How is it the world stands by as it is lied to? Paul explains why the anarchy and lawlessness abounds. God gives them over to delusion as they do not want the truth which is displaced by the lie. But you and I being chosen of God to salvation LOVE the truck and seek it as we have been sanctified in it!

When: The situation Paul deals with are some that believed in the Lord's imminent coming and were troubled. Paul tells them two things: 1) There has to be a tremendous falling away from the truth and 2) the anti-Christian world must show its head. We understand that we live in that day where the truth has fallen away in the world and in the church world that has become very nominal today. There also has to be the revelation of the man of sin (or in the original is speaks of the man of lawlessness which is against the law.) Even the world bemoans that the glasses of the law has been removed. The law of God and everything that is connected...lawlessness! We can speak of in our day even more so than Paul in this day and age. He opposes everything that is worshiped or revered. "Remove every Christian symbol!" Even nominal churches worry about their place in this world today! The whole world will bow down to that anti-Christian world. Paul says this because this anti-christ must come with the lie doing lying wonders that men might believe. We ask how can the world even believe these things and be so "stupid" without common sense? The reason is God sends strong delusion so they do not love the truth, believe the lie to their own destruction. They swallow hook, line, and sinker the lie and delusion of the beast. They take hold of everything that makes no sense. Everything regarding truth they must put away!

How: But God has chosen you and I from before the foundations of the world as He has sanctified us in the TRUTH! Salvation worked out in your and my heart that conforms us more and more to that truth. Redeemed in our Lord Jesus Christ who is made wisdom unto us causing us to see the world and all the things in this world in an entirely different perspective. Not like Pilate who asked "what is truth?" But we know the OBJECTIVE truth! Not subjective like the world where the standards are completely gone but the objective word of God that SPEAKS the truth! And we can witness to the truth not to convict the world, but to witness to it!

Result: Paul says "I am thankful that you are sanctified in the truth." We know the truth! The world is in delusion in their own pleasure madness and are given over to it to their own destruction. God has instilled in us a sanctified Spirit! How profoundly thankful we are or should be! God restrains things that the anti-Christian word comes in His time. The same God that separated at the tower of Babel is the same God that will bring together to destroy them at the coming of Christ. Not a fictional story or narrative, but gospel TRUTH! And thanks be to God that He has saved you and I....keeping us through all the delusion and keeping us in the truth even when it is so ill spoken of in the day and age in which we live. And He keeps us until the day when He comes again to destroy and cast into oblivion all sin and will take His people to heaven.