Don’t you remember that when I was with you I used to tell you these things? And now you know what is holding him back, so that he may be revealed at the proper time.
For the secret power of lawlessness is already at work; but the one who now holds it back will continue to do so till he is taken out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendor of his coming.
The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie, and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.
2 Thessalonians 2:5-12 NIV
they refused to love the truth and so be saved
2 Thessalonians 2:10 KJV
There is immediately something unhealthy and not fresh in the air when religious group or teacher does not love the truth.
However, loving the truth is one of the hardest things for us humans and it is much easier just to accept the truth as presented by the group and by those having authority, was that the Pope or the Patriarch or the Bible as interpreted by the group.
It is so hard that loving the truth is a gift from God. This is not so clearly visible in the NIV translation above. King James is closer to the Greek:
And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.
In my blogs I am dealing with some hard things, like the Truth trip that seems to minimize our Lord Jesus into an insignificant dot in the Cosmos, Geocentric Bible that crushes Chicago 1978 declaration on the inerrant Bible and other not so nice things. Never claiming that I have the truth but rather one who has been given the love to truth and who cannot stand any kind of false teachings about our God or about our world or about ourselves.
But the key to my personal understanding of the ultimate truth is p52.
Veritas forum in action
Veritas ForumSo it has been a most wonderful discovery to learn to know that I am not alone in thinking that p52 is the answer, not 42 as in The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
There are people who have been working on this much before me and are much more qualified and have created the impressive Veritas Forum with huge resources and always giving honor to Jesus Christ.
Veritas Forum info puts the message in p52 in a nutshell
Christ-Centered Vision
We seek to experience veritas not only as a journey, but also as a person. We offer our hardest questions to our presenters in exploration of the radical and ancient claim of truth in the person and story of Jesus Christ. (veritas forum)
And I say Amen!
Actually, we established our Finnish veritas forum before knowing about the big one over the seas.
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