Pro-Palestinian protesters in New York, March 30, 2022. (Luke Tress/Times of Israel)
Rebellion and Delusion
In his second letter to the church in Thessalonica, the Apostle Paul reminds the saints of what he has already taught them regarding "the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to Him."[1] It was an apostolic priority for Paul that the nascent churches understand that the "appearance of His coming" would be preceded first by a short but powerful time called "the rebellion." At that time, a "mystery of lawlessness" that is already at work in this age will be fully revealed when a "man of lawlessness…son of destruction" is himself revealed in the Temple of God.
By "the activity of Satan," this lawless one will act "with all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception." Falsehood and lies will mark this time, bolstered by demonic power. Paul calls this phenomenon a "strong delusion."
There are many elements of this "strong delusion" which will undoubtedly be peculiar to the days when the lawless one "opposes and exalts himself." We are not yet living in those days, so we cannot yet presume to interpret the exact form the powerful deception will take. However, knowing that the "lawless one" will be given power specifically to "conquer the saints" and "seduce those who violate the covenant,"[2] we have reason to believe that the delusion enables this end. That is, a major theme of the "strong delusion" will likely revolve around the demonization of God's covenant people as a means of provoking violations against of the covenant itself, and therefore, against the Covenant-Keeper.
If the covenant in question is a promise of eternal blessing to all nations through a certain Seed of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob, and if the patriarchs and their descendants inherited the Land forever as a visible guarantor of that promise, then to violate the covenant would look like an attempt to disinherit their descendants from the Land and thereby nullify the blessing for all.[3] Again, if the eternal covenant promises a Seed from David's line to sit on his throne forever in Jerusalem, ruling over the nations, then a violation of that covenant would be for those same nations to "trample" the Holy City and to preempt the Messianic coronation. In other words, a "strong delusion" facilitates the events of Zechariah 14:2,
For I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem to battle, and the city shall be taken and the houses plundered and the women raped. Half of the city shall go out into exile, but the rest of the people shall not be cut off from the city.
Considering events in the Land of Israel and throughout the world over the past two weeks, I cannot help but wonder if we are beginning to witness the preliminary contours of such a delusion. On October 7, at least 2,500 men from the Gaza Strip stormed the security barrier along the border, overwhelmed nearby Israeli military bases, and began an hours-long rampage with near impunity across Southern Israel. They raped, they tortured, they murdered, they took 200 Israelis and other foreign citizens "into exile" in the Gaza Strip. They committed atrocities that are quite literally unspeakable. In other words, they committed a microcosm of Zechariah 14:2. Multiply the ferocity of October 7, expand it across the State of Israel, and you have what the Hebrew prophets call "a time of trouble for Jacob…such as never has been since there was a nation till that time."[4]
Not only did the armies of Hamas and Islamic Jihad commit this barbarism, but they also flaunted it. Wearing GoPro's and carrying smartphones, they documented their atrocities. They even streamed the executions of Israelis live on social media. Besides this, the communities around the Gaza border are monitored by hundreds of security cameras. Not only was the jihad of October 7 an act of attempted genocide, but it was the most well-documented attempt in world history. Within hours, even before it ended, dozens of images and videos flooded Israeli and Palestinian Telegram, spreading to other social media platforms, and then the mainstream media. As the scope and severity of the events of the day became clear, one could reasonably expect a few reactions:
The international community would be horrified by such demonic violence.
The Israeli government would gain wide, international support for a war against jihadists in Gaza, including from friendly Arab governments.
There would be an outpouring of love and support for the State of Israel and the Jewish Diaspora across the world.
This is not what we've witnessed unfolding in the two weeks since the attacks. Certainly, there has been staunch political support for the Jewish State from some Western nations, India, and elsewhere. There has been some words of outrage, comfort and clarity on the streets and in the sound bites. But another phenomenon has also crept out of the Abyss and into the daylight: denial, equivocation, and even gleeful, public celebration of barbaric acts against Jews. These things haven't just come from the voices of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the ayatollahs in Iran. They have come from the streets of Istanbul, London, Paris, Berlin, Toronto, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. They have come from university campuses and city squares. Instead of a global outpouring of love and support, the global Jewish community is confronted with a renewed surge of antisemitic anger and violence that has targeted their shops, their homes, and their schools. Simply put, they have become the targets of a delusion.
Are you delusional?
The current state of delusion has manifested in a myriad of ways, but at the core, it seeks to demonize, delegitimize, and disinherit the covenant people. It uses lies, backwards logic, and malicious insinuation to achieve its objective of “blinding the minds of unbelievers.”[5] For instance,
If you accuse those who suffered the most at the hands of the Nazis of being Nazis themselves, you are delusional.
If you claim that the State of Israel, as part of some global cabal, willingly orchestrated the savage murder of 1,400 of its own citizens in the interest of starting wars and making money, you are delusional.
If you rabidly post about dead Arab civilians in Gaza while ignoring 500,000 dead Arab civilians in Syria since 2012 (including 5,000 Palestinians at the hands of the Assad regime), you are delusional.
If you accuse the Israeli government of turning the Gaza Strip into an open-air prison after seeing the tragically obvious reason for such a security apparatus on October 7, you are delusional.
If you wring your hands because of Israeli "war crimes" in Gaza but not Turkish war crimes against millions of Kurds, or Chinese crimes against millions of Uhygurs, or Russian war crimes against millions of Ukrainians, you are delusional.
If you believe that the Israeli military is trapping and killing Palestinians in Gaza while ignoring the clear photographic evidence that Hamas is literally trapping people in Gaza with roadblocks, you are delusional.
If you are a Western social liberal, a woman, a gay person, even a trans person, and you're on the street advocating for Hamas and Islamic Jihad as freedom fighters when those very men, if they got their hands on you, would not hesitate a half-second to rape and/or murder you like the Jews in the Gaza Envelope, you are delusional.
If you chant "From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free" in the streets or in digital square, knowing that such a chant involves the horrors of October 7 on a national scale, you are delusional.
If you believe "Hitler was right" or "We are all Hamas" are acceptable forms of peaceful protest, you are delusional.
If you believe that men who avoid a military base so that they can murder more children and elderly people in the nearby kibbutz are “brave resistance fighters” you are delusional.
If you see images of the lifeless, bloody bodies of elderly people strewn across the streets of Sderot, Re'im, and Be'eri, and you excuse it as an "understandable" response to 75 years of "occupation," you are delusional.
If you see videos of half-naked dead women piled in trucks and paraded through the streets, or handcuffed women with bloodstains between their legs dragged from car trunks in Gaza City, and you think they somehow deserve it, you are delusional.
If you see the nightmarish images of the charred remains of infant Jewish children and question their veracity because an Israeli reporter misspoke about all of them being beheaded instead of just some of them, you are delusional.
If you see the blood-curdling, vomit-inducing videos of the aftermath of Jewish women raped while watching their zip-tied husbands and children burned alive, and you dismiss it as fake, or even worse, somehow justified, you are (extremely) delusional.
If you believe that Israel is deceiving the churches to control them, or that Israel is the Harlot Babylon, or the Beast, or the [insert medieval Christian Jew-hating label here], you are delusional.
Overcoming Delusion
I don't know exactly what shape the strong delusion will take at the end of the age. But I see a lot of delusional people in the world today, and I see how they're speaking about and acting towards the people of the covenant, and that tells me all I need to know for now.
Most important is not "what" the strong delusion will be, but why. According to Paul it is,
"a wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness."
Satan does not act on his own authority. He is given authority to perpetrate deception and delusion as the precursor to God's judgment. Those who embrace and abide in the strong delusion are revealing their own eternal condemnation. That is a hard truth, but abundantly clear in Scripture. It ought to prick us to first soberly examine our own hearts, and then commit whatever time, gifts and resources we have from God to combatting the delusion with our strongest weapon in this age: the gospel of the Kingdom. If the deluded hate the truth, we love it, and we speak it in love.
Let us follow the example of Jesus. When His hour had come, he "set His face towards Jerusalem."[6] Towards death, towards destiny, towards "the joy set before Him."[7] Towards the eternal peace of a Holy City. Like Him, we will have a resurrection. We will ascend to meet Him in the air. We will receive eternal glory, and the covenant will be vindicated when the man of lawlessness and all of his worshippers are killed by the mouth of the One who comes to judge and make war.
But first, our hour of the power of darkness.
More than ever, Maranatha.
Gabe Caligiuri is the editor of THE WIRE, as well as an occasional contributor to other FAI digital content on the subjects of history and geopolitics as they relate to the Great Commission. Gabe and his family live in California.
[1] 2 Thessalonians 2:1-11, including every reference hereafter
[2] Daniel 11:32, Revelation 13:7
[3] Genesis 12:1-3, Genesis 13:15, Genesis 26:2-3, Genesis 28:12-13, Genesis 35:9, 11-12
[4] Jeremiah 30:7, Daniel 12:1
[5] 2 Corinthians 4:4
[6] Luke 9:51
[7] Hebrews 12:2