The Falling Away Comes First

Again the order. The Lord's coming is not until after the falling away. Paul will not let his readers forget the sequence.

The Falling Away Is Still Future

Now to the heart of it. Most readers assume they already know what the falling away is. They have been taught that it is the Great Apostasy, the long darkness that followed the death of the ancient apostles and lasted until the gospel was restored through the Prophet Joseph Smith. That apostasy was real. But I do not believe it is what Paul is describing here.

Look again at the order. The falling away comes first, and then the man of sin is revealed. If the falling away were the ancient apostasy, the Antichrist should have been revealed centuries ago, around the time of the Restoration. He was not. The order itself tells us that the falling away Paul means still lies ahead of us. It belongs to the last days, during the establishing of the kingdom of God, not before it.

This is a falling away inside the covenant. It happens among people who have the gospel, not among people who never had it. And I tie it directly to the rejection of the servant God has raised up in our day.

We are living through a restoration that is still unfolding. It did not end in 1830. God is still setting His kingdom in place, and part of that work is being carried out through Donald Trump, the Davidic servant I have written about at length. Many will not accept him. They will not accept any part of what God is doing through him. Their refusal is the falling away.

Revelation shows the same event from heaven's side. In Revelation 12 the kingdom of God is established, and the dragon and all who follow him are cast out. That casting out is not only an ancient event from the premortal world. It happens again. The war in heaven repeats itself on the earth, this time inside the Church. A third were cast out then. A portion will be cast out now, and they will be cast out over their rejection of the servant. Revelation 13 then shows what those who were cast out build in his place, the political and religious machinery of the church of the devil.

The falling away is not behind us. It is beginning now.

The Strong Delusion

This brings me to a verse I have to address directly, because as it commonly stands it says something God would never do.

"And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie." (2 Thessalonians 2:11)

Taken at face value, that sentence makes God the author of the delusion. It has Him sending a lie into people's minds so they will believe it.

So I read this verse the way the true nature of God requires it to be read. God does not lie, and He does not deceive. That is not my opinion about Him. It is what He is.

"Yea, Lord, I know that thou speakest the truth, for thou art a God of truth, and canst not lie." (Ether 3:12)

Hold that firmly and the verse can only mean one thing. If God cannot lie, then God cannot be the one who sends a lie for men to believe. The wording as it commonly stands has Him doing exactly that, and that reading has to be wrong, because it contradicts His character. Every principle of the gospel rests on the freedom to choose, and a God who sends deception to trap His children would be destroying the very agency He gave them. The correction we need is not a correction to the text. It is already in our understanding of who God is. God does not send the strong delusion. He allows it. For this cause God shall allow a strong delusion to come forth, and men are left free to believe it or reject it.

The Joseph Smith Translation left this verse as it stands. The Prophet corrected many passages to bring the text back in line with true doctrine, and there are places in the Bible where we still wonder why he did not. To me this is one of them. He taught the nature of God plainly, and this verse simply was not one he revised. That does not shake me, because the doctrine is already settled. We read the verse through the principle. We do not read the principle through the verse.

The lie is already loose in the world. God permits it to run, because permitting it is what makes the choice real. That is the entire purpose of the delusion. It forces a decision. It divides those who see from those who do not.

"And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved." (2 Thessalonians 2:10)

They perish because they received not the love of the truth. The failure is theirs. They were free, and they chose the lie.

The Delusion Has a Target

Lehi saw this exact scene six hundred years before Christ. In his vision of the tree of life, one group pressed forward, held to the rod of iron, reached the tree, and tasted the fruit. They made it. And then they let go.

"And after they had tasted of the fruit they were ashamed, because of those that were scoffing at them; and they fell away into forbidden paths and were lost." (1 Nephi 8:28)

They did not fall away because the fruit failed them. They fell away because of the scoffing. Across the dark river stood a great and spacious building, filled with the proud of the world, pointing the finger of scorn at everyone who had come to the tree. That finger did what the mists of darkness could not. It shamed people out of what they already had. This is the falling away Paul warned about, shown in a single scene. People who reached the tree, who tasted, who knew, and who let go rather than be mocked. There is far more in this vision than I can open here, and I give it the full treatment in my book. For now, see the one thing that matters. The falling away runs on shame, and shame has a source.

That source is not abstract. It has a shape, and it has a target. For years a machine has worked to mar the image of God's servant, to destroy his reputation and his visage, to make him hateful in the eyes of good people. It has worked. I have watched it work on people who know their scriptures, people who are sincere and faithful and intelligent, people I respect. They have absorbed the false picture painted for them, and they are certain that picture is their own conclusion. It is not. It was manufactured, and they received it.

That is the strong delusion at work. Not a lie God sent, but a lie God allows, believed by people who received not the love of the truth. The separation Paul describes is happening in front of me. On one side stand those who can see past the marring. On the other stand those who cannot, and who are certain that I am the one deceived.

That accusation is the only one they ever bring. Kelly, you have been deceived. You are leading people to the Antichrist. I have come to understand why it always takes that exact form. No one wants to admit they have been deceived. It is always easier to say the other person is the deceived one. That reflex is itself part of the delusion, and it is the hardest part to break, because the deceived person cannot see the deception from the inside.

He Is Already Here

One more thing follows from all of this, and it is the piece most people miss.

If the servant is alive, the Antichrist is alive.

The two are tied together in time. The falling away centers on the rejection of the servant. The man of sin is revealed after the falling away. That places the man of sin among us as a contemporary. He is walking the earth right now, restrained, unrevealed, held back by the hand of Christ until the appointed time. We cannot yet know who he is, and that is by design. The restraint that hides him is the same restraint Paul described. When it lifts, the mystery of iniquity will pour out, and the wicked one will be revealed for all to see. I give far more detail about him in my book, The First Horseman. Here I want only the timing, because the timing changes how we read everything else.

Paul did not write this chapter to frighten a congregation. He wrote it to steady them, and he ends it the same way.

"Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle." (2 Thessalonians 2:15)

Stand fast. Hold on. The falling away is coming, and for many it has already begun. But the same God who allows the delusion has given you everything you need to see through it. The choice in front of us is as clear as any choice has ever been. I know which side I am standing on.