For the mystery of lawlessness already works. Only there is one who restrains now, until he is taken out of the way.
Now you remember in Isaiah fourteen, as he speaks of the fall of Satan, "O Lucifer, son of the morning, how art though fallen from heaven, O Lucifer son of the morning, for though didst seek [really] to exalt your position. You said, I will exalt myself above the angels of heaven. I will sit in the congregation in the sides of the north. I will be like the most high. And yet God said you will be brought down to hell".But here is the anti-christ doing the same thing, exalting himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he as God will sit in the temple of God showing himself that he is God. In other words, after three and a half years, after the temple has been rebuilt, he will return to Jerusalem, he will sit in the Holy of Holies of the rebuilt temple and declare, "I am God," and will demand to be worshiped as God.This is called in the book of Daniel, "the abomination of desolation", Or the final abomination which will bring the desolation of the earth as God, at this point, will pour out his judgment and wrath. The cup of his indignation at this point will overflow. This is the final straw. This will perpetrate the judgment of God coming upon the earth in this three and a half-year period known in the Bible as the Great Tribulation.So Paul said don't think that this is the tribulation, that the tribulation is now present. Don't be troubled in your spirit. Yes, it is tough. Yes, you are really going through a lot of persecution and all. But, the Great Tribulation cannot come, the day of God's judgment cannot come until first of all there be this spiritual apostasy and the man of sin, the son of perdition is revealed. And then he tells us a little bit about what this son of perdition is going to do. And so the Great Tribulation cannot happen until these things take place.Paul said,