Various forms of enticement, pressure, and persecution, including the subsidizing of cooperating Christian institutions by the world government, and economic pressures and other harassments directed toward those who want no part of the government in their worship of Christ, will cause the majority of Christians to compromise the fervency and purity of true Christian discipleship.

Added to this will be the ready availability of every form of sin and immorality coupled with the insistence of the Christian ministry that we are saved by grace and therefore cannot be punished or lost to God's purposes no matter how we behave. God's love will be stressed but the wrathful part of His nature, His severity, will not be permitted to be mentioned. The churches will teach that no human being should be allowed to suffer—except, of course, those whom Antichrist is persecuting as being enemies of the human race.

"The love of the majority shall grow cold." Here is the new world order that Christ will destroy by the brightness of His coming. Here is the revelation of Antichrist.

The believers have been taught they will disappear from the earth before Antichrist is revealed. Therefore they are not guarding themselves against deception. They are not preparing themselves to stand in the evil day. They are not arming themselves with a mind to suffer (I Peter 4:1).

The change from the rule of God to the rule of man has begun already. It will be completed in the earth before the coming of the Lord. The wheat (the righteous) and the tares (the wicked) will grow side by side and come to maturity together until the end of the present age.

The Lord Jesus will destroy the new world government, and deliver the elect from persecution, by the brightness of His coming.

Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; (II Thessalonians 2:3)

"And that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition [destruction]." Notice that the emphasis is not on the coming of the man of sin, the Antichrist, but on his being revealed.

The man of sin is the man of lawlessness. The "apostasy" is the revolt against all authority, all law. The man of lawlessness teaches us that the rights of people always are more important than laws that cause discomfort and inconvenience as individuals are engaged in the "pursuit of happiness."

The spirit and workings of Antichrist have been with us from the days of the Apostles. Therefore it is illogical to teach that the saints will be removed from the earth before Antichrist appears.

Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time. (I John 2:18)

The above statement made by John demonstrates conclusively that the Apostles of the Lamb did not teach that the saints would disappear from the earth before the manifestation of Antichrist. The Apostle John believed he was living in the "last time" and that many antichrists already had come. If there is to be a pre-Antichrist disappearing of the saints it was not known to the Apostle John. The reader may notice the simplicity and directness of this argument.

To be continued.