The Righteous and the Wicked: One Simple Distinction Lies Between Them

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According to the parabolic imagery of The Teaching, God plans to bring each and every one of us into court on Judgment Day to respond to the charge that we do not know—and believe—the Truth of The Teaching that Adam and Eve carried with them when they left the Garden of Eden. And nobody has a gnat’s chance in a hurricane of being acquitted if they don’t actually know—and believe—the Truth. That’s because, just as the Protestant Reformers clearly stated, salvation is by faith—belief—alone. Unfortunately, the one thing the Reformers intuitively sensed but failed to state clearly is the most fundamental truth of all: Salvation is by faith in the Truth that God concealed and revealed in the Scriptures. All that anyone will ever get by believing a lie concerning that Truth is a one-way ticket to Hell. That’s why the Apostle Paul makes such a big deal of the fact that those who perish at the End will be deceived by the Antichrist because they “did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved”:

Now we request you, brethren, with regard to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and our gathering together to Him, that you may not be quickly shaken from your composure or be disturbed either by a spirit or a message or a letter as if from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. Let no one in any way deceive you, for {it will not come} unless the apostasy comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, displaying himself as being God. Do you not remember that while I was still with you, I was telling you these things? And you know what restrains him now, so that in his time he may be revealed. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only he who now restrains {will do so} until he is taken out of the way. And then that lawless one will be revealed whom the Lord will slay with the breath of His mouth and bring to an end by the appearance of His coming; {that is,} the one whose coming is in accord with the activity of Satan, with all power and signs and false wonders, and with all the deception of wickedness for those who perish, because they did not this reason God will send upon them a deluding influence so that they might believe what is false, in order that they all may be judged who did not believe the truth, but took pleasure in wickedness.
(2 Thessalonians 2:1–12)

“The Righteous and the Wicked: One Simple Distinction Lies Between Them,” The Voice of Elijah^®, April 2002, pp. 9–10

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