Antichrist in the Church
By Elhanan ben-Avraham July 30, 2020
Antichrist in the Church
The Antichrist is called “the man of lawlessness”- anomia – ἀνομία- in Greek (2 Thessalonians 2). That is the very same Greek word used by Jesus when he said, “Not everyone that says unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that does the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name? and in your name have cast out devils? and in your name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, you workers of iniquity (anomia – lawlessness).
Today many in churches have distortedly professed from their pulpits, “We are no longer under the Law, but under grace, therefore as long as there is love, everything you do is just fine in the sight of God.” By declaring grace as the opposite of Law, they have made the pig kosher, and homosexuality holy. They have created the Church of Lawlessness: the Church of the Antichrist.
“Grace” is not the opposite of Law, Torah in Hebrew. And Torah is not Law, but instruction (the same root as parent, teacher, direction). The Hebrew word for grace, appearing hundreds of times on the Old Testament, is hesed. Hesed is translated to Greek as charis (Χάρις) in both OT and NT, but later translators to English created the division by rendering the very same word charis to “lovingkindness” in the OT, and “grace” in the NT, creating a false dichotomy.
“Nevertheless, I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the Law” (Romans 7:7), therefore it is the Torah that defines what sin is. Grace does not in any way cancel the prohibitions of the Law. That which is deemed abomination in the Torah remains so in the New Testament. But we are not under the Law, but the Law under us, like a train track upon which grace may travel and abound in truth. Even the laws of kashrut are intended to give us a discernment of right and wrong, clean and unclean, that we take into ourselves only that which is edifying. For the Torah was given “that it may go well with you and with your children after you forever, when you do what is good and right in the sight of the LORD your God” (Deuteronomy 12:28, 4:40, 5:33; Ephesians 6:3).
We are witness in our times of a world where lawlessness is abounding and creating chaos and fear, with little succour from a church that has lost its moorings in the Torah of God, copying instead the corruptions of a world gone lawless.
Jesus made it abundantly clear in the Sermon on the Mount, “For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”
Therefore, it behoves us not only to believe IN Jesus, but to believe Jesus.