Deeper Reflection
THE GREAT REFUSAL OPENS THE DOOR TO THE GREAT deception: Satan’s deception through the antichrist’s “false signs and wonders” is “for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth” (vv.9-10). The great refusal actually receives a double dosage of the great deception. The additional dose comes from God, which comes as the great judgment: “Therefore God sends them a strong delusion” (v.11a). And it is for a specific purpose: “so that they may believe what is false” (v.11b). They believe “the lie” (v.11b, NIV) and this “lie” is “the denial of the fundamental truth that God is God, together with the blatant assertion by Antichrist that he is God”⁷. This divine specific purpose (v.11b) has its final purpose: “in order that all may be condemned” (v.12a).The God “who desires all people to be saved” (1 Tim 2:3-4), “not wishing for any to perish” (2 Pet 3:9), is the same God who in judgment “sends” those who insist and persist in unbelief and unrighteousness “a strong delusion” to deepen the deception, and in His wrath “gave them over” to deeper depravity (Rom 1:18, 24, 26, 28). There is no greater divine judgment than this divine abandonment, leaving sinners to rot by their own sin.The great deception (v.9-10a) is the result of “refused to love the truth” (v.10b). And the great judgment (v.11-12a) is the result of “did not believe the truth” (v.12b). So, ultimately, when these unbelievers are “perishing” (v.10) and “condemned” (v.12), the responsibility lies on them. It is their choice. 

---

⁷ John R. W. Stott, 172