People are clearly lost when they pursue false greatness which stops them from looking to the true and living God…
This was the case with Pharaoh’s magicians in Exodus chapters 7 to 9. They drew people away from the Lord.
And later in the book of Acts, we’re going to see something similar with King Herod Agrippa, who encourages the people to hear him as a man who has the voice of a god—again, pointing people away from the Lord Jesus.
The apostle Paul summarises this as a key feature in someone who could rightly be called the lawless one (or Antichrist), or the man of lawlessness. He is someone who works in accordance with how Satan works. He uses all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders which serve as a lie. He deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason, God sends a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie, and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.
Remember, in the Bible, the term antichrist does not refer to someone who is explicitly against Jesus, but someone who takes the place of Jesus—somebody who draws people away from Jesus by claiming to be like Jesus or better than Jesus.
You can see it in cult leaders who claim to be the Messiah or who claim to receive new knowledge from God. That’s always something that should set off alarm bells: “You must be part of our club or our society.” No. They claim to be Christians who preach the Bible, but they don’t.
Even older religions like Islam are doing the same thing, because they claim that someone else, other than the Lord Jesus, should be given attention—namely Muhammad. They are replacing the real Jesus with someone who pulls people away from the Lord.
