New Testament Of The Day

I'm almost finished with a book:   After Jesus Before Christianity: A Historical Exploration of the First Two Centuries of Jesus Movements.

I'm only an armchair historian or theologian.  To be clear, I am not an ordained minister or an expert.  However, I do enjoy reading about history.  Including religious histories.  This tome has been an instructive narrative.  A couple of letters by Paul to the Thessalonians are instructive from a historical point of view inasmuch as they provide an insight into the nascent early church.  There is little of theological substance in these letters; yet they shed light upon the type if instructions Paul gave to followers of the early Jesus movement.

Without getting all Hebrew apocalyptic there is substance to these early writings that is apropos to modern conditions.  Of course nothing new under the sun as far as that goes...

The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works.  He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie, and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing.  They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.  For this reason God sends them 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.

 -2 Thessalonians 2:9-12