As any reader of my fictional book HALION Rising knows, I've spent a lot of time studying how rapidly changing technology—particularly artificial intelligence—might fit into Christian eschatology. I don't believe we should force modern technology into Bible prophecy. But sometimes technology makes something Scripture described thousands of years ago suddenly much easier to imagine.
One passage that increasingly gets my attention is the “strong delusion” of 2 Thessalonians 2.
Paul writes:
“And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie…”
— 2 Thessalonians 2:11
What exactly is this delusion?
The Context Tells Us a Lot
Paul places the strong delusion in the context of the appearance of the “man of sin” or “lawless one”—the Antichrist.
His arrival will be accompanied by:
“…power and signs and lying wonders…”
— 2 Thessalonians 2:9
People aren't simply forced into following him. They are deceived.
And Paul explains why. They “received not the love of the truth” (v. 10). After repeatedly rejecting truth, they become susceptible to an extraordinary counterfeit.
I don't believe God is tricking innocent people who genuinely want to know Him. This resembles the judicial hardening we see elsewhere in Scripture: people continually reject God, and eventually God allows them to experience the consequences of that rejection.
The result is terrifying.
Humanity embraces “the lie.”
What Is “The Lie”?
Scripture doesn't explicitly define it in one sentence, but the context strongly suggests that it centers upon the Antichrist and his counterfeit claims.
Paul says this individual will exalt himself above God and ultimately present himself as God.
Revelation 13 appears to describe the same great deception.
The world marvels after the Beast. The False Prophet performs extraordinary signs and deceives those living upon the earth. Eventually humanity is drawn into a system involving worship, political authority and economic control.
For most of my life, I've wondered:
How could the entire world possibly fall for something like this?
Increasingly, I'm beginning to understand how it could happen.
Then Along Came AI
I want to be careful here.
The Bible never says artificial intelligence causes the Great Delusion.
But AI has dramatically changed what is technologically possible.
We can now create artificial people who look real, speak naturally and respond intelligently. AI can reproduce someone's face and voice. Synthetic video can depict events that never happened. Algorithms can learn our beliefs, fears and vulnerabilities and deliver individually tailored messages to millions—or billions—of people.
Consider Revelation 13:15:
“…the image of the beast should both speak…”
For nearly two thousand years, Christians reading about a speaking image naturally imagined something supernatural or symbolic.
Today?
We can build one.
An artificial representation of a person can look alive, speak, listen, answer questions and potentially interact simultaneously with millions of people around the world.
That doesn't mean John was describing AI.
But suddenly one possible mechanism isn't difficult to imagine anymore.
And that's significant.
The Restrainer and the Rapture
There's another reason this passage particularly interests me.
Immediately before describing the Antichrist and the strong delusion, Paul talks about a mysterious restraining influence:
“…only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way.”
— 2 Thessalonians 2:7
From a pre-tribulation perspective, I believe there is a compelling case that this restraint involves the Holy Spirit working through the Church.
If that's correct, consider the sequence:
The Church is present → evil is restrained → the Rapture occurs → restraint is removed → the Antichrist emerges → extraordinary deception follows → humanity embraces the lie.
That sequence makes considerable sense to me.
It also connects directly with something I've explored in Pray That You May Escape: the biblical case that Christ removes His Church before the outpouring of end-times wrath.
Evil May Not Look Evil
Perhaps this is the most important lesson.
We tend to imagine the Antichrist as an obviously sinister dictator whom inexplicably everyone decides to follow.
Scripture paints a much more disturbing picture.
He deceives them.
He may initially appear to be precisely what a frightened and fractured world desperately wants: a problem solver, peacemaker and extraordinary leader capable of bringing order out of chaos.
Jesus repeatedly warned about deception when discussing the end times:
“Take heed that no man deceive you.”
— Matthew 24:4
That warning seems increasingly important in an age when distinguishing truth from fabrication is becoming more difficult every year.
AI may have absolutely nothing to do with the ultimate fulfillment of the strong delusion.
Or it may become one of the mechanisms through which unprecedented deception becomes possible.
Scripture doesn't tell us, so neither should we pretend to know.
But something has undeniably changed.
Technologies that would have sounded supernatural to previous generations now exist in our pockets.
A world in which billions of people can simultaneously see, hear and interact with an extraordinarily convincing counterfeit is no longer science fiction.
And perhaps that's the larger lesson.
We shouldn't reshape Scripture to fit today's technology.
Instead, we should recognize when today's technology makes the world Scripture describes increasingly possible.
Jesus didn't tell us to predict every mechanism.
He told us to watch.
And, as He said in Luke 21:36:
“Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things…”
