What the Bible Says About the Great Apostasy

Scripture

Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we ask you, brothers,
² not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by a spirit or a spoken word, or a letter seeming to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come.
³ Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction.
⁴ who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God.
⁵ Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you these things?
⁶ And you know what is restraining him now so that he may be revealed in his time.
⁷ For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only he who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way.
⁸ And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of his mouth and bring to nothing by the appearance of his coming.
⁹ The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders,
¹⁰ and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.
¹¹ Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false,
¹² in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

2 Thessalonians 2:1-12

1 Timothy 4:1-5: ¹ Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons.
² through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared,
³ who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.
⁴ For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving,
⁵ For it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.

2 Timothy 3:1-9: ¹ But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty.
² For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy,
³ heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good,
⁴ treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,
⁵ having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people.
⁶ For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions,
⁷ always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.
⁸ Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men corrupted in mind and disqualified regarding the faith.
⁹ But they will not get very far, for their folly will be plain to all, as was that of those two men.

2 Peter 2:1-22: ¹ But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction.
² And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed.
³ And in their greed they will exploit you with false words. Their condemnation from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep.
⁴ For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment;
⁵ if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly;
⁶ if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly;
⁷ and if he rescued righteous Lot, greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked
⁸ (for as that righteous man lived among them day after day, he was tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard);
⁹ then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment,
¹⁰ and especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling passion and despise authority.
¹¹ whereas angels, though greater in might and power, do not pronounce a blasphemous judgment against them before the Lord.
¹² But these, like irrational animals, creatures of instinct, born to be caught and destroyed, blaspheming about matters of which they are ignorant, will also be destroyed in their destruction,
¹³ He will receive the wages of unrighteousness.
¹⁴ They have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin. They entice unsteady souls. They have hearts trained in greed. Accursed children!
¹⁵ Forsaking the right way, they have gone astray. They have followed the way of Balaam, the son of Beor, who loved gain from wrongdoing,
¹⁶ but was rebuked for his own transgression; a speechless donkey spoke with human voice and restrained the prophet’s madness.
¹⁷ These are waterless springs and mists driven by a storm. For them the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved.
¹⁸ For, speaking loud boasts of folly, they entice by sensual passions of the flesh those who are barely escaping from those who live in error.
¹⁹ They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved.
²⁰ For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first.
²¹ For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them.
²² What the true proverb says has happened to them: “The dog returns to its own vomit, and the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire.”

Matthew 24:9-14: ⁹ “Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake.”
¹⁰ And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another.
¹¹ And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray.
¹² And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold.
¹³ But the one who endures to the end will be saved.
¹⁴ And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.

Hebrews 6:4-8: For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit,
⁵ and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come,
⁶ and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt.
⁷ For land that has drunk the rain that often falls on it, and produces a crop useful to those for whose sake it is cultivated, receives a blessing from God.
⁸ But if it bears thorns and thistles, it is worthless and near to being cursed, and its end is to be burned.

Hebrews 10:26-31: ²⁶ For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins,
²⁷ but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.
²⁸ Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses.
²⁹ How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace?
³⁰ For we know him who said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his people.”
³¹ It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

Jude 1:3-19: ³ Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.
⁴ For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.
⁵ Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe.
⁶ And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day.
⁷ just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.
⁸ Yet in like manner these people also, relying on their dreams, defile the flesh, reject authority, and blaspheme the glorious ones.
⁹ But when the archangel Michael, contending with the devil, was disputing about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment, but said, “The Lord rebuke you.”
¹⁰ But these people blaspheme all that they do not understand, and they are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively.
¹¹ Woe to them! For they walked in the way of Cain and abandoned themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam’s error and perished in Korah’s rebellion.
¹² These are hidden reefs at your love feasts, as they feast with you without fear, shepherds feeding themselves; waterless clouds, swept along by winds; fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted;
¹³ wild waves of the sea, casting up the foam of their own shame; wandering stars, for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever.
¹⁴ It was also about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, “Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones,
¹⁵ to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him.”
¹⁶ These are grumblers, malcontents, following their own sinful desires; they are loud-mouthed boasters, showing favoritism to gain advantage.
¹⁷ But you must remember, beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ.
¹⁸ “They said to you, ‘In the last time there will be scoffers, following their own ungodly passions.’”
¹⁹ It is these who cause divisions, worldly people, devoid of the Spirit.

Revelation 13:1-18: ¹ And I saw a beast rising out of the sea, with ten horns and seven heads, with ten diadems on its horns and blasphemous names on its heads.
² And the beast that I saw was like a leopard; its feet were like a bear’s, and its mouth was like a lion’s mouth. And to it the dragon gave his power and his throne and great authority.
³ One of its heads seemed to have a mortal wound, but its mortal wound was healed, and the whole earth marveled as they followed the beast.
⁴ And they worshiped the dragon, for he had given his authority to the beast, and they worshiped the beast, saying, “Who is like the beast, and who can fight against it?”
⁵ And the beast was given a mouth uttering haughty and blasphemous words, and it was allowed to exercise authority for forty-two months.
⁶ It opened its mouth to utter blasphemies against God, blaspheming his name and his dwelling, that is, those who dwell in heaven.
⁷ Also it was allowed to make war on the saints and to conquer them. And authority was given it over every tribe and people and language and nation.
⁸ and all who dwell on earth will worship it, everyone whose name has not been written before the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who was slain.
⁹ If anyone has an ear, let him hear:
¹⁰ If anyone is to be taken captive, to captivity he goes; if anyone is to be slain with the sword, with the sword must he be slain.
¹¹ Then I saw another beast rising out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb and it spoke like a dragon.
¹² It exercises all the authority of the first beast in its presence, and makes the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose mortal wound was healed.
¹³ It performs great signs, even making fire come down from heaven to earth in front of people,
¹⁴ and by the signs that it is allowed to work in the presence of the beast it deceives those who dwell on earth, telling them to make an image for the beast that was wounded by the sword and yet lived.
¹⁵ And it was allowed to give breath to the image of the beast, so that the image of the beast might even speak and might cause those who would not worship the image of the beast to be slain.
¹⁶ Also it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead,
¹⁷ so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name.
¹⁸ This calls for wisdom: let the one who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man, and his number is 666.

Revelation 17:1-18: ¹ Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the judgment of the great prostitute who is seated on many waters,
² with whom the kings of the earth have committed sexual immorality, and with the wine of whose sexual immorality the dwellers on earth have become drunk.”
³ And he carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness, and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was full of blasphemous names, and it had seven heads and ten horns.
⁴ The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and jewels and pearls, holding in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the impurities of her sexual immorality.
⁵ And on her forehead was written a name of mystery: “Babylon the great, mother of prostitutes and of earth’s abominations.”
⁶ And I saw the woman, drunk with the blood of the saints, the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. When I saw her, I marveled greatly.
⁷ But the angel said to me, “Why do you marvel? I will tell you the mystery of the woman, and of the beast with seven heads and ten horns that carries her.
⁸ The beast that you saw was, and is not, and is about to rise from the bottomless pit and go to destruction. And the dwellers on earth whose names have not been written in the book of life from the foundation of the world will marvel to see the beast, because it was and is not and is to come.
⁹ This calls for a mind with wisdom: the seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman is seated;
¹⁰ they are also seven kings, five of whom have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come, and when he does come he must remain only a little while.
¹¹ As for the beast that was and is not, it is an eighth but it belongs to the seven, and it goes to destruction.
¹² And the ten horns that you saw are ten kings who have not yet received royal power, but they are to receive authority as kings for one hour, together with the beast.
¹³ These are of one mind, and they hand over their power and authority to the beast.
¹⁴ They will make war on the Lamb, and the Lamb will conquer them, for he is Lord of lords and King of kings, and those with him are called and chosen and faithful.”
¹⁵ And the angel said to me, “The waters that you saw, where the prostitute is seated, are peoples and multitudes and nations and languages.
¹⁶ And the ten horns that you saw, they and the beast will hate the prostitute. They will make her desolate and naked, and devour her flesh and burn her up with fire,
¹⁷ for God has put it into their hearts to carry out his purpose by being of one mind and handing over their royal power to the beast, until the words of God are fulfilled.
¹⁸ And the woman that you saw is the great city that has dominion over the kings of the earth.