Does God Purposely Send a Strong Delusion?

There was yet another stunning poll today showing that the overwhelming majority of Republicans trust Donald Trump above anyone else, this time having to do with getting accurate news about the war in Ukraine.

The CBS News/YouGov poll revealed that 79% of Republicans trust what Trump tells them about the war, which is a number far exceeding that of any other group, including journalists actually reporting from the war zone.

This poll echos another one from a few months back, in which Trump voters were asked who they felt was most likely to tell them the truth – and 71% answered Trump, a higher number than their friends, family, conservative media figures, and religious leaders.

To any Christian who is NOT caught up in the personality cult surrounding Trump, these kind of polls reinforce the impression that we are witnessing the strong delusion we were warned about in the Bible.

After all, Donald Trump was notorious for having a casual relationship with the truth for decades before even entering politics. Yet in the last few years he has somehow managed to convince tens of millions of Americans that HE should be trusted above others to tell them the truth.

The strong delusion is talked about in Second Thessalonians:

“And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” 2 Thess 2:10-12

However, there’s a bit of misunderstanding with this verse, as many Christians are under the impression that God is deliberately deluding these people, as evidenced by the words “God shall send them strong delusion.” But let’s look a bit closer at this.

According to Strong’s Concordance, the Greek word translated as send them is used as “I send, transmit, permit to go, put forth.” The “permit to go” usage is interesting because, in fact, the same Greek word has been rendered before as exactly that.

For example, in Mark we read: “And all the devils besought him, saying, Send us into the swine, that we may enter into them.” – Mark 5:12

In this case, demons who had possessed a man, and who called themselves Legion, were asking Jesus to permit them to be cast into a herd of swine, which Jesus did.

Another example is in Luke with the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, and the verse which reads: “Then he said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father’s house:” – Luke 16:27

In this parable, the rich man is asking Abraham that he, Abraham, might permit Lazarus to go to his father’s house.

The same Greek work being used to convey asking permission in these two verses is important, because it gives us a slightly different perspective on the wording in Second Thessalonians: “And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:”

In this case, a better understand of the verse is, rather than God deliberately causing people to be deluded, it’s that he is permitting them to fall under the strong delusion since they did not love the truth.

This is reinforced in Second Peter: “The Lord is not … willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” – 2 Peter 3:9

So, the lesson is that while these people are very deluded, God isn’t purposely sending them delusion. Rather, He is allowing them, or permitting them, to fall into this strong delusion because they didn’t love the truth, and had pleasure in unrighteousness.

Thank you for watching and I will talk to you guys soon. ♦