Gene, the Bible tells us that the Antichrist will try to deceive the elect (Matthew 24:24). You say that the elect are led by the Holy Spirit and protected by it. I wholeheartedly agree with this. However, you also state that the Holy Spirit will not be present during the reign of the Antichrist. So, how does this make sense? Will the Holy Spirit abandon his elect, despite what the Scripture says Matthew 28:20, John 14:16, Ephesians 4:30?
Therein lies the problem, you see it, but you can't believe/receive, that's deception, the only logical answer is the elect can NOT the Church.
There are three groups of people called the
elect in the Word,
1. Israel is called the elect of God,
2. the Church is called the elect of God
3. those that are saved during the Trib are the elect of God
You need to study what
elect actually means.
Also we need to understand deception,
1. there are born again believers that are
subject to deception, they waver on the subject, not really sure what is true, ...they just haven't had a revelation from the Holy Spirit as to what is the Truth, they will either believe/receive the Truth or fall into the next group
2.. there are believers that are deceived, Paul says they have fallen into the snare of the devil, they are saved, but will not have many rewards in Eternity
3.and there are non-believers that are deceived, these fall into two different categories,
a. those that are the tares in the Church, that have heard the Gospel, but for some reason have refused to believe/receive it
b. those that have never heard the true Gospel, these are those in the cults and false religions of the world
As stated in my last post, those in subgroup
a are damned, those in subgroup
b will be the saints that come out of the Trib.
Gene