Ezekiel 20 speaks of the wilderness. First God condemns the ruling elders , the elders who the King of Babylon removed from the land of Israel. They stand condemned for walking in the same idolatry as their fathers did, the fathers who God led out of Egypt into the wilderness about 1000 years before this.

The first thing God did for his Egyptian redemption was to give them his statutes and rules, “by which, if a person does them, he shall live.” (Ezekiel 20:11) This reveals the secret to a happy and successful life that all but God’s obedient children miss. If a person acts upon the statutes of God and actually does them, then he will live an abundant life. The fruit of my life, which is my wife and my children, testifies to this truth.

All of the pain, controversy, fighting, and rebellion in this world arise from refusing to do the statutes of God. The Christian fad for generations now has been to throw off God’s law and to both lead and follow the world in the pursuit of endless pleasure and perversion. Lawlessness now rules the earth and a man of lawlessness has just been elected President of the nation which represents Mystery Babylon on earth. Speak a word against him or the moral unrighteousness of the times and many will quickly say, “Do not judge.” The only absolute for many is that there is no revealed or knowable standard of right and wrong. This idea produces absolute lawlessness and reduces men to beasts with no ability to discern truth or to separate good from evil.

God said that he would send strong delusion so that the people would believe a lie when the man of lawlessness is revealed.  See 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12.  Why else would the people actually elect him (the representative of lawless men) to rule over them?