Part I (NASB)

In 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 Paul continues to address Christ’s coming, the Day of the LORD. As we learned while looking at chapter one, it appears that false teachers have come into the congregation and begun telling the Thessalonians that Christ had already come; some apparently even carried forged letters from Paul as evidence. Being believers struggling under persecution and trial—people whom Paul had urged to remain faithful because God has promised to make things right—this false teaching would have been a gut-punch and tantamount to advising the Thessalonians to give up hope.

“God promised you that He would make it right at His second coming. Well, that has happened, and He didn’t do that for you.” Think Job’s three friends and his wife. Paul writes:

“Now we ask you, brothers and sisters, regarding the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to Him, 2 that you not be quickly shaken from your composure or be disturbed either by a spirit, or a message, or a letter as if from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. 3 No one is to deceive you in any way!”

He urges the Thessalonians to not give into a feeling of despair or believe the words of these liars or to be tricked into thinking that Paul has changed his message. Let “no one…deceive you in any way!” And then to counter any “But what ifs” that will likely enter their hearts and minds he continues.

“For it will not come unless the apostasy comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, 4 who opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, displaying himself as being God.”

Readers are told here that the Day of the LORD will not come until there is first “the apostasy.” This belief in an increasing lack of moral integrity and lack of faith arose in the intertestamental period within Judaism. That is, in the period between the end of the Old Testament and the start of the New Testament. Referring to the last chapter, those who commit apostasy are those who “disobey the gospel of Jesus Christ” and will face olithros aionion, “eternal destruction”.

This belief in a great falling away before the coming of the LORD is found in numerous Apocryphal and Deuterocanonical writings. Although not considered canon by the majority of the Church today, the teachings found in these writings impacted the zeitgeist of the 1st century. Indeed, you can find their influence outside of Paul’s letters in Jude and Revelation—two texts much younger than 2 Thessalonians.

1 Enoch 91:7,8—which was likely composed over the course of the 1st and 2nd centuries BCE during this intertestamental period—reads:

“And when sin, and unrighteousness, and blasphemy, and violence, increase in all kinds of deeds, and apostasy, and transgression, and uncleanness increase, a great discipline will come from heaven on all these, and the Holy Lord will come out with wrath and discipline to execute judgement on earth. In those days violence will be cut off from its roots, and the roots of unrighteousness together with deceit, and they will be destroyed from under the heavens.”

In the Book of Jubilees, another such book, recognized today by some traditions as canonical but not by most, it, too, composed in the intertestamental period, states in chapter 23:14-22 that God’s people will fall away from Him before the Last Day, and in verses 23 and 24 we are told,

“And He [God] will wake up against them the sinners of the nations who have neither mercy nor compassion, and who will respect the person of none, neither old nor young, nor anyone, for they are more wicked and strong to do evil than all the children of men. And they will use violence against Israel and transgression and transgression against Jacob, and much blood will be shed on the earth, and there will be none to gather and none to bury. In those days they will cry aloud, and call and pray that they may be saved from the hand of the sinners, the nations, but none will be saved.”

I don’t bring these two texts up to say that they should be part of canon, only that in Paul’s day within Judaism there was already an established belief that before the Last Day, when God reconciles and makes things right, things will be bleak. It’s always darkest before the dawn. This would not necessarily have been the case for the Greek, pagan Thessalonians. Perhaps this is why Paul asks in verse 5, “Do you not remember that while I was still with you, I was telling you these things?”

“…and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, 4 who opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, displaying himself as being God.”

Back in 2 Thessalonians 1:7 Paul speaks of Jesus’ being “revealed from heaven with His mighty angels…” So it is not as if He has been away, playing golf in the Maldives. Christ has always been here, always been present and not far off—as Luke puts it in Acts 17. Here, too, this “man of lawlessness is revealed,” as if he also has been here all along, lurking in the shadows working against the Thessalonians’ faith.

This unnamed and unspecified entity—I refrain from saying Paul is necessarily talking about an individual here—is destined for apoleias. The Knox Bible translates this lawless one to be “destined for perdition,” thereby making it clear that this destruction is due to God’s judgement. He is characterized by anomia: that is willful opposition to all faith; and not just faith in the LORD, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and considers himself greater than all religions’ beliefs and even objects of worship. All these paltry gods are beneath him. Or more to the point, next to him in priority and importance.

This enemy of faith has the goal of usurping God—with a capital G—and of becoming the object of worship himself, “…he takes his seat in the temple of God, displaying himself as being God,” even though he is “destined for perdition”. Since Paul does not tell the Thessalonians who this guy is, what is the apostle getting at here?

Many Christians who focus their faith on the end-times believe that Paul is speaking here about and event that will happen in Jerusalem someday. They believe that at some point the Temple will be restored and, after this, the Antichrist will declare himself God.

Contrary to this position, other Christians believe that this event has already happened with the emperors of Rome being deified, starting with Julius Caesar. But even before this, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who considered himself a manifestation of Zeus, desecrated the Temple c.167 BCE by erecting a statue of Zeus—made in his own likeness—there and then by sacrificing a pig.

Regardless of their differences, these two positions have one thing in common: They believe that Paul is talking about a single, historical event—something that we can see with our own eyes and maybe watch a clip of it on You Tube. However, I don’t think that this is what Paul has in mind.

In Paul’s next letter, 1 Corinthians, penned just two to four years later, he describes the Corinthian church as God’s temple. The structure around which Jerusalem is built is now not of any consequence to him or to his faith. I find reasonable to believe that he had already started to come to this conclusion when writing to the Thessalonians. Recall what Paul writes to the Gentile Galatians in 4:26, “But the Jerusalem above is free; she is our mother.” So, it is necessary for Paul, a Jew, to teach and remind his Gentile audience of the necessity of these two events—the apostasy and the lawless one—happening before the end times, since they would have no experience of such things. However, to restrict the ac...