2 Thessalonians 2

4. The coming of Christ not at hand, 2 Thessalonians 2:1-17.

This chapter discusses the main topic of the epistle, the time of the Second Advent. The passage has been the subject of discussion and varied opinion from its first publication to the present hour. Good histories of the phases of interpretation may be found in Alford, (derived mainly from Lunemann,) M’Clintock and Strong’s Cyclopaedia, and Dr. Gloag on St. Paul’s Epistles.

The Fathers of the primitive Church agreed largely, but not unanimously, in four propositions. 1. The man of sin is identical with St. John’s antichrist, 1 John 2:18, “ye have heard that antichrist shall come.” Hence, Who or what is antichrist? and, When shall be his coming? were questions of great interest. 2. Antichrist is a personal being; the incarnation of sin, who at some future day will come and work in powerful opposition to God. 3. The what withholdeth, and the he who now letteth, (impedeth, preventeth,) were the Roman government and the Roman emperor. Hence antichrist was to rise when the Roman empire fell. 4. Antichrist will be destroyed by the Lord at his second advent.

Such being the views of the earlier Church writers, the thinkers of the Middle Ages were struck with the number of the traits ascribed by St. Paul to antichrist appearing in the popedom. Hence, in the disputes between the emperor and the pope the doctrine came out that the pope was antichrist. The Waldenses, and Albigenses, and followers of Wiclif and Huss, held this same view. The reformers, Luther, Melanchthon, Zuinglius, and the creed-books of the Lutheran Church, adopted it. The same view pervades the English Protestant authors, as Hooker, Bishop Newton, Macknight, Benson, Wordsworth, Doddridge, and many others.

In our modern times three classes of opinions besides this last have prevailed. 1. Writers rationalistically inclined, as De Wette, Lunemann, Davidson, and Jowett, deny the prophetic character of the passage, and explain away its predictive phrases. 2. Others, Grotius, Wetstein, Hammond, and Whitby, hold its predictions to be fulfilled in past times, and find its verification in various events or characters. The inventor of each particular verification finds few followers in his individual views. 3.

Another class, as Olshausen and Alford, holds the fulfilment in the far future, and so have no special events or characters to identify.

Our own view, by the adoption of a single special element, harmonizes, as we think, and brings into one, the interpretation of the early Fathers and the Reformers. That element is this: Antichrist ( anti, opposed to, and Christos, Christ) is the great opponent and antithesis to Christ in the moral government of this world, the personal Satan himself; Satan under various successive historical guises, but Satan himself; and Satan truly at last incarnate, probably in human form, to be destroyed, Revelation 20:9-10, as St. Paul here predicts he will be, before the final judgment throne. 2 Thessalonians 2:8.

The antithetic traits in St. Paul’s description between Christ and antichrist are thus happily traced by Dr. Gloag:

“The apostle evidently represents ‘the man of sin’ as the counterpart of Christ. It is antichrist ( ο αντιχριστος , 1 John 2:18) who is here described. He is ‘the man of sin,’ the personification or incarnation of iniquity; whereas Christ is the righteous One, the personification of righteousness. He is the mystery of lawlessness; whereas Christ is the mystery of godliness. His coming, parousia, is described by the same word as the coming of Christ. He is represented as sitting in the temple of God, which is the proper seat of Christ. He shows or exhibits himself as God; whereas Christ is the true manifestation of the Godhead. His coming is after the working of Satan; whereas Christ’s coming is in the power of the Holy Ghost. He, under the influence of Satan, performs signs and wonders, but they are miracles of falsehood, the counterpart of the real miracles which Christ performed. In short, the kingdom of light, which Christ has established, has its counterpart in the kingdom of darkness.” Pp. 1, 211.

We may then trace some of the phases of this historic antithesis between Christ and antichrist afforded by Scripture as follows: 1. In the garden of Eden, Satan, incarnated in, or in diabolical possession of, the serpent, is opposed to the Jehovah-Messiah, walking in the garden at the cool of the day antichrist versus Christ. 2. At the temptation, Satan, in some fair guise, encounters Christ and offers him the secular kingdoms of the world antichrist facing Christ again. 3. In the Apocalypse, next, incarnated in the great red dragon, the pagan-Roman empire personified, Satan stands in battle with the man-child antichrist with Christ. 4. When that guise is demolished, infused into the beast, he becomes the power and soul of the papal Roman world and encounters the conquering Christ in Revelation 19:11-21 Christ versus antichrist. 5. Stripped of this guise he comes out the naked Satan, and is cast into prison a thousand years.

Revelation 20:1 to Revelation 6:6. At the close of the thousand years he emerges, probably incarnate in human form, leads the final apostasy and is destroyed. Revelation 20:7-10. It will be seen, perhaps, that this survey takes in and harmonizes nearly all the ancient patristic points with the modern Protestant.

We think that a true interpretation of both St. Paul’s brief Apocalypse and the fuller Apocalypse of St. John, will sustain this survey. The latter is a full supplement to the former. To St. Paul, the future presents but a few clear points from a dark background, just as in Acts 27:22, where see note. He professedly penetrates the future with a little knowledge in the midst of a great ignorance. He sees that the advent of Christ cannot fully come until after the advent of antichrist has come and gone; but how far in the future both are, or how far Christ’s advent is beyond antichrist’s, he does not see. He sees that antichrist cannot come, that is, the antichrist future to him, until the Roman empire ceases; but he does not see that the Roman empire is itself a previous objective antichrist, to whom his antichrist is successor, waiting his predecessor’s departure. This St. John’s Apocalypse will disclose. He sees the elements of his antichrist already working, but does not see that the antichrist to be destroyed by Christ’s advent is a succeeding and far-distant phase of his antichrist; and this development, too, St. John’s Apocalypse well unfolds.