2 Thessalonians 2:4

4. Who opposeth ’ Ο αντικειμενος , the antagonist, one lying anti, or opposite. Antagonist to whom? To Christ. “For,” says Lunemann, “he is the forerunner of Christ’s advent, and has, as Christ’s counterfeit, an advent (parousia) and a revelation of himself; his works are the direct anti thesis to Christ’s works, and it is by Christ’s appearing that he is abolished. This ant agonist is, then, no other than anti christ. 1 John 2:18.” And it is curious to note that anti signifies, in the Greek, instead of, as commonly as it means opposed to; so that antichrist might as well mean substitute for Christ, or, in papal phrase, “vicar of Christ,” as antagonist of Christ.

Exalteth himself above… God Alford argues from this clause that the pope cannot be meant, because the pope, so far from placing himself above God, is an abject adorer of gods. Alford’s words are a feeble repetition of a Romanist argument. Says the Rhemish commentator: “How can the Protestants, then, for shame, and without evident contradiction, avouch the pope to be antichrist, who, as we say, honoureth Christ the true God with all his power, or, as they say, honoureth idols, and challengeth no divine honour to himself, much less to himself only, as antichrist shall do.

He humbly prayeth to God, and lowly kneeleth down in every church at divers altars erected to God in memory of his saints, and prayeth to him.

He saith or heareth mass daily, with all devotion; he confesseth his sins to a priest, as other poor men do,” etc. To Alford and the Rhemist it may be replied, 1. Alford mistranslates Paul’s Greek preposition επι , which signifies not so properly υπερ , above, as against. 2. If the prophecy is to wait for a being who literally exalts himself above the Omnipresent and Omnipotent, it waits an impossibility. No finite being can exalt himself above the infinitely high. The very thought is inconceivable. 3. The only possible meaning of exalting himself above God is to arrogate and usurp the attributes and authority of God over men; making his own laws the substitute of, or validating power for and over, the divine rule. Now the papacy has assumed the attribute of infallibility; it has manifestly and manifoldly, by virtue of that attribute, truly reversed and overridden the divine law. It holds itself as the giver of Scripture, and proceeds to overrule Scripture by its traditions. It claims, against and over and above the law of God, to absolve from sin. Nor does Alford at all invalidate the strange fact that the pope “creates the God he adores;” manufacturing a wafer when he pleases, and then by consecration transforming that wafer into God. To claim the power of creating God when he pleases is one of the most flagrant self-exaltations over God conceivable. Nor does the fact that he worships the God he has created invalidate the argument. The pagan idolater first makes his fetish and then worships it.

As God Usurping divine attributes, such as infallibility, absolution, God-making. The best critics, however, omit these words.

Sitteth Literally, Takes his seat, and by implication keeps it.

Temple of God Not the Jewish temple, which is never called so in the New Testament, but unquestionably the Christian Church. See 2 Corinthians 6:16; Ephesians 2:21. This seating himself in supremacy in the Church is a vivid picture of the inauguration of each new pope. Forthwith upon his election he enters St. Peter’s Church, the claimed temple of God; is lifted by his cardinals and placed upon the high altar. There he takes his seat, and is by them adored, kneeling on their knees and kissing his feet. Their technical term for this act is adoration; and the words on the papal coin are, Quem creant, adorant: Whom they create, they adore.

Is God He is styled, “Dominus Deus noster papa; alter Deus in terra: The Lord God our pope: a second God on earth.” This antichrist, whoever he may be, then, occupies a high, a supreme, seat in the Christian Church. He cannot, therefore, be Nero, nor Mohammed, nor any mere secular prince or warrior.