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The Man of Sin of II Thessalonians 2: 3
Posted : 9 Dec, 2010 02:54 PM
The Man of Sin of II Thessalonians 2: 3
II Thessalonians 2: 3 says "Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;"
Paul does not tell us who the man of sin is. But the man of sin is said to be revealed when or after the falling away begins. The falling away is the falling of Christians from the truth of the gospel of Christ. The truth is in part replaced by man-made doctrines, so that the gospel is leavened.
Christ says in John 17: 12 that "While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled. " The son of perdition here is
Judas Iscariot. Perdition is Strong's number 684, "ruin or loss, physical, spiritual or eternal, damnable, destruction, die, perdition, perish, pernicious ways, waste." Revelation 17: 8, 11 say "The beast that thou sawest was, and is not; and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition: and they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and yet is...And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition."
Judas was a servant of Satan, but he was of the twelve disciples of Christ. The beast in Revelation 17: 8 is also a Servant of Satan and will go into perdition, or eternal ruin. The beast in Revelation 17: 7 carries the woman of Revelation 17: 1-7 called the great wh*re, and mystery, Babylon the great, mother of harlots and abominations of the earth, who represents false religion, or man's religion.
It is interesting that Revelation 17: 8, 11 mentions a three step sequence the beast goes through. The beast was, and is not and yet shall come up out of the bottomless pit. He or it was and is not, and is of the seven. In Genesis 2 God finished his work of creation and rested on the Seventh Day. He sanctified the Seventh Day. Man was created on the sixth day. Remember that in Revelation 13: 18 the number of the Second Beast of Revelation 13 is 666, or the number six repeated three times. It s the number of man. Before the Cross the main kingdoms of the ancient world were the Egyptian and Assyrian kingdoms, and we add the four kingdoms of Daniel 2 - the Babylonian, Persian, Greek and Roman empires - and we get six kingdoms of man's rule.
Christ began the kingdom of God during the Roman Empire, so that the kingdom of God on earth is the seventh kingdom. Number Seven is the rule of God. But we don't want to get so far into Biblical numerology as to go where Harold Camping of Family Radio went with his Old Testament time lines and numerology he used to claim to predict the end of the world in 1994.
This three step sequence, or six, seven and eight sequence, can be applied to the beasts of Revelation 13. I am not saying that the
text says either beast once existed as the rule of man, then entered into the kingdom of God, but went on into the eighth phase which goes back to man's religion and man's rule. while mixing in part of the rule of God. But we can use the principle stated in Revelation 17: 8, 11 to look at the beasts in this way.
Following the Cross there were six main kingdoms which in some way mixed the kingdom of God with the kingdom and rule of man.
The Holy Roman Empire and the Spanish Empire were both Catholic kingdoms which mixed in a little of Christianity with man's rule. and then came some kingdoms which were at least in part Protestant nations - England, Russia, or the Soviet Empire, Nazi Germany and then the United States.
But it is the Second Beast of Revelation 13 that I want to deal with here. The Second Beast is said in Revelation 13: 11 to look like a lamb, but he speaks like a dragon. He or it is deceptive. This beast has been called the False Prophet. I know that Revelation 19: 20 says the False Prophet is said to be thrown into the lake of fire. Yet the Second Beast is still a collective, a group of those who believe they are God's people. It is those who stay in false doctrines. They that remain in a mix of man's religion with the Gospel of Christ are deceived and led by False Prophets, who can be called The False Prophet, But those who remain in man's religion also try to keep others in the same false doctrines.
The Second Beast of Revelation 13, who is dealt with from verses 11 to 18, appears as he is number eight or the six, seven eight cycle. We can say it is implied that this beast came out of a Christianity that once was in number seven, in God's rest.
In Revelation 13: 12 the Second Beast causes people, or Christians, to worship the First Beast, described in verses 1 to 10, whose deadly wound was healed. This indicates that the First Beast is some kind of a composite, because verses 1-2 describe the four beasts of Daniel 7, which are the British Empire, the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and the United States as the diverse dreadful fourth beast. The nation whose deadly would was healed and who the Second Beast causes people to worship sounds like the nation of Israel, the Little Horn of Daniel 7: 8 and 8: 9.
This all is quite different from the end time scenario of Separation Theology, or Scofieldism, which cannot see the nation of Israel as any kind of beast, even if we admit that America is the fourth beast of Daniel 7: 7. The beast whose deadly wound was healed in 1948 uses the Fourth beast of Daniel 7: 8 to increase its power as the Little Horn.
Some who want an end time single person Anti-Christ will say that Paul's man of sin in II Thessalonians 2; 3 is the one man Anti-Christ. But the gist of what John tells us about the Anti-Christ in I John 2: 18-19 and I John 4: 2-3 is that there is not one single Anti-Christ to appear during the dispensationalist seven year tribulation, but that the spirit of Anti-Christ manifests as many Anti-Christs and we can believe that these Anti-Christs will become more threatening in the tribulation. There will be a tribulation but I am not at all sure it will last seven years.
Since Paul associated the revealing of the man of sin with the falling away in II Thessalonians 2: 3 it is more likely that the man of sin is the Second Beast of Revelation 13: 1-18, who is that falling away from the truth of Christ's gospel into false doctrines. And that falling away has been going on since the late 19th century.
In his commentary on II Thessalonains 2: 3 John Gill says the falling away is "... the falling of men from the faith of the Gospel, from the purity of Gospel doctrines, discipline, worship, and ordinances; and this not of some Jews who professed faith in Christ, and departed from it, or of some Christians who went off to the Gnostics..." He says of the man of sin that "...and that man of sin be revealed;
who was now hid, though secretly working; by whom is meant not only any particular person or individual; not the devil, for though he is the wicked one, a damned spirit, an opposer, an adversary of God and Christ, and his people, and who has affected deity, and sought to be worshipped, and even by Christ himself; yet the man of sin is here distinguished from Satan, (2 Timothy 2:9) ..."
What Gill says here is not too easy to understand. He does say the man is sin is not a particular individual and not Satan.
My King James Version Reference Bible lists I Timothy 4: 1, Daniel 7: 25 and Revelation 13: 5 for II Thessalonians 2: 3. I Timothy 4: 1 is the most relevant of these three, which says ". Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils;"
The man of sin is not a one man Anti-Christ, but the context fits the Second Beast of Revelation 13: 11-18, the False Prophet, which again, is not one man, though the False Prophet can include the office of False Prophet (John Hagee at present?). The Second Beast is the Church in apostasy, or in the falling away from the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ. "Whosoever transgresseth, and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God. He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son (II John 1: 9)."
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