2 Thessalonians 2:1-3
1-Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him,
2-That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand.
3-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;
All Christians know, believe, and affirm that our Lord Jesus Christ will return to this earth at an appointed day and hour. His return, or advent, will be a physical and bodily return. He will, at that time, pass final judgment upon all who are living and all who are dead; and, He will return with all those who, having once lived in mortal flesh as Christians, are glorified in eternal bodies like unto His. Any and all Christians who remain on earth at His advent “shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air:”(1Thes4:17). This is what John refers to as “the resurrection of life”(Jhn5:29); and, all those, living and dead, who were never redeemed by the blood of the Lord will experience the “resurrection of damnation”(Jhn5:29). This is the Scripture teaching of our Lord’s advent, and, this is what the apostle Paul in this entire chapter to the Thessalonians is inculcating.
Letters and rumours had been circulating throughout the churches of the first century that were troubling the saints. These letters, some that were falsely signed in the name of the apostles, were telling the churches that the Day of the Lord, and all that that intimates, had already taken place. The resurrection of life, the judgment, and Christ’s very coming were being rumoured to have already taken place. And, from what we know about this event from Scripture is that it is going to be undeniable to both believers and non believers. Not only are we told that the Lord will return in His physical glorified body and descend from heaven upon clouds in the like manner in which he ascended (Acts 1:9-11); but, when He does return He will return “with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God:” (1Thes 4:16). And, if a shout by the voice of an archangel accompanied by the sound of God’s trumpet isn’t enough to wake and alert all of creation, then the fact that the Lord will be accompanied by tens of thousands of angels and that every soul both living and dead will be assembled before Him in the Judgment (Mat 25:31,32) should put an end to any false teaching that the Lord came in secret and removed His saints from this world and left everyone else in ignorance and dismay.
Indeed there are many today, as throughout history, who teach this very heresy. Some are nothing more than cults like the Jehovahs Witnesses, others are even worse in that they pretend to accept orthodoxy in regards to the essential doctrines of the Christian faith whilst teaching that the resurrection and judgment have already happened; these heretical sects are referred to as “full” or “hyper-Preterists”. Then there are the Dispensationalist Pre Tribulation Rapture sects, of whom nearly all of modern visible Christianity now consists of. These may not believe that the Coming and Judgment have already happened in the past, but, what they do teach is that there will be a secret “rapture” or “catching up” of the saints which is then followed by a most incredible fictional tale of a “millennial kingdom”. And, this tale plays heavily and prominently in our ‘Display of Cultural Christianity’. But, first we must establish that which Scripture teaches positively, then we may look at those things that are contrary and negative to the truth.
So, in our verse here, Paul is reminding these Thessalonians about the fact that he had already told them these things concerning the resurrection of the saints. How upsetting it would be, then or now, to be told that the resurrection had already taken place! These saints, who are now left behind, must now feel as though they themselves are not Christians at all. But, Paul reminds them of some facts that must take place before this resurrection will occur.
Paul tells us that two things must happen before the day of the Lord would come, and he doesn’t put a time or an order on these two events. First, he mentions ‘the apostasy’ and then the revealing of ‘the man of sin’. For our part we will be focussing at the present on what the apostle here refers to as ‘the apostasy’.
When the apostle says ‘the apostasy’, first off we notice his use of the definite article; ‘the apostasy’ intimates that it is a great an wholesale departure from ‘the faith’; and, by the faith we mean the apostles doctrines, that which we would consider as essential to biblical Christianity. This apostasy will be the entire visible Christian Church, from the least to the greatest we believe that all Christian sects and denominations will worship God falsely and teach the Scripture in a fashion that is like unto man and wholly unacceptable to God. Not unlike the Israelites at the foot of Sinai in Exodus chapter 32. As Moses was gone not even 40 days into the mountain of Sinai to commune with the Lord they felt that they needed to worship God in some way. So, being men without great understanding and lacking godliness they chose to worship God in a way that was plesing to themselves; they chose a contemporary and cultural method of worship, a method that was familiar to them from living in Egypt for 400 years. They then got Aaron to fashion a golden calf so that they could worship God with this calf.
Too often do we hear people misquote Scripture concerning these events at the foot of Sinai. The modern popular and cultural reading of these events paints a picture of a people who have wholly left the God who had brought them out of Egypt and fashioned themselves an entirely different god. Yet, upon a careful reading of Exodus chapter 32 we see that the people did not in fact create a different god, but that, they created Jehovah God in the image of a golden calf. In Romans 1:23 we read that the ungodly “…changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts…”. Is this not exactly what took place at the foot of Sinai?
Having collected the gold from the people Aaron “… fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf: and they said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. And when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation, and said, To morrow is a feast to the LORD.”(Ex 32:4,5) Where the Authorized Version here reads “These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.” it can also be translated as “This is your god, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt.” We feel that this translation is more contextually accurate, as it seems very unlikely, even impossible, that Aaron the high priest of Jehovah, would fashion a foreign god for the people to worship; and, the fact that he then “built an altar before it” and then made a proclamation, as the high priest, that “To morrow is a feast to the LORD.”, where LORD is Jehovah God in the Hebrew tongue, not to mention the fact that over a million people, who were then present, were well aware that it was Jehovah that brought them out of Egypt. Based on these observations of our text in its context, it is impossible for us to believe that the text in Exodus is a record of Israel worshipping an entirely different god; no, in fact t is a display of how Israel chose a method of worshipping God Almighty in a cultural way. By worshipping in this way and reducing God to an image of a fourfooted beast, they made themselves feel better about not being godly, and thus, the unrighteousness that followed their false worship seemed justified in their minds. This self righteousness ultimately led to their profaning God and to committing of all sorts of acts of evil; and, during this entire time they dedicated their feasting, their drinking, and their playing, to a golden calf of which they claimed was a representation of Jehovah. If there ever was a biblical exposition of apostasy, this is it!
There is one thing that these Israelites had going for them, and that was Moses. He entreated Jehovah on their behalf that He should not destroy them, besides, they hadn’t even received the Ten Commandments yet; and God had mercy upon them.
Fast forward to today. We’ve had an open Bible in our own language for over 500 years, not to mention the entire history of the church from the cross until now. So how is it possible that the visible church today is engaged in the worshipping of the one true and living God as a ‘golden calf’. Just as the Israelites at Sinai fashioned God into a calf, the visible church today has fashioned Him into all sorts of cultural forms of idolatry. This is what we call Cultural Christianity. And though it is troubling to the saints, we would like to ensure our readers that this is a providential act of God and a fulfillment of prophecy. We believe that the apostasy that must come before the advent of our Lord Jesus Christ is the church visible of which is now on display.
In every corner of what is called the Christian church we see nothing but the worshipping of man and culture; and those that are doing so boldly proclaim that what they do and how they do it is entirely scriptural; and, they do what they do and how they do it in the name of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. So, what exactly are they doing? We can sum it up like this — They are taking from the culture that surrounds them, that which is really of the most comfort and carnally enjoyable to them, and then they paint it with a brush of Christianity,(as they see Christianity) and then they call that which was once worldly culture Christianity. This is exactly what happened at the foot of Sinai! The Israelites took the comfortable image of the Egyptian god and called it Jehovah; they then proceeded to have a grand party and celebration as the world would have. Drunken parties that involve sacrifices and naming gods as reasons to have the parties were no different then as they are today. What the Israelites did at Sinai in profaning God by turning Him into a fourfooted beast is exactly what the visible church today has done, and continues to do by adapting their love of the culture of the world to rest comfortably in what they now call Christianity. And, since the culture of the world is a result of the realm of Satan, and Satan is the ruler of this world, we conclude that every aspect of the nominal Christian church today is twisted, perverted, and polluted by the Devil!
Before we continue in this topic we would like to emphatically state that though the entirety of visible Christianity is seemingly corrupted, we know of a fact, that scripturally, historically, and experientially, God has His saints spread throughout Christendom and the world at large; a remnant of the entire false church and dying world are indeed His true Israel, “For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel:”(Rom 9:6). And, we know that He will redeem all who are His, our Lord said “… this is the Father’s will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day.”(Jhn 6:39) So, our observations of the visible church and the apostasy that is the disease of it is just that — our observations of the diseased visible church. And, we believe that this is what Paul is telling the Thessalonians must happen before our Lord returns.
Some Christians have an idea that in the very last days that there will be a one world religion, and this is based on an understanding of Revelation chapter 17 verses 4 through 6; however, we’re not so much interested in exegeting this very difficult verse as we feel that the verse that we have here in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 is more than enough to make a positive assertion; but, if there is to be a one world religion we have no doubt that that religion would be Christianity in its falsest form. From the Reformers of the 16th century until now many have said that Great Harlot of Revelation 17 was the Roman Catholic Church; we would not disagree, but, we would also have to add all the other denominations and sects as being a part of that beast system of the apostate church. Most all denominations have gone back to Rome to make peace with her Pope and her system; and, those who oppose Rome with their words we believe that their deeds say that they rather approve of Rome and her system, and that they who remain vocally as opponents of Rome are spiritually her very own children.
Lord willing we would like to identify the apostasy for what it is and view it from the lens of this great Word of God as we have it; and, also in the light of centuries of Christian church history, and, by the truly catholic, viz. general, understanding of which Christians of all the ages would be able to agree that the doctrines of the apostles must be understood. Otherwise, how are we to know how we are to live in this present evil world and to remain safe from being made into the image of the very world that desired the unjust death of our Lord and Saviour?
“Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul;” (1Pe2:11)
Scripture Alone 