David

It seems that the Thessalonians were often concerned about missing out on Christ’s coming.  Now in II Thessalonians 2:1-12, Paul is assuring them that they have not missed out on Christ’s coming.  He informs them that two things must occur before the day of Christ’s coming.  The first is the “falling away” (NKJV).  The second is the revelation of the “man of sin” (NKJV).

Paul does not elaborate on the first event, the “falling away” in this passage.  The NASB translates this phrase as “the apostasy.”  Though falling away seems somewhat ambiguous, apostasy makes it clear that the falling away is Christians falling away from Christianity.

The second event, the revelation of the man of sin, receives much more attention.  Paul calls him the “man of sin” (or “man of lawlessness” in NASB) and the “son of perdition” (or the “son of destruction” in NASB).  The next thing that Paul tells us about the man of sin is that he will exalt himself above every man-made god and against the one true God.  In verse four, Paul says that he will exalt himself as God in the temple of God.  It seems clear that here he is referring to the Judaic temple in Jerusalem because he calls it the “temple of god.”  He does not call it the “temple of man” or the “temple of that called god.”  As a note, the original Greek would not have capitalized the word god even if it referred to the one true God.

Paul’s discussion continues in verses five through eleven, but my discussion will end here and pick up with those verses in my next post.

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