PEARLS OF PAUL
END OF DAYS PT 2
DR. JIM DIXON
DECEMBER 19, 1999
II THESALLONIANS 2:1-10
100 years ago, on a Saturday night in 1899, right here in the city of Denver four men gathered down at the Denver Railroad Station at Union Station. Their names were John Lewis, Jack Toney, Al Stevens, and Hal Welshire. These four men represented what were then the four Denver newspapers: the Rocky Mountain News, the Denver Post, the Times, and the Republican.
These four men were gathered at the Denver Railroad station on Saturday night looking for a story for their Sunday editions, just hoping that someone would step off the train with an interesting story to tell, but nothing was happening. It was a boring night. And in the midst of their boredom, the four men commiserated and they said, “Let’s go over to the Oxford Hotel and get a beer.” And so they went over there and they sat down and they began to drink. And Al Stevens said, “You know, I think I’m just going to make up a story for my newspaper tomorrow.” And Jack Turny said, “You know, maybe I’ll do the same.” And they all laughed, and they all liked that. They had another round of beers. And then they decided to collaborate. Why don’t they make the same story up, go in together on it? Maybe they can get this whopper of a story on the front page of all four newspapers.
And so they created a whopper of a story. They made up a story about four men traveling from New York City to California. And they came into Denver on the train that night and spent the night in Denver on a layover. These four men were engineers. They were on their way to California so they could take a ship over to China at the invitation of the Manchu government in China. And the government of China hired these four engineers from New York because China was going to tear down the Great Wall of China. And they were going to do this as a gesture of international goodwill to show that they were opening their borders, welcoming the world, and wanting to enter into a new era of international trade. This was the story they made up. In fact, they even went over to the Windsor Hotel and registered these four non-existent men, these four engineers from New York. They gave them fictitious names and they bribed the desk clerk so he would lie for them.
The next morning it was on the front page of all four newspapers and the headlines of the Times said, “Great Chinese Wall Doomed, Peking Seeks Foreign Trade.” Well, the story spread slowly but surely across this nation and ultimately the story spread to China. In China there was a group called the White Lotus Sect which consisted of millions of Chinese and they were opposed to the Manchu government. In the White Lotus Sect, there was a powerful segment called the Righteous and a Harmonious Fist. This group was known to the western world as the Boxers. And in their spare time they did box and they practiced martial arts and gymnastics, but the Boxers hated the western world, hated western interference and influence. And when they heard this story that Westerners were going to come over to tear down the great wall of China, that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. And the Boxers moved in on the city of Peking, 300,000 of them. They attacked the foreign embassies there and they did much damage to those buildings and they killed embassy personnel and they sought out foreign missionaries and they murdered them, executed them by the hundreds. And it was the beginning of what historians call the Boxer Rebellion. Of course, ultimately eight nations including the United States and Great Britain sent forces into China to put down the Boxer Rebellion.
Finally, on September 7th in the year 1900, the Boxer protocol was signed by the Manchu government and 11 nations and the Boxer Rebellion was brought to an end. It would be historically inaccurate to state that those four newspaper reporters of the city of Denver caused the Boxer rebellion. They were simply part of the trigger. The real cause was the animosity that was in the hearts of the Boxers, the Righteous and Harmonious Fists. They hated the western world. They hated western religion, western interference, and they’d hated the western world for years. And they were ready for rebellion. History is filled with rebellion, from the French Revolution to the American War of Independence. History is filled with examples of rebellion. Some of the rebellions have been properly motivated, others improperly motivated, but there has been much rebellion throughout history. The Bible tells us that there will come one last rebellion on this earth, and it will be rebellion against God—rebellion against the morality of God, rebellion against the law of God.
This is our first teaching this morning: rebellion against God will come. The Apostle Paul writes, “do not think that the day of the Lord has come, for that day will not come unless the rebellion comes first.” And the Greek word is the word apostasia. It’s the word from which we get the English word apostasy. In the Greek world, this world, this word apostasia, was used to describe rebellion against authority—rebellion against civil political authority or rebellion against military authority or rebellion against religious authority was all apostasy. And in the New Testament, the word apostasia is only used twice—in our passage of scripture for today in 2Thessalonians two, and then in Acts chapter 21, verse 21, where the word apostasia is used in reference to rebellion against the law of Moses.
In the Septuagint, in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament, the word apostasy is used once, and that is in Joshua chapter 22, verse 22, where it refers to rebellion against God and the morality of God and the laws of God. And this is how most Bible scholars take the word apostasia here. The rebellion against God is coming.
Now, I must say there is a small segment of pre-millennial pre tribulationists who believe that the word apostasia in our passage for today should refer to the rapture of the church—which we dealt with last week—the gathering of the people of Christ to be with Him. And they translate the word apostasia with the English word departure. “The day of the Lord will not come unless the departure comes first.” The rapture. But even most pre-millennial, pre tribulationists acknowledged that this is a mi rendering of the Greek word apostasia. It can only refer to departure in the sense of departure from authority—rebellion against authority, political or religious.
So the overwhelming majority of Bible scholars view this as describing a final rebellion, a worldwide rebellion against the authority of God. This fits the teachings of the rest of scripture. The Bible says, “In the last days, some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons through the pretensions of liars whose consciences are seared. But having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own liking and they will turn away from listening to the truth and they will wander into myth.” The final rebellion. And I would submit to you this morning that that rebellion against God is already beginning. The rebellion is already at work. And we see that rebellion in the world of entertainment, where Hollywood is producing movies and television shows that seek to eradicate Judeo-Christian values.
The rebellion is at work in the mainline Protestant denominations, where it is expressed in religious liberalism and in religious syncretism. The rebellion is at work in the world of academia and particularly in secular higher education, where so many university professors and teachers are attacking the credibility of holy scripture and the viability of the gospel of Christ. And the rebellion is at work even in the judicial branch of the United States government and state and federal courts, where there is an effort to script God out of the public square. The rebellion is already active in our time, but we have not seen anything yet. The Apostasia is not yet full grown and one day it will reach fruition.
Now there’s a second teaching and it concerns the man of lawlessness. “The day of the Lord has not already come, for that day will not come unless the rebellion comes first and the man of lawlessness is revealed.” This is Paul’s title for the Antichrist, “the man of lawlessness.” He is called the son of perdition. And Paul tells us that he will come by the energy, the “energeia,” the inworking of Satan.
I hold in my hand the November 29th issue of Newsweek Magazine and the cover story is entitled “The Inside Story of Flight 990.” And of course the reference is to Egypt air Flight 990 and the 767 jetliner that crashed into the Atlantic a month ago. According to the National Transportation Safety Board, the NTSB, that crash was probably caused by the relief pilot Gameel Al-Batouti.
According to the the National Transportation Safety Board, a half hour into the flight, pilot Gameel Al-Batouti asked the co-pilot if he could take the co-pilot’s seat. And Gameel Al-Batouti had seniority and he was given the co-pilot’s seat, and the co-pilot then left the cockpit. And then a few moments later, the captain left the cockpit, perhaps to go to the bathroom. Gameel Al-Batouti was all alone in the cockpit of that plane. And he began to say a prayer, “Allah, I put my faith in God.” And according to Newsweek magazine, he uttered that prayer 14 times, as recorded on the flight data from the so-called two black boxes. He uttered the prayer 14 times as he disengaged the autopilot and then took the plane into a suicide dive. At the beginning of that dive, according to Newsweek magazine, the captain reentered the cockpit and he shouted, “What’s going on?” And he made his way somehow to the pilot’s seat. He tried to fight to reverse the dive, but he failed. At some point the engines were disengaged and flight 990 crashed into the Atlantic and 217 people died in a watery grave.
And of course, the Egyptian government is very upset with the NTSB and very upset with the American government, claiming that our investigators have jumped to unnecessary conclusions. And the Egyptian government is claiming that one of their pilots would never intentionally crash an airplane. And it must be acknowledged that is an extremely rare thing for a pilot to intentionally crash a plane. In fact, in commercial aviation in the United States of America, there’s no evidence that it’s ever happened. And in terms of global aviation in the last 20 years, there’s only three possible incidents where the pilot might have taken the plane into a suicide dive. But I think we would all agree it’s a scary thought to be on an airplane with a suicidal pilot. And yet, spiritually speaking, that’s exactly the situation the world finds itself in because the Bible tells. us that Satan is the prince, the ruler of this world. He is a usurper, but the prince nevertheless. And he is suicidal. He wants to crash your plane and he wants to crash my plane. In truth, he crashed long ago when he rebelled in heaven, and he is spiritually dead and he exists in utter darkness and he wants to take you there. He wants your soul.
He wants to crash the plane. He has a strategy and its related to rebellion against God and the raising up of the man of lawlessness. This is his strategy. He wants to bring the world into rebellion against God. And with this effort in mind, he will raise up in the final stage of history this individual the Bible calls the Antichrist. Paul calls him the man of lawlessness. We know from scripture that the Antichrist will seek political and economic power globally. He will seek to control people economically, requiring all people to receive a number in order to buy or sell. But most of all, he will seek to control people spiritually and he will be deceptive and he will seek to lead the world into “anomia,” the Greek word for lawlessness. He will seek to lead you into lawlessness and rebellion against God’s laws and morality. And he will seek to keep you from Christ, who is the atoning sacrifice for sin.
He will seek to keep you from Christ and draw you towards a new morality. This is what he seeks. Now, the prototype of the Antichrist in the Bible is found in the book of Daniel, the 11th chapter. And the prototype of the Antichrist is Antiochus IV, who took the title Epiphanes, Antiochus Epiphanes, “God manifest.” And he was a Seleucid king of great power, and he ruled the region of the world that included Israel. And in the second century before Christ, it was Antiochus Epiphanes who desecrated the temple on the temple mount in the city of Jerusalem. And it was Antiochus Epiphanes who ushered in a corrupt priesthood in the land of Israel, seeking to change the laws of scripture; seeking to lead the Jews away from the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; seeking to lead the Jews away from the decalogue and the 10 commandments. He sought to lead the Jews into a new morality and into the immorality of the Hellenized world.
He was ultimately overthrown by the Maccabees. And of course, the cleansing of the temple from the desecration Antiochus Epiphanes is celebrate celebrated by the Jews today in their festival of Hanukkah. But he was simply the prototype of the Antichrist who is to come. And in the early church in the first century, there were many Christians who believed the Antichrist was the Roman Emperor Nero. And he of course also sought to desecrate the temple on the temple mount in the city of Jerusalem. And he sought to market himself as divine. And yet he was utterly debauched and without morality. Even after his death, there remained a period of time when Christians thought he would be resurrected and revived to become the Antichrist, but he was not.
In the time of the Reformation, reformation leaders, including Martin Luther and John Calvin, and indeed, the entire Westminster Assembly, believed that the Antichrist was tied up with the corrupt papacy. They believe perhaps the Antichrist would be the pope, a corrupt pope. And they believed that the papacy was desecrating the temple of God spiritually because the pope was claiming to be the head of the church in place of Christ. And the corrupt popes of that time were leading the people into immorality.
Today there are some people who think that the Antichrist is tied up with the world of Islam and they view the desecrating sacrilege as the Dome of the Rock that has been built on the temple mount standing in the Holy Place. And they view the Mahdi, the future Muslim messiah, as a potential Antichrist.
But all of this is speculation, and in my view, inaccurate. Certainly the Roman Catholic Church today has not sought to erode Judeo-Christian value; it’s quite the opposite. The Roman Catholic Church today is to be commended, and the Vatican and Pope John Paul II are to be commended for fighting for Judeo-Christian values in a time when the world is sliding into moral decay. And I think sometimes, as Protestants, we forget that the Protestant reformation not only launched Protestantism, but it reformed the Catholic Church as well. The papacy is no longer corrupt today. And even the world of Islam, for all of its political problems and theological problems, is not seeking to undermine Judeo-Christian values.
It’s religious liberalism which seeks to undermine Judeo-Christian values and lead the world into “anomia.” And it’s secular humanism which seeks to lead the world into “anomia” and lawlessness and seeks to erode Judeo-Christian value. We don’t know yet who the man of lawlessness is, but we do know one day he will appear, and it will be just before the day of the Lord. We need not fear him but remain faithful to Christ. And the Bible promises that Christ will destroy him with a breath of His mouth and by His appearing and by His coming. Judgment awaits him.
Now, there’s a final teaching in this passage and it concerns the restrainer. The Apostle Paul says that Satan is being restrained today and restrained from raising up the Antichrist or the man of lawlessness. Paul writes, “You know what is restraining him now so that he may be revealed in his time.” There’s a restrainer at work.
Now, 3,500 years ago, there lived a woman whose name was Hatshepsut. She lived in Egypt. We would know nothing of her except for the fact that she became the Pharaoh of Egypt. She was the fourth woman Pharaoh of Egyptian history. She was the daughter of Thutmose I and she married her half-brother Thutmose II, but he died unexpectedly in 1490. And so she took the throne and she had the support of the powerful priests of the cult of Amun. And she declared herself the daughter of the God Ahman and was embraced by the Egyptian people. She expanded the empire and she encouraged foreign trade and she built buildings. She expanded the temple of Amun at Karnak and she built the great temple of Deir el-Bahri, which was built in her own honor and for her own glory.
We don’t know much about her really because her stepson, Thutmose III, who ascended the throne upon her death, sought to wipe out all records of her and he destroyed the inscriptions that spoke of her accomplishments. So we know little of her, but we do know that she was the one who 3,500 years ago brought a giraffe 1,500 miles down the Nile River. And why did she do that? Why did this pharaoh Hatshepsut bring a giraffe 1,500 miles down the Nile? She did it, historians tell us, because she was the person who established the first zoo on the earth. She was the person who established the first zoo. And of course, in Egyptian history and in world history, there came many zoos and most of those zoos were simply menageries kept by royalty to proclaim their own glory.
But today, zoos have become public, and the Denver Zoo is public. And today zoos and zoological gardens are very much concerned with captive breeding and very much concerned with natural habitats and very much concerned with animal extinction. But there’s one thing that all zoos throughout history have in common, whether they’re public or private or whether we’re speaking of modern or ancient zoos. One thing that all zoos have in common is restraint. Zoos seek and always have sought to restrain animals. We can understand that because certain animals are dangerous. Elephants are dangerous. Rhinos, hippos, tigers and lions—they’re dangerous. And if people are going to observe them, then these animals must be restrained.
I remember a few years ago going to the Denver Zoo and we went into the little building where they keep the tigers. And the tiger was outside, but we looked at the tiger through the glass and there were little children there playing in front of the glass. They began to make noises and faces and kind of draw on the glass. And this tiger just went ballistic and just jumped at us and crashed right into the glass and we all backed up. I mean, we just flew backwards, and we didn’t need to because the glass was there and it’s thick glass and it’s a restrainer. It’s a restrainer to keep the animal at bay.
We understand this concept and the Bible tells us that Satan needs to be restrained. He needs to be restrained. The Bible promises us that Satan does not have a free hand on this earth. There are restraints. He has a measure of freedom as we all do until the final judgment, but he does not have the full use of his powers. There is a restrainer at work, and it is keeping Satan from even being able to raise up the Antichrist. What is this restrainer? Well, we should remember the words of St. Augustine who, in the fifth century in his masterpiece called the City of God, in the 20th chapter, wrote with regard to 2 Thessalonians chapter two and the whole subject of the restrainer, “I must confess I have absolutely no idea what Paul is talking about.” And if that was true of a great theologian like St. Augustine, then we all should take caution with regard to the identity of the restrainer.
Now, St. Augustine went on to make a couple of guesses as all Bible scholars do, and I’m going to share with you as we conclude this morning the two prevailing theories as to who or what the restrainer is. And the first theory is that the restrainer is the church. Throughout history, there have been those who have said the restrainer is the church. The church is restraining Satan—the true church—and it restrains the mystery of lawlessness and the rising up of the man of lawlessness.
Whatever our view of this passage of scripture, there is no doubt the church does restrain evil on the earth. Some of you may have heard of Dr. Gunther Louie. Dr. Gunther Louie is a professor at the University of Massachusetts and he has authored recently the book called Why America Needs Religion. The strange thing is that Dr. Gunther Louie is not a Christian, nor is he a theist. He’s not even a theist, and yet he’s written this book Why America Needs Religion. But you see, he intended to write a book called Why America Doesn’t Need Religion. That was his intended subject. He wanted to write an apologetic, a defense for secular humanism and ethical relativism. That was his purpose. But when he began to research history and when he began to research the data, he came to understand that religion—and particularly Christianity—was critical for a humane society.
He discovered that it was the church and it was Christians who so often throughout history fought for human dignity and for social justice. He discovered that it was the church, it was Christians, who established hospital and orphanages and schools. And so often it was the church and Christians that reached out to the poor and the oppressed and the hurting. He was stunned as he began to understand the reality of these things. He also discovered that with regard to individual Christians, that they were measurably less likely to be involved in marital conflict or divorce or prejudice or out of wedlock birth or juvenile delinquency or adult crime or the other indicators of what he called moral failure and social ill.
Incredibly, Dr. Gunther Louie still has not become a Christian, but he believes in Christianity pragmatically. Practically, he believes the church of Jesus Christ is essential in order to maintain a humane society. And there’s no denying this if we take an accurate and open look at history. But of course the question is, is the church the restrainer that Paul is referring to in 2 Thessalonians chapter two? And I think there are some problems with that view because the restrainer in 2 Thessalonians, chapter two in the Greek language is described as both personal and impersonal by virtue of being gendered as both masculine and neuter “he” and “it.” And you see, biblically it’s not possible to think of the church in this way. The church is simply not referred to in the Bible as both he and it, masculine and neutral, personal and impersonal.
Now, some have suggested that maybe Paul is describing the church and the Holy Spirit who indwells the church and therefore he speaks of masculine and neuter. The church and the Holy Spirit that indwells the church is the restrainer. And when the church and the Holy Spirit are taken out of the way at the rapture, the Antichrist will come. And that’s possibly true, but it is difficult because it’s difficult biblically to think of the Holy Spirit as being taken out of the world or taken out of the way because the Holy Spirit is God and the Holy Spirit is therefore omnipresent and always at work. And the Bible makes it very clear, even in the book of Revelation, that during the final time of tribulation the Holy Spirit will continue to work and bring women and men to Christ.
So it’s difficult to think of the church and the Holy Spirit as being taken out of the way as a possible view. However, a second view (and with this we close) is that the restrainer is God-ordained government. This was the view of the early church fathers. This was the view of Calvin and Luther and the reformers. And it is the view of the majority of the scholarly world today. They believe Paul was referring to God-ordained earthly government as a restraint to evil. And they point to Romans chapter 13, where Paul spoke of earthly governments as instituted by God to deter evil and to reward the good. And by virtue of this view, the restrainer is the government and the civil laws enforced by government. And the man of lawlessness, “anomia,” needs to get rid of God-ordained government in order to rise. That rebellion against authority cannot reach its fruition unless God-ordained government is removed.
If this view is correct (and it may or may not be), the time will come when God-ordained government no longer exists on this earth, and earthly governments have been usurped by fallen powers and evil is no longer deterred. But you see, whether you take it as the church or God-ordained government, either way the real restrainer is God Himself. He is the one who is in charge of history. He is the one who has all power. He is omnipotent. He has given a measure of freedom for a period of time, but judgment is coming and at the right time, He will send His Son once again and He will come with power and He will come with great glory. He will come to judge the world and He will come to receive His people unto himself. And the call of Christ is that we be ready for that day. Let’s close with a word of prayer.