The following is a recording of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. For more information, visit gpts.edu. It is good to be with you all again, and I'm grateful for the opportunity to read the word and pray and preach the word. Today from 2 Thessalonians 2. 2 Thessalonians 2. And again, while you were turning there, 18 years ago now, I came to this institution, not this building. Greenville Seminary used to be in a building down the road. And actually, I've been going there now for 18 years, every week, nonstop, many days a week. But every time I come back to chapel, the same thing comes through my mind. It is a prayer of thanks to God for His grace and mercy. And the raising up of this institution in the good men who teach here and in the fellowship of the saints that I enjoyed here. And now with God's help, the ministry that I seek to exercise, building on the good foundation that was laid here. You men have an inestimable privilege and give thanks to God for it. Now to the word. Now, brethren, concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to him, we ask you not soon, not to be soon shaken in mind or troubled, either by spirit or by word or by letter, as if from us, as though the day of Christ had come. But no one deceive you by any means, for that day will not come unless the falling away comes first. And the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God. Do you not remember that when I was with you, I told you these things? And now you know what is restraining that he may be revealed in his own time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only he who now restrains will do so until he is taken out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed. whom the Lord will consume with the breath of his mouth, destroy with the brightness of his coming. The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish because they did not receive the love of the truth that they might be saved. And for this reason, God will send them strong delusion that they should believe the lie, that they may all be condemned who did not believe the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness. The grass withers, the flower fades, this word of God endures forever, and let's pray for his help. Lord God, we do pray for your help. Holy Spirit, for your great work of inspiration, we praise you, and we ask now for that great work of illumination, both in understanding and preaching and in hearing, There would also be new understanding that you would convict us of sin and righteousness and judgment, and that you would lift up and exalt the name of Jesus Christ, whom we preach, and Father, in whose name as sinners we pray, amen. Please be seated. Here in the preaching of the word, I would like to focus on a simple topic, the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Satan and the whole kingdom of darkness would be quite content for you to minimize the New Testament witness to the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. In the history of the church, some reject the idea of his coming altogether. Liberals who deny his resurrection, deny his incarnation, deny anything historical about Jesus, the man Christ Jesus. They're all about the ideals of Jesus and living on in those ideals. Others push the possibility of his coming so far into the future that the doctrine has no effect on the Christian life. and we all, if we are careful interpreters of the New Testament, would be preterists to some degree, but none of us full preterists. That would be a heresy. Christ is coming. However, I would say that I have seen this, I think, in a reaction to the dispensational preoccupation with the second coming of Jesus as opposed to many other doctrines in the New Testament or that I've heard in Presbyterian preaching often very little of the second coming and little of the urgency of this doctrine. Very often little press to the heart and soul of the believer and perhaps little meditated on. And I think we ought not to be that way. If you read the New Testament, it's just the great blessed hope of the apostles and the early church. It should be ours. The opposite mistake is to be so fascinated with the timing of this coming that we fall into other errors that I don't have to go through, but they many in times result in cults like Seventh-day Adventists and the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Mormons and many others. And we don't make those errors. We don't make the errors on either side, but we need to recognize that this simple truth, when Jesus ascended into heaven, the angels, simple word, angel, simple message was that the way you saw him go, he will come again. The bodily return of Jesus is something that a messenger from heaven impressed on the disciples. And it then is a major theme of the New Testament era, that Jesus has gone to prepare a place for us, and it is purpose is one day to bring us there, and also to judge the world and make an end of all things. And this could not be, there could not be a bigger event in history than this event that's coming. And we need to think about it. Now, from 1 Thessalonians 2, some of you very strong preterists might not like this chapter on this topic, but we'll deal with that another time. The danger of a major blunder is evident in Thessalonica, and Paul is trying to correct that in this chapter. And the major blunder is that some have thought that perhaps the second coming of Jesus has already happened. Paul is going to first deal with that blunder, and he's going to warn against it. And he's going to do so by fortifying the church against this error with this doctrine of Christ's coming and the man of lawlessness in the middle of all that. some of the details of that coming. And we're gonna look at that, the blunder we could make, the way Paul fortifies the church, and then just simply from that, what this clear picture that Paul presents should change in your life, and also in your preaching, your ministry. The danger, years ago, I was preaching in a church in Michigan, and I had booked a flight to fly out on Monday, and I thought I booked a flight at 7 a.m., And I scrambled up early and drove an hour and 45 minutes and got through, you know, rental car and shuttle bus and I was late running through security and I got there to the gate and it was the wrong city wasn't even the right time. Then I looked at my booking again and it was 7pm. And at first I thought I had missed something terrible. The reality is that the thing I thought I had missed hadn't happened yet. It's a good analogy for what was happening in the church in Thessalonica. Similar problem they're thinking about the second coming of Christ. The topic of this section is in verse one concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to him. We ask you not soon to be shaken. It is clear from this text that the Apostle Paul has two things in mind, a coming of Jesus combined with a gathering of the saints. And those two things together seem to be an indisputably strong reason to understand this to be a reference to the second coming of Jesus, which is a theme that runs all through these books. This is a review in itself of Chapter 4 of the previous letter. Again, I referred to Acts 1 and 11, the words of the angel to the disciples. It is about this chapter, it has as its backdrop, a truth that's essential to Christianity. We confess it regularly in the Apostles' Creed. Jesus ascended into heaven, from there he will come to judge the living and the dead. The Nicene Creed, he shall come again with glory. the visible bodily return of Jesus Christ at the end of the age, when he will judge the wicked, gather the dispersed into one body, his saints, and where he will judge the living and the dead, where he will cast Satan and all the fallen angels into destruction forever, and those who have rejected the gospel of Jesus Christ, and he will gather his own to himself in that final gathering and assembly of the righteous. There is one second coming in the scriptures. There is one final resurrection of the just and the unjust, one final judgment of men and angels, two final states, heaven and hell. And this is simply and clearly taught in the New Testament. The problem at Thessalonica, again, was that there was confusion, if you go back to the previous letter, that some were confused about the timing of that coming and the details of the events. Some had thought that they had missed the coming of Jesus, and that if they had died, then they had no hope at all. And Paul is clarifying these things. Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering to him, we ask you, keep reading, not soon to be shaken in mind or trouble, either by spirit or word or by letter, as if from us, as though the day of Christ had come. Here's the problem. There are people saying this has already happened. and the source of that. Paul says it doesn't matter what the source is, whether it be false prophets, false preachers, forgers of a letter as if it was from us, don't listen. They are wrong. This is an error. Critically, he says, we ask you not to be soon shaken in mind or troubled. Let no one deceive you by any means. Verse three, let no one deceive you by any means. This is a strong warning against the deception that the coming of Jesus Christ has already come. The second coming, that final coming. What had happened? Paul had taught them. He had already taught them. And they were in danger of falling away. The apostolic record is clear. The Bible is clear. And the Thessalonians here are skating to the edge of denying, by listening to these false teachers, this major cardinal doctrine of the Christian faith, the second coming of Jesus, by assuming it was over. And Paul is here going to fortify them. Now, how does he fortify them? What truth does he teach again? Verse five, do you not remember that when I was still with you, I told you these things? The thing he is going to fortify them with against the error is something, it's a review. He's gonna have to say it again. And Paul often has to say the same thing again. And he often has to review with the churches because they so quickly forget what they have learned. The truth that fortifies against the error follows now, the second half of verse three, for that day will not come unless, the day of Christ in verse two, will not come unless, and here the apostle teaches very plainly or reminds them of what they already should have known that the second coming of Christ will be preceded by these certain clear and public events. First is the falling away or the rebellion, the great apostasy. You read about this in other texts in the scriptures, 1 Timothy 4 and verse 1 and following, Matthew 24, 11 through 13. that there are, have been in history and history will culminate with a period of mass rejection of the Christian gospel. Now, the second event here is the falling away, the first one. The second one is the man of sin being revealed, the son of perdition. The scripture gives various names to this figure. Verse eight, the lawless one, We have two names for him here, the man of sin, the son of perdition. He is like a similar to the beast imagery in the book of Revelation or in Daniel chapter seven, the antichrist principle in history, which as John says, many antichrists have come. This is a abiding principle in history, a lawless antichrist rebellion against God. Paul foretells here that in human history, there will be a unique competitor to the throne of Christ that will arise one day, and he will dispute the truth claims and power of Jesus Christ in a very public, intentional, and significant way. He will be revealed one day. He will come to the stage, the language here is. He will be one who will again, verse eight, be revealed. There will be a unveiling, a setting forth, an appearance of this great competitor called the lawless one, the son of perdition and the man of sin. Characteristics of this dangerous and powerful figure. Look at the text, verse four. He will forbid all forms of worship of the true God. He will oppose and exalt himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God. There's a sort of forced religious consolidation in view here. The second characteristic, he calls for a universal allegiance that he himself is God, as if he were to, to use the Old Testament imagery, take the place in the Holy of Holies and declare himself one to be worshiped. And this is not, we're talking about a future figure. We can go through history and you can go through a long list of figures who have done this. Nebuchadnezzar, bow down to me. Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il actually have commanded the nation of North Korea to worship them. If there is no true God and if there is no true spiritual life, then men will set themselves up as objects of worship. I think of Herod, the voice of a God and not of a man, that this runs all through human history, that if a heart is not submitted to God in worship, then that especially an individual who amasses power and influence will be sorely tempted and often fall to the temptation of calling for the worship of the masses and to set himself up as a God. You think of the time of Paul when the Caesars said they were God. It's not new. Paul indicates that before the coming of Christ, this principle will be intensified, at least for a short time. Don't think that the scientific age has cured this megalomania. It hasn't at all. Third characteristic is sobering. He will possess something that appear to be clear supernatural powers. With all power, verse nine, while this one will be revealed, Sorry, verse nine, the coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan. And now we see something more. He's lawless, a breaker of God's law. He's the son of perdition. He's under the judgment of God already. He is the one who opposes himself, but now he's in league with Satan himself, according to the working of Satan. And now with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deceptions. Perhaps you can think of a place in the scriptures. It's a tiny part of a narrative that I have often thought about. It is when Moses and Aaron go to Pharaoh and the magicians replicate their signs. A satanic deception with a supernatural power, go all the way back to the garden. We have a speaking serpent. Not only here do we have the rise in the lawless one, but we have satanic influence, in the language of displays of power, signs, and lying wonders. You remember that these two words for signs and wonders are the same words which Acts chapter two, Peter attributes to Jesus, a man attested to you by signs and wonders. It's a competitor here in view. The deception of dark spiritual powers and the Satan here, who can disguise himself, Paul says, as an angel of light, who attacked Job, who tempted Jesus, who was the one in the garden, still active in history and here will be active in a what appears to be an unusual way with unusual power. Characteristic number four is that he'll have extraordinary success in his deception, Satan here, with all unrighteous deception among those who perish because they did not receive the love of the truth that they might be saved. And for this reason, God will send them a strong delusion. The lawless one here is being described as one who will have success in his deceptions to some degree. And that those who are perishing because they've rejected the gospel, They will follow this man of sin. Many, many will follow him. Here's the question. Why does Paul give this as the answer to the problem at the beginning of the chapter that they had thought that the day of Christ had already come? And why is this happening then? Also another question before Jesus comes. Why is this a series of events narrated to us? Notice number one, this man of sin, will come only when Jesus Christ himself loosens his restraints on human evil. Why is the world not evil to the greatest degree that it could be right now? Because God in his mercy restrains evil, stands against it, does not permit it to run to its greatest degree. Today that evil is restrained. Look at verse six. Now you know what is restraining that he may be revealed in his own time. There is a restraint against this dark kingdom. But if you look at the book of Revelation, we're told that there will be a time when there will be a loosing of Satan. His chain will be lengthened and he will seek to deceive the nations again in a powerful way. And the man of sin follows this pattern here. Second question is why does Christ loose the restraints? Again, look at verses nine and 10. Coming of the lawless one according to the working of Satan. He deceives those who perish, the ungodly. Why? Because they did not receive the love of the truth that they might be saved. And so this is very important. Centrally, Jesus Christ and him crucified being proclaimed in human history. And if you embrace him freely offered in the gospel, then you grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. For those who reject him, do not receive him, then Satan on Satan's suggestion rather, then God does the opposite. He brings judgment. It's either life, you receive Christ, or judgment, if you turn away from Christ. And the judgment is this, notice, much like Romans chapter one, for this reason, God will send them a strong delusion that they should believe the lie that they may all be condemned who did not believe the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness. God's righteous judgment in history is this, because they reject the gospel, the personal work of Jesus Christ, he sends them a delusion that they may believe the lie. Their ultimate sin is that they did not love the truth, they did not believe it, and had pleasure in unrighteousness. The Father sent the Son into the world, the Son now reigns at the right hand of the Father. He is the lawgiver, not the lawless one. And he sees and knows what's happening in the world of men. And here Paul says that when unbelief rears its ugly head, there is a time where God begins his judgments in time that will be revealed finally in eternity. Sobering. Sobering for our world. Need not make mistakes here in interpreting providence. My family has, it's a family history that went through the Second World War in Nazi-occupied, the Nazi-occupied country of the Netherlands. There were a lot of people who made some pretty big interpretive errors believing that Hitler, and you can understand why, another one of these figures in human history who raised himself up for the worship and adulation of the people was probably this figure. Jesus said, we don't know the time of the end of the age, and that belongs to the Lord. However, the principles we're seeing here continue in the present day. You notice that the mystery of lawlessness, verse 7, is already at work. The principle of rebellion that we're reading about, which is encapsulated in this singular figure that will come, exists across human history, and we need to be wary of it and thoughtful about it. As our world drifts into rebellion, every time that it does, and the world is living in rebellion, It is asking for the full scale judgment of God against that lawlessness, sin, rebellion, rejection of the gospel and pleasure seeking in unrighteousness. And it's a dangerous, dangerous game. God will judge the world. And we are in a time where some of these characteristics and features are again coming up. They have, again, as I said, they have many times in history and they come up again. It's good for Christians to recognize this. When your top medical universities are teaching that a man can have a baby, it's not a small delusion. It represents a loss of any ability to think God's thoughts after it. It's not just a weird social phenomenon. It's a sign of the profoundly darkened understanding of the natural human heart running in its own course, and rebellion against God's created order. We think about these things, we watch them happening, and we see a principle of lawlessness at work in our age. I could give you so many other examples, that's just one. But these are, we live in a time when people do not believe the truth and they have pleasure in unrighteousness and they parade it in the streets. And what will God do because of this? He has time and again, and ultimately at the end in a great massive way, he will send them a strong delusion that they should believe the lie and judge them in their pursuit of unrighteousness and the rejection of Jesus Christ. The son of man will then, Paul is teaching, be revealed as the beginning of the final judgment of God on those who reject Jesus Christ, even as he looks like a king, to be followed. This will be the judgment of God. Now, a few things about what this very clear and simple picture should do to change your life. First of all, we're not quite done with the text. Christ on the throne is the main theme of this text. And that becomes very clear in verse eight. We have the revealing of the lawless one. So verses three through eight, A, is this description of what Paul has already taught the church. He's reminding them, he's reviewing this great historical principle, the singular figure in the future. and he's saying this hasn't happened, and so your idea that Christ has not come is wrong. I told you this before. But he also wants to and does exalt the name of Jesus Christ. He says, at that time, what will Jesus do? Then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will consume with the breath of his mouth and destroy with the brightness of his coming. and that's really the center of the text here, that he will consume the man of sin with the breath of his mouth, the same breath that breathed life into Adam, and the same word that is even now being preached in opposition to the kingdom of darkness. Christ presently is ruling, and he ultimately will destroy this figure at the end. And in an instant, the text says, the man whom the world will follow will be gone, and instead of the antichrist will be Christ. the victor, Christus victor, and the righteousness, kingdom, power, and glory of Jesus Christ in his judgment at that moment will be unmistakable. He will consume him with the breath of his mouth and destroy him with the brightness of his coming. And then there will be silence in all the earth, mourning and rejoicing. And then he will turn the judge of all the earth and see two kinds of people, those who waited for that coming and those who followed the counterfeit. Those who worship man because they did not have the truth and couldn't stop themselves in seeking pleasure and unrighteousness. In verse 12, the judgment that began with delusion will finish with final condemnation and he will sweep them all away. And then there'll be a second kind of person, those who love Jesus, who wait for his appearing, who are patient for him, knowing that they do not know the day nor the time, who are now re-instructed from the Apostle Paul that Christ is coming and these events have to happen first. And they are waiting to be gathered together to him, verse one, Christ will separate the sheep from the goats. Some lessons. I want to urge you men to, in light of what I would call a balanced systematic theology, the Thessalonians were being tempted to follow an error, a made up error, that the second coming of Christ had already come. And so we're in danger of losing their hope, really their ultimate hope. There's different ways you can make this error, and I would submit to you one is by this tragic theological error, but anything that minimizes or does not rightly lift up this blessed hope, particularly in a preaching ministry, but also in your own heart would be a significant error and will not help the church. You should be engaged in sustained theological reflection on this great doctrine of the visible bodily return of Jesus Christ. The apostle warns that anything that deviates from this, whether it be a spirit or word or a letter as if from Paul himself, should be rejected and instead the truth as it is in Jesus embraced that he hasn't come. There are these great events that will precede his coming, but he is coming in judgment, have no fear. That's the ultimate message of the chapter. The Bible in high-definition clarity, the New Testament is pulsing with this hope, surely I come quickly. and you need to think about it, and you need to preach it, and you need to live like it is coming. And I said earlier, and I'm afraid of, I sometimes fear that so many people who come to reform theology from dispensationalism sometimes haven't recognized, you need to think about this, You don't, I'm not a dispensationalist. You probably heard by now, I'm a happy Amill. The happiest kind of Christian, by the way, amillennialism. I'm a proponent right here. I was talking to my good friend, a pastor, and he took me out for lunch years ago. And he said, Peter, you sound so confident about the future of the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ. You must be post-millennial. And I said, I don't understand you. Why would that make me happier? And he said, well, because things are going to get better. And I said, well, I can't think of anything more depressing than a lifetime of unrealized expectations. They're great right now. Anyways, that's an all male, post male difference. I'm just kidding about that. If you read Cornelius Venema's good book on this question, he does show that the tradition of the Reformation and the Puritans the all male post male, if you rightly understand it theologically, those two positions are very, very close. Not reconstruction post-millennialism, not dispensational form of all millennialism, but they are very close positions. All that being said, the Bible teaches a parousia, a future coming of a living Christ, which we need to speak about and preach about. It is the great hope of the New Testament church to be delivered from this world of sin and suffering, corruption, delusion, and deception. and Christ will come to do that. And you think about it and it will help you in preaching Christ. One of the things that has helped me do as I meditate on it is to remember that I am preaching a person who presently reigns and who is at the right hand of the Father and who is coming. not a theological system of propositions, but a systematic theology and a biblical theology at its heart is Jesus Christ, Him crucified, risen, ascended, reigning, and coming. And our meditations on His coming should bring us in the present day to His present reign, because we're waiting while He's reigning. And this should help you preach and offer Jesus Christ and Him crucified and risen again to sinners in the present day. Him we preach, Paul says, with urgency, power, and conviction. And secondly, if you men want to preach, in Paul's theology, in Paul's preaching, he has again and again this idea of presentation. He is waiting for that day because he recognizes that his present ministry under the reign of Christ is in order to present the church to Christ when he comes. That there's this grand day of presentation that he's looking forward to. In other words, if you're thinking like the apostles, this doctrine needs to be embedded in your heart and mind with a strong focus on his present reign. You need to think clearly about your future. Every generation of New Testament Christians that has ever lived should be praying and longing for the second coming of Jesus. Watch and be ready. Surely I am coming quickly. And if you read your Westminster Confession of Faith, the end of the last chapter reminds us that we should always be ready and prepared and long for and pray for that coming. It should be a central feature of your devotional life. It should be embedded in your heart and mind. And with this chapter, even if you see lawlessness rising up, that it doesn't shake your hope in Jesus Christ, because this is what Christ has revealed to us will happen before he comes. Either the final man of sin or many antichrists have come. This principle is in human history. It will be until Christ comes again. But this should not deter us This actually is a warning and an equipping for the church. Watch therefore Jesus said, surely I'm coming quickly. Revelation 22 verse 20 for you, more full preterists, I'll use that text. The matter of lawlessness, another thing to know is central here. The man of sin is the lawless one. And those who follow the man of sin are those who have pleasure in unrighteousness. This all traces its way back to Satan verse nine. This text should remind us and the second coming should remind us that there's a war in history between righteousness and unrighteousness, between those who are lawless and those who love the law of God. And that the same dark power that will manifest itself at the end in a particular way is at work right now. And that we are in this great spiritual warfare of the ages. And look at verse seven again, for the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Now, it's principle is here now, and you are not living in a time that's safe. You are safe in Christ, but what I mean by that, you're living on a battlefield. And this should remind you that this cataclysmic war of champions at the end of the age, that you are living on a battlefield where there are spiritual forces and you need to be watching and praying. Going back to verse eight, I wanna circle back around to this. the great picture at the center of the text. The surpassing glory, power and holiness of Jesus Christ. And the lawless one will be revealed and the Lord will consume with the breath of his mouth and destroy with the brightness of his coming. I said this a moment ago, but I'm gonna repeat some of it again. One of the great uses of the second coming is to exalt the present living Christ in your heart and mind as you wait for him. When he comes, he will finally consume this lawless one with the breath of his mouth and destroy him with the brightness of his coming. Again, use this text to sharpen your view also of the present rule and reign of Christ, particularly in the preaching of his word and the display of his glory, even in the ordinary means of grace while we wait for the end. Let me read you a good quote from Calvin. At least I thought it was a good quote, a bit of a paraphrase. Paul here intimates that Christ, by rays previous to his advent, that is, in the preaching of his word, will put to flight the darkness in which Antichrist will reign, just as the sun, before it is seen over the horizon, chases away the darkness of night by the pouring forth of its rays. And what he's saying there is, look at that picture in verse eight. there will be a final cataclysmic revealing of Jesus Christ by the breath of his mouth and the brightness of his glory. But between here and there, that same power is operative in history as he spreads his glory over the earth, particularly by his word to push back the kingdom of darkness. Let's pray for grace to think on, meditate on, and believe these things. Let's pray. Lord our God, We come to you and pray for grace to think carefully about the coming of our Lord Jesus and our gathering together to him. Lord, help us to learn what your word has to say about that sequence of events that will precede that coming. Lord, we think of Satan now bound, but then one day loosed for a short time before you come again. We pray that you would make us watchful of these events Lord, as we long for the coming of you, Lord Jesus, and we pray come quickly. Lord, we also pray for grace to have the spiritual discernment to recognize our present warfare, the principle of lawlessness, which is already at work in the world, the many cycles of world history where your people have suffered greatly under many antichrists. Lord, we pray that you would make us bold and valiant to lift up the standard of Christ to preach that he by the breath of his mouth might root out all lawlessness and wickedness, that you, Lord Jesus, would gather to yourself from east and south and north, west, kingdoms and nations and tribes to yourself. Will we pray for grace that we would be those who recognize the nature of the spiritual warfare and its deceptive power, that we would be not caught in the pleasure of unrighteousness, but in the careful sobriety of a life under the law of Christ. Lord, we pray that you would grant us grace to meditate often, Lord Jesus, on your present rule and your second coming, or to set our mind on things above where you are and to wait eagerly for a day which is yet to come. And Lord, we ask that you would give us a humble sobriety about your judgments, which are already evident in the earth and in history. as you turn men over to unrighteousness, delivering them over to their own sins and lusts. And we ask for grace to be heralds in our age of a better way, submission to Christ. We pray in His name. Amen. Thank you for tuning into this production of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. For more information, please visit gpts.edu.