Rapture: The Thessalonian Key, part 9

Let no one deceive you by any means;

for that Day will not come unless...

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 still with you

I told you these things?

2 Thessalonians 2:3-5, NKJV

The Day of the Lord--prophesied by Joel and others as a day of judgment and wrath upon the unrighteous world--was indeed coming upon the earth, but Paul says there are two things that have to happen before that Day begins.  First of all, there has to be a departure.  Whether one views this as a departure from faith, as most modern English translations have it, or as our departure from this earth in the Rapture, it is still a precursor to God's wrath.  And secondly, the Antichrist has to be revealed.

Prior to Paul's writing of 2 Thessalonians, the last real expose of this man of lawlessness and sin was 600 years previous in the visions of Daniel.  Daniel see him in a vision as the Little Horn rising out of the Middle East, a willful king who will forge a 7-year treaty with Israel and then break it halfway through.  He will invade the glorious land, take over Jerusalem, and defile the temple of God with an image called the Abomination of Desolation, an event Jesus referred to as well with a warning to the Jews to flee Jerusalem when they see it happen.

The next description of this man will be as the Beast of Revelation 13, a terrible conglomeration of all those empires and evil rulers who have passed away with time, rising from the sea of peoples and nations as the man with all the answers, the man with the plan.  This Antichrist will apparently be killed with a wound to the head, only to be resurrected and then worshiped as a God.  His image will be erected in the temple of God--likely the Abomination--and the whole world will be required to worship the image and the beast by bowing to the statue and receiving the mark of the beast.  To refuse either will mean death for the resistors.

In these earlier verses of 2 Thessalonians 2, Paul gives more facts about the rise of the man of sin.

51.  The man of sin opposes all religions.  He may arrive on the scene proclaiming the validity of all religions--except for those who believe there is absolutely only one way to get to God.  This man of sin will in actuality be opposed to all world religions and will eventually insist on putting them all down in favor of a single world religion that centers on worshiping him.

52.  The man of sin exalts himself above all gods and all that is worshiped.  Revelation describes how the kings of the earth will prop up the false, syncristic, New Age religion, but only until they destroy it to make way for the worship of Antichrist.

53.  The man of sin will declare himself to be God by sitting in God's temple and offering proof of his claims.  This would seem to indicate that there will indeed be another temple built in Jerusalem in which Jews will worship and which the Antichrist will defile with his own image and other abominations.  With false signs and lying wonders, including an evil trick designed to imitate the resurrection of Jesus Christ, this man will deceive the world and they will run after him.

Though some claim this has already been fulfilled, we know that the event is actually still future.

The Abomination of Desolation was not Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the Syrian king who desecrated the Jewish temple in 167 BC, because Jesus talks about it as a future event in Matthew 24:15.

The Abomination of Desolation was not the continual sacrifices folowing the sacrificial death of Christ, because Paul talks about it as still future in 2 Thessalonians 2:15.

The Abomination of Desolation was not Titus, the Roman general who destroyed the temple in 70 AD, because John talks about it being in his future in Revelation 13:7, 14-15, in a future temple described in Revelation 11:2.

There has not been a Jewish temple in Jerusalem for 1942 years, but the Jews have been making preparations to build another one since they were restored to their homeland in 1948.  The Jewish temple will be central to the unfolding apocalypse that begins with the Rapture of the church, the revealing of the Antichrist, and the Return of the Actual Christ to destroy the Antichrist, and one of these days if will be rebuilt. 

When the Lord shall build up Zion, he shall appear in glory!

Psalm 102:16, NKJV