2 Thessalonians 2: Verse 2 Comes Before the Man of Sin

It isn't the man of sin that stayed with me this week, and I know that's the part everybody wants. I'll get to him. But what stuck was verse 2, and it stuck because of an email my dad sent on Tuesday.

The subject line was "FW: FW: FW: FW: Before Conference." Above the pile of forwards, in the box where he types his own words, he'd written "Is this real?" and nothing else. Underneath was a long paragraph of warnings credited to an apostle, with specifics about what was coming this fall and what a faithful family ought to have in the basement. It named no talk, gave no year and had no link, and my father spent his career as a civil engineer for UDOT, and he will not sign off on a culvert without the calculations, so I understood why he couldn't put this one down and couldn't pass it along either. I searched the Church's site for three of its phrases and found nothing, which proves less than I'd like. Then I called him instead of writing back, because he doesn't read long replies.

This morning's chapter was 2 Thessalonians 2, and verse 2 read as if it had been waiting for me.

What Paul asks them not to be shaken by

Here's the verse:

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.
(2 Thessalonians 2:2)

Paul lists three ways a claim can reach a person, and the last of them, the letter, comes with the phrase "as from us." Something was going around that sounded like Paul and his companions and said the day of Christ was already close. He doesn't say who started it or whether anyone meant harm, and I'd be guessing if I told you. Some readers take "letter as from us" to mean a forgery. The verse only says the letter was presented as coming from them. I'm going to keep to that smaller claim.

What I notice is where Paul puts his effort, which isn't on who is right about the calendar. His first concern is that these people were "shaken in mind" and "troubled." The claim was doing its damage before anyone checked it. If you've ever had a message land in your stomach at 9 p.m. and only later gone looking for the source, you know the order of events.

And his answer in verse 5 is plain enough that I almost laughed: "Remember ye not, that, when I was yet with you, I told you these things?" He doesn't send new evidence. He sends them back to what they already had.

The falling away, and the parts I'm leaving alone

Verse 3 is the one people quote, so here it is.

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;
(2 Thessalonians 2:3)

Two things come first, a falling away and the revealing of a man of sin, and Paul isn't handing out a date with them. He's giving an order, for the reason he gave in verse 2, so nobody gets talked into thinking the day has already arrived. The Church's study helps read the falling away as the Great Apostasy, and that's how I've always read it. I should say that other Christians read the same verse differently, some of them as having to do with the Lord gathering the faithful ahead of time, so this isn't a verse where the whole world agrees with us.

The man of sin I'll treat more carefully, because this is where posts like this go wrong. Verse 4 describes him: he "opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God" and sits "in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God." Verse 4 is the only place the chapter says what he does in the temple, though later verses add that his coming is "after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders" and that the Lord will consume him. Nothing in it names him, and it doesn't say which temple. Verse 6 says "ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time," and verse 7 says "only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way." Paul assumes his readers know what he means. We weren't there and we don't. People have attached those verses to nearly every large power in history, every one of them said with confidence and none of them found in the text.

What verse 7 does state outright is that "the mystery of iniquity doth already work," in the present tense, in the first century, so Paul isn't describing something that only happens somewhere far ahead of the Thessalonians. That's the part I'd hang weight on, ahead of any identification I've been handed.

Last Wednesday I wrote about the thief and the labor pains in 1 Thessalonians 5, and this chapter reads to me like the other half of it. The first letter says the day comes without warning and the second says don't let anyone tell you it already has.

Verses 13 to 15, where the chapter turns

Verse 13 changes direction so abruptly, after ten verses of deception and delusion, that I went back and read it twice. "But we are bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord." The warnings in verses 3 to 12 are in a letter to people he loves and is thankful for. I hadn't weighed that before. If you read verses 8 to 12 on their own they sound like a sentence being passed, but they're sitting in the middle of a thank-you note.

Verse 15 is the instruction the whole chapter has been leading to.

Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle.
(2 Thessalonians 2:15)

Set that beside verse 2. There he lists a spirit, a word and a letter as the ways a claim could arrive, and here only "word" and "epistle" are left, both of them things they "have been taught." That teaching came through people Paul stands behind, and it came before the rumor did. He doesn't tell them to suspect everything. He tells them to hold what they got through the channels they already knew, and to measure the new arrival against it.

"Traditions" is an old English word that sounds heavier to us than it does here. To my reading it just means something handed on, and in this verse that's the gospel they were taught, by Paul's voice or by Paul's letter, not a pile of customs. "Stand fast" is the kind of thing you'd say to someone on a ladder.

If the second half of this chapter turns out more useful to you than the first, as it did to me, go back to 1 Thessalonians 4, where Paul tells the same people they hardly need a letter from him on one subject at all.

The last two verses are a prayer, and I nearly skipped them the way you skip a signature. They ask that Christ and "God, even our Father" would give "everlasting consolation and good hope through grace" and "comfort your hearts, and stablish you in every good word and work." After a chapter about being shaken and troubled, Paul asks first for comfort and then for work to do, and I find that order interesting. Most of us would have asked for the second thing to be fixed first.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does the falling away in 2 Thessalonians 2:3 mean?

The Church's study helps read it as the Great Apostasy, a widespread turning away from the gospel after the Apostles. The verse itself gives you "a falling away" and says it comes first. It doesn't say how long it lasts or how it ends.

Who is the man of sin in 2 Thessalonians 2?

The chapter says what he does, which is oppose God and sit in the temple of God presenting himself as God, and it says the Lord will consume him. It never gives a name. If someone hands you one, ask which verse it came from, because it isn't in this chapter.

What is it that "withholdeth" in verses 6 and 7?

Nobody can tell from this chapter, since Paul says his readers knew, and we're reading over their shoulders. I'd leave that one alone and put the time into verse 15 instead.

Does 2 Thessalonians 2 tell us when the Second Coming will be?

No, it gives an order of things and leaves out the date, and verse 2 is a warning against people who said it had already begun.

Tonight I'm going to read 1 Thessalonians 4:15 to 17, since verse 1 here is about the gathering together unto him and that's where Paul spoke of it in the first letter. I'll do it after dinner, with the page open next to this one.

— D.