Paul encouraged the Thessalonians from a prophetic perspective. They were suffering for the kingdom of God (2 Thess 1:5). The Lord Jesus would soon come to take vengeance on their persecutors (2 Thess 1:6–9). I discussed these topics in my last post.
The Apostle continued by reminding the Thessalonians about events in their near future. He said a great apostasy must occur; then Christ would deliver them (2 Thess 2:1–12).
The popular prophetic models obscure Paul’s meaning by inserting the messianic age between the Thessalonians and the apostasy. In future posts, I will propose an alternate interpretation that conforms to the Thessalonians’ historical context. I will do so using inmillennialism, the prophetic model I have documented elsewhere.1
In this post, I will discuss three contextual hints that expose the error of the standard prophetic models: (1) the timeframe Jesus gave; (2) the possibility of deception by a letter; and (3) Paul’s present-tense verbs.
Jesus’ Timeframe
In his first letter, Paul said he based his teaching on “the word of the Lord” (1 Thess 4:15). In a previous post (here), I showed that his “rapture passage” (1 Thess 4:13–5:11) contained at least a dozen specific elements Jesus mentioned in his Olivet Discourse (Matt 24–25; Mark 13; Luke 21:5–38). The two passages describe the same events.
Paul used the same source for his “great apostasy” passage (2 Thess 2:1–12). Nehemiah Nisbett mentions “the very remarkable and striking resemblance between our Lord’s language and that which [Paul] made use of.”2 He uses the following table to show the similarity of the two passages:
| The Olivet Discourse | The Great Apostasy |
|---|---|
| What will be the sign of Your coming (Gk. parousia)? (Matt 24:3) | Now … concerning the coming (Gk. parousia) of our Lord Jesus Christ. (2 Thess 2:1) |
| See that you are not troubled. (Matt 24:6) Do not be troubled. (Mark 13:7) Do not be terrified. (Luke 21:9) | We ask you, not to be soon shaken in mind or troubled. (2 Thess 2:2) |
| Take heed that no one deceives you. (Matt 24:4) Take heed that no one deceives you. (Mark 13:5) Take heed that you not be deceived. (Luke 21:8) | Let no one deceive you by any means. (2 Thess 2:3) |
| They will gather together (Gk. episunagō) His elect from the four winds. (Matt 24:31) | Our gathering together (Gk. episunagōgē) to Him. (2 Thess 2:1) |
But Jesus assured his disciples that all these would occur in his generation: “Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all these things take place” (Matt 24:34; cp. Mark 13:30; Luke 21:32)
The current prophetic models err by putting the “great apostasy” in our future.
A Deception by Letter
Using one of the common prophetic models, modern commentators define the “great apostasy” as an “extensive turning away from the truth of God.” It will accompany “the removal of the Restrainer (the Holy Spirit restraining evil in the world as He works through the church He indwells) at the Rapture, and the unveiling of the Antichrist, the man of lawlessness.”3 They say the coming (Gk. parousia) of which Paul spoke (2 Thess 2:1) will be “a splendorous, visible event.”4 They mean visible to the physical eye and visible to everyone.5
If Paul meant such things, how could anyone convince the Thessalonians “by letter” that “the day of Christ had come” (2 Thess 2:2)? Paul’s verb is in the perfect tense; “It describes an event that, completed in the past …, has results existing in the present time (i.e., in relation to the time of the speaker).”6 The supposed letter was proposing this day had already happened.
Let’s play a mind game. Visualize the end times of popular prophetic teaching: the rapture, the Beast, the Antichrist, the “great tribulation,” Christ suspended in space, the elements of the cosmos melting, etc. Could an email from a friend convince you that such a day had already occurred? Of course not!
Paul did not have such a scenario in mind. As I will show in future posts, the scene he envisioned was much different. And a letter could deceive someone into believing it had happened.
The popular prophetic models confuse this matter by distorting the nature of the “great apostasy” and by putting it in our future.
Already at Work
Other verb tenses show the problem created by current prophetic models. Paul said, “The lawless one will be revealed (future), whom the Lord will consume (future) with the breath of His mouth and destroy (future) with the brightness of His coming” (2 Thess 2:8). All this was in the Thessalonians’ future.
However, the Apostle says other things about this “lawless one.” He was the son of perdition “who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits (present) as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is (present) God” (2 Thess 2:4). Also, Paul says, “The mystery of lawlessness is already at work (present); only He who now restrains will do so until He is taken out of the way” (2 Thess 2:7).
Nisbett knows that “the present may be put for the future tense.” But he says such cases “should be perfectly clear” before we admit them. Here is his opinion of the “great apostasy” passage: “The Apostle appears to me, with great accuracy, to have distinguished what was yet future from what had already been, or was then taking place.”7
Paul said Christ would destroy the man of sin in his future, but that that evil being was already in the temple of God and doing his wicked work.
As we will see, inmillennialism can account for these verb tenses; the other prophetic models cannot.
Conclusion
These observations suggest the popular interpretations of this passage make a foundational mistake—they put the “great apostasy” in our future. It belongs to Paul’s generation.
I hope to show how this works in future posts.
Footnotes
- I documented this perspective in Michael A. Rogers, Inmillennialism: Redefining the Last Days (Tullahoma, TN: McGahan Publishing House, 2020). This book is available here in hardcopy and here as a PDF. A free summary PDF document of inmillennialism is here.
- N. Nisbett, The Mysterious Language of St. Paul, in His Description of the Man of Sin (Canterbury: Rouse, Kirkey, and Lawrence, 1808), 21.
- Thomas L. Constable, “2 Thessalonians,” in The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures, ed. J. F. Walvoord and R. B. Zuck, vol. 2 (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1985), 721.
- Louis A. Barbieri Jr., “Matthew,” in The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures, ed. J. F. Walvoord and R. B. Zuck, vol. 2 (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1985), 77.
- The image in this post is The Great Day of His Wrath by John Martin (1789–1854). This file (here) is in the public domain (PD-US).
- Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 573.
- Nisbett, The Mysterious Language of St. Paul, 53.
