The Man of Lawlessness

[Apollos]

Hey Apollos,

You are making me work! The Antichrist’s focus is on Israel. The prince to come destroys Jerusalem and the Temple. The king of the North comes against Jerusalem (Dan. 11:40-45); this is the time of the great tribulation (Dan. 12:1-3); it results in the shattering of the Jewish nation (Dan. 12:7). It was those in Judea who would need to flee at the time of the great tribulation (Matt. 24:15-21). The man of lawlessness would take control of the Jerusalem Temple (2 Thess. 2:1-4). The beast destroys harlot Babylon (usually seen as Jerusalem by preterists) the great city where Jesus was crucified (Rev. 17:18, cf. 11:8). While the great tribulation would come upon the whole world it would focus on the dwellers on the Land (Rev. 3:10, note: preterists contend that ge is usually better translated as “Land” rather than “earth” in Revelation).

Hi Duncan,
Well I think I need to keep studying, and continue to weigh my options, but right now this seems to me the biggest problem with preterism - there is no historical scenario that matches all the data. The beast makes war against the saints - not the Jews who are experiencing God's wrath in 66-70 ad. They would never be referred to as 'saints'. Therefore I do not believe that the beast's making war on the saints is the great tribulation that came upon the land of Judea. Titus wasn't a Gnostic false teacher. He may, however, be a type of the Man of Sin, since he sat in the physical temple etc, and this I find an interesting possibility.

I take the great tribulation of Daniel to be the fall of Jerusalem. But, for the reasons given, I do not link this personage with the Man of Sin or antichrist, or Beast, and see no reason to. The beast destroys the harlot Babylon - this does fit your paradigm - and probably very well. However, I'm not convinced it can't fit the historicist paradigm as well.

Also supporting the fact that the reference to the dwellers on the Land is speaking of the land of Israel is the time period of forty-two months (Rev. 13:5) that the individual beast is allowed for his reign of terror. Forty-Two months is three-and-a-half years; it is a reference to the last half of Daniels’ seventieth week.

I think the historicists make a valid point when they point out that each of Daniel's weeks was seven years - a prophetic day = a year. If the same is true in Revelation, then we are looking at a 1260 year period - and I am impressed at the predictions that were made centuries ago based upon this belief.

Forty-Two months is how long it took Titus to destroy the Jewish nation (cf. Dan. 12:7).

But surely with such an episode, one could take their pick from many different start or finish dates. The actual War didn't really begin until May 66, which is a two months short of the 42 months needed to bring it up to the actual destruction of the Temple.

Anyway, just my thoughts. I'm still studying all this, but I must reject any reconstruction that interprets 'making war with the saints' as the war against the Jews under the wrath of God.

[Duncan]

If anyone is interested, I just put up part three of my series on the man of lawlessness. Here is an excerpt.

THE DESTRUCTION OF THE ANTICHRIST
This is part three—to start at the beginning go here: http://planetpreterist.com/content/man- ... s-part-one

In 2 Thessalonians 2:8-9 Paul discusses the revelation and then destruction of the Antichrist.

8. And 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.
9. The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders.

The lawless one would be revealed only when whatever was restraining the evil forces that would work through him was taken out of the way. Just as Jesus would be revealed at his Second Coming, verse 8 (Gr. parousia; cf. 2 Thess. 1:7), so too would the man of lawlessness be revealed at his own coming, verse 9 (Gr. parousia). Wanamaker refers to the Antichrist’s parody of Jesus’ parousia as “the anti-parousia.”43 I believe the parallel between the two parousiai goes even further. Titus’ AD 70 invasion of the Holy Land from Egypt (cf. Dan. 11:40-45) was his second coming to the Holy Land, his first coming being in conjunction with his father in AD 67. Unlike Jesus’ Second Coming, which resulted in salvation (Heb. 9:28), the second coming of Titus resulted in desolation; he would be allowed to prosper until God’s wrath against Israel was accomplished (Dan. 11:36; 12:7; cf. 9:27).

The second advent of Titus was the revelation of the man of lawlessness; it would lead to the destruction of the Antichrist spirit working through him (2 Thess. 2:8). At first there appears to be a problem with saying Titus was the man of lawlessness, seeing as Titus was not killed in AD 70. Second Thessalonians 2:8 says that Jesus’ parousia would “destroy” the lawless one. If Titus was the man of lawlessness, how is it he was not killed at Jesus’ parousia? Discussing the word “destroy” (Gr. katargeō) in 2 Thessalonians 2:8 (“whom the Lord will consume with the breath of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming”), Vine writes:

lit. to reduce to inactivity (kata, down, argos, inactive) . . . In this and similar words no loss of being is implied, but loss of well being . . . [Thus,] the Man of Sin is reduced to inactivity by the manifestation of the Lord’s Parousia with His people.44

The Greek word for “destroy” here does not necessarily entail physical destruction. The parousia of Jesus, “the manifestation of his presence” (2 Thess. 2:8 YLT), did not kill Titus; rather, it rendered useless the demonic forces working through him. This is similar to how Jesus’ death on the cross did not put an end to Satan’s existence, it destroyed his power: “inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same that through death He might destroy [Gr. katargeō[/i>] him who had the power of death, that is, the devil” (Heb. 2:14).

Satan was not destroyed in terms of ceasing to exist at the cross; rather, he was neutralized, his spiritual authority destroyed (cf. John 12:31-32; 1 John 3:8). Vine writes the following on this: “Katargeō = to render inactive, or useless, as the barren fig tree did the ground it occupied, Luke 13:7, and as the death of Christ makes ineffective, prospectively, the power of the Devil, Hebrews 2:14.”45 In a similar manner to how Satan’s position of authority was destroyed at the cross, so the man of lawlessness had his dominion taken away at the parousia, as God’s people inherited the kingdom of God (cf. Dan. 7:24-27).

As I have said previously, ultimately the Antichrist was not Titus but the demonic spirit working through Titus—the demonic prince to come (Dan. 9:26), the spirit of Antichrist (1 John 4:3), the beast from the abyss (Rev. 11:7; 17:8). It was this demonic spirit, not Titus (nor the Roman Empire!), that was cast into the lake of fire at the AD 70 coming of God (Dan 7:11, 21-22; Rev. 19:11-21). With this in mind, it is not correct to refer to Titus as the Antichrist after AD 70, as the Antichrist spirit working through Titus was destroyed by Jesus’ parousia in the autumn of AD 70. According to Paul, the demonic rulers of the pre-AD 70 age would be “coming to nothing” (<i>katargeō</i>, 1 Cor. 2:6) at Christ’s Second Coming (cf. Rom. 16:20). This is shown in Daniel 2 (vv. 34-35 and 44-45) where the glorious human statue collapses at once. This is shown again in Daniel 7 where the authority of the four beasts is stripped (at once) and given to God’s people (vv. 11-12, 17-27). This was to happen at the time of the defeat of the little eleventh horn (Titus). See here on the identity of the little horn http://www.theos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3203. This happened the AD 70 destruction of those who were morally destroying the land of Israel—it was the time when the kingdoms of this world fully became the kingdom of God (Rev. 11:15-18).

To read the rest, go here: http://planetpreterist.com/content/man- ... antichrist
By the way, the rest is interesting--I discuss the lying signs and wonders that accompanied Vespasian and Titus' takeover of the Roman Empire.