(1 Thess. 2:3,4.)

Before the revelation of Christ, there must be the revelation of Antichrist, the " wicked one," who will then be consumed by the breath of His mouth, and brought to naught by the manifestation of His presence.

This man of sin, moreover, would be the issue of an apostasy from the ranks of professing Christians themselves, and unite the treachery of a Judas (the son of perdition, John 17:12) with Jewish unbelief, yet still transcending this in a blasphemous exaltation of himself in the very temple itself, challenging even Israel's Most High in the place claimed by Him as His earthly Throne, and exalting himself as supreme above every God whatever named among men. It is plainly the most pretentious and insolent defiance of God that can be even imagined; and yet with such imposing display of power that the masses of those once enjoying the light of revelation (Jewish or Christian) will be carried captive by it. For all the power of Satan, freed from restraint on God's part, will be let loose in it; and God will be giving over to believe a lie those who, having once been solicited by the truth, have made a fearful and deliberate choice of error in its stead.

At the first statement of such an appalling diabolism as this impending, one would say, Here is something that has never been yet; something that would need no argument to convince us of its existence if it did exist:and this is, surely, what would be the judgment formed upon the most thorough and profound examination of it in connection with all kindred passages. Here, we should say, is certainly the apostle John's great "Antichrist, who denieth the Father and the Son "-the Christian revelation, on the one side; as, on the other, he is "the liar, who denieth that Jesus is the Christ"-the Jewish form of unbelief. It is needless, at present, to go further. In its character, as marked with such absolute distinctness, as well as in the time of the revelation (just before that appearing of Christ which brings the wicked one to an end), and in its result, as carrying away the mass of unbelieving Christendom, as well as in its being given as an unmistakable sign of the day of the Lord, this devil-inspired power is guarded, as it would seem, from all possibility of being misapprehended, and decisively determined to be even yet in the future to us, however near. As we know, it has indeed been taken to be the papacy; and this was perhaps the universal belief of the Reformers ; with whom, naturally enough, the evil shadow which brooded ominously over so much of the professing Church suffered them to look no further for the full development of Antichrist. Nor were they mistaken in seeing features of this kind in one in whom the mystery of lawlessness assuredly has manifested itself in a manner so conspicuous. If, as the fruit of its working, the apostle John could already in his day declare that there were "many antichrists," and saw in this the character of the "last time" (i John 2:18), how clearly might it be expected that here was now the fruit, much more developed, and at least approaching its full ripeness! Did not the pope claim honors really divine ? and did he not sit in this godless affectation of supremacy in the Church, the true temple of God ? How could one look for plainer evidence ?

Yet, however natural the error was in their time, there is one consideration which is by itself amply sufficient to prevent our following them. If Antichrist were already manifested over three centuries ago, the apostle's statement has for all this time ceased to have the significance he attached to it, as what would be an indication of the nearness of the day of the Lord. Now it is quite true that, for the Thessalonians, if we are only to think of these, it would still be a sufficient guard against any mistake such as he feared they might be making; for them the papal Antichrist would be yet far off. But to accept this as sufficient would be to say that the apostle wrote only for current needs, and did not know enough to give what would provide against such a mistake in the future. We may dismiss it, therefore, from our thoughts.

Moreover, the same consideration tells against the "man of sin" being, as this view would make him, a succession of individuals, instead of the one person which really the whole prophecy suggests. Otherwise the sign would be insignificant, or, at least, its significance would be very much reduced. Nor can we imagine that this open defiance of God, which in fact brings in the long impending judgment, could he yet allowed to go on for generations more, unsmitten by it. It is the climax of insult and outrage, after all God's grace has been manifested in vain for salvation,-and, with the exception of a remnant preserved of God for Himself, the world of professed Christianity has gone after the devil's candidate and king. The final conflict is commenced, and the issue cannot long be in suspense :the battle is that of the great day of God Almighty.

While there may be many lesser antichrists, the definition of the Antichrist marked out by prophecy is, according to the apostle John, such as to describe, not a concealed, but an open enemy."Who is the liar," he asks, "but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ ? He is the Antichrist who denieth the Father and the Son " (i John 2:22),Thus there is no pretense of Christianity whatever, even the least orthodox. The pope does not deny-he affirms-that Jesus is the Christ:he never pretended to be the Christ, but only His vicar. Antichrist is, according to the full meaning of the word, "one in the place of Christ," but not His vicar:he is himself the Christ, and denies that Jesus is; and so denieth the . Father and the Son-the Christian revelation in its whole extent. Thus he does not, in the common idea of this, sit in the temple of God at all; for in the Church he is not, even by profession. The papacy, for all these reasons, cannot be the "man of sin;" the pope is only one who exhibits certain similar features, and thus foreshadows the great apostate.

This leads us further to realize what the sitting in the temple of God must mean. If the Church of Christ be necessarily excluded, then there is but one other temple of which we can think; and that is the temple at Jerusalem. For the present it does not exist; and by many it is still believed to have passed away forever. It is useless to show them the plainest statements of the Old Testament; for these they take as merely Jewish symbolism, to be applied in spirit, not in letter, to the Christian Church. But they cannot doubt that when the Lord, in His prophecy upon the mount of Olives, speaks of "the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place," He is speaking of that very temple which was then before Him. The temple then existing, of course suffered destruction at the hands of the Romans, and according to the Lord's own prophecy; but the application of His words as given in Matthew to anything that happened before or at that time-to the standards, for instance, planted on the site of the already desolate sanctuary-is entirely set aside by the connection in which He places it. For the abomination is the sign at which His disciples are to flee, and then follows a tribulation so great, that, except the days were shortened, no flesh would be saved; immediately after which the sun and moon are darkened, the stars fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens are shaken; and " then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven; and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory." The Lord then speaks of angels sent forth to gather His elect from the four winds ; of the going forth of the wise virgins (His true saints) to meet Him; of His sitting on the throne, and the nations being gathered before Him for judgment, when He separates between the sheep and the goats, and the latter depart into everlasting fire. It is with a violent wrench indeed that these things can be torn apart from one another; while by no possibility can they all be made to have taken place at the destruction of Jerusalem, now more than eighteen hundred years ago. They undoubtedly all concur at the time for which the Thessalonian saints were looking, and for which, after this long delay, that the long-suffering of the Lord might be salvation, we are looking still.

But thus we see how there can and will be, in the last days, a revival of Jerusalem and Jewish worship there, which now becomes continually easier to anticipate, with the increasing Zionite movement and the actual increase of the Jews in the land, which Scripture assures us again will be their own. That they are going back still in unbelief makes the temple worship easier to understand. It would be more difficult to see the connection of those disciples with Jewish worship in the days contemplated (whom yet the Lord evidently owns as His own, and listening to His voice) if we had not the knowledge of that coming of our Lord into the air, and our gathering to Him there, which precedes His appearing, and which the apostle is in earnest that we should not confound with the day of the Lord. If once we see the interval which elapses between our gathering to Him (which ends Christianity, in the sense which we attach to it ordinarily, upon the earth) and His appearing with us, which brings in the blessing for Israel and the world at large, things are in the main clear to us. The brethren of the Lord have returned to the children of Israel (Mic. 5:3). They are very much in the position of the disciples while the Lord was yet with them, and which continued for some time after the resurrection, while, acknowledging Jesus as their Messiah, they were "daily with one accord in the temple," and were "all zealous of the law" (Acts 2:46; 21:20). Of such the apostles, at the time of the prophecy we have referred to, were fitting representatives.

Among Israel, then, back in their own land, and obeying the voice of the Lord their God as made known to them by Moses' law (Deut. 30:2, 3), there will arise the dark and terrible figure of the last antichrist, the outgrowth of Jewish unbelief and consummated apostasy in which Christendom will end. The prophecies of Daniel regarding the abomination of desolation and the wilful king enlarge and confirm our knowledge of what is here; which the book of Revelation completes for us on both sides, the Jewish and the Christian. The figure in Daniel (11:36, 37) can scarcely be mistaken, of the king who "shall do according to his will, and shall exalt himself above every god, and shall speak marvelous things against the God of gods, and shall prosper till the indignation be accomplished." Here he sitteth in the temple of God, setting himself forth that he is God. The simple placing in juxtaposition of these prophecies delivers us from all uncertainty as to the application here.-F. W. Grant, in Numerical Bible.