For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. 2 Thessalonians 2.7

This passage in 2 Thessalonians, in which Paul mentions the “man of lawlessness” and “the mystery of lawlessness,” has been a source of much speculation and erroneous thinking about the so-called “end times.”

A typical interpretation of this text will have us looking for a powerful individual – the “Anti-Christ” – who appears just before the return of our Lord, and prior to the “rapture” of the Church. This individual accumulates vast political power which he uses to make a mess of things on earth, and, in particular, to harass and persecute the Church. Notions respecting one world government, universal false religion, ominous signs and strange numerical badges, and the return of ancient Judaistic practices to a rebuilt temple in Jerusalem are usually part of the furnishings of such end times scenarios.

Whatever truth there may be to such speculations, they get into much more detail, and are asserted with much more confidence, than it would seem Scripture allows. Asked about the events heralding His imminent return, Jesus told His disciples, “It is not for you to know” (Acts 1.7). That should be enough for us; however, it hasn’t dampened the enthusiasm of end-times hucksters who have found in such noisy prophesying a way to generate adoring followers and ready cash.

Calvin offered sound advice concerning all such speculations when he wrote, “But we must be ignorant of the secret events of things, as touching the time to come…Christ forbids us to apply those things unto ourselves, which God challenges as proper to Himself alone. Of this sort is the foreknowledge of those things which God has taken to Himself to govern and direct, according to His own pleasure, far contrary to our opinion, and otherwise than we could invent.”

But this doesn’t mean that we can’t know anything about the last days – the days, by the way, which Peter declared to have begun on the first Christian Pentecost, and in which we have been living ever since (Acts 2.16, 17). In our text Paul says flatly that “the mystery of lawlessness is already at work.” Similarly, the Apostle John wrote that, in his day, “many antichrists” had already appeared. Thus, the spirit animating the age of rebellion against Christ, so often considered to be an “end times” phenomenon, has been with us since the days of the apostles, and continues with us today.

Ours is an age of lawlessness, of rebellion against God, flight from Him and His holy and righteous and good Law, and outright denial of His saving mercy in Jesus Christ. It behooves us to understand well this lawless age and to consider the implications for our discipleship.

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