02-04-2021, 11:02 PM
LECTURE III.
BEFORE I enter on our third subject, let us call to mind the two points which, I hope, have been established in what I have hitherto said. The first is, that we see the revolt, or falling away, already verified and manifested in the spiritual separation from the Church, and in the opposition to its Divine authority and its Divine voice, which we traced in operation from the day when the Apostle said, “The mystery of iniquity doth already work;" and St. John declared the Antichrists were already gone out, into the world. The other point we have seen is this, that the man of sin, the son of perdition— the wicked one—is a person, in all probability, of the Jewish race; that he is to be a supplanter of the true Messias, and therefore an Antichrist in the sense of substituting himself in the place of the true, —a worker of false miracles, and claiming for him
self Divine worship.
Now the third point on which I have to speak is the hindrance which retards his manifestation. The Apostle says, “The mystery of iniquity doth already work; only that he who now holdeth” (that is, stands in the way of the revelation of the man of sin) “hold until” (the time that) “he be taken out of the way.” As there is a perpetual working of this mystery of iniquity, so there is a perpetual hindrance or barrier to its full manifestation, which will continue until it be removed; and there is a fixed time when it shall be taken out of the way. St. Paul, in this passage, uses two expressions. He says, the hindrance “which holdeth,” and “who holdeth.” He speaks of it as of a thing and as of a person: Tó katéxov and o catéxtov. At first sight there appears to be a difficulty, whether that which hinders the revelation of the man of sin be a personor a system; for in the one place it is spoken of in the neuter as a system, in the other case it is spoken of in the masculine as a person. I hope in what I have hitherto said that I have already given a solution to this apparent difficulty. You will remember that I drew out shortly the parallel of the two mysteries of godliness and of iniquity, and of their respective heads. This is, in fact, the argument of St. Augustine, who has sketched the two mysteries of godliness and of iniquity, from the beginning of the world, under the character of the two cities—that is, the Spirit of God and the spirit of Satan, working by a manifold operation either in the elect servants of God, or in the enemies of God and of His Kingdom. And just as the mystery of godliness is summed up in the person and Incarnation of the Son of God, so the mystery of iniquity is summed up in the man of sin, who shall be revealed in his time. In like manner also, that which hinders, or he who hinders, will be found to express both a system and a person, and the person and the system to be identified after the same manner as the examples which I have already given.
First of all, let us consider more particularly what is the character of “this wicked one,” or Antichrist, who shall come. The word used by St. Paul in this place signifies “the lawless one,”—the one who is without law, who is not subject to the law of God or of man, whose only law is his own will, to whom the license of his own will is the sole and only rule which he knows or obeys. The Greek word is ô àvopos, the lawless, or licentious one. Now, in the book of the prophet Daniel, there is a prophecy, almost identical in terms, where he foretells that there shall arise in the latter ages of the world a king “who shall do according to his own will,”* who shall exalt himself above all that is called God, who “shall speak great words against the High one.”1 This is almost word for word the prophecy of St. Paul, which shows us that St. Paul was literally quoting or paraphrasing the prophecy of Daniel. Now, inasmuch as this wicked one shall be a lawless person, who shall introduce disorder, sedition, tumult, and revolution, both in the temporal and spiritual order of the world, so that which shall hinder his development, and shall be his direct antagonist after his manifestation, must necessarily be the principle of order, the law of submission, the authority of truth and of right. We therefore have got what I may call an indication to enable us to see where this person, or system which opposes, hinders, or holds the revelation of the man of sin until the season shall come, is to be found.
* Or “pleasure,”
1 Dan. xi. 16. f Dam. vii. 25.