JOHN BRADSHAW - It Is Written

Who Is Babylon?
provides more details on the timing of that event.
Notice what he says:
“Do you not remember that when I was still with
you I told you these things? And now you know what is
restraining, that he may be revealed in his own time. For
the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only He who
now restrains will do so until He is taken out of the way”
(2 Thessalonians 2:5-7).
Something or somebody was standing in the way of
the lawless man’s appearance. And some of the early
church fathers saw something very specific in this.
“What obstacle is there,” wrote Tertullian, “but
the Roman state, the falling away of which, by being
scattered into ten kingdoms, shall introduce Antichrist
upon (its own ruins)?” (Tertullian, On the Resurrection
of the Flesh, chapter 24)
Building on the prophecies found in the book of
Daniel, Tertullian predicted that the biggest problems
for the Christian church wouldn’t come from the Roman
Empire itself, but from something that happened after
the Empire collapsed.
For some reason, he couldn’t see the man of sin
becoming a problem as long as the Roman Empire stood
in his way—and Paul described the man of sin appearing
after a great “falling away,” a time when the church itself
would become unfaithful to the teachings of Christ.
When you start putting the pieces together you get a
startling picture. As troublesome as the pagan Roman Empire
was for the early Christian church, there were much worse
problems on the horizon—distinctly internal problems.
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