The life and work of St. Paul

346 THE LIFK AND WORK OF ST. PAUL.
be revealed, 1 the son of destruction, 1 1 who oppoaeth, and exalteth himself above and
against every one who is called God,4 or is an object of worship, so that he enters
and seats himself in the shrine of God,* displaying himself that he is God. Do
you not recall that, while I was still with you, I used to tell you this ? And now
the restraining power you know what it is which prevents his appearing that
he may appear in his own due time [and not before]. For the mystery of the lawlessness
is already working, only he who restrains now until he be got out of the
way. 8 And then shall be revealed the lawless one, whom the Lord Jesus shall
destroy with the breath of His mouth, and shall annihilate with the Epiphany of
7 His presence whose ;
presence is in accordance with the energy of Satan in all
power, and signs, and prodigies of falsehood, and in all deceitfulness of iniquity
for the ruin of those who are perishing,* because they received not the love of the
truth that they might be saved. And, because of 9
this, God is sending them an
energy of error, so that they should believe the lie I0 that all may be judged who
believed not the truth, but took pleasure in unrighteousness. 11
Of this strange but unquestionably genuine passage, which is nevertheless
so unlike anything else in St. Paul's Epistles, I shall speak immediately. He
proceeds to tell them that their case, thank God, was very different from that
of these doomed dupes of Antichrist, seeing that God had chosen and called
1 * 13 them from the beginning to sanctification and salvation and glory. He
exhorts them therefore, to stand fast, and hold the teaching which they had
received from his words and his genuine letter, and prays that our Lord Jesus
Christ and God our Father may comfort them and stablish them in all 1 *
goodness.
of the Antichrist.
1 The apocalypse
3 Whose end is destruction (Phil. iii. 19 ; John xvii. 12).
* A human Satan or adversary (Renan, p. 255).
4
. . . vrpupoMv*, A, B, D ; ver. 5, Aryor,
"I told;" ver. 11, r