The life and work of St. Paul

THE SECOND EPISTLE TO THE THESSALONIA.N8. 349
Johu, 1 and with a certain involved enibarrasBment of language, he reminds
2 them of his repeated oral toachings'about something, and some person, whose
power must first be removed before this mystery of iniquity conld achieve its
personal and final development. They knew, he says, what was " the check "
to the full development of this opposing iniquity, which was already working,
aad would work, until the removal of ; " the checker." After that removal,
with power and lying portents winning the adherence of those who were
doomed to penal delusion, the Lawless One should be manifested in a power
which the brnath and brightness of Christ's Pr-esonee should utterly annihilate.
events
Between the saved, therefore, and tho Second Advent there lay two
"
the removal of the restrainer," and the appearance of the Lawless
One. The destruction of the latter would be simultaneous with the event
which they had so often been bidden to await with longing expectation.
This is what St. Paul plainly says; but how is it to bo explained? and
why is it so enigmatically expressed P
The second question is easily answered. It is enigmatically expressed for
two reasons first, because all that is enigmatical in it for us had been orally
explained to the Theesaloniane, who would therefore clearly understand it ;
and secondly, because there was some obvious danger in committing it to
writing. This is in jitself a sufficient proof that he is referring to the Roman
Empire and Emperor. The tone of St. Pal is exactly the same as that of
Josephus, when he explains tke prophecy of Daniel. All Jews regarded the
Fourth Empire as the Roman but when ;
Josephus comes to the stone which is
to dash the image to pieces, he stops short, and says that " he does not think
proper to explain it," 3
for tho obvious reason that it would have been politically
dangerous for him to do so.
Now this reason for reticence at once does away with the conjecture that
"
the check," or " tho checker," was some distant power or person which did
not for centuries come on the horizon, even if we could otherwise adopt the
notion that St. Paul was uttering some far-off vaticination of event* which,
though they might find their fulfilment in distant centuries, could have no
meaning for the Thcssaloniaus to whom ho wrote. When a few Roman
Catholic commentators say that the Reformation was the Apostasy, and
Luther tho Man of Sin, and the Germau Empire " tho chock ;" or when a
mass of Protestant writers unhesitatingly identify the Pope with the Man of
oiu one can only aak whether, apart from traditional exegesis, they have
really brought themselves to hold such a view? If, as we have Been, St. Paul
undoubtedly held .that the day of the Lord was ai hand, though not
1 These secrets and dim allusions (cf. Dan. xii. 10) current among the early Christiana
rounded them on every side. The years which elapsed between the Epistle and tha
Apocalypse had made the views of the Christiana as to Antichrist much moro
L1
(Eenan, Antichrist, p. 1^7, &c.).
2 ThesS. ii. 6, 7, 6 ratrexui/ TO xa.TfX.ov.
9
Sjee the instructive passage, Jop. 4-ntt, x. 10, 1