2 Thessalonians 2
Riley2 Thessalonians 2:1-17
WORLD , THE OF THE CHURCH! 2 Thessalonians 2 THIS second chapter of Thessalonians, following as it does close upon the first Letter written to this people, was evidently intended to correct certain mis-judgments, particularly the impression that the day of tribulation had already come and that the Lord was immediately to appear. It would yield to the careful student as many suggestions that would easily fruit in sermons as has been brought, or might be brought from the first Epistle.The limit of time, however, lays upon us the necessity of this briefer treatment, and at the same time provides us an opportunity to discuss a theme that presses for consideration, namely, “World conditions, the challenge of the Church”.Paul, while writing to the Thessalonians concerning matters of immediate concern to this first century anticipates, also, our far off time of the twentieth century, and we predict some surprise as we see how perfectly his prophetic insight presaged the problems of our age. When a few days since, as a result of reading newspaper and magazine articles, this theme emerged from my mind, it came with what I believe to be a suggestion of the Holy Spirit, namely, that the adverse world condition of the present hour was a poor defense of spiritual impotency in the Church of God; and instead of surrendering to those conditions, we should successfully resist and rise above them! To impress that thought is the object of this sermon.However, we propose to frame an outline from what Paul writes into this second chapter and to follow a logical interpretation of this Scripture to the natural conclusions.The true student of the second chapter of Second Thessalonians will consent, we are sure, to this series of suggestions: The Close of the Age, The Antichrist Revealed, The Challenge of the Church.THE CLOSE OF THE AGE The Second Coming of Christ will close the age.“Now we beseech you, brethren, by the Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto Him, “That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the Day of Christ is at hand” (2 Thessalonians 2:1-2). Or, as some have translated it,“The Day of the Lord is now present”! It may be conceded, without controversy, that “the day of Christ is at hand”; but “the Day of the Lord” is a technical phrase in Old and New Testament and refers to that millennial day in which He shall reign, solitary and alone, the breaking of which day will close the present age.There are many Scriptures that go to prove that fact. Perhaps no one of them is clearer than Paul’s statement to the Corinthians, “As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. But every man in his own order: Christ the first fruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at His Coming. Then cometh the end” (1 Corinthians 15:22-24).In other words, the Second Coming of Christ closes this age. It is a truth that from the days of Paul until now, each black period, each extensive triumph of iniquity, and particularly each outbreak of martyrdom, has led many to feel that the end was on. But the mistakes of the past should not involve us in a still greater mistake for the present.
In Æsop’s fables the cry of “Wolf! Wolf!” became so common that the people eventually paid no attention to it.
It was then that the wolf came and found ho one expecting him and no one guarding the flock.This much seems to be certain, that the present age is rapidly fitting in to the mould of Scripture; and the conditions prophetically described as belonging to the last days are manifestly present— an indication that the end may be nigh. There are people who foolishly believe that no great catastrophe will ever overtake the world again; that if a flood did once occur, a teaching they seriously doubt, the cleansing fires of prophecy will never fall, and that according to evolutionary laws man, society and civilization will continue to move along in their developing lines.Such reasoning ignores history! Already there has been a Babylonian age, but it perished; there was a Greek culture the like of which the world has never seen, but it also crumbled to the dust; there was a Roman government that grew in power until the world itself acknowledged no other.But now, that government, long buried and almost forgotten, is beginning to stir in its grave and to threaten a resurrection, possibly even a recovery. When Ralph Norton of Belgium was in this pulpit, three weeks ago, he quoted from one of the leading statesmen of Europe to this effect, “We know that the age is now dying.” If that be true, the Second Coming is at hand. People who are ignorant of, or indifferent to prophecy, are thereby appointed to surprise. The prophetic portions of Sacred Scripture have found literal fulfilment so often as to create a scientific certainty concerning the future of the unfulfilled portions. For instance, listen to this,“Therefore thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I am against thee, O Tyrus, and will cause many nations to come up against thee, as the sea causeth his waves to come up. “And they shall destroy the walls of Tyrus, and break down her towers: I will also scrape her dust from her, and make her like the top of a rock. “It shall be a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea: for I have spoken it, saith the Lord God” (Ezekiel 26:3-5). What is the history of Tyre? It lies in ruins today. Alexander the Great actually scraped the dust from the top of it. He blew through it a causeway into the sea, and he made her as the top of a rock at which fishermen today dry their nets, as God, through the mouth of Ezekiel declared nearly three thousand years ago.Christ said, “I will come”. His Word will not fail; His presence should be expected; His descent to the earth will close this age.That great event of prophecy is not yet the experience of history.Undoubtedly many of the early disciples interpreted the language of Jesus to mean His immediate Return. But a careful consideration of what Christ said on the subject, and of all that the inspired writers of the New Testament added, demands no such interpretation.
A Nobleman has gone into a far country to receive for Himself a Kingdom. In time He will return.
The Householder is on a long journey. The day will yet break when He will come back to receive an account of behavior during His absence. The day of Jacob’s trouble has not yet been born. The time of these things is unknown. They belong to the secrets of the Most High. Curious man has anticipated it; unwilling to let God keep aught to Himself. A thousand times man has attempted to unravel this mystery; to discover this secret; to decide the day, yea, even the very hour when the Son of Man shall arrive. It is an engaging theme.
It is an opportunity for unlimited speculation and it has produced a thousand forms of fanaticism and ten thousand thousand fanatics, and the end is not yet. Christ has not come; the age has not closed; new government has not been introduced; the reign of righteousness has not begun. “Of that day and hour knoweth no man”. Let us cease then our speculations, refrain from further fanaticism, and gladly wait and watch the Eastern sky; it will yet brighten; the Morning Star will yet appear upon its brow; the voice will yet be heard, “Behold, the Bridegroom cometh”,The final apostasy must precede it.“Let no man deceive you by any means: for that Day shall not come, except there come a falling away”. I will not go into details in this matter, but remind you again of recently stated facts. A great spiritual dearth grips the world! The report of a year ago was that over twelve thousand churches in America had seen no convert in twelve months!A famous writer declared that there were sixty thousand dead churches, whose past services demanded for them decent burial. Retrenchment on the foreign field has been the necessity of many seasons. The largest denominations have marked no progress but rather suffered decline. Let us not be blind to those social conditions that have produced sin in every conceivable form; conditions that have created a break down in morality; that have incited the passion for pleasure to the point of insanity; that have grown the greed in the minds of men until bandits and racketeers exercise no hesitancy whatever when a human life is pitted against paltry dollars, to take away the first that they may lay hands upon the second; that even the leaders of the Church of God have joined the atheists of the age in denying personality to Deity, disputing the Divinity of Christ, deriding the personality of the Holy Spirit, holding to scorn the claims of authority on the part of the Sacred Scriptures, scoffing the Blood Atonement, calling it the “gospel of the shambles”; denying the necessity of regeneration and suggesting culture instead; in fact, literally joining hands with the social bolshevists and the theological atheists of the age to remove the very foundations of morality and demolish the superstructure of society!
It is an age of racketeers and wreckers. The “falling away” is at hand; the apostasy approaches its full.
The enemies of the Church of God are unlimited; the time of the traducers is on.Charles Spurgeon speaks of the long line of portraits of the Doges, in the palace at Venice; one space is empty, and the semblance of a black curtain remains as a melancholy record of glory forfeited. Found guilty of treason against the state, Marino Falieri was beheaded, and his image, as far as possible, blotted from remembrance. Every one’s eye rests longer upon the one dark vacancy than upon any one of the fine portraits of the merchant monarchs. So the apostates of the Church are far more frequently the theme of the world’s talk than the thousands of good men and true who adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things.How true in America today; and in fact, in every so-called Christianized country of the world! The loyal man is forgotten. No matter what his position is, nor yet what his attainments or accomplishments are, he is ignored.
The apostate blazes across the heavens as the meteor at night; all eyes are upon him. What does it mean?
To students of Scripture it can mean but one thing, the end draweth near. WILL BE “That man of sin shall be revealed, the son of perdition; “Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the Temple of God, shewing himself that he is God. “Remember ye not, that, when I was yet with you, I told you these things? “And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time. “For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only He who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way. “And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of His mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of His Coming: “Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, “And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the Truth, that they might be saved. “And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: “That they all might be damned who believed not the Truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness”. These verses bring to us hard facts that must be faced by true believers.The antichrist is also soon coming.The plainness of the prophetic Scripture concerning the Second Coming of Christ is such that even skeptics cannot deny their interpretation. One of the famous modernists admits that the promise of the Return is to be found upon almost every page of the New Testament, and only escapes the conclusion of the Second Coming by discrediting the veracity of the Scripture itself, and charging its authors with pure superstition.However, the Coming of Jesus Christ, while more often referred to in the Book, is no more revealed, by the same, than is the appearance of the antichrist. They will meet on this earth, the spot selected for their final conflict. They will face one another in the presence of men for whose souls each will wager his all. As Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, and as skeptics resist the Truth, so the antichrist will withstand the Christ and resist the Spirit. And as Michael the archangel contended with the devil about the body of Moses, so will Christ contend against the antichrist for the good of society, and the souls of men. Uhlhorn is famed for his volume on “The Conflict of Christianity with Heathenism” and Andrews on “Christianity and Anti-Christianity” but the conflict of all conflicts, the consummation of the centuries of conflicts, will occur when the Christ and the antichrist, captain the world’s last battle, and wage its final war!This monstrous character is minutely described.“Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the Temple of God, shewing himself that he is God. “Remember ye not, that, when I was yet with you, I told you these things? “And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time. “For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only He who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way” (2 Thessalonians 2:4-7). But for the present it is enough to know that he is the man of sin, the son of perdition, the opponent, of God, the claimant of the throne and the universe, the author of all iniquity, the consummation of all wickedness, the unreconciled and unyielding enemy of the Lord.Let no man imagine this individual as of hideous mien; let no imagination picture a man of treacherous features, combined with the beastly suggestion of horns and tail and hoof, or with the hellish mouth breathing fire. Augustus J. C. Hare is justified in calling our attention to the fact that in the frescoes of Signorelli we have “The Teaching of Antichrist”—no repulsive figure, but a grand personage in flowing robes, and with a noble countenance, which at a distance might easily be taken for the Saviour. To him the crowds are eagerly gathering and listening, and it is only when you draw close that you can discover, in his harder and cynical expression, and from the evil spirit whispering in his ear, that it is not the Christ.There never was a time when sin-incarnate took such attractive form as now; or wrought such infinite havoc as today. The movement of the century is in the direction of the consummation of evil; the coming of the antichrist.But his defeat is prophetically assured.“And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of His mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of His Coming” (2 Thessalonians 2:8). Let the saints rejoice! The one reason why pre-millennialism is optimistic rests in this certainty! Our God will conquer! The gates of hell shall not even prevail against His Church. If one would see how Old Testament prophecy fits in with New Testament prediction in this very matter, let him read Isaiah 2:10-22.The conqueror of ancient times used to illustrate his success by chaining captive kings to his chariot and dragging them after him through the streets of his capital city. But alas, no sooner was one rebel subjugated than another had risen; so, war succeeded war and of conflicts there was no end.Alexander the Great is reputed to have conquered all known peoples and to have wept because there were no more worlds to conquer.
And yet his history is filled with opponents who rose against him and contended with him until the last breath went from his intemperate body, and he himself was slain by a sickness superinduced by sin; in other words, Satan he could not meet. Before his mailed fist this battled monarch went down to death, and the grave claimed its own.There will be no such issue in the conflict to come, when the Captain of the Hosts of Heaven faces the leader of the hosts of hell.If one wants to lift his spirit let him open to the Prophet Daniel and read the interpretation of the king’s dream as recorded in the second chapter of that Book and see the world kingdoms rise and wane, until “the God of Heaven sets up a Kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the Kingdom shall not be left to other people”; or to Daniel, seventh chapter, where all the potentates of earth under the figures of beasts, have fallen, and their dominions are taken away, and their lives are cut off “for a season” and then, suddenly—so suddenly that it is introduced by the word, “BEHOLD, One like the Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought Him near before Him. And there was given Him dominion, and glory, and a Kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve Him”. And the proclamation is made, the glorious proclamation, the enheartening proclamation, the everlasting, uplifting proclamation, “His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and His Kingdom that which shall not be destroyed”.THE OF THE CHURCH But to complete our study.Paul presents these great and stirring facts as a basis of appeal, an occasion of exhortation and instruction. What is our duty as we face them? What is our obligation as we reflect upon them? What is our inspiration as we seek to interpret them in the light of Sacred Scriptures, and in the face of world-conditions? Possibly these questions could be answered as we reflect upon the remaining portion of this chapter.Our choice, in Him, is our call to His service.“But we are bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the Truth: “Whereunto He called you by our Gospel, to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Thessalonians 2:13-14). If it were in my power this morning to awaken in the membership of the First Baptist Church a sense of its abilities and responsibilities at the same time, what men would call miracles would surely result.I know the days are dark. I know the times are difficult. I know that world conditions are bad, and that evil men wax worse and worse. But I also know that these facts are no sufficient excuse. They are not even a subterfuge for failures on the part of the true Church of God.What if the picture show is popular? The power of the Holy Spirit is certainly sufficient against it.
What if the auto does accentuate “the call of the wild”, and carry people not only away from the church but out of the city, into country spaces? What if the multiplied places of amusement add daily to their appealing attractions?
What if the wear and tear of modern methods means weariness of the flesh and compels a cry for change? What if the discouraged conditions of the churches ‘round about us have shut up their sanctuaries at the night time, and left them but poorly peopled even at the forenoon service? What if 12,000 churches went through a year without a convert and 60,000 gave such little evidence of life that a decent burial is suggested thereby? What is that to us? What is it to the people who truly love God, to whom His cause is supreme above all, who believe that by the Blood of His Son their souls were saved and that by the indwelling of His Spirit they have been sanctified? Shall they quail before these opponents or yield to their seductive whispers?
God forbid!This is a time when every man who has in him the Spirit of Jesus Christ at all should face this entire flood of iniquity, these multiplied foes of spirituality, these armies from the pit that present themselves in solid array, and say again in the language of Joshua as he assembled the tribes at Shechem and recited before them the history of Divine benefits and refreshed their minds concerning the covenant, and then declared, “As for me and my house, we mil serve the Lord”.The days are such that one cannot always command his house; but the individual’s responsibility to God can never be shifted, and each of us can say today, “I will serve the Lord”. Would that the people might answer as they did in that far-off day, “God forbid that we should forsake the Lord, to serve other gods”.The trouble with our Christianity is that it is costing us too little.
We are putting into it too little of time and too little of money, to have for it the affection that insures its survival in our hearts.John Wesley was one man in millions! We imagine that he must have been a great orator, judging by the movement he originated; a great organizer, judging by the denomination that he founded. But possibly nothing about him was so great as his sense of obligation to God, a sense that voiced itself in the fact that when he had thirty pounds a year as his salary, or $150, he lived on twenty-eight pounds and gave away the forty shillings thereby saved. When they increased him to sixty pounds, he lived on twenty-eight pounds and gave away thirty-two pounds or 640 shillings. When they increased him to ninety pounds, he lived on twenty-eight and gave away sixty-two or 1240 shillings. When they increased him to 120 pounds a year, he lived on twenty-eight pounds and gave away ninety-two pounds or 1840 shillings.How differently we are living today!
Too often, as our income increases, our personal and home expenditures are multiplied and our contribution to the cause of God is actually cut down. No wonder the church grows weak!
No wonder its services languish! No wonder its converts decrease! Brethren, shall it be so with us? God forbid!Mark again; the skepticism of this hour is only an appeal to steadfastness.“Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by words or our Epistle” (2 Thessalonians 2:15). It is a strange day! Could any day be stranger than when a man stands in the pulpit, a professed and even a professional minister of Jesus Christ, and concludes his address by saying, as a personal acquaintance of mine, a modernist, recently did, “Brethren, I have not pleaded with you to believe in God. I have not asked you to bring your sins to be forgiven, primarily. I have not asked you to believe in the realities of the spiritual world. I have asked you to believe in yourself—in the divinity of man; in the greatness of the human soul. Men are what they are because of their fatal disbelief in their own divinity.”Think of it!
An outstanding man, speaking from a prominent pulpit of one of the most evangelical and evangelistic denominations, of our day, resting his appeal upon such a basis! Oh, what an hour!
The very God who bought them is denied. The very blood with which they have been sanctified is treated as an unholy thing. The very Scriptures themselves concerning the depravity of man are ignored, and the Gospel of Humanism is substituted for the revelation Divine.You may have imagined, at times, that my views were radical; that my expressions were unnecessarily strong; but I bring you the profoundest conviction of my soul, that such skepticism is deadly; that it does divide the church of God into hostile camps; that it does imperil all spirituality, that it has brought to an end the soul-winning appeal; that it has stilled, in spiritual death, the people that accept it.But it has not touched us! We join not the camp of the critics! We drink not from the cup of skepticism; we feed not from the table, laden with fruit of human endeavor! We hold not with Cain that we are “justified by our works”; and yet, some of us illustrate perfectly, James’ word: “faith without works is dead”; and at the same time we give proof of the fact that our philosophy of religion is one thing and our practical daily experience of the Divine presence is another.We have just concluded a fiscal year.
The reports by Mr. Robb, our treasurer, were most enheartening.
They revealed a total of gifts amounting to $193,941.60. The clerk’s report shows a membership of 3,316. By way of comparison with others, we can secure pleasure from it. When I tell you that less than one-half of the membership, possibly nearer one-third of it has accomplished it all, put up all the money; and that one-tenth of the membership has done all the personal work that has been done during the year, we see what could be done were we all and always “stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord”.I set before my Board last Monday night the following goals: for every organization in the church, an increase of interest and attendance; for the Sunday School an enrollment of 2,500 as against the 2,100 of the present; for accession to the church, 300 in the twelve months, bringing our net membership to 3,500 as it would; for our financial objective, every single dollar included by the budget of recent adoption, paid at the end of twelve months; and above all, for the church itself, such a revival of spiritual interest as shall accentuate the endeavor of those engaged and accomplish a resurrection for those who “have a name to live, but are dead”.Shall we do it? If so, we must realize, as Paul did, thatOur strength is not in self but in God.“Now our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and God, even our Father, which hath loved us, and hath given us everlasting consolation and good hope through grace, “Comfort your hearts, and stablish you in every good word and work” (2 Thessalonians 2:16-17). Are we alive, this morning, to the sense of our source of supply, and if so, are we in personal touch with the same? What matters it, as to social conditions? What matters it as to the tendency of the times? What matters it as to the natural opposition of unregenerate man? What matters it as to the tidal wave of skepticism that sweeps the world? What matters it as to the euroclydon of crime?
God lives, and in Him is our resource, and He is our sufficiency.I saw a while ago the statement of one J. B. Jones, with which I want to finish this morning’s appeal. He said, “The dweller in Toronto wakes up in the morning, wants a light to dress by, presses a little switch and his whole room is flooded as with daylight. Niagara is at work for him. He goes to his bathroom and wants some hot water for washing or shaving or bathing.
He presses a switch and once more Niagara answers. He wishes to talk to some one at Montreal or Chicago or New York. He rings a bell and Niagara carries the message. He boards a trolley car and Niagara whirls him down to his office door. It is a Source of almost exhaustless power.”But it is a pitiful little thing beside the infinite power of an infinite God. He can meet every need.
He can convert every weakness into strength; every wish, that is righteous and true, into reality; every endeavor into success!Brethren, shall we believe in and prove it? Sisters, shall we say it and live it? We “can do all things through Christ who strengtheneth” us!