The night before a family vacation to Paris, 8-year-old disobedient Kevin was banished to bed in the attic.  Unfortunately, in the chaos of leaving the next morning, nobody remembered attic-sleeping Kevin.  The boy awoke to a strangely empty house,  Worse, he was the only  one left to fight off two bumbling thieves.  So starts the hilarious movie “Home Alone”.

The Thessalonians, too, faced a strange situation; but no one was laughing.  A spreading rumor had shaken them out of their wits:  “The day of the Lord has come!”  Yet no one had heard an archangel’s voice or God’s trumpet or cry of command from the descending Lord (1 Thessalonians4:16,17).  Had they been “left behind”?

Learning of their predicament from Silas and Timothy, who’d returned to Corinth after delivering Paul’s  first letter to the Thessalonians, Paul wrote to calm their fears . . .

Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we ask you, brothers not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by a spirit or a spoken word, or a letter seeming to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come (2 Thessalonians 2:1,2).

“The day of the Lord” is the day of “the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him” as Paul had written earlier:   “For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God.  And the dead in Christ will rise first.  Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 4:16,17). 

Their alarm seems bizarre.  How could they think they missed such a momentous event?  How could they think they might have slept through a cataclysm of Christ’s Second Coming with its attendent grandiosity and his terrifying wrath on his enemies?

It seems bizarre, too, because frankly we don’t think much about the day of the Lord.  Christ’s Second Coming has been eclipsed by more immediate day-to-day concerns until it’s become more a matter of theological speculation.  But the apostle warns against being deceived, either by heretical teachings or preoccupation with passing-away things.

Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction,who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God. Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you these things (2:3-5)?

To calm the Thessalonians, Paul reminds them that the “day of the Lord” will be preceded by two unmistakable events.  First “the rebellion comes.”  Second, “the man of lawlessness is revealed.”   These two events will go “hand-in-glove.”  One will foster the other.  Perhaps the rebellion will occur first, then the man of lawlessness will be revealed as one to quell the rebellion.

The original Greek word behind “the rebellion” is apostasia, also translated  “revolt”, “desertion”, “defection”, “abandonment”, or “apostasy”.    Before Christ returns “the rebellion”will come.

Jesus prophesied it to come at the end of this present age:  “And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another.  And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray.  And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold” (Matthew 24:10-12).  

Years later, Paul provided more detail.  “The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons.  Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron. They forbid people to marry and order them to abstain from certain foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and who know the truth” (1 Timothy 4:1-3).

“But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days.  People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy,  without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good,  treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God– having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them” (2 Timothy 3:1-5).

“For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths” (2 Timothy 4:3,4).

Such vices mark the “last days” since Christ’s first coming, but presumably increase like birth pains.  We can expect, then, a falling away from the faith until, like Old Testament Israel, only a faithful remnant remains.  In other words, the church is destined for increasing minority status.

However, this “rebellion” may include far more than the church.  F. F. Bruce (Word Biblical Commentary) writes:  “It appears more probable . . . that a general abandonment of the basis of civil order is envisaged.  This is not only rebellion against the law of Moses; it is a large-scale revolt against public order, and since public order is maintained by ‘the governing authorities’ who ‘have been instituted by God’, any assault on it is an assault on a divine ordinance (Romans 13:1,2).

To that point an online article (“Lawlessness and Disorder:  An Emerging Paradigm for the 21st Century”)  by Phil Williams (holds the Wesley W. Posvar Chair in International Security Studies at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh and is the director of the University’s Matthew B. Ridgway Center for International Security Studies) is prescient.  Williams begins with this paragraph:

“The 20th century will probably go down in history as the exemplar of geopolitical interstate conflict with two World Wars centered in Europe followed by over four decades of the Cold War between the United States and Soviet Union. The 21st century, in contrast, could well become a period of lawlessness and disorder—a century in which states are in long-term decline; new violent actors challenge states and one another; resources such as food, water, and energy become a central focus of violent competition and of large illicit markets; demographic and environmental trends pose challenges to sustainability, security, and stability; and the severity of problems is significantly increased by the interconnections and often perverse interactions among them . . .”

Williams continues by citing the following “megatrends” as evidence of future increased disorder in society . . .globalization, population growth and demographic trends, urbanization, natural resources and global climate change, the decline of the state and the rise of alternative governance.  I disagree with some of William’s argument, but agree that it lends a credible secular view of the biblically-prophesied coming rebellion.  (You can read the entire essay at http://mercury.ethz.ch/serviceengine/Files/ISN/163854/ichaptersection_singledocument/0217aa14-981b-41a6-86a0-0ab0c2ca9046/en/convergence_Ch2.pdf.).

Next time we’ll take a close look at “the man of lawlessness”.  Meanwhile, we would do well to give heed to Paul’s conclusion to the Thessalonians:  “So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter” (2 Thessalonians 2:15).  For us I take that to mean . . .

Don’t take your Christianity casually.
Follow the news with your Bible in hand.
Prepare to live as part of a minority community in the world.
Faithfully follow Jesus and his Word even when the majority turns away.