Man of Perdition Sitting in the Temple: A Post Tribulational Islamic Schema Interpretation of 2Thes 2:3-4
Jay Altieri 2013
2 Thes 2:3-4 Author’s translation Be not deceived yourself by no way,for the Day of the Lord will not come unless first the divorcement comes and the man of sin (or lawlessness) is unveiled, the son of perishing waste, 4 who is opposing and exalting above everything called god or considered sacred, wherefore himself in the temple of God, as God does sit, teaching that he is God.
2 Thes 2:3-4 NASB Let no one in any way deceive you, for it will not come unless the apostasy comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, 4 who opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, displaying himself as being God.
The second chapter of the second epistle to the Thessalonian church strongly warns about deceit, trickery and apostasy. Paul gives an intimation of the impending danger. He uses a double negative. “Don’t be tricked by no means.” This is not a contradiction as it might be in English. The double negative in Greek is for emphasis. It stresses the imperative nature of this admonition. Don’t be fooled into thinking that the evil man of sin (or some manuscripts have man of lawlessness) will really be Jesus the promised returned Christ. The passage is an exhortation to be on guard against deception which leads to apostasy.
Most futurist Christians consider this warning to be a description of the Antichrist. My position for this study paper will be that instead of the human figure we call the Antichrist, this is actually his sidekick, commonly called the False Prophet.
Some ground rules for comprehension of this interpretation: My thesis will be within an historic premillennial framework; another words, no pre-trib rapture. Like the saints of old, we will achieve crowns not by luxurious complacent living, but through treacherous turmoil, wherein we may taste the suffering of Jesus our Lord.[1] My thesis will also be within an Islamic endtime paradigm, understanding the beast that persecutes believers and blasphemes God to be the restored caliphate with a Satanic zeal for jihad and genocide of infidels.[2] My thesis will be futurist, for the moment you may forget about Nero and Titus. And finally, my theory will not be dispensational. By non-dispensational I mean that there is no distinction between Israel and Church. Gentile believers are grafted into the family of Israel and enjoy full rights as adopted sons. We are Israel. God honors those who honor the Messiah. Unsaved Jews have been cut off from the olive tree of Rom 11 and Paul calls them “Anathma” (cursed). As you will soon see, Temple language in the NT does not revolve around edifices of limestone, but around a very special temple not hewn with human hands, that is the Body of Christ.[3]
The False Prophet? He is biblically known to us only from a few passages in the Revelation. He is notably connected withthe description of the beast out of the land in Rev 13. That passage is highly symbolic. It is not describing a man. The beast from the land is the religious aspect of Islam, whereas the beast from the sea is the political aspect of Islam. I do not refer a specific nation state, or to any person. The beast is a system. It is the whole body of Islam. The political beast coming out of the sea, has 10 horns. The final iteration of the beast (7th morphing into 8th head) is manifest in the kingdom of the pan-Islamic caliphate. The army, the diplomacy, the tax collector, everything to do with the government is included within the system of the Sea Beast. Horns represent the power of the bull, so here horns represent kings/presidents/prime ministers and such. Horns are personal individual men that lead the system. This final political power will have 10 prominent men. The mouth of the beast (Rev 13:5) is commonly known as the Anti-Christ. (In Daniel 7, this same figure is called the 11th horn: a little one that talks big. But let us not mix up our prophecies.)
Likewise the beast from the land also has horns. This beast also is a system, not an individual. The religious system of Islam, including shariaand Quranic study is best understood here. It is important to realize that these 2 beasts from sea and land are 2 parts of the same organism: the social, religious political power of Islam. There is no separation of church and state within the Islamic worldview. Islam is a highly political religion with complete submission required in all aspects of life. The Land Beast has 2 horns. Again horns represent the controlling power of the polity. Thus, the man known as the False Prophet is one of these horns. He is likely an ayatollah or high ranking imam, although his origins may be obscure.
My proposal is that this character, the False Prophet, who is the sidekick to the Antichrist, is the man of sin in 2 Thes 2:3-4, who shows himself to be God.
First, notice that the text of 2Thes seems to claim that this figure is not a symbol as frequently used in the Revelation. Paul is mentioning an individual human man, as he is called “anthropos[man] of sin.” A person does this deed. What does he do? He sits down in the temple. This action is strong historical and cultural evidence that we are looking at the Imam not the Sultan.
Sitting while teaching or judging is a very ancient Middle Easterntradition.Even today, Orthodox Jewish Rabbis in the East don’t pace around on a platform while preaching, they sit and teach. In the bible whenever you read that somebody“sat down”, recognize the literary clue that teaching or judging is about to commence. The connection to teaching and judging is one of class superiority.The master sits while the servant stands. To sit down is to show higher rank then those still standing. This tradition stems from the respect for the elder. Old men prefer to sit. Old men are the leaders and teachers within most Middle Eastern civilizations. So the boss sits while the underlings listen.
Teaching while sitting is displayed inMat 5 on a hill near the Lake of Genesseret, Jesus sat to deliver the sermon on the mount. Another time in Lk 4, Jesus went to synagogue in Nazareth on Shabbat. He stood up to read a messianic passage from Isa61. They always stood to read the sacred scripture out of respect for the word of God- a great tradition. Then he handed the scroll back to the attendant and Jesus sat down. In our western tradition, we think that means that he is done, it is over, sit down and shut up. That is where we would be terribly wrong. When it says that he sat down, ah-ha, now the teaching will begin. Jesus explains that this prophecy has been fulfilled in your sight-I am the messiah! My point is that culturally, this subtle indicator of teaching would not lost on an ancient Jew in Corinth or Rome reading the text.
Judging is also done from a seated position. In Acts 23:3 Paul is being interrogated by the high priest who is sitting for this duty. Pilate sat at the stone pavement in John 19:13 to judge for crucifixion. Moses sat at the judgment seat to deliver verdicts in Ex 18:13.
Not to belabor the point but warriors don’t sit. They wield a sword which doesn’t work with a bent hip on a chair. So the person in 2 Thes 2:3-4 who is sitting in the temple is not a warrior. He is a judge or a teacher. A teacher makes more sense because of the use of the Greek word apodeiknymi. It isfrequently translated ‘displaying’ or ‘showing’ himself to be god. The Greek word means to point out, show forth, to expose to view, to prove,to exhibit and to demonstrate. To educate or teach would be a fair translation. The man of sin sits in the temple in order to explain, teach and educate the people that he himself is Jesus Christ.
Most expositors think that this sitting behavior happens atthe beginning of the Great Trib, 3.5 years after the ratification of a treaty with many (Dan 9:27).[4] I do not find biblical evidence requiring our verse in 2 Thes as occurring at the 3.5 year point when the treaty is broken. It could be much earlier without conflict. I think the context of the verse implies that the sitting action in the temple is to be concurrent with the unveiling of the man of sin. When he sits in the temple is when true believers realize his identity. So I think it is more likely to be much earlier at the beginning of the reign of terror, not half way through.
According to Islamic prophecy, the Mahdi will appear in the Last Days.[5]Mahdiis "the rightly-guided one" who, according to Islamic prophecy in Hadith, will come before the end of time to convert and subjugate the entire world for Allah.
In accordance with theories of Joel Richardson and WalidShoebat[6], what is messianic Mahdi for Muslims is in biblical reality the Antichrist. Islamic eschatology has reversed the roles found in the bible, so that the Muslim is the messiah and the parousia of the returning true Christ is the antichristicDajil. The Mahdi will be joined by Jesus, according to Islamic eschatology. In Islam he is knownby the Arabic name Isa. Muslims believe that Isa/Jesus is coming back. Oh yes, he never actually died on the cross, most Muslims teach that Judas Iscariot was miraculously switched with Jesus, so that Judas died on the cross but was given the appearance of Jesus so as to trick everyone. Isa, they claim, has been occulted and hidden for 2000 years in heaven. Someday when the end comes Isa will return along with Mahdi. Isa and the Mahdi will be partners for the conversion of Jews and Christians. Isa will himself testify that he never died on a cross, that he is not the son of God, and that he is only a good prophet of Allah. Isa will beckon all Christians to all become Muslims and to follow in submission to Allah through Mohammed. Hadithsay that Isa will descend at Damascus wearing a yellow robe.[7] Together,Mahdi and Isa, will do great miracles and heal the world. They will bring in Allah’s eternal peace for the planet. So according to Islamic teaching Madhi and Jesus, whom they call Isa, are the good guys.
Richardson’s book Islamic Antichrist does a good job of recognizing the upside down irony of Islamic prophecy. What Islam presents as Mahdi and Isa are actually by biblical definitions the Antichrist and FalseProphet. However, the book appears to think that Antichrist is the person entering the temple. The book acknowledges a difficulty with any Muslim self proclaiming deity. From personal communication with the author, I think Richardson’s view has developed since publication, but it seems much more likely that the False Prophet is the one sitting in the temple.
This greatly helps to explain our passage in 2Thes 2. Paul says that the man of sin (some manuscripts say man of lawlessness) sits in the temple. He is the son of perdition, meaning that he is doomed to destruction. This guy will teach as he is seated that he is the bodily return of Jesus Christ. He boldly proclaims: “I am Isa returned for jihad on the Jews and Christians who stubbornly refuse to recognize the truth of Allah.” The Christians have strayed from the path of Quran. He begs and pleads for them to join him in prostrate worship of the Islamic deity. This would fit perfectly with an Islamic understanding of Isa. It would contain no Islamic blasphemy of a man claiming to be Allah. And it would fit nicely with Paul’s understanding-if you claim to be Jesus then you are claiming to be God, because from a Pauline NT understanding Jesus is God. So from Paul’s position, claiming to be Jesus is “displaying himself as being God.”
So, usingtheir own theology from an Islamic viewpoint, this starts to make sense. It becomes understandable how millions will be deluded. I think the Antichrist is the Mahdi. He is the warrior king, like the great Saladin. He is the caliph of the re-established Islamic kingdom. But this man of sin character to whom Paul refers is most likely the horn of the False Prophet. The False Prophet is the religious power of Islam and its leader (the horn) is the confidant and close companion to the Antichrist. He is the one performing great miracles (Mat 24:24, Rev 13:13) and lying signs and wonders (2Thes 2:9).
Claiming to be Jesus is (at least for a Muslim) different than claiming to be God. Muslims believe that Jesus was a prophet, a man and he will return. It would be highly blasphemous for an individual to claim to be Allah embodied. The text of verse 4 is rendered by NASB as: he “opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god.” However, ‘himself’ is not in the Greek. The two verbal nouns are participles. A participle in Greek is very similar to a gerund in English. They end with ’ing.’ A better translation would be that he “is opposing and exalting above everything called God.” There is no translational reason for him to be exalting himself. He is exalting Islam above all other gods, including the God of the Christians.
What about the temple? Most dispensational teachers believe that 2Thes 2 requires a rebuilt Jewish Temple for this event to occur. They think that he sits on the bema of the ark, a pedestal or platform upon which the Ark of the Covenant was placed. This was inside the Holy of Holies in the Jewish temple. As a pre-millennialist I have no dispute with the possibility of a rebuilt Temple during the Millennium, but before the return of Jesus any rebuilt temple will be a false house of God.[8] The temple of God during these NT centuries is the church. Not a church building in Jerusalem, Rome or Houston, but the collective body of believers in Christ Jesus. Even if the Jerusalem temple were to be rebuilt in the Last Days, God would not dwell there. God’s sanctuary is the people of the church. The heart of true believers in Messiah is the holy place. The Father will not be worshipped at some mountain edifice, he must be worshipped only in spirit and truth (John 4:21). So any physically rebuilt buildings don’t matter.
In Mat 26:61 Jesus said destroy the “temple of God” and I will raise it up in three days. Of course he meant his body. In 1Cor 3:16 Paul explains that believers are the “temple of God.” Both of these verses use the exact same Greek words as in 2Thes 2. The expression that the False Prophet sits in the temple of God means that heteaches the Christians, falsely of course.
On another occasion, in John 7:38, Jesus again declares the temple language as applicable to the believer when he said “Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them." The Lord is quoting from either Ezekiel 47:9 or maybe Zech 14:8, but either way Jesus is applying clear temple language of the OT to the individual person in the NT.
True believers that have the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit will not be tricked or duped by the Isa pretender. But everyone else will be. He is a wolf in sheep’s clothing (Mat 7:15). He looks like a lamb, but speaks like a dragon (Rev 13:11). Those without spiritual wisdom will be fooled. Our churches today contain many members who attend only for social and habitual reasons. They are not true born again believers. They have not received a new spirit creation by the resurrection of Jesus. Likewise, the churches in antiquity had the same problem. Paul admonishes in 1 Cor 5:13 to expel the evil man who fornicates yet calls himself a “brother.” Not everyone who shows up for church services is truly a brother. I call these non-believing Christians “ChINO”s. They are “Christians In Name Only.” Spiritual statistics of who believes and who is a faker do not exist. We have no definitive way of knowing who’s profession is authentic, except by their fruit. But suffice it to say that I suspect a surprisingly large percentage of church going “brothers” are not truly believing Christians.
The events of the endtime beast will dramatically unfold primarily in the Middle East. [9]The Christian population across the Middle East totals about 3%. This represents about 12million people region wide. Orthodox, Coptic, Roman Catholic, Melkiteand Syriac churches are the largest groups. They all have the same problems that our churches have: false profession is common. Many people robotically have head knowledge of Christianity with no heart knowledge of Jesus.
The context of 2Thes 2, the chapter that we have been studying, is about deception and apostasy. Paul gives a warning to be on guard against deception. Don’t be troubled and shaken in your faith (verse 2). Let no man deceive you by any means (verse 3), but a lot of deception is headed our way. A very powerful delusion will cause people to believe a lie (verse 11). This false teacher will use signs and wonders(verse9) to convince people. Those who fall into his trap will abandon the church and become apostate (verse 3).