Pastor Joel Webbin and Dr. Gary DeMar challenge the dispensational view of "the man of lawlessness," arguing it refers to first-century events surrounding Jerusalem's destruction in AD 70 rather than a future tribulation. DeMar identifies the Roman Empire as the historical restrainer and critiques pre-millennialism for assuming a losing church, advocating instead for post-millennialism where Christianity actively shapes society. He asserts that all ideologies possess an eschatology and promotes his book Last Day's Madness, emphasizing that the Founding Fathers operated within a Christian worldview essential to countering materialistic ideologies today. [Automatically generated summary]
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Paul's Cryptic Revelation00:14:48
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Hi, welcome to another episode of Theology Applied.
I am your host, Pastor Joel Webbin with Right Response Ministries.
Today I am joined again by Gary DeMar from American Vision, and we focus our attention this time on the man of lawlessness.
This is a phrase talking about a certain individual or perhaps an entity that's described in 2 Thessalonians 2, the man of lawlessness.
This is used by a lot of dispensational premillennials to point towards some future individual during some time of tribulation and these kinds of things.
But Gary DeMar has a different opinion on the matter.
Let's go ahead and tune in and find out.
Big news.
Really big news.
Our next Right Response Conference is in the works.
We've got a number of things already lined up and organized.
This is what we've got so far.
The whole conference, three days long on post millennialism and theonomy.
And the speakers Dr. James White, Dr. Joseph Boot, Gary DeMar, and of course, yours truly, Pastor Joel Webbin.
We've got a great lineup.
We've got great topics.
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Applying God's Word to every aspect of life.
This is Theology Applied.
Do you want to talk about the man of lawlessness?
Do you have a little bit of time or you want to maybe do it in a minute?
Yeah, we'll do the man of lawlessness.
All right, so let's go ahead and look at this is going to be what?
First, Second Timothy?
Second Thessalonians.
Second Thessalonians 2.
Okay.
I'm having to type.
2 Thessalonians 2.
Go ahead.
And it says here, now we request you, brethren, with regard to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, I believe this coming is the same coming that Jesus talks about in Matthew chapter 24 coming as lightning on the clouds, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Then he talks about coming on the clouds of heaven, et cetera.
This isn't the second coming, it isn't a rapture.
And I'll try to explain this in a little bit.
In regard to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our synagoging together with him or to him.
Again, what is this?
I think it goes back to Matthew chapter 24, verse 31.
And there's an interesting passage in John, if I can remember where this is John 11.
John 11.
This is, again, one of these things.
This is what Jim Jordan calls the weird.
You know, something just kind of thrown in there, and you just don't really know what is going on here.
So, John chapter 11, verse 47 says, Therefore, the chief priests and the Pharisees convened a council and were saying, What are we doing?
For this man is performing many signs.
If we let him go on like this, all men will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.
But a certain one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, You know nothing at all, nor do you take into account that it is expedient for you that one man should die for the people and that the whole nation should not perish.
Now, Caiaphas was probably thinking here, we get rid of this guy and the nation will be saved.
Right.
But then it goes, Now, this he did not say on his own initiative.
So this must have been something.
That the Holy Spirit put into him as a prophetic announcement that he had no idea what in the world he was talking about.
But being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the nation.
Again, not what he thought.
Right.
And not for the nation only, but that he might also gather together, that he might synagogue together into one the children of God who are scattered abroad.
And what is described here is that.
The gospel went out to the entire Roman Empire and God was synagoguing, gathering people together, the Jews from around the Roman world.
The gospel goes into all the world.
This is what Jesus says in Matthew 24, verse 14, goes through the whole oikumeni to every creature under heaven, as Paul writes in Colossians 1 23.
Paul says to all the nations in 1 Timothy 3 and Romans 16.
This gathering together, and at the same time as this gathering together of the Jews takes place, it's the gathering together of the Gentiles taking place.
And also, I think, related to all these Old Testament saints, this whole gathering, this synagoguing together of one new people in Christ.
And so, this is what is being dealt with here.
This isn't talking about the rapture of the church, it isn't even talking about the second coming.
It's in verse 2 that you may not be quickly shaken from your composure or be disturbed.
Either by a spirit or a message or a letter, as if from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come.
Now, if this refers either to the rapture, which it doesn't, or the second coming, which it doesn't, but a lot of people who take this passage believe that it does, then why in the world would they have thought that they had gotten a letter from Paul that this had taken place already?
How could he have written the letter if he was?
In the rapture, if this was the second coming, it makes no sense.
So, this has got to be talking about something that was taking place in their day and that the Lord has come.
And it was also something taking place in their day and that was local.
Yeah, it was within the empire.
And so, this is my speculation.
They had gotten, they knew that Jerusalem was going to be destroyed, they knew there was this judgment coming, they knew it was going to take place before their generation passed away.
They knew that there were fellow Christians who were living in Jerusalem.
That's why, you know, you get Jesus says in Matthew chapter 23 when you see these things happen, see the abomination of desolation sitting in the place where it ought not to be, head for the hills.
You have Luke and Luke 21 says, when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies.
And so maybe they thought at this particular period of time that this had already happened and they had not gotten any news about what happened.
What happened?
Did they make it outside the city?
Did the Romans come in and do all of this?
They didn't know.
And so, this isn't talking about the second coming of Christ because why in the world would they have heard this from Paul or seemingly gotten a letter from Paul that this had taken place?
Because he would have been taken to heaven in a rapture or the second coming.
Now, then it goes on, it says, 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.
And so, this wasn't going to take place until this man of lawlessness.
Appears, whoever he might be.
And I don't know, there's all kinds of speculation of who the man of lawlessness was.
Some believe he had something to do with the temple, that he was a high priest, it was a corrupt high priest, and so forth and so on.
That's kind of what it sounds like, yeah.
Yeah.
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.
By taking his seat in the temple, he essentially says, I'm the guy right now.
I'm the one in control of all this.
Keep this in mind that the temple was being rebuilt and it was a spectacular temple.
And the temple was being dedicated in AD 64.
And I think this is exactly what Peter was talking about in 2 Peter chapter 3, talking about scoffers.
The scoffers were saying, Hey, yeah, your Jesus talked about that he was.
That he was going to come within a generation and destroy the temple.
And look at this glorious temple that we have here.
It's still standing, more glorious than ever and ever and ever and ever.
Jesus is a fraud.
And so this man of lawlessness takes his seat in the temple, essentially blaspheming that Jesus was a fraud.
He wasn't the Savior.
He wasn't who he said he was.
He was a false prophet and so forth and so on.
Now, again, I'm speculating because Paul isn't saying this.
I'm just trying to put a couple of things together.
And particularly, and I think you're probably about to do this, but if you're not, So, this man could be a high priest, but it's associated with the temple.
This is not a man, number one, this is not about the second coming.
It's not something that's far off in the distance.
This is something that's soon.
And it's not a man in the church.
It's not the man of lawlessness in the church.
It's the man of lawlessness in the temple.
Right?
Now, keep in mind that throughout the Reformation era, they took the temple here as being the church.
Right.
And I get that.
Yeah, go ahead.
The papacy was the antichrist.
And they futurized this.
We had a little bit of that talk last time I had you come on the show.
And I love the reformers, but I completely understand what you're saying in the sense that this is talking about, it seems as though it's talking about Judaism.
Yeah, I believe so.
And there is a, I had an appendix in an earlier edition of Last Day's Madness by a man who finished John Lightfoot's commentary on the New Testament.
John Lightfoot wrote up until, I think, 1 Corinthians, I think that's as far as he gets.
And this German came along, German Bible expositor came along and finished it.
And I could read enough Latin to figure out that what this guy was writing about 2 Thessalonians 2 was exactly what I was describing here.
So I had a fellow translate 2 Thessalonians 2, and that is exactly what this guy was saying that this apostasy that was taking place was taking place in the first century.
John talks about the apostasy that was taking place.
There were those who were of us, who were among us, who really were not of us, ended up leaving, departing.
Paul talks about savage wolves who come into the church.
There was a small apostasy leading up to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70.
This is probably what John is talking about the synagogue of Satan.
These were people who claimed to be Jews and be believers, but they really weren't.
They abandoned Christ.
And then you get to verse 5.
Do you not remember that while I was still with you, I was telling you these things?
Now, verse 6 and you know what restrains him now.
So that in his time he may be revealed.
So, whoever this guy was, whoever the man of lawlessness was, he was alive in Paul's day because he was being restrained in Paul's day.
Something's holding him back.
Something is holding him back.
And again, what is it that's holding him back?
We don't know.
Some people speculate it was the Roman Empire that was holding him back because if you read through the book of Acts, somebody, what you ought to do, my pastor is going through the book of Acts, he's just about finished with it.
And you read the book of Acts.
And the Romans are not the bad guys.
There were a couple, I mean, Paul was punished, et cetera, in Acts chapter 16.
But for the most part, Christians were left alone by the Roman government.
The little thing that was going on under Gallio, he essentially protected Paul.
He said, Look, I'm not getting involved in your disputes.
The Romans saved Paul when a message had come, I think, from Paul's nephew that there was a plot to kill.
The Apostle Paul.
So the bad guys in the book of Acts are the Jews.
And if you look at 2 Corinthians chapter 11, Paul denounces his own countrymen.
They were the ones who almost stoned him to death, beat him with lashes, you know, 39 lashes and so forth.
So the Roman Empire kept the Jews from killing Christians.
I mean, Paul, well, he wasn't the Apostle Paul, but Saul.
Accomplished a little bit of this in Acts chapter 7 when he killed Stephen, and in Acts chapter 8, he was taking people out of their homes and persecuting them and so forth.
But the Roman government later stepped in and stopped all this.
Well, if it hadn't been the will of God, I mean, it seems like Pilate would have stopped them from killing Jesus.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So look, so it says here, and you know what restrains him now, so that in his time he may be revealed.
For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work.
Only he who now restrains will do so until he is taken out of the way.
So we don't even have to know who the man of lawlessness is or was.
We do know that he was alive in Paul's day.
And we know that the temple was still standing in Paul's day.
And so this isn't describing a rebuilt temple.
This is talking about the temple that was still in Jerusalem.
And it's, I think, one of the reasons why this is somewhat cryptic to us is because Paul in this letter talks about.
Jesus Wins Despite Losing Church00:06:40
He had talked about this already with them.
So they had already had some background knowledge of this before he wrote this.
So he's kind of updating them with maybe some more details because maybe they, you know, he found out that a message had gotten to them that the day of the Lord, that is the destruction of Jerusalem, had already come.
So, anyway, that's what I believe the second that the man of lawlessness is it was alive in Paul's day, had something to do with the temple.
And he was judged, and the temple was judged as well.
And I have two chapters on this, much, much more detailed than this, in my book, Last Day's Madness, where I go through pretty extensive detail on 2 Thessalonians 2 and the man of lawlessness.
Great.
Well, that's really helpful, Gary.
Thank you so much.
So let's go ahead and land the plane now.
I want to give you the final word with just the man of lawlessness, with the rapture, with eschatology, with post millennialism, preterism, the whole nine yards.
What.
What do you think, Christians who are looking into these things?
Like, what does the Bible say about the end?
What does the Bible say about my responsibility and what I should be doing now?
What would be maybe a final, even pastoral word to people?
And this is why I got involved in all this.
In fact, I was down in Mexico last month.
I spent about five days down in Mexico speaking to pastors down there.
And I explained to them the fellow who wanted me to come down there.
Wanted me to deal with eschatology.
And I said, You sure?
And he says, Yes, I want you to deal with eschatology.
And I explained to these men that the reason I got involved in the whole eschatological thing was because of the worldview material.
The first book I wrote, first series of books I wrote, was God and Government.
It was a three volume work on God and Government.
Not God and politics, but God and Government.
That God's government is over everything.
And he has established self government, family government, church government, and civil government.
We are to apply the Bible to every area of life.
Look, this world does not belong to the devil.
And if you know, they say, well, what about that passage in 2 Corinthians 4 where it talks about Satan is the God of this world?
No, Satan is the God of this age.
And the age is that those who have, you know, rejected Jesus as the promised Messiah in essence took on Satan as their God.
There's no neutrality.
You got either one God or another God.
Right.
And so I told them that this eschatology thing has to be settled because it's a hindrance to people.
Because every time they see something bad happen, they say, Oh, it's got to be the end of the world.
Oh, there's nothing we can do about it.
This has all been foretold in the Bible.
And as a result of that, I think that's one of the reasons why we're in the mess we're in today.
I think so.
So, eschatology everybody has an eschatology.
This is another thing I tell people everybody has an eschatology.
Every atheist has an eschatology.
Scientists.
Everybody, Islam has an eschatology.
You can't get away from an eschatology.
It's all there.
Liberalism has an eschatology.
That's why they're on the winning side in so many ways.
Well, that's funny.
Real quick, my thought on that, though, your radical, I don't know about liberalism in general, but your radical leftists like AOC and people like that, they have an eschatology, the one they actually believe, and then they have a second eschatology, which is the one they say when the camera's on.
So the spoken eschatology is the world's going to end in 12 years because of the climate.
But what they actually believe is.
Post millennial, the world's going to go on for a very long time and we're going to win, yeah.
And they're and see, the way they're going to win is they're going to control the future, and that's what they want.
And they say, Give us more money, we can handle this world better than you can.
Islam has an eschatology, yeah.
The Islamists believe they are on the winning side, right?
Now, Christians say, Well, we're on the winning side too, and that's the rapture.
Oh, okay, all right, that's the kind of an interesting way to say you're on the winning side, and in one respect, I guess that's the case, yeah.
Right.
Yeah, you're going to be raptured and you're going to be winning.
But is that what does the Bible teach that?
I don't believe it does.
Right.
The little phrase that I've been using lately, a few people have told me they've said that I think that's helpful, is I think the difference between your dispensational pre mill versus a post millennial eschatology is to be fair and to not straw man either side.
To be fair, both sides believe that Jesus wins, that Jesus is victorious.
I think the difference is that the dispensational pre millennial believes that Jesus wins despite a losing church.
And the post millennial believes that Jesus wins through a militant and triumphant church.
How does Jesus win?
He wins in both scenarios, but how does he win?
R.J. Rush Dooney, in his book, The Mythology of Science, I wish I could grab a hold of it real quick and read it, but he essentially said this God is in control and sovereign and everything, but he put us down here, and it's hard, it's difficult.
We're not God.
We're limited.
We're going to fail in our life.
We're going to die.
All of these types of things.
But if God really wanted to really get us out of here, why doesn't He just save us at the time that we've come to Christ?
Why has He left us here for nearly 2,000 years?
To do what?
To wait for the rapture to take us out of here or wait for the second coming?
I don't believe so.
This is God's world.
Satan is not in control of this world.
In essence, we are proxies of what God wants us to do.
God wants us to apply his word to every area of life.
That was always the thing that was supposed to take place.
And why do we think that that has changed?
It's more difficult now, but I think that's just the nature of what it means to be a Christian in a world that's limited and.
And in essence, sinful as well.
God left us here to apply His word in every area of life and told us to get busy doing that.
Founding Fathers Were Christian00:05:35
Amen.
And I think having the right view of the future has helped me tremendously.
So there's not a hindrance in my way.
And also having a better view, and I'm not there yet, I'm still working on it, but having a better view of the past, and especially the recent past with America, right?
You know, that you're told, you know, so going through like some of the history conferences and things that like Doug Wilson and guys have put on, Stephen Wilkins, I believe is one of the things.
Yeah, it has been so helpful to hear, like, okay, maybe not all the founders were deist.
And maybe the reason why the history that you've read said they were all deist is because the history books have been written by atheists and they don't want you to think that they were Christian.
The winners write the history books.
Right, right.
I have a brand new book coming out called The Case for America's Christian Heritage.
Good.
Praise God.
The final touches on it this weekend.
I'm just waiting for the cover to come back.
And then I got some tinkering to do with a conclusion.
Where can people get that?
Because I want to send people.
I think that anything that I do is you can get it American.
Vision.org.
I got Last Day's Madness.
Is Jesus coming soon?
Wars and Rumors of Wars.
I have a book that I did called The Case from, let's see, it's called, oh, no, it's in my mind.
America's Christian History, The Untold Story, which we're offering right now.
We've republished a book called The Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States.
But I wanted to do something that was kind of a jazzy, Four color book that you could give to friends, lots of images in it, and so forth, and so on, and so forth.
It's not a technical book, deals with original source documents.
And it deals with a mixture of Enlightenment philosophy and Christianity.
And Enlightenment philosophy infected some aspects of Christianity, but Christianity tempered the full effect of the Enlightenment.
And remember, the Enlightenment grew up out of a Christian worldview, made it all possible.
But the Enlightenment arose in the period of a Christian worldview before Darwinism came along in 1859.
So, we are now living with essentially the full orb, full court press of an Enlightenment philosophy no longer grounded in some Christian ideals.
I mean, John Adams, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, even Thomas Jefferson were living within the context of a Christian worldview.
I mean, Thomas Jefferson took the Gospels and cut out all the miracles and so forth and so on on.
He couldn't extract himself from the morals of Jesus.
You can't account for morality in a Darwinian world.
Yeah, he was, from what I've heard, even today, I was listening to some guys saying he's a Unitarian, Jefferson, but then people will say that George Washington is a deist.
But then you can find a deist, you have to define what is a deist.
In those days, it would have been somebody who denied the divinity of Christ and denied special revelation.
That they did not believe in God.
Yeah, deist was more of God.
Yeah, there was God.
They believed in God.
But they denied the Trinity.
They denied the divinity of the Trinity.
Unitarians denied the Trinity.
Of course, Thomas Jefferson did too.
John Adams.
John Adams, you go back and forth with John Adams.
He was a very young man.
He was very orthodox in his theology.
And all the way up until one of his Thanksgiving proclamations reads like it's a Trinitarian perspective.
But what you find here is that the The founders, a deist was somebody who believed that God created the world and he abandoned the world.
Right.
And he's no longer, but if you read the Declaration of Independence, that Thomas Jefferson had a lot to say about it, God is the one who is the judge of the world.
I mean, wait a minute, how can you say that?
If you're a deist and you don't believe that God's involved in the world, how can you say that he is, in fact, the judge of the world?
We are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights.
And so forth.
So you're right.
You have to define these terms very precisely.
And my only point was to say that, from my understanding of how it's defined, George Washington would not be a deist.
He, in some of his letters, even affirmed, I mean, he was sent regularly, people would send him sermons from pastors and, like, oh, George Washington, would you read this sermon?
And he would respond, say, I read this sermon and I approve of its evangelical doctrine.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, you got Benjamin Franklin who stood up at the Constitutional Convention and gave this, you know, God governs in the affairs of men.
And how could a sparrow fall to the ground without his knowledge and so forth and so on?
I mean, that is not a deistic statement.
These guys, they all lived within the context of a Christian world.
And this is why I believe what you're finding today in our culture is an attack on Christianity.
Because Christianity is the last bastion.
Against a full orbed materialistic worldview that they're trying to push on us from around the world.
Christianity As Moral Bastion00:00:53
This is what they want.
They got to get Christianity out of the way because Christianity has a transcendental moral foundational complex that keeps other people's morality in check.
Right.
Agreed.
Well, so we need to have an accurate view of the past and we need to have a biblical view of the future.
And whatever we do, even on the things that we disagree on, we need to obey all of Christ, all of his commandments in every avenue of life.
Amen?
Right.
I agree.
All right.
Gary, thanks so much for coming on the show.
Really appreciate it.
Thank you, Joel.
Appreciate it.
Thanks so much for listening.
But, real quick, before you go, do us a small favor take a moment and leave us a five star review if you enjoyed the show.
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