And let me tell you that a favorite weapon of the devil in injuring God's people lies in fear. Very likely he draws them into something wrong first. He entices men, perhaps, into sin. That is one fault; and then he distracts and overthrows their conscience, and makes them judge God according to their own notion of what they deserve. On the other hand, he works also by falsehood, and makes even the believer stand in doubt of God. But his great weapon, in many ways, has always been terror. What is the weapon of God? What is His way of drawing men from Satan's power, and from evil of every kind? Faith—not fear; faith of God's grace and truth as revealed in His Son; not only in the person, but in the infinite work of the Savior. His person alone would not suffice. But, on the other hand, His work could not have sufficed without His person. I am not called to worship grace, but to worship Him who died upon the tree. It is an easy thing to slip away from the truth, and turn the work of the Lord into an object of idolatry, as we see in the Roman Catholic system, where the Lord's Supper is converted into one of the most hideous forms of idolatry. One can understand that men should get on by slow degrees to idolize a wafer. One might reason about it, of course, as being almost incredible, but there is the fact. Our forefathers all worshipped it; all Christendom Worshipped it once, with a very slight exception—a thin line of witnesses whom the Lord raised up, but who, for the most part, were spoken of as the vilest of the earth; and remember it was not merely bad men who persecuted them. The best of the Popes encouraged the persecution of the Waldensians. Through their vain traditions and their unholy prejudices they really played a most evil part in persecuting these true children of God who stood up against that corrupt woman—that great city Babylon.
As the enemy works by fear, the Lord does by faith. You see that is exactly what is brought out in these verses. What is the great object of hope in the words before us? It is the coming of the Lord. Behind His coming to take us up to heaven I see dark clouds and coals of fire. I see that the wrath of the Lord is, to break forth—for let us not forget the wrath of the Lamb. But, surely, we must not mix these things up together, and make a mere medley of grace and judgment. This is precisely what faith disentangles. Faith lays hold of Christ as the true object of the Christian's hope. Judgment is for unbelievers. Never allow the thought that a man is not responsible for his unbelief. Grace gives a man faith to believe; but a man is truly responsible for his unbelief. He knows very well that he is fighting against the Word of God.
Take, for instance, those men who say that there never was such a character as the Lord Jesus Christ; never anything so humble, so loving, so holy, so sublime. I admit freely and entirely that if the Lord Jesus was not the Only-begotten Son of God He was not holy or sublime. People who tell lies are not very admirable folk; and I say if Christ was not God He was not good, because it is impossible that One who was good should pretend to be other and better than He was. Now, the Lord Jesus Christ does constantly leave the impression upon the soul, indirectly as well as directly, that He was God. Take, for instance, these words — “Before Abraham was, I am.” Before Abraham came into being I am—not “I came into being.” He was the self-subsistent One before Abraham was in existence. Abraham was born; the Son of God never began to be the Son of God. He was born as man; the Word was made flesh, but He was the Only-begotten and the Eternal One before He ever tame into the world. That is what lies at the very bottom of all truth as to Christ; and, therefore, if persons object to this and try to overthrow it, just look at the insult to God. Think what God feels about the rejection of His infinite love—of the One that all heaven worships! Think of poor puny men pouring contempt upon the Lord!
I suppose there never was a time in the history of the world when so many respectable baptized persons rejected the Lord Jesus Christ. It is not so very long ago since a Bishop on the other side of the Tweed preached a sermon urging the Jews to become Christians; and a clever Jew replied to his Lordship, telling him that it was a very inopportune moment to ask the Jews to become Christians, when so many Christians were ceasing to be Christians. This was a very painful thing to hear; but I am afraid the Bishop could not well get out of the scrape. That is, he could not fairly deny the fact that many nominal Christians are abandoning nominal Christianity, particularly among educated men. I daresay the working men of England are rather disposed in that way too, at least they were some time ago. But on the opposite hand, the teachers, the barristers, the medical men, and the clergy have shown them a remarkably bad example. Why do I say this?
Just that we may, at any rate, have the truth before us and not be left in a foolish paradise of our own ideas; that we may truly realize the solemnity of the present moment, and that we may personally cleave to the truth with full purpose of heart. The truth is found inseparable from Christ.
That which the Holy Spirit brings up to meet the lie of Satan is the truth. Faith lays hold of the truth, and the truth as to this matter is that Christ Himself is coming to gather all that are His to meet Him on high, changed into His glorious likeness. The Apostle presents that hope to neutralize the fear of the “day.” The fear that the evil one was creating amongst the Thessalonians was that the day of the Lord was come. Perhaps many of you recollect the time when a person in America named Miller produced a fearful condition of things. He pretended to fix the date when the day of judgment was coming—the day of the Lord on the earth—and the consequence was that numbers of persons gave up their business, shut up their shops, abandoned their farms—they were chiefly persons in that class of life. The day came, but there was no such thing as the day of the Lord; and it was not merely that the faith of the great mass of the people was shaken to its center, or that a good many lost their businesses and were ruined, but numbers of them from the shock lost their reason. That, however, was not at all a new thing in the world. In the year woo there was a great time of alarm. Ignorant people thought that there was a fatal charm in the word thousand, and, according to the reckoning of the doctors, they were taught that the day of the Lord would be then. The day came and passed, and there was no appearance of the day of the Lord. Before that time, in the year 600, there had been another but perhaps milder shock of that kind of earthquake. These all passed away, and what was the effect? People got hardened more and more in unbelief. Why was this? Because it was not the truth. They had no right to talk about the day of the Lord in that way. They were puzzled and alarmed about the day of the Lord, because they did not realize the Apostle's motive of comfort in the coming of the Lord.
There is a true order of events. The Lord is coming-that is the first thing—coming to gather His own together; and, therefore, they need not trouble themselves about the alarming cry that the day of the Lord was there, for even, when it does come, it will not affect them. It will fall upon those that know not God, and those that obey not the gospel.
I may direct the attention of any of you who wish to understand the subject to the chapter before this. You will find that there is a most careful preparation for the due understanding of the day of the Lord. The Apostle presents truth to them in the previous chapter, showing that they were quite mistaken in their anticipations of the nature of that day, because they feared that it would fall upon the saints. Not at all. When that day comes, you will arrive with it. Who, then, are the people that will have trouble on that day? The people who are troubling you now—your persecutors. The day of the Lord is a day of trouble, not for God's people, but for God's enemies. They were all wrong in their thoughts, and he sets them right about the nature of the thing before he brings in the elaborate refutation in the second chapter.
I now turn to this, for it is very full of spiritual instruction for our souls. Observe, first of all, the careful preparation of the ground, and, secondly, the careful setting right of the heart. “We beseech you, brethren, by the coming of the Lord” —that is the motive for the sake of (ὑπέρ) which he entreats them. It is not the subject matter that troubled them. Here the Revisers of the New Testament have done harm, I think, because their version connects the coming of the Lord with the day of the Lord. They take it to be the subject of which he is speaking in the first verse; but it is not. It is the motive against the rumor, the fear of which had taken possession of and troubled them. Clearly the “day of the Lord” is the subject, and the coming of the Lord Jesus is the motive of comfort against the false representation and the fear that it was come. To confound the two is fatal; and I have no doubt it was that which led to the mistranslation, and to the day of the Lord being understood to be “at hand,” and not to have actually come, as the heterodox said.
I remember glancing at a book by a certain Regius Professor of Greek upon the Epistles to the Thessalonians. You would expect a Greek Professor of Oxford to understand Greek; but the extraordinary thing was that he continued the same mistranslation as is in the Authorized Version. There is no ground to doubt that the closing verb means “is present,” not “at hand:” an error alike of rendering and of doctrine, which would contradict the Apostle's own teaching in Rom. 13:12, that the day is at hand. Certainly the false teachers did not anticipate what the Apostle taught; they pretended to have his authority for saying that the day was come, to the alarm of the Thessalonians. There is no just reason for questioning the regular sense. What is now admitted by every Greek scholar worth consulting eluded the Professor. How do you account for that? People go to the New Testament with their own ideas of what it ought to be, instead of to receive what God says. This is the way that people do when they rise up against the plainest truths that are in the Bible. It is because their minds are preoccupied. They have got a certain pre-conceived idea, and because of this they make the greatest blunders. Remember I do not say that the person who is addressing you is not liable to as great a blunder. I am sure we all are if we go to the Bible in that spirit. You will not, therefore, suppose I mean to speak disrespectfully of any person, but to press positive facts. We ought to, have far more homage for the truth than for persons. I do not understand a man writing to keep back the truth. It may seem a wonderful thing to find a person who has the just reputation of being a scholar misinterpreting plain Greek. But he did so; and it was entirely owing to the fact that he had got a system in his mind which falsified his views of Scripture and the translation of Scripture. The only way in which a man can get rid of that is when, by grace delivered from prejudice, he looks to the Lord and approaches Scripture with the desire to learn what God says.
The Apostle, having given the motive of comfort why they should not be agitated about this report which had so alarmed them, lets them know that the people who had spread that report were no better than they should be, because they had actually given out a letter of their own as if it were a letter of the Apostle's. You must not suppose that it is his First Epistle they had misinterpreted. What he says is— “That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us.” He does not say it was his letter. If he had referred to the first epistle, he would have said, the letter from us. He would have referred to it as a well-known letter. If he had referred to it vaguely, it might have been any letter, but he would not have said “as from us,” but ours. What he meant was that it pretended to be what it was not. The worst morality is shown particularly in implying what is not true was inspired. Forging is a great sin. It was not merely that they pretended to a revelation, or to a word spoken in the assembly, but they really pretended it was Paul's letter. When the truth is lost, how often men cease to be truthful!
And now the Apostle goes into the facts of evil, which must precede the day which is to judge them. He says— “Let no man deceive you by any means; for [that day shall not come] except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition.” I do not recollect the Revised Version, but I have no doubt you will find it is “the falling away,” which is the regular word for the apostasy. It is not merely an indeterminate expression— “a” falling, as in the Authorized Version. Next, the man of sin. The apostasy referred to what was already known among the Christians and even among the Jews. In the eleventh of Daniel we hear of a king that should do according to his own will, that was to come by-and-bye; and this king is described in very characteristic coloring. He rejects false gods, he refuses his father's god, he would not have what is called the desire of Israel, that is, the Messiah; and he rejects the true God. Yet, for all that, he falls a victim to a god of his own device. Like Jeroboam, he sets up a new religion in order to accomplish political ends. It is not merely an ambitious prelate who sets himself up—this would be bad enough—but it is one who claims the honor due to God. He makes no hypocritical pretense to be a servant of His servants. He claims for himself supreme and exclusive divine worship in the temple of God.
I think that it is unjust to say that this has ever yet been realized to the full. I have as bad an opinion of Popery, I suppose, as anybody here; but I do not believe that Popery is the apostasy. The apostasy is a great deal more, and a great deal worse. I believe that a man might be saved who is a Roman Catholic; I believe, in the midst of the terrible corruption and superstition of the Romish Church, there is enough of the word of God read, enough of Christ, for a poor soul to lay hold of the great truth of a Divine Person who became man and died for sinners. Hence, I believe that there have been not only Roman Catholic laymen, but Roman Catholic priests saved, and, what is more, Roman Catholic Popes. I believe Pope Leo was a good man (although he was ambitious), as also Pope Gregory the First. Alas, Gregory the Seventh was a very different man. I only refer to these as two occurring to me that seem to have shown a fear of God and a love of His truth in the midst of abounding darkness and superstition. We must not allow ourselves to be carried away too strongly by controversy. We must hear in mind that there are persons who may be objects of divine grace under most untoward circumstances. I can conceive of a Roman Catholic being saved, but who can conceive of a Unitarian being saved? The latter denies the divinity and atonement of Christ. Indeed, anyone who denies even the true humanity of the Lord is worse than a Roman Catholic. The falling away, or apostasy means the rejection of all revealed truth.
(Continued)
(To be continued)