 You're listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. To support this podcast, visit nakedbiblepodcast.com and click on the support link in the upper right-hand corner. If you're new to the podcast and Dr. Heiser's approach to the Bible, click on newstarthere at nakedbiblepodcast.com. Welcome to the Naked Bible Podcast, Episode 224, The Falling Away and The Restrainer. I'm the layman, Trey Strickland, and he's a scholar. Dr. Michael Heiser, hey Mike, how are you doing? Pretty good. Busy as usual. Anything else going on in Mike's world? Oh, I just handed in the manuscript for the demons book. That'll be a companion volume to the angels book. I have no idea when the demons book will be available on Amazon, but the angels one, of course, is September. Yeah, that'll be here before you know it. And the title against angels and demons? Well, the one book will be angels, something like what the Bible really says about the heavenly host. And the other one is going to be something like demons or what the Bible really says about evil spirits or something like that. I'm not quite sure what they've decided on a subtitle, but there'll be separate books. They'll be sold at different times, but eventually they'll get married and you'll be able to get them. I'm sure Amazon will bundle them somehow, but that's a ways away. Awesome. And of course, it'll be in kindle format and all that good stuff. Yeah, that's what Lexham is prone to do, so that's what they'll be doing. Well, Mike, what in the world are we talking about today about the falling away in the Restrainer? What's going on? Yeah, but believe it or not, we're actually going to tread into the realm of end times stuff, that favorite subject of mine. All this that we're going to talk about today is in 2 Thessalonians 2. We have in part of the chapter, there's this phenomenon, I guess you could say it, of the falling away. The Greek word is the apostasia. And then that's followed up by talk about a Restrainer. And both of these items are connected to the day of the Lord and possibly other end times events. So again, let it never be said that Mike never does eschatology. I've just been asked about this a couple of times and I put it on my list of topics. So here we are. Let's just read 2 Thessalonians 2. We'll read the first few verses just to get us in here. Again, I'm reading from ESV. We read this at the beginning of the chapter, verse 1. Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered 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. And isn't that the whole other subject? People sort of masquerading as Paul writing letters. So don't be misled by a letter seeming to be from us to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. Let no one deceive you in any way for that day will not come unless the, and here we go, the apostasia, ESV translates it as rebellion. 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. We'll stop there with the first four verses. So the easy part here is the man of lawlessness is clearly the beast or the antichrist because you keep reading in the chapter, you hit verses 8 through 10. And those verses mirror very closely the book of Revelation's content about the beast, the antichrist and his defeat by the returning Jesus. So later on in verses 8 through 10 of the same chapter here, 2 Thessalonians 2, we read this. Then the lawless one will be revealed whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of his mouth and bring to nothing by the appearance of his coming, the Lord's return. The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing because they refuse to love the truth and to be saved. So again, if you're familiar with the whole Armageddon scene in the book of Revelation, it's very close here to 2 Thessalonians 2, so it's no mystery that the man of lawlessness is this figure, the beast or the antichrist. So that's the easy part. The difficult part where we want to camp on is what is the apostasia? Some translations have falling away. ESV, of course, has rebellion, but what is the apostasia? And there's a variety of semantic nuances that we're going to be talking about in relation to this today. If you looked up apostasia in a good Greek lexicon like B-Dag, Bauer, Donker, Arten Gingrich, you would get English glosses like defiance, rebellion, abandonment, breach of faith, like a betrayal. All of those are legitimate ways to translate apostasia and they're all sort of semantically related, but they have little nuances as well. Now in the New Testament, this is part of the difficulty. In the New Testament, this term is only used twice. Here in this passage, 2 Thessalonians 2, in verse 3, and then Acts 21, 21, and I might as well read that, that verse reads, and they have been told about you that you teach all the Jews, this is somebody's talking about Paul, that he teaches all the Jews who are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses. The word forsake there is this word apostasia. To forsake Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children or walk according to our customs. Again, it's this idea of abandonment or defying something. Since it's a religious issue, breach of faith is again a possible nuance here. Really all four of these semantic options, defiance, rebellion, abandonment, breach of faith, i.e. betrayal, they're all operable really in Acts 21, 21, and really 2 Thessalonians 2, 3. We're going to go through some other details, then I'm going to return to how some of that discussion might help us understand this term itself. We sort of have to set it up. Before we jump in though, I do want to eliminate one option. For sure, the apostasia is not the rapture. 2 Thessalonians 2, 1 would actually refer to that if indeed there is a rapture. Again, it depends how you read verses 1 and 2. Verses 1 and 2 can be read to either refer to two different events or the same event in two different ways. Let me just read verses 1 and 2 again. Let's just do verses 1 and 2. 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 that seems to be from us to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. Now the question is, are the phrases coming of the Lord Jesus Christ are being gathered together to him and day of the Lord? Do they refer to one event in different ways or do we have a situation where the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and the being gathered, is that the rapture and then that's followed by the day of the Lord? So you could read these passages or these two verses either way, two events or one. But if you are a person who believes the rapture, you're naturally going to go for the two because then you have the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ are being gathered together and people who would opt for the rapture position are going to say, well that's like 1 Thessalonians 4, we're caught up in the air. So that would mean we have the rapture mentioned in verse 1 and then the day of the Lord in verse 2. Well if that's your take then certainly the apostasia that follows in verse 3 cannot be the rapture. Now I mention this because believe it or not there are people out there whose names we would know, you know, Bible teachers who say that this apostasia term should be rendered as falling away and then they try to connect that to a rapture. It's a little silly because your real rapture ammunition would be in verse 1 and the apostasia again would be something different. So let's just, let's wipe that one off the table because it's incoherent in terms of verse 1 and, you know, get into our own subject matter here. So what can we really say about the apostasia? There's no way to be certain about some things, hence the debate among scholars. There are some interpretive hurdles for sure. Let's just sort of pick it apart. So in the phrase, unless the apostasia comes first, okay, unless the rebellion against ESV, I'm just going to use the word apostasia because I don't want to bias anyone with the translation choice here. So in the phrase, unless the apostasia comes first and the man of lawlessness is revealed, here's the question. Is the apostasia a separate event from the revealing of the man of lawlessness? Or are they simultaneous things and therefore basically the same event? Now some of you might not even realize that that's a question. But again, if you look this up, this passage up in an academic commentary, you're going to see that it really is a question. You know, do we have even in this verse, unless the apostasia comes first and then the man of lawlessness is revealed, is that one event or two? You know, we have the same question that you could ask back in verse one, being asked here in verse three. It might seem obvious if you're reading English, that we have two events here, but the passage wasn't written in English. It's also written by Paul, whose Greek has a typical pattern. I'm using my words carefully here. Paul has a typical pattern when conveying a sequence of events that he doesn't use here. We'll get to why that doesn't nail the door completely. But Paul has a typical way of speaking or writing in Greek when he wants to convey a sequence of events. Separate events, again, produces a scenario where the apostasia is one thing and then you have the revealing of this one individual. If you combine the two, though, then the statement is to be read as the apostasia being the behavior or defection of more than one. I mean, there are different ways to chop this up and keep it together and so on and so forth. Let me just read a little section from Weima's commentary on 2 Thessalonians. It gives you the flavor of how scholars sort of talk about this. He writes, there is some confusion about the precise relationship of these two events. Are they sequential or simultaneous? Placing the adverb first after the noun apostasia and before the reference to the man of lawlessness and presenting two parallel clauses with a separate verb for each event, these features have convinced some that we have the apostasy first and then after this the man of lawlessness is revealed, a chronology. However, Weima writes, Paul does not include the expected then, the word for then in Greek is which he uses in 1 Corinthians 1546. Might as well just read that quickly. But it is not the spiritual at his first but the natural and then the spiritual. So his point is that when Paul wants to denote clearly a sequence, he'll use the word epita. That's kind of a typical pattern to say this, then that. But that isn't present here in 2 Thessalonians 2. Or Paul might use the word second in 1 Corinthians 12-28. He does this. God has appointed in the church first apostles, second to prophets, third. He'll number things when he wants to convey a sequence. Again, Weima's point here is that this is how Paul typically gives us a chronology, but it doesn't do that here. Back to his quotation here. These features again have led the vast majority of commentators to, you know, in a certain direction. That the coming of the apostasy, the apostasia and the revealing of the man of lawlessness are simultaneous. That's where the majority of scholars are because, again, follow the reasoning that if Paul didn't want these two things to be viewed simultaneously, he would have said this and then they use the word then or he would have numbered things. Okay. So most scholars think that the apostasia and the revealing of the man of lawlessness are simultaneous and they're really, you know, they're kind of inseparable in that way. They're simultaneous events and they ought not to be distinguished really sharply from each other. So you realize where people could go with this. They could define the apostasia as the revelation of who the Antichrist is, that that's the apostasy. The revelation of the Antichrist is the apostasy, the apostasia. Again, if you view the events simultaneously, that's the direction you go. Now, Weimah, again, says, these grounds for doing this, though suggestive, are nevertheless not weighty. So Weimah's going to disagree with that. Since it is always dangerous to draw too much from an argument from silence, in other words, what Paul did not say, words that Paul doesn't use, as well as the fact that the apostle occasionally begins with a reference to the adverb first without continuing the series with a then, a next, or a second. And he gives a few verse references where Paul does give a sequence of events and he doesn't have this typical, you know, patterning. Weimah says, the reality that Paul is not clear about the precise relationship of the two events, you know, that is the case. That's what we're dealing with here. The grammar is ultimately ambiguous. Now, Weimah goes on to cite Lightfoot, who is a very famous New Testament scholar in this regard. And Lightfoot says this, the apostle, i.e. Paul, is less concerned in verses three to 12, with laying out a specific timetable for these eschatological happenings, than he is with correcting the false claim about the day of the Lord, and thereby comforting his Thessalonian readers. Whatever the precise relationship between the coming of the apostasy and the manifestation of the man of lawlessness, the church in Thessalonica knows that these two events must occur first, that is, before the day of the Lord can come. That's the end of the Weimah section and the end of Lightfoot. Now, so you got two options, either the apostasia and the unveiling, the revealing of the man of lawlessness, are simultaneous and essentially the same thing, or two sides of the same coin, or they're two separate events. Now, I would agree that Paul really isn't concerned here. I think Lightfoot's point is well taken. Paul is not concerned with giving a specific timeline in verses three through 12 for all of the things that are going to happen in their proper order. He's really only concerned with telling the Thessalonians that, look, there's some things that are going to happen before the day of the Lord comes. When you hear somebody, even if it's some kind of phony letter that people claim is from us, that the day of the Lord has already come, don't believe it. All Paul is really trying to correct is that, look, the day of the Lord has not come. There are things that need to happen first. Here's a grocery list, but he's not concerned about laying out a specific timetable. I think that's coherent. Really, the best support for either view, again, I think we've sort of hit on that, how you could look at these two things, the two events are one. I think if you're going to go with two related but distinct events, you have the apostasy and the revealing. Well, the revealing is one person, this man of lawlessness, and the former just seems to be corporate. The context seems to suggest that the apostasy is more than the behavior and defection of one character because, again, he's talking about things that have to happen before the day of the Lord that affect masses of people because the day of the Lord is going to affect lots of people. I can't see restricting the apostasy to only one person here. There are some who are going to point out, for instance, if you look at verse four, the beginning of verse four, let me just read verse three and then hit verse four. Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come unless the apostasy 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 takes his seat in the temple proclaiming himself to be God. They would say, look, look what that guy does. That guy forsakes the faith. That guy is an apostate. If verse four describes the apostate who is the man of lawlessness, then the apostasia and the revealing of the man of lawlessness must be the same thing. People are going to argue that. But again, it just seems to me that while you could go either direction, there's nothing that clearly rules out one or the other. I favor the view that we have two related events here, but they are distinct events. I'll admit there's no way to be 100% sure. But I favor the idea of two separate events, not simultaneous events, because I think 2 Thessalonians 2 verse three and really more in the passage may reference what Jesus taught in Matthew 24, 10 through 14. Let me just read that because it's a sound somewhat familiar here. So in Matthew 24, verse 10, we read, 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. But the one who endures to the end will be saved, and this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come. Jesus is clearly referring to the day of the Lord, the end will come, the kingdom reaches its final form, and then we have there's a judgment context, there's a kingdom context here. So if he's talking about the same thing Paul is, and you notice that in that Matthew passage, there are similar vocabulary. So I'm willing to bet that there's some relationship here between Matthew 24, 10 through 14, and 2 Thessalonians 2. And if there is, then the apostasia refers to something that happens with respect to lots of people. It's a mass event. It's a corporate event. It's not just one guy. So that's why I sort of veer away from the notion that the apostasia and the unveiling of the man of sin are the same thing. Again, I'm admitting again that we can't be 100% sure that they're not the same thing. But I think, again, the weight of what's in the passage, again, because Paul's trying to correct a problem that applies to masses of people. Again, Paul's teaching about the day of the Lord. So I think that favors looking at the apostasia as a kind of mass corporate thing, whatever it is. And then I think the relationship to Matthew 24 argues for that as well. Now, again, it's not perfect. Let's just, again, try to be honest here. If you look at Matthew 24, someone could ask whether it takes us in a different direction. So on the surface, it kind of seems obvious that Matthew 24, 10 through 14, with its description of people, again, corporate, going astray, precedes the abomination of desolation event. That seems kind of obvious because you have verses 10 through 14, and then verses 15 and 16, you get the abomination of desolation, which is obviously something that's described in 2 Thessalonians 2 when the man of sin exalts himself above every God and goes into the temple and declares himself to be God. Okay, we get that. So you've got a chain of events there. That would seem, again, to be a template for two separate events, and that's my view, there's two separate events, but there's an ambiguity there too. But let's read Matthew 24, 10 through 16 with the abomination part included, and you'll see what I mean here, that it's still kind of ambiguous. So I'm trying to be fair to the other side here. So Matthew 24, 10, 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, and the one who endures to the end will be saved, and this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations. And then the end will come. So when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel standing in the holy place, let the reader understand, then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. So you could read the, so when you see the abomination, you know that all this other stuff is the abomination. Again, I'm just trying to argue how the other side would argue to try to make the apostatia and the abomination the same thing. They would take the so when terminology, and that's a legitimate translation of what's in the Greek, and say, look, they're the same thing. Again, I'm just not buying it again, because it's very clear whether we're in Matthew 24, or whether we're in 2 Thessalonians 2, that the apostatia stuff is a mass event, and the revealing of the man of sin, the man of lawlessness, and what he does is a singular event. It's what he does. It's not what everybody does. It's what he does. So I still think these are two separate things that are, that are, you know, two separate events. They might be consecutive, but they're not simultaneous. Again, that's just my take on it. So how do we understand apostatia itself? You know, we mentioned earlier that there are a few semantic nuances here, possibilities, defiance, rebellion, abandonment of breach of faith, or betrayal. These options are really only distinguishable by their object. That is, what is the thing or the entity against which the apostatia is being perpetrated? It's either rebellion against normal civil order, just, you know, everything's sort of going to hell in a handbasket kind of thing, everything's chaos, or it's rebellion more specifically against God and God's truth. Now, given any connection with Matthew 24, and again, I think there is a connection, however that works out, it would seem obvious that the apostatia is a religious theological issue. It's not about rebellion against civil authority. I think 2 Thessalonians 2, 10 through 12, really drives us in this direction. So here we are in the same passage, 2 Thessalonians 2, and listen to what we read. With all wicked deception for those who are perishing because they refuse to love the truth and so be saved, therefore God sends them a strong delusion so that they may believe what is false in order that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure and unrighteousness. Again, this is the result of the apostasy, God sending them a strong delusion so that they who didn't believe the truth but had pleasure and unrighteousness would be condemned. Again, this points to a defection, an abandonment, a rejection, a resistance. Again, however you want to put that against God and the truth of God, it's not about civil authority. Again, I realize some commentators go the civil authority direction. I just don't see how you can do that. I think the odds of that are very low. So I'm trying to be fair to other views here as we go through the passage where there's a legitimate ambiguity here. I don't see much ambiguity here because I don't know how much clearer Paul could be. It's really about not believing truth. He says that point blank in 2 Thessalonians 2.12. So how do we characterize the apostasy? I think it's a rebellion or an abandonment, a betrayal against truth, some item of truth. Defiance, here's another semantic thing. Is this a defiant rejection of truth? Defiance has a hard-hearted flavor and again would no doubt apply to some who actively reject the faith for whatever motive. If we think of it as an abandonment, then it sounds like it sounds less defiant. It sounds less in your face. It sounds like people are losing faith. It sounds less aggressive than rebellion, but the effect is the same. People maybe under persecution, they just leave the truth behind. They leave. They stop believing. So I think apostasy, it could speak to both a hard-hearted rebellion, an open defiance, but it could also speak to, again, just losing faith. Again, a little less defiance and a less defiant flavor, if you will, in that option. To me, this question doesn't matter as much because the effect is the same. The truth is left behind. The truth that people turn away from the truth for whatever reason or under whatever circumstances. Now, one final note about the apostasia before we get to the second aspect of all this, and that is the talk about Nero. Now, Nero gets mentioned often in regard to being the man of sin or the Antichrist. I would suggest that in what we've just talked about to this point, Nero is completely ruled out as the man of lawlessness. Look at the passage. For the mystery of lawlessness, again, this is 2 Thessalonians chapter 2, verses 7 and 8. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only he who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of his mouth, and bring to nothing by the appearance of his coming. Here's the point. The death of the lawless one, the Antichrist, is by the hand of Jesus when Jesus returns. Okay, that didn't happen with Nero. It doesn't describe Nero's demise by any stretch. So again, for the life of me, I don't know why people are still clinging to Nero as the man of lawlessness. It's like verses 7 and 8 in 2 Thessalonians aren't even there. I'll read verse 8 again. Then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of his mouth, and bring to nothing by the appearance of his coming. Even if you say that the killing there is metaphorical, even if you say that, the two things are connected. The return of Jesus and the demise is the death of the beast, the Antichrist, just like Revelation has. Again, Nero, when Nero died, we didn't get the second coming. We didn't get the day of the Lord. Full predators, they're going to come up with some spiritual coming or whatever. Well, that's wonderful. Let's just take nothing about the day of the Lord at face value then. The day of the Lord is concerned about more than the second coming, than the return of the Messiah. It's about the consummation of the kingdom. It's about the judgment of all evil. The day of the Lord is sweeping and comprehensive in its language in both testaments. Again, I don't know about you, but I am not living in the consummated kingdom. Bellingham's nice. Linden is nice. The United States is nice, but that's not the consummated kingdom. I just don't know why Nero is even a viable candidate in the discussion because of passages like this. It's a very clear association between the death of the lawless one and the coming, the return of Christ. That didn't happen with Nero. I think we can wipe Nero off the table. I would say also Matthew 24 reinforces this point as well. Matthew 24, 13, and 14, but the one who endures to the end will be saved, and this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then, then, the end will come. Again, I got news for you. The gospel was not preached to all nations by the time of Nero's death. Even if one argues that it only means the nations of Genesis 10, Jesus didn't return and kill Nero. The end didn't come. The day of the Lord didn't come. So again, just for coherent sake, I think we can wipe Nero off the table. We don't take any particular eschatological view if Nero's not in the picture. The only thing that it really harms, I guess, is something like full preterism, but they're going to come up with something there. But again, if you're going to take that view, you've basically got to take nothing about the day of the Lord at face value. Again, this isn't news, but it's kind of an extreme position. But anyway, part two of the passage, we really dealt again with the first four verses. Part two is about the Restrainer. So we've talked about the apostasy. And again, I'm landing on it's a corporate event. It has something to do with forsaking in truth, whether that's hard-hearted or people just lose faith, get a little less defiance. But again, it doesn't matter to me because the result's the same. The truth is forsaken. So we've got that. That's going to precede the revelation, the unveiling of who the beast is, who the man of lawlessness is. But now we get to verses five through eight. And I'm going to read those because now we're in related but different subject matter. So verse five, Paul says, Do you not remember that when I was still with you, I told you these things? And you know what is restraining him now so that he may be revealed in his time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only he who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of his mouth and bring to nothing by the appearance of his coming. That's verses five through eight. Now, it's kind of interesting just as a sidebar, the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. I mean that suggestion is also in Matthew 24. So again, there's definitely a connection here between those two things. But let's stick here with verses five through eight. Who or what is the restrainer? And we have to ask the question that way for a specific reason that we'll get to in a moment. Now what I'm going to do here, and I've uploaded both of these articles into the protected folder that you have access to if you subscribe to my newsletter. Go to drmsh.com. It's on the right hand side. These are very technical articles. Honestly, you will not be able to get too much out of them unless you know some Greek or that you can use some Greek tools. You're going to have to be able to read the Greek characters as well. These are technical articles, but they're really good. They're both by the same person, Roger D. US. One is entitled God's plan and God's power colon Isaiah 66 and the restraining factors of 2 Thessalonians 2, 6, and 7. It's from the Journal of Biblical Literature back in 1977. So it's fairly old, but it's an excellent article. And the other one is the relevance of Isaiah 66, 7 to Revelation 12 and 2 Thessalonians 1. That's in a high-faluting German academic journal, the Zeitschrift für die Neue Testamentliche Wissenschaft. I like to say German stuff like that. It makes you sound really smart. That's in 1976. So he wrote these two articles essentially back to back. And the reason I think they're important is because they're one of the few attempts. I mean, you'll see this in a serious academic commentary, but most people, when they do prophecy research, they're not using serious material. I'm just going to be blunt. They're not. You know, they're quoting Tim LaHaye or John Hagey or whatever. It's time to graduate to real material here. Both of his articles are one of the most detailed attempts to relate the language. Again, in our case, we're going to focus on 2 Thessalonians 2 back to Isaiah 66. It's rooted. This passage has real hooks into Isaiah 66. And if you know that and you sort of check at what Paul is doing, how he's tracking through Isaiah 66, it will help answer the question of who or what is restraining that whole issue. Okay? So that's why I want you to know these articles exist and have access to them. Now, a few grammatical observations that we can even see in English. Look at verse 6. And you know what is restraining him. And we've got two issues here. What in verse 6 is translated that way in English? Because we have a neuter article. It's ta ketekon, excuse me, ta ketekon in verse 6. There's a neuter article here. So we don't want to translate the verse. And you know who or that he is restraining. You say and you know what, because you have to sort of neutralize the word there. What? It's a what instead of a he. That's one issue. We have a neuter grammatical construction here. ESV says, you know, what is restraining him. The word him is interpretive in the ESV translation. There is no pronoun in the Greek text behind the word him in English. Literally, the verse says, you know, what restrains. There's no object, you know, what restrains now so that he may be revealed in even this time. So the word him there is supplied. Verse 7, we have some issues as well. Verse 7, it switches to masculine. Now catch this. Verse 6, you know what is restraining. And then verse 7, for the mystery of lawlessness is already at work, only he who now restrains it will do so until he's out of the way. So we have a, we have a neuter ta ketekon and we have a masculine ha ketekon. Okay. We've got a neuter and a masculine both described as restraining, which is really weird. Well, is it a thing that's restraining all these events, keeping them from happening? Or is it a person? Is it an it or is it a he? Is it a thing? Is it a person that's doing this restraining? Well, we have to answer those questions. We have to come up with an answer for the restraint that satisfies both the neuter and the masculine, both the impersonal and the personal. Otherwise, we're not interpreting correctly. We have to find, we have to identify the restraint in some way that it satisfies both of those circumstances. Now, if you've done any, you know, reading on this, again, you may have come across different candidates for the what or the who of the restraint. Okay. Some commentator, in fact, a lot of commentators will say it's the Roman state, which again, if you think the apostasia is about a rebellion against civil authority, well, that makes sense to think that the restraining force is the Roman Empire because it was big. It was powerful. It would kill dissent, you know, okay. But we've already said that the apostasia as a rebellion against civil authority doesn't make a whole lot of sense because Paul seems to be talking about the apostasia as a departure from a forsaking of truth. Okay. Truth is the issue for Paul, not civil government. So even though that's a popular option for commentators, I don't think it makes much sense. Second, there will be some who say that it's an angel of God. There's an angel up there somewhere restraining all of this, you know, keeping the end time timetable, you know, in its place or holding things in check until God says, you know, what a rip, okay. And usually this is Michael. You'll find material that talks about Michael being the restrainer. Third option, some say it's the preaching of the gospel, that the spread of the gospel acts as a restraint against evil. In other words, as the gospel goes out and hearts and minds are changed, then that creates sort of a lesser circumstance for a mass apostasy. As more people come to the Lord, then this apostasy is sort of lessened and that kind of forestalls the end time events. You'll read that option as well. And some lastly will say it's God. It's God's own will and his plan. He's the one restraining things. Now, those are four options of the four you'll probably run into the most. You might find some outlier somewhere. That's all well and good. What I'm going to try to do is not just sort of play some game and pick the one I like here, the four. We want to go back to Isaiah 66. Now, I'm going to be quoting some of the things that Aus says in his article, specifically the article on 2 Thessalonians. I'll read the title again. God's plan and God's power, Isaiah 66 and the restraining factors of 2 Thessalonians 2 versus 6 and 7. I'm going to quote a few parts of that. And since this is a dense technical article, it's a little bit of a challenge to communicate what Aus is saying and what he's seeing in the relationship between Isaiah 66 and 2 Thessalonians 2. But I'm going to try. I think we can pull it off and you'll see why these two passages need to be sort of read in tandem. And then that helps us come to some conclusions. So Aus says initially, because of the great number of interpretation possibilities in the text of 2 Thessalonians 2, most commentators simply present the major alternative solutions and let the reader choose between them, presuming that no probable answers can be reached. In other words, they bail. I agree with him. That's typically what you see in commentaries. But he disagrees and I think he's on to something. He writes this, the use of definite passages from the Old Testament in the first chapter of 2 Thessalonians, however, offers the possibility that the author has used one of these same passages for part of the background of his thought on the Catechon, again, the Restrainer complex several verses later, specifically in the second chapter. First, Aus says it is probable that Psalm 88 in the Septuagint Psalm 89 in the Hebrew text is employed in both 2 Thessalonians 110 and in 2 3. Secondly, I have elsewhere proposed that the last chapter of Isaiah, Isaiah 66, describing the final theophany of the Lord, has influenced the presentation of Jesus' final appearance in 2 Thessalonians 1 in a major way. This essay will now point out how other verses in Isaiah 66 help to explain what and who are holding up the coming of the day of the Lord. His return in glory in 2 Thessalonians 2, 6, and 7, unquote. So that's how he begins his article. And again, I'm telling you right now, I think he's on to something. I think you'll find it really fascinating. So here are his observations. What I've tried to do here is I'm going to just number some of his observations. If you want the nuts and bolts data, if you can work in Greek, go get the articles. And again, I think you'll find it worthwhile. But first, Aus says, hey, let's go back to the preceding chapter, 2 Thessalonians 1, specifically verses 7 through 10. I'm going to read it to you. Note its description of Jesus' return. Just pay close attention to how Paul describes the return of the Lord in the first chapter of 2 Thessalonians. He writes, verse 7, he talks about, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus, they will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints and to be marveled at among all who have believed because our testimony to you was believed. Now, that description draws heavily on Isaiah 66, verses 15 and 16. Listen to those two verses. For behold, the Lord will come in fire and his chariots like the world room. Okay, remember that the chariots of God are associated with angels in the Old Testament. Remember that? Like Elijah in other places. Okay, behold, the Lord will come in fire and his chariots plural like the whirlwind to render his anger in fury and his rebuke with flames of fire. For by fire will the Lord enter into judgment and by his sword with all flesh and those slain by the Lord shall be many. Now that, again, it's very clear that Paul is drawing on that passage in 2 Thessalonians 1, verses 7 through 10. So, the point that Ios is making here is that it's certain that Isaiah 66 is in Paul's head in 2 Thessalonians 1. So, why not 2 Thessalonians 2? That's going to be his argument. So, his second point, again, I'm just grocery listing these. Ios observes that in 2 Thessalonians 2, 4, the man of lawlessness, quote, opposes and exalts himself against every so-called God or object of worship on the way to proclaiming himself God. Ios says that the word for oppose or opposes here is found, the Greek word is found in the Septuagint of Isaiah 66 verse 6, where it refers to how the enemies of God are opposed to God. Drawing on the historical circumstances of the writing of 2 Thessalonians, again, we didn't get into the whole context here, but Paul is writing this letter to the Thessalonian Church, and he has specifically, he has Judaizers, Jewish enemies that have been trying to undermine his work in Thessalonica. So, Ios says, if we draw on the historical circumstances of the writing of 2 Thessalonians, we can note that in 2 Thessalonians 2, 4, just as in 2 Thessalonians 2, 4, where, again, we read, just to remind you of the language here, the idea of opposing and exalting himself against every so-called God or object of worship takes a seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God. Just like in that description, in Isaiah, the opponents of God are also associated with the Jerusalem temple in some way. In other words, Aos is arguing that Paul, catch this, Paul is painting the Jews who are opposing his ministry to the Gentiles in Thessalonica as the enemies of God from Isaiah 66. Paul is looking at Isaiah 66 and noting a reference to the enemies of God there, and the enemies of God in that passage are specifically denying the glorious future of Zion. We'll get to that point in a moment, and Paul looks at that and thinks, you know what? These Judaizers are doing the same thing. They are teaching the people that I have won to Jesus, that the day of the Lord has already come. Paul is messed up. His theology is crazy talk. They're trying to undermine Paul's theology about the return of Jesus, because these Judaizers don't believe that Jesus rose from the dead and is going to return at all. They're messing with the Thessalonians theologically. Paul looks at Isaiah 66 and says, just like the Jews back there, there were some Jews who specifically denied that the glory would ever return to Zion, Jerusalem would ever be glorious again. That's what's happening here. Paul plucks the term out of Isaiah 66 and the Septuagint and uses it to label the people here. He uses it as part of his description about not only the apostasy, but really the man of sin. It's really bad. Paul is using the language to basically associate the Jews with this anti-Christ behavior. It's really inflammatory, what he's trying to do here. That's what Aus is saying. He uses this word deliberately. The Jews are opposing the will of God, the will of the God they claim to worship, just like back in Isaiah 66. Aus's third argument, the word for temple in 2 Thessalonians 2.4, Na'an is very likely drawn again from Isaiah 66 verse 6, Na'as. What's Isaiah 66 verse 6 about? Let me read it. Let me read verses 5 and 6. Just listen to what Isaiah has here. Hear the word of the Lord, you who tremble at his word. Your brothers who hate you and cast you out for my name's sake have said, and your brothers, these are other Jews, they have said, let the Lord be glorified that we may see your joy. Oh, this is Mike now. Oh, we hope that happens, but it is they who will be put to shame. The sound of an uproar from the city, a sound from the temple, the sound of the Lord rendering recompense to his enemies. What's going on here? I'm going to quote from Mackenzie's commentary on 2nd Isaiah is the title, but it's Isaiah 66. He says, verses 5 and 6 are detached from the poem by some commentators, but the roar of Yahweh is the apocalyptic sound of judgment. The poem moves through two themes, salvation and judgment in that order, but first the prophet mentions the unfaithful Israelites. Hate and expel do not refer to any open and permanent division in the Israelite community of which we know. The preceding poem indicates a division between the wealthy, the priests, and the pious poor. The institutional structure of the community was in the hands of those whom the prophet and the pious regarded as apostate Israelites. Verse 5 suggests that these apostates expressed incredulity toward the prophet's predictions of a glorious future and were contented with a realistic adjustment to life as it could be lived. Judgment of that will begin from the temple, the seat of Yahweh's presence. So there were some who were denying, again, that the temple's going to be rebuilt, Jerusalem's going to have a glorious future. Oh, we hope that happens, but that's just crazy talk. And so Isaiah 66, God is angry with that. He's angry at their faithlessness, their unbelief, and then he just starts ranting on them. Now for our purposes, the point is that Isaiah 66 verses 5 through 6 describe apostate Israelites, apostate Jews who don't believe the prophet's prediction of Israel's glorious future at the day of the Lord. Second Thessalonians 2 has the same theme. You have a bunch of Jews rejecting the truth. What's the truth? You have Jews, the people of Israel, the people of God, okay, rejecting the very Messiah that their own God had sent and rejecting the idea that he will come again because he rose from the dead. Can Paul is seeing his opponents through the lens of Isaiah 66 and the unbelieving faithless Jews back in that chapter in Isaiah 66? So we're three points in now. We've got the context of Second Thessalonians 1 very clearly tracking on Isaiah 66. We've got a word associated. We've actually got two vocabulary words now from the Septuagint of Isaiah 66 drawn into Second Thessalonians 2. Alice continues with a fourth observation. He says, Isaiah 66 speaks of a woman in labor, Zion, who delivers a son. Does that sound familiar? Think of Revelation 12. This is Aus's other article, the Zion the woman gives birth to the child to the Messiah. Isaiah 66 speaks of a woman in labor, Zion, who delivers a son, the result of which is the rebirth of the people of God and the kingdom of God. Aus suggests this may be, in his mind it likely is, in my mind it likely is, maybe a reference to the Messiah, in which case Paul's use of Isaiah 66 makes sense again. It is the Messiah born from Zion who will come at the day of the Lord to restore the kingdom of God. Again, Mackenzie, his commentary Mackenzie notes this. The prophet is sure that the saving act will come suddenly. It's like a conception and birth in a single day. The saving act means the sudden appearance of a large number of true Israelites. This miracle is possible to Yahweh. The children of the New Jerusalem are compared somewhat broadly to infants at the breast. Now let me just read again some of the passages Isaiah 66-7. Just think about the imagery here. Before she was in labor, again talking about Jerusalem, Zion, before she was in labor she gave birth, before her pain came upon her she delivered a son. Who has heard such a thing? Who has seen such things? Shall a land be born in one day? Shall a nation be brought forth in one moment? For as soon as Zion was in labor she brought forth children. Shall I bring the point of birth? Bring to the point of birth and not cause to bring forth says the Lord. Shall I who cause to bring forth shut the womb says your God. Rejoice with Jerusalem and be glad for her all you who love her. Rejoice with her enjoy all you who mourn over her. Then you may nurse and be satisfied from her consoling breast. Again, if you think of Zion giving birth to a son the result of which will be the rebirth of the people of God. Who are you going to think of? Paul is reading Isaiah 66. He sees messianic language here. He sees the coming of Jesus. He sees the birth of Jesus. He sees the return of Jesus to revive the people of God, the kingdom of God. And you know what else he sees? He sees a bunch of Jews opposing it, doubting it in Isaiah 66. That is precisely the set of circumstances he's in in Thessalonica. It's precisely the same set of circumstances. He has been preaching everywhere he goes. Read his trips in the book of Acts to Thessalonica. Paul does the same thing everywhere he goes. He preaches to the Jew first and then he preaches to the Gentile. They're all one people of God. This is what he's trying to convince people of. This is the mystery of Paul's theology. Again, we know who Paul is. He's the apostle to the nations, reclaiming the nations, all that kind of stuff. But they're included now in all this messianic, this whole messianic picture. And in Isaiah 66, the nations are very specifically included as well. This is House's fifth point. So we've got all this connection to Isaiah 66. And then House notes this, in Isaiah 66, 18 through 21, we see a description of how the Lord will come and reclaim the nations. Okay, just listen to this. The time is coming to gather all nations and tongues. And they shall come and shall see my glory. And I will set a sign among them. And from them I will send survivors to the nations, to Tarshish, to Paul and Ludd, who draw the bow into Tubal and Javon, to the coastlands far away. They have not heard, that have not heard my fame or seen my glory. And they shall declare my glory among the nations. And they shall bring all your brothers from all the nations as an offering to the Lord on horses and in chariots and litters and mules and dromedaries to my holy mountain Jerusalem says the Lord, just as the Israelites bring their grain offering in a clean vessel to the house of the Lord. And some of them, these Gentiles, I will make for priests and for Levites, says the Lord. Again, that's the passage, it's full inclusion of the Gentile. Now, I talk a little bit about Isaiah 66 in the unseen realm about how this informed Paul's mission, you know, the reference to Tarshish and all that kind of stuff, Spain. There is no doubt, again, just to review what House is arguing, there is no doubt Isaiah 66 is in Paul's head and in 2 Thessalians 1. House's argument is that it's in Paul's head in 2 Thessalonians 2. And he's just given, you know, four or five reasons why we can tell that it's in his head. Now, he writes on this last point, he says, the Septuagint in Isaiah 6619 reads this, from them I will send those who are saved to the nations. Does that sound like Pentecost? For the Christian reading that Isaiah text in the Septuagint, the saved would be those who believed in the redemption found in Jesus the Messiah. It gets sent back into the nations. Again, it's also shown, for example, in Paul's use of the same expression in 1 Corinthians 118, for the word of the cross is falling to those who are perishing, he writes, but to those who are being saved, it is the power of God. 2 Corinthians 215, we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. The saved there, in those two instances, are Gentiles, but initially it's like you have people sent out from these communities into these places and then they come back. The saved or redeemed, again, would be people who have accepted the gospel that God is sending out into the nations. As the Gentile survivors, again, Gentile believers, were to bring the Jews of the diaspora back to Jerusalem, so it will be with the Christian missionaries sent out to the coastlands, to the islands far off. Again, it's the picture of Paul's ministry. Now, that's a picture not only of Pentecost, Paul's home mission. It's his home ministry. It's precisely that ministry that his Jewish enemies at Thessalonica are opposing and therefore making themselves enemies of God. Paul sees them as the people opposing Isaiah's glorious vision in this chapter in Isaiah 66. Now, with all of that, let's go back to 2 Thessalonians 2 and recall what we're dealing with. We had a couple grammatical observations. We have a neuter, an impersonal what that restrains, again, is keeping the day of the Lord from happening, and we have a personal he who restrains, who is keeping the day of the Lord from happening. The links between Isaiah 66 and 2 Thessalonians 2 that we've noted, again, in Ouse's article, lead Ouse, lead the author to conclude the following about the neuter reference, what restrains. Listen to what he says. Isaiah 66, an Old Testament text employed extensively in 2 Thessalonians, thus may offer a solution to the meaning of the puzzling phrase that which is restraining in 2 Thessalonians 2-6. It is the mission to the Gentiles, to the coastlands and islands far off, which would be the neuter, the restraining factor of the author of 2 Thessalonians. In other words, it's God's will or plan that the gospel first be carried to all men before the day of the Lord arrives. In other words, the what restrains or impedes the day of the Lord and its associated events, like the revealing of the lawless one, is Paul's doctrine of the fullness of the Gentiles. God's plan for bringing the Gentiles back into his family is not yet complete. It needs to be complete before the day of the Lord, only when it is complete will the Lord return in judgment. And that is consistent with Pauline thinking throughout his letters when he talks about the fullness of the Gentiles. Now, Ouse goes on to link more vocabulary in 2 Thessalonians 2 to other passages about the beast, the Antichrist like Daniel 11. You can get the articles for that. What I want to focus on is he takes all that and he moves on to the masculine reference, he who restrains. I think you could kind of guess who the Restrainer is. If the neuter restraint is the plan of God for the fullness of the Gentiles, then it's obvious who the masculine Restrainer is. Again, I'll cut it short for the sake of time here. This is the way Ouse addresses this. He says, again paraphrasing, hey, remember the image of the woman in Isaiah 66, Zion Jerusalem in labor, about to produce a son, the son? Again, here's Isaiah 66, 9. Shall I bring to the point of birth and not cause to bring forth? Says the Lord. Shall I who cause to bring forth shut the womb? Says your God. It's really interesting, but the Hebrew verb for shut there, shut the womb is atzar, which elsewhere very obviously and coherently means to restrain, to delay, or hinder. If you look at Isaiah 66, 9, Paul's looking at it after the first coming of Jesus, obviously, after the cross, after the resurrection, after the ascension. Paul has a sense of his mission now from Isaiah 66, just general Old Testament theology about reclaiming the nations. He now reads Isaiah 66 as a reference to the second coming because we didn't have the day of the Lord yet. That's his whole point. The day of the Lord has not come yet. He goes back and he looks at Isaiah 66, and what does he see there? Well, he sees a bunch of Jews doubting it. He sees a reference to, again, Israel delivering a son and since he's reading it past the first coming, he's now looking at, you know, it's the same son. It's the Messiah produced by, you know, Israel, who's going to come again. And God's saying, hey, am I going to sort of bring this all up, all up to a head and not follow through with it? Am I who cause to bring forth? Am I going to shut the womb? Am I going to restrain? Says your God. Well, he is going to restrain because he has a plan for the Gentile nations, which follows in Isaiah 66. We have to have the nations brought back into Zion. So again, do you see the picture? Do you see the point? If the image of the woman Zion and labor about to produce the son is messianic language, if that's messianic language and it's associated with the day of the Lord, then God is the agent in Isaiah 66.9 who is restraining the return of the son. He is the one metaphorically keeping the womb shut because he's waiting. He's restraining because his plan for the Gentile is not yet done. So again, this all makes really perfect sense in my head. The neuter, what restrains, that's God's plan for the fullness of the Gentiles. The masculine, the restrainer himself, is God himself. He is the one waiting until the time that he knows is the right time to put the day of the Lord events into motion. Now, that's the content of what I have in this episode, but I have to tack on, again, a little bit of a, I don't know what you'd call this, a little bit of a commercial, a little bit of a, hey, what did we learn here? Maybe that's the best way to say it. Hey, what did we learn today other than the content? What did we learn besides the apostasia, which again, I view as a corporate turning from the truth and the restrainer. The restraint of course is the fullness of the Gentiles plan and God himself is the one keeping everything from happening because it's God's plan. He knows when he's satisfied. God knows when the plan is fulfilled or not. You know, what did we learn here besides all that stuff? And I, you know, for some listeners, this might make me as popular as vegan options at a burger place. I get that, but I'm going to say it anyway. We learned two things. We learned that interpreting the New Testament without checking the Old Testament is foolish. Second, we learned that we need resources that alert us to how New Testament writers are using, reading, interpreting the Old Testament. That's what we learned. So I'm going to say this, and again, like I said, it might make me as popular as, you know, a vegan order at a burger place, okay? But anyone you're reading about end times theology who isn't doing this, who isn't engaging the whole issue of how does the New Testament use the Old Testament? Anybody you're reading about end times eschatology who isn't doing that should be listened to with extreme caution if not outright ignored. They are not doing the kind of exegetical work that needs to be done. You know, for my audience, we need to train ourselves to grasp these obvious points. The New Testament writers interacted deeply with the Old Testament. So when we aren't studying Scripture the same way, following the same sort of methods that they used to produce it, when we aren't doing that, we can't possibly follow what they were trying to tell us. We just can't. So again, might make me unpopular, but that's what we learned. Yep, we learned about the falling way. Yep, we learned about the restraint and all that stuff. But what we really learned were these two things. And Mike, you've mentioned in the past, New Testament students in seminary today. I mean, what are the requirements really to go back and study the Old Testament? Yeah, what they're, what you're going to get is an at an MDiv level is you're going to get a hermeneutics class where you're going to have at least part of that class, you're going to have this beaten into your head. If you take a book study, you will get this drilled into you because you're going to be forced to read through commentaries and journals and you will see and your professor will alert you to the fact that, hey, the New Testament writer is using the Old Testament, he's interacting with the Old Testament. So you can get it at an MDiv level in a hermeneutics class and in a book study. Again, if you go to a decent seminary anyway, you might, as an elective, you might be able to use some elective credit to take a class in the Old, how the New Testament uses the Old Testament. A lot of seminaries have specific classes like that. So people can get exposed to the method, to the strategy, but at the very least in a hermeneutics class, you're going to run into this. You just, you can't avoid it. All right. So it's just not as dire as I thought because you've mentioned in the past that they just get no exposure to the Old Testament. They get very little. And now, again, without, it's not that I don't want to mention the name, it's just I can't remember the name. I know I just remembered the name. Stanley, Andy Stanley basically telling hundreds of thousands of Christians that follow him to ignore the Old Testament that we don't need it. That's a crime. That is a hermeneutical crime. He should be ashamed of himself. When you're going around saying things like that, you can't possibly know what's going on in scripture or dare I say even care. And you're misleading people. You're telling people to read the Bible in a way that's different from how it was written. I mean, it's just absurd. So you can get it. I'm sure if I don't know anything about Andy Stanley, but if he went to seminary, this isn't what he would have seen at least in a hermeneutics class, but he doesn't care. So a lot of, again, people who would listen to the podcast, the lay community and even pastors, it still falls in the category of, are you willing to put some work into this? And we've talked before in the podcast about why it's hard for pastors to do that. There are some legitimate obstacles there that our whole church circumstance creates. Again, I'm not saying they're adequate excuses, but the obstacles are real and they need to be dealt with. But if people aren't seeing this modeled for them, they're not going to develop any sensitivity to how important it is. Next week, Mike, we'll be covering the intro of our new book that won the poll. Yep. With that, I just want to thank everybody else for listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. Thanks for listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. To support this podcast, visit www.nakedbibleblog.com To learn more about Dr. Heizer's other websites and blogs, go to www.brmsh.com.