Guest Article by Robert Cruickshank: Unraveling The Mystery of The Lawless One
I am happy to share with our visitors a guest article by my good friend Robert Cruickshank. He is an excellent student of the Word and I think you will find his article on the Man of Sin to be very helpful.
Don K
************************************************************************************************************
Unraveling The Mystery of The Lawless One
Copyright © Robert E. Cruickshank, Jr.
All Rights Reserved– Used by Permission
In 2 Thessalonians 2, Paul is writing to correct the mistaken notion that the Day of the Lord had already come (2 Thes. 2:2). In and of itself, this is evidence enough to dispel the modern notion that the Day of the Lord is a world-ending event. For example, according to Pastor Paul Begley, host of The Coming Apocalypse: “the earth will explode…the Bible predicts it” In light of 2 Thessalonians 2:2, this doesn’t make much sense at all.
If Jesus was coming back to obliterate the planet, how could anyone have possibly thought it had already happened? More to the point, answering the Thessalonians’ misunderstanding would have been fairly easy on Paul’s part. The Thessalonians were still here, Paul himself was still here, and the planet hadn’t blown up yet. In other words, Paul could have simply pointed out the obvious and called it a day.
Instead, Paul proceeds to delineate several things that must happen first – before the Day of the Lord arrives. Tracking on what Paul says in this regard clears up not only the Thessalonians’ original confusion regarding the timing of the Day of the Lord, but the modern confusion pertaining to the nature of that day as well.
He tells the Thessalonians that the Day of the Lord will not come unless certain things happen first. According to Paul, there would be an “apostasy” or “rebellion,” and then “the man of lawlessness” would be “revealed” (2 Thes. 2:3). The “mystery of lawlessness” was “already at work” when Paul wrote, but a “restrainer” was holding the “lawless one” back (2 Thes. 2:6-7). Once the “restrainer” was removed, the “lawless one” would be unleashed (2 Thes. 2:6). Just as modern prophecy speculation misunderstands the Day of the Lord in general, imaginations likewise run wild regarding Paul’s description of events in this passage.
An AI God and the Restraints of the Passage
The “lawless one” is said to “take his seat in the temple of God, displaying himself as being God” (2 Thes. 2:4). With the advent of AI (artificial intelligence), many speculate that today’s world is ripe to set the events of this prophecy in motion. We are informed that, “an AI god will emerge by 2042 and write its own bible.” This galvanizes modern prophecy speculation to all new heights.
For example, Paul Begley claims that “AI technology” is “becoming part of the biblical narrative” of “the last days” Charlie Bing, of Grace Life Ministries, concurs: “AI has changed our world in the last few decades and it will have a huge impact on the future as we approach what Jesus called ‘the end.’ AI has indeed had a “huge impact,” but that “huge impact” has been on the way in which these modern teachers import modern concepts into an ancient text. In their attempt to keep 2 Thessalonians 2 up to date with current times, they completely ignore the original context of Paul’s letter. While AI is indeed “becoming part” of their “narrative,” their “narrative” is far from “biblical.”
In his article, “Artificial Intelligence in the Bible (Part Five),” Bing claims that “Paul was looking to a future event that we now know was at least 19-hundred years from the time of Paul’s writing.” A red flag should immediately go up in the reader’s mind when he/she reads Bing’s statement here. Paul told the Thessalonians that “the mystery of lawlessness” was “already at work” in their own day (2 Thes. 2:7a). To belabor the obvious, AI technology did not exist 1900 years ago. In its current form, it didn’t even exist 19 years ago.
Additionally, The Restrainer was currently restraining The Lawless One when Paul wrote his letter to the Thessalonians (2 Thes. 2:7b). It’s hard to imagine how something or someone could have been restraining AI technology almost 1900 hundred years ago. As Gary DeMar writes, “The time texts, the present restraining, and the ‘mystery of lawlessness already at work,’ restricts the passage’s time of fulfillment to the first century.” Despite the exegetical restraints of the passage, however, today’s prophecy speculators show no restraint in their wild conjecture.
Textual restraints and restrictions simply do not apply, as Bing’s article runs awry. He moves on, in part six, to pose the question of whether or not the “lawlessness one” will be “Man or Machine?” Apparently, it will be a combination of both! According to Bing, this Man of Lawlessness “will use AI to his advantage to build a global empire to control the world” and may even be a human/machine “hybrid.”
A “Matrix” Theology in the “Metaverse”
Bing spends a considerable amount of time discussing the concept of the “metaverse,” a term coined by Neal Stephenson in his 1992 novel, Snow Crash. An updated version of the “metaverse” would be the concept of a “virtual reality,” popularized in the Matrix movies. “The fact that Facebook (Meta) and other tech giants are involved in developing and promoting the ‘Metaverse,’” says Bing, “may propel its acceptance by billions of ‘users’ around the world.”
Bing believes that the passage itself alludes to this “metaverse.” Paul says that “a deluding influence” will cause people to “believe a lie” (2 Thes. 2:11). For Bing, the “metaverse” or “virtual reality” is the key to understanding what this “deluding influence” will be. “If billions of people live inside a lie (imaginary world),” he writes, “how hard would it be for a powerful person (the lawless one) to tell them a lie they would believe?”
And what, specifically, is this “lie” going to be? For Bing, The “lawless one” (whom Bing equates with the Antichrist) will lie to the world about the Rapture. He will supposedly deceive them into believing that it never took place.
Bing writes, “The lie the ‘lawless one’ will tell, I believe, is how millions of people living on earth disappeared in the ‘twinkling of an eye.’ If billions of people live in or are influenced by a virtual, augmented ‘Metaverse,’ an imaginary computerized world, believing the lie of how those people disappeared would seem easier than we might imagine…. What will happen is what God says in His Word. The ‘lawless one’ (Antichrist) will lie and the world will believe him.”
The Rapture and The Restrainer
Thus, like everything else in the world of pop-prophecy today, all roads lead up and point to rapture. This is what it’s all about for them. The Rapture is the moment for which everyone is waiting. In fact, it’s the moment for which they’ve been waiting ever since Dispensationalism was let loose upon the world in the 1800s. The rapture is also the moment that will let the lawless one loose upon the world, or so they tell us.
In an article in Biblical Christianity, Alice A. Anacioco enthusiastically writes, “The Rapture will change everything. When the rapture occurs, the Spirit-indwelt church and its restraining influence will be removed. That will release the world to sin as it never has before.” According to Anacioco, Evil will erupt and expand unchecked beyond anything known in the history of man. It will be like the removal of a huge dam. The world will be inundated with the evil of unimaginable scope and severity.”
Jonathan Brentner concurs. In a Harbingers Daily post, he opens by telling the reader: “As I watch events unfold in America and around the world, I find myself wondering why the Rapture hasn’t already occurred. I never thought I would see so many precursors to the Tribulation period as are evident all around us and yet still be waiting for the Lord’s appearing.” Brentner then asks the question: “Why would God restrain His judgments for the moment?” According to him, “The answer is found in 2 Thessalonians 2:3-8; the Restrainer is holding back the appearing of the antichrist on the world scene and in so doing, I believe He’s also suppressing events that will usher the ‘lawless one’ into power.”
This entire approach is nothing more than classic Dispensationalism with an upgrade. With the advent of AI, they now “have the technology” they need to make the Man of Lawlessness “better, stronger and faster than he was before.” Despite the sleek new design of the advanced model, however, they are still stuck with a lingering old problem. While they believe AI technology is the missing puzzle piece needed to solve the “mystery of the lawless one,” the “restrainer” continues to be one piece which leaves the puzzle they’re piecing together somewhat incomplete. It seems the “restrainer” still puts a huge “restraint” on their interpretation.
A Puzzling Problem
For the Dispensationalist, the Restrainer is, specifically, the Holy Spirit. This was the view of John Nelson Darby as well as John Walvoord. When the Church is removed in the Rapture, the Holy Spirit’s restraining power goes with them. This, however, creates a huge loose end that cannot be tied up. Even those who of this persuasion recognize the glaring problem here. For example, Phillip J. Long writes,“…the Old Testament very clearly indicates that the Holy Spirit will be active in the tribulation (Joel 2, for example.) If he is removed at the beginning of the Tribulation, how can he be ‘poured out’ as Joel predicts?”
Long’s answer to this seeming dilemma is to equivocate with a word salad: “Therefore it is best to conclude that the Restrainer power is God, through the Holy Spirit and the positive effects of the preached Gospel. The Spirit is active in the world as a preserving agent, a ministry that will end at the time of the Rapture, allowing the events of the tribulation to unfold.”
It’s unclear how this solves the problem of how the Holy Spirit can be both absent and active at the same time. It is equally unclear how the Holy Spirit is presently restraining AI technology if in fact the Man of Lawlessness is to be some incarnation of that technology. The popular, futurist approach to this passage leaves many puzzle pieces missing and even the pieces that are there don’t fit very well.
Nonetheless, attempting to put the pieces they do have all together, the picture would look something like this: the Man of Lawlessness with be a human/machine hybrid who will unleash unprecedented evil upon the world once the Restrainer is taken out of the way at the Rapture. This “lawless one” will then deceive the world into believing that the Rapture never actually happened. He will delude them with lies as to why millions, if not billions, of people suddenly vanished. This will all be made possible by the “metaverse,” or alternate reality, in which mankind will supposedly be living at the time.
In “reality,” the true “alternate reality” is the concoction these prophetic purveyors have misconstrued out of the Biblical text. Prevalent as it may be, this is a “reality” that has nothing to do with the “reality” of that text. In keeping with the theme of virtual realities and metaverses, believers need to take the red pill. It’s time to disconnect from the Dispensational Matrix and return to the real world in which the Bible was actually written – the world of the first century.
Solving the Puzzle and Taking the Red Pill
As with any puzzle, the key to solving this puzzle is the picture on the box, and this isn’t a picture of our modern world with an AI avatar ushering in World War III. It is a picture of a world that was on the cusp of a very different war – a now ancient war (from our vantage point) that would change redemptive history forever.
Once the Romans leveled the temple during the Roman-Jewish War, it would become evident to everyone that salvation was not to be found in the types and shadows of the Old Covenant system. The temple that housed that system would be reduced to rubble, and Old Covenant Judaism would be nothing but debris left in the ruins. When that happens, the claims of Christ would be validated for all to see (Matt. 24:2, 34). In order for the war that would set these events in motion to happen, however, a rebellion needed to take place first.
Switching over from the blue pill of imaginative speculation to the red pill of a Biblical hermeneutics, our operating principle should be that Scripture interprets Scripture. This being the case, the parallels between 2 Thessalonians 2 and Revelation 20 are fairly obvious. In both passages there is a restraint and a release of evil connected with “deception.” This three-fold theme of restraint, release and deception is loud and clear in words of both authors. In Revelation 20, the deception and release are specifically linked to Satan’s ability to gather the nations together for “the war” (Rev. 20:8).
As Mike Sullivan writes, ““The definite article ‘the’ is purposely placed in front of ‘war’ to describe one very specific and important end-time war.” In other words, this isn’t just any old war nor is it merely war in general. There is a certain specificity to it. With a major war looming on the horizon when John wrote (the Roman-Jewish War), it’s hard to imagine that his readers would have thought of any other “very specific and important” war than the one they were about to witness, experience and see with their own eyes and in their own time. It’s hard to imagine that John was expecting them to imagine some other war – thousands of years in the future.
With that said, the Roman-Jewish War was triggered by a zealot-lead rebellion in Israel against Rome. The zealots were kept at bay as long as the legitimate priesthood remained in power. Once the true priesthood was removed, all Hell broke loose. Literally. Consequently, the Restrainer would have been the lawful priest while the Man of Lawlessness himself would have been a leader in the zealot movement.
This coincides with Revelation 20 in that the zealot in view would have been the tool Satan used to set the events in motion that would initiate the war. Paul tips his readers off to this by calling the Man of Lawlessness “the Son of Perdition” (2 Thes. 2:3) and noting that his “coming” is “by the activity of Satan” (2 Thes, 2:9). The only other time the term “the Son of Perdition” is used is in conjunction with Judas (John 17:12), who was possessed by Satan. Once Satan was free to jump start the war, the zealots would become his tool to accomplish this end.
The Zealot Rebellion
The zealot rebellion fits Paul’s context in 2 Thessalonians 2 perfectly. Paul said an apostasia had to come first, and then the Man of Lawlessness would be revealed (2 Thes. 2:3). According to Michael Heiser: ‘If you looked up apostasia in a good Greek lexicon like BDAG (Bauer, Danker, Arndt, and 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 semantically related.” Heiser concludes that “all four of these semantic options (defiance, rebellion, abandonment, and breach of faith, i.e., betrayal) …all operable in 2 Thessalonians 2:3.”
Accordingly, the zealot movement checks all four boxes with regard to the meaning of apostasia, precisely. They were defiant. They orchestrated a rebellion. They abandoned their own people. And like all first-century Jews who rejected their Messiah (i.e., Jesus), they breached the true faith of Yahweh and betrayed their own God.
Adam Maarschalk makes the connection and sees the “mystery of lawlessness” as “a reference to the Zealot movement which had been gaining steam since Hezekiah the Zealot rose up in 47 BC.” This coincides nicely with 2 Thessalonians, written around 51 BC. With Zealot movement seemingly on the rise (wars and rumors of war, so to speak), it’s feasible that the Thessalonians could have thought that everything was already going down. Nonetheless, the Restrainer hadn’t been taken out of the way yet. Paul’s writing to tell them not to jump the gun, it was far too early.
The Restrainer Taken Out of the Way
Maarschalk offers several insightful observations on the historical situation at the time. Maarschalk sees the Restrainer as… “collectively, the Jewish high priests who led the peace movement in Jerusalem. Josephus, in Wars of the Jews, wrote a great deal about how they were a thorn in the side to the Zealots, at times preventing the Zealots from fully doing as they pleased. When the Jewish-Roman War began in AD 66, this peace movement was led by Ananus ben Ananus and Jesus ben Gamaliel. Their long speeches against the Zealots can be seen in Wars 4.3.10 and Wars 4.4.3. Josephus said that Ananus ‘preferred peace above all things,’ was ‘a shrewd man in speaking and persuading the people,’ and ‘had already gotten the mastery of those who opposed his designs or were for the war’ (Wars 4.5.2).”
Ananus and Jesus were both killed, along with other priests, during the Zealot Temple Siege of February-March AD 68. At that point, the Restrainer was taken “out of the way.” Their deaths marked a significant turning point for Jerusalem, according to Josephus: “I should not mistake if I said that the death of Ananus was the beginning of the destruction of the city, and that from this very day may be dated the overthrow of her wall, and the ruin of her affairs, whereon they saw their high priest, and the procurer of their preservation, slain in the midst of their city… to say all in a word, if Ananus had survived they had certainly compounded matters… And the Jews had then put abundance of delays in the way of the Romans, if they had had such a general as he was” (Wars 4.5.2).
The Man of Lawlessness
Maarschalk identifies, what he considers to be, the “Top Two Candidates” for the Man of Lawlessness. According to Maarschalk: “During the Jewish-Roman War, there were two Zealot leaders who took their place in the temple:
“[1] The first one made the temple, including the inner court, his headquarters for about 3.5 years (from the fall of AD 66 until April AD 70). He was killed in Jerusalem in AD 70. That was Eleazar ben Simon.
“[2] The second one took over the inner court about five months before the temple was destroyed, precisely when the Roman general, Titus, arrived and began his siege against Jerusalem (from April – August AD 70). He was captured, taken to Rome, and sentenced to life in prison. That was John Levi of Gischala.”
Since 2 Thessalonians 2:8 states that the Man of Sin would be “slain,” the fate of Eleazor seems to best fit the context here. On the other hand, perhaps this isn’t an either/or? If “the restrainer” was the legitimate priesthood collectively, perhaps the Man of Lawlessness is also a general reference to the zealot movement collectively. Just as the legitimate priest at any given moment would have been the personification of the restrainer, it’s possible to view the Man of Lawlessness in the same light. The prominent zealot in any given faction could be viewed as the personification of the Man of Lawlessness at any particular moment.
For the reader who’d like to do a deeper drill on the historical details, these resources are helpful:
II Thessalonians 2 and the Man of Lawlessness, by Adam Maarschalk.
Preterist Paper 31: Man of Sin part 2 (Theory), by Patricia Bailey.
The Man of Sin of II Thessalonians 2, by Evangelist John L. Bray.
Abomination, Rebellion, and Lawlessness, by Edward E. Stevens.
Conclusion
The bottom line in all of this is: the Bible is a product of its own time and not our time. Scripture must be interpreted in light of its historical context and in light of other Scripture. The zealot uprising and the impending war with Rome make better sense out of these two hermeneutical imperatives than a metaverse created by a human machine hybrid in our own day and age. The theory in vogue today, regarding “the mystery of the lawless one” (2 Thes. 2) throws audience relevance out the window.
In other words, an AI god in the twenty-first century would have totally irrelevant to the very people to whom the letters of Thessalonica were written. The impending Roman-Jewish War and the events that would precipitate it, on the other hand, would have been very relevant to them. In many ways, that ancient war is just as relevant to us today as it was for them almost 2000 years ago.
The destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 changed everything. Without the Roman-Jewish War, it would not have taken place. John tells us that Satan had to be released for that war to happen (Rev. 20:3 cf. 20:7). In Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonians, the “restrainer” (the legitimate priesthood) had to be removed in order for the “lawless one” (the zealot movement) to mount the “rebellion” that would set all of these events in motion. Paul writes to remedy the Thessalonians’ misguided notions regarding the sequence of these events. Careful attention to what he is actually talking about, in the context of their own time, will remedy many mistaken notions in our own time. Rather than waiting for the Day of the Lord to come, we should be living out the fulfillment of that day. Unlike the Thessalonians living before AD 70, the Day of the Lord has already come from our vantage point.
Guest Article by Robert Cruickshank: Unraveling The Mystery of The Lawless One