2 Thessalonians 2:8

And then shall be revealed the lawless one, whom the Lord Jesus shall slay with the breath of his mouth, and bring to naught by the manifestation of his coming;

Most students of this passage are dogmatically certain that "the lawless one" of this verse is an eschatological person, an individual, answering to the Biblical definition of "antichrist"; and, while there seems to be some indication of this, this understanding for it requires understanding the following clauses to contain a double prophecy. The man of sin will be eroded and worn out; the final "lawless one" shall be vanquished instantly in the final Advent.

Slay with the breath of his mouth ... "Here is an expression found nowhere else in the New Testament."[6] The reference would appear to be to the word of the Lord. When the New Testament was stripped out of the dead languages in which it had been concealed, in the times of Wycliffe, Tyndale, Luther, and others, there was a sense in which the man of sin received a mortal wound. There is also a possible rendition of "slay" as "consume," as in Adam Clarke's quotation, below, indicating that the power and glory of the man of sin will not perish instantly, but gradually, being continually eroded, wasted away, and "consumed" by the breath of the Lord's mouth, by his word. Clarke said:

"Whom the Lord shall consume ..." He shall blast him so that he shall wither and die away; and this shall be done by the spirit of his mouth, - the words of eternal life, the true doctrine of the gospel of Jesus; this shall be the instrument used to destroy this man of sin: therefore it is evident that his death will not be a sudden one, but a gradual one; because it is by the preaching of the truth that he is to be exposed, overthrown, and finally destroyed.[7]

Bring to naught by the manifestation of his coming ... It seems to this expositor that these clauses are parallel; but if the emphasis, as so many insist, is upon the Second Advent, then the fate of antichrist is foretold in it, that same antichrist whom we have identified as the final, terminal and ultimate "man of sin," being an individual who shall be destroyed at the Second Coming of Christ.

[6] Leon Morris, op. cit., p. 131.

[7] Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Holy Bible, Vol. VI (London: Carlton and Porter, 1829), p. op. cit., p. 567.