2 Thessalonians 2:8

8. Then As soon as the hinderance is withdrawn. The Roman-pagan empire must disappear, before the Roman-papal power can disclose itself. The Roman emperor must cease before the Roman pope can commence supremacy. The great red dragon must be cast down before the beast can rise. One antichristic guise must be dropped before another can be assumed.

That Wicked That Lawless; who overrules God’s laws and substitutes his own.

Revealed Clearly alluding to the personal Satan. For as Christ is revealed, being pre-existent, so is this antichrist revealed, being pre-existent.

Consume… destroy We have now a vivid semi-poetic picture of the double destruction of antichrist. Our apostle, in the glow of inspiration, interrupts his description to hasten to the destruction. He has a moment of old Hebraic rapture, and gives us a splendid specimen of Hebraic parallelism:

Shall consume with the breath of his mouth,

Destroy with the brightness of his coming.

But the Hebrew parallelism was not always the reiteration of the same thought, but two richly varied phases of the same subject. The subject here, as just noted, is the double destruction of antichrist, first under his beast guise, as in Revelation 19:12-21, and the second in his incarnate form, as in Revelation 20:7-10.

Consume with the spirit (or breath) of his mouth An allusion to the beautiful words of Isaiah 11:4: “He shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked.” This figure is not to be degraded into a description of a physical or bodily destruction by an uttered word of Christ.

“The rod of his mouth” is the powerful truth that he utters to the world; and “the breath of his lips” is that divine doctrine by which the old man is slain that the new man may be born. This passage is virtually reproduced in Revelation 19:15: “Out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations.” As a material image this would be very gross; but as an emblem of all-conquering truth going forth from the lips of Jesus, cutting and smiting down all before it, it is a parable of beauty. And so the entire passage (Revelation 19:11-21) is a picture of spiritual conquests and providential overrulings by Jehovah-Christ in behalf of his earthly kingdom. Kings, there, are, as in ancient prophecy, antitheistic dominations and organisms; the beast and false prophets are not so much men as antichristic systems; their overthrow is the emancipation of “the nations” of 2 Thessalonians 2:15, who are still existing in Revelation 20:3; Revelation 20:8. This battle and overthrow are not the work of a day, but of an age; and it is the preparation for that predominance of Christ’s kingdom symbolized by the reign with Christ of the imparadised “souls” of the martyrs in the battle, who are enthroned over the world, Satan having been bound.

And As the previous member of this parallelism describes Revelation 19:11-21, so the following corresponds with Revelation 20:7-10.

Destroy Bring to naught. Not “annihilate,” as Alford (apparently following Lunemann’s vernichten) translates it; but, abolish, nullify. To “annihilate” would imply the putting the very elements of his being out of existence.

Brightness of his coming The επιφανεια της παρουσιας , by the resplendence of his parousia. Very flatly rendered by Alford “annihilated by the appearance of his coming.” It is by the epiphania, and not by the parousia, that antichrist is said to be destroyed. The word in the New Testament uniformly implies either physical or moral resplendence; as an adjective, Acts 2:20; as noun, 2 Timothy 1:10; as verb, Acts 27:20; Luke 1:79. In Revelation 20:9, antichrist’s armies are “devoured” by “fire out of heaven,” just before the parousia.

This interpretation does, with a slight yet effective variation, ratify the view taken of this parallelism by the best Protestant writers. Thus says Dr.

Gloat: “The spirit or breath of his mouth has been understood to denote the preaching of the pure gospel, the diffusion of the word of God, and the revival of evangelical doctrines, which will undermine popery. By the brightness of his coming is meant… the final destruction of popery by the coming of Christ to judgment.” Substitute antichrist here for popery, embracing our historic-prophetic view of antichrist, and these words express our exposition of this parallelism. And so says Bishop Newton: “If the two clauses relate to two different events, the meaning manifestly is, that the Lord Jesus shall gradually consume him with the free preaching of his gospel, and shall utterly destroy him at his second coming.” The former began to take effect at the Reformation, and the latter will be accomplished in God’s appointed time.

And this puts into our hands a key for the solution of the most important section of the Apocalypse, Revelation 10-20. It is a tracing the history of the stages of contest between Christ and antichrist from the first to the second coming. The former appears under successive phases of his true Person, as man-child, conquering hero, and final judge; the latter lurks through various guises and exposures as dragon, beast, naked Satan, and incarnate anti-messiah. At the successive time-points the two, Christ and antichrist, meet; at every point Christ is increasingly victorious; until at last his glorious advent consigns the adversary to hell forever.