In this episode, Pastor Joel Webbin is joined by Gary DeMar of American Vision Ministries to talk about the man of lawlessness. The phrase The Man of Lawlessness is used by dispensational pre-millennials to point towards some future individual during some time of tribulation, but Pastor Webbin has a different opinion on the matter.
00:02:42.840And I'll try to explain this in a little bit.
00:02:46.280In regard to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our synagoguing together with him or to him.
00:02:53.400Again, what is this? I think it goes back to Matthew chapter 24, verse 31. And there's an
00:03:01.960interesting passage in John, if I can remember where this is. John 11. John 11. This is again,
00:03:13.700one of these things. This is what Jim Jordan calls the weird. You know, something just kind
00:03:19.260of thrown in there, and you just don't really know what is going on here. So John chapter 11,
00:03:27.080verse 47, it says, therefore the chief priests and the Pharisees convened a council and were saying,
00:03:33.680what are we doing? For this man is performing many signs. If we let him go on like this,
00:03:39.500all men will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.
00:03:44.760But a certain one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, you know nothing at all, nor do you take into account that it is expedient for you that one man should die for the people and that the whole nation should not perish.0.78
00:04:02.240Now, Caiaphas was probably thinking here, we get rid of this guy and the nation will be saved.
00:10:16.340The papacy was the antichrist and that's, and they, they futurized it.
00:10:20.080We had a little bit of that talk last time I had you come on the show,0.80
00:10:22.740But like, and I love the reformers, but I completely understand what you're saying in the sense that this is talking about, it seems as though it's talking about Judaism.0.67
00:10:32.200Yeah, I believe so. And there is a, I have a, I had an appendix in an earlier edition of Last Day's Madness by a man who finished John Lightfoot's commentary on the New Testament.
00:10:48.640And John Lightfoot wrote up until, I think, 1 Corinthians.
00:12:23.440Some people speculate it was the Roman Empire was holding him back because if you read through the book of Acts, somebody, what you ought to do, my pastor is going through the book of Acts.
00:14:07.500Yeah, so look, so it says here, and you know what restrains him now so that in his time he may be
00:14:13.160revealed. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only he who now restrains will do so
00:14:21.800until he is taken out of the way. So, we don't even have to know who the man of lawlessness is
00:14:26.980or was. We do know that he was alive in Paul's day, and we know that the temple was still standing
00:14:32.640in Paul's day. And so this isn't describing a rebuilt temple. This is talking about the temple
00:14:37.880that was still in Jerusalem. And it's, I think, one of the reasons why this is somewhat cryptic
00:14:44.340to us is because Paul in this letter talks about, he had talked about this already with them.
00:14:51.200So they had already had some background knowledge of this before he wrote this. So he's kind of
00:14:57.280updating them with some, maybe some more details, because maybe they, you know, he found out that
00:15:02.400they, that a message had gotten to them that the day of the Lord, that is the destruction of
00:15:08.580Jerusalem had already come. So anyway, that's what I believe the second, that the man of lawlessness
00:15:15.480is, is he was alive in Paul's day. It's something to do with the temple. And he was, he was judged
00:15:22.140and the temple was judged as well. And I have two chapters on this, much, much more detailed than
00:15:28.080this. In my book, Last Day's Madness, I go through a pretty extensive detail on 2 Thessalonians 2
00:15:36.780and the man of lawlessness. Great. Well, that's really helpful, Gary. Thank you so much. So let's
00:15:41.300go ahead and land the plane now. I want to give you the final word with just, with the man of
00:15:45.680lawlessness, with the rapture, with eschatology, with post-millennialism, preterism, the whole
00:15:50.520nine yards. What do you think, Christians who are looking into these things, like what does the1.00
00:15:57.140Bible say about the end? And what does the Bible say about my responsibility and what I should be
00:16:02.800doing now? What would be maybe a final, even pastoral word to people?
00:16:07.080And this is why I got involved in all this. In fact, I was down in Mexico last month. I spent
00:16:14.140five days down in Mexico speaking to pastors down there. And I explained to them,
00:16:19.720the fellow who wanted me to come down there wanted me to deal with eschatology. And I said,
00:16:25.960sure. And I said, he says, yes, I want you to deal with eschatology. And I explained to these men
00:16:32.400that the reason I got involved in the whole eschatological thing was because of the worldview
00:16:38.680material. The first book I wrote, first series of books I wrote was God and Government. It was
00:16:44.040three-volume work on God and government. Not God and politics, but God and government. That God's
00:16:50.600government is over everything. And he has established self-government, family government,
00:16:54.280church government, civil government. We're to apply the Bible to every area of life. Look,
00:16:58.820this world does not belong to the devil. And what about that passage in 2 Corinthians 4,
00:17:07.920where it talks about Satan is the god of this world? No, Satan is the god of this age. And the
00:17:14.060age is that those who have rejected Jesus as the promised Messiah, in essence, took on Satan as
00:17:22.820their God. There's no neutrality. You got either one God or another God. And so, I told them that
00:17:30.280this eschatology thing has to be settled because it's a hindrance to people because every time
00:17:36.860they see something bad happen, they say, oh, it's got to be the end of the world. Oh, there's
00:17:40.700nothing we can do about it. This has all been foretold in the Bible. And as a result of that,
00:17:46.100I think that's one of the reasons why we're in the mess we're in today. So, eschatology,
00:17:50.600everybody has an eschatology this is another thing i tell people everybody has an eschatology
00:17:56.080every eight an atheist has an eschatology scientists um the everybody that islam has
00:18:04.200an eschatology you can't get away from an eschatology it's all there right liberalism0.81
00:18:09.100has an eschatology that's why they're on the winning side in so many well that's funny real
00:18:13.140quick my thought on that though the your radical i don't know about liberalism you know in general
00:18:17.620But your radical leftists like AOC and people like that, they have an eschatology, the one they actually believe, and then they have a second eschatology, which is the one they say when the camera's on, right?
00:18:27.620So the spoken eschatology is the world's going to end in 12 years because of the climate.
00:18:32.480But what they actually believe is post-millennial.
00:18:35.580The world's going to go on for a very long time, and we're going to win.
00:18:38.420And see, the way they're going to win is they're going to control the future.
00:18:46.380kids. Give us more money. We can handle this world better than you can. Islam has an eschatology.
00:18:52.440The Islamists believe they are on the winning side. Now, Christians say, well, we're on the1.00
00:18:56.720winning side too, and that's the rapture. Oh, okay. All right. That's kind of an interesting0.98
00:19:02.060way to say you're on the winning side. And in one respect, I guess that's the case. Yeah.
00:19:07.460Right. Yeah. You're going to be raptured and you're going to be winning.
00:19:10.600But is that what does the Bible teach that? I don't believe it does.
00:19:14.100Right. The little phrase that I've been using lately, a few people told me, they said, I think that's helpful, is I think the difference between your dispensational pre-mill versus a post-millennial eschatology is to be fair and to not straw man either side.
00:19:30.720To be fair, both sides believe that Jesus wins, that Jesus is victorious.
00:19:36.240I think the difference is that the dispensational premillennial believes that Jesus wins despite a losing church,
00:19:44.700and the postmillennial believes that Jesus wins through a militant and triumphant church.
00:19:54.240He wins in both scenarios, but how does he win?
00:19:56.500Now, R.J. Rushdooney, in his book, The Mythology of Science, which I could grab a hold of it real quick and read it, but he essentially said this.
00:20:06.120God is in control and sovereign and everything, but he put us down here, and it's hard.
00:25:03.500When he was a very young man, he was very orthodox in his theology, and all the way up until one of his Thanksgiving proclamations, reads like it's a Trinitarian perspective.
00:25:15.480But what you find here is that the founders, a deist was somebody who believed that God created the world, and he abandoned the world.
00:25:27.420But if you read the Declaration of Independence that Thomas Jefferson had a lot to say about it, God is the one who is the judge of the world.
00:25:53.000You have to define these terms very precisely.
00:25:56.080And my only point was to say that my understanding of how it's defined, George Washington would not be a deist.
00:26:01.920He, in some of his letters, even affirmed, I mean, he was sent, regularly people would send him sermons from pastors and like, oh, George Washington, would you read this sermon?
00:26:11.780And he would respond and say, I read this sermon and I approve of its evangelical doctrine.
00:26:16.480Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, you got Benjamin Franklin who stood up at the Constitutional Convention and gave this, you know, God governs in the affairs of men. And how could a sparrow fall to the ground without his knowledge and so forth and so on? I mean, that is not a deistic statement.
00:26:39.700Right. These guys, they all they all live within the context of a Christian world.
00:26:44.840This is why I believe what you're finding today in our culture is an attack on Christianity, because an attack.0.98
00:26:52.640Christianity is the last bastion against a full or materialistic worldview that they're trying to push on us from around the world.