And that web has many filaments added over the ages. Like the changing of meaning by shifting one phrase in 2Thess2:3, to read ‘revolt’ in the Rheims bible. It had been The Departure in the first five or six bibles, until the Rheims bible changed it to read ‘a revolt’. The definite article was changed, the meaning of the word ‘apostasia’ was changed from departure to revolt, and presto, the catholics condemn the reformation. Then the Protestants repeat the error but change it slightly to take the sting our of the catholic rebuke, calling it ‘a falling away’ in the King James bible. Interesting how God has been able to use even these changes.
Slipping in a pretrib rapture on a thread that is about the antichrist taking his seat in the temple of God?
No apologist for the RCC, but we can’t lay this one on them. When they put “revolt” in the Rheims, it wasn’t an innovation. No commentary on this verse by anybody in church history, prior to the Rheims, understood “apostasia” to mean anything else.
Take Justin Martyr for example, he called the man of sin in verse 4, who would sit in the temple of God shewing himself God, “the man of apostasy.” Similarly, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Hippolytus, Cyprian, Lactantius, Victorinus. They knew the Greek well! Yet not a one of these noted scholars interpreted “apostasia” to mean a pretrib “departure.”
You don’t even have to be a scholar to see what the word meant. The context literally bristles with proof of what Paul intended “apostasia” to mean. The man of the “apostasia” would oppose all that is called God - sounds like a revolt, or rebellion, against God to me. “That wicked” in verse 8, a man of “strong delusion” in verse 11, deceiving the world that they should believe “the” lie, he being that lie.
Enter MHGinTN, some 2,000 years later, to correct Paul, Justin Martyr, etc. “No, no, no, you are all wrong,” he tells us, we are supposed to understand “apostasia” to mean a pretrib rapture.
Incredible, I tell ‘ya, what hoops pretribs will jump through to push their pretrib rapture.
the word apostasia is also used in Acts 21:21. I don’t know which word but the context is very clear.
Also, for all Christians in all churches, Satan is in each. I believe 2 Thes 2:3 is disregarded by the pre-trib theory, interesting enough, and may in fact be the cause of the loss of faith due to the resurrection of the dead and the return of the Messiah not occurring until after the anti-messiah proclaims he is god.