2 Thessalonians Chapter 2 Part 1: When the Soapbox Is More Important Than the Soap First Day

(All scripture quoted is from the New American Standard  Bible, © 1960,1962,1963,1968.1971,1973,1975,1977,1995.2020 by the Lockman Foundation, A Corporation Not for Profit, La Habra, CA, All Rights Reserved, unless otherwise noted.)
In 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 Paul continues to address Christ’s coming, the Day of the LORD. As we learned while looking at chapter one, it appears that false teachers have come into the congregation and begun telling the Thessalonians that Christ had already come; some apparently even carried forged letters from Paul as evidence. Being believers struggling under persecution and trial—people whom Paul had urged to remain faithful because God has promised to make things right—this false teaching would have been a gut-punch and tantamount to advising the Thessalonians to give up hope.
“God promised you that He would make it right at His second coming. Well, that has happened, and He didn’t do that for you.” Think Job’s three friends and his wife. Paul writes:
“Now we ask you, brothers and sisters, regarding the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to Him, 2 that you not be quickly shaken from your composure or be disturbed either by a spirit, or a message, or a letter as if from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. 3 No one is to deceive you in any way!”He urges the Thessalonians to not give into a feeling of despair or believe the words of these liars or to be tricked into thinking that Paul has changed his message. Let “no one…deceive you in any way!” And then to counter any “But what ifs” that will likely enter their hearts and minds he continues.
“For it will not come unless the apostasy comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, 4 who opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, displaying himself as being God.” Readers are told here that the Day of the LORD will not come until there is first “the apostasy.” This belief in an increasing lack of moral integrity and lack of faith arose in the intertestamental period within Judaism. That is, in the period between the end of the Old Testament and the start of the New Testament. Referring to the last chapter, those who commit apostasy are those who “disobey the gospel of Jesus Christ” and will face olithros aionion, “eternal destruction”.
This belief in a great falling away before the coming of the LORD is found in numerous Apocryphal and Deuterocanonical writings. Although not considered canon by the majority of the Church today, the teachings found in these writings impacted the zeitgeist of the 1st century. Indeed, you can find their influence outside of Paul’s letters in Jude and Revelation—two texts much younger than 2 Thessalonians.
1 Enoch 91:7,8—which was likely composed over the course of the 1st and 2nd centuries BCE during this intertestamental period—reads:
“And when sin, and unrighteousness, and blasphemy, and violence, increase in all kinds of deeds, and apostasy, and transgression, and uncleanness increase, a great discipline will come from heaven on all these, and the Holy Lord will come out with wrath and discipline to execute judgement on earth. In those days violence will be cut off from its roots, and the roots of unrighteousness together with deceit, and they will be destroyed from under the heavens.”
In the Book of Jubilees, another such book, recognized today by some traditions as canonical but not by most, it, too, composed in the intertestamental period, states in chapter 23:14-22 that God’s people will fall away from Him before the Last Day, and in verses 23 and 24 we are told,
“And He [God] will wake up against them the sinners of the nations who have neither mercy nor compassion, and who will respect the person of none, neither old nor young, nor anyone, for they are more wicked and strong to do evil than al