THE PERSON OF THE "MAN OF SIN"
He is called the "man of sin," and this expression is qualified by another, "the son of perdition."
As before, we search the Scriptures to learn what use the Spirit has elsewhere made of this phrase, and we find it employed in only a single other instance (John 17:12), where it is applied to Judas Iscariot. But how suggestive again of the character of an apostate, for which we have already been led to look! Judas was a minister of Christ before he became revealed as the "son of perdition."
He was not an infidel, denying Christ, but an apostle confessing Christ, to the very end.
Likewise the antitypical “son of perdition”, the Antichrist (the system itself) does not consist of non-believers, but rather of believers, those who have apostatized (fallen or departed) from the faith once delivered to the saints, the true Gospel.
Judas communed at the Lord’s table while meditating his betrayal; he saluted him with "Hail, Master," just at the moment he gave him the traitorous kiss. It is not atheism (disbelief), but hypocrisy, not the open iniquity that reviles the Lord, but the mystery of iniquity that confesses him while betraying him, which we find in this typical person, whom the Holy Spirit sets before us to describe the predicted "man of sin."
We said that he was an apostle; we may add--what may startle the English reader of the New Testament-- that he was a bishop. For not only does Peter say in the first chapter of the book of Acts, that "he was numbered with us, and had obtained part in this ministry," and that one must be chosen "to take part in this ministry and apostleship from which Judas fell," but he quotes the words, "which the Holy Spirit by the mouth of David spoke concerning Judas"--"His bishopric let another take."
Now, here is wisdom in a mystery. For who does not know that the apostasy—the one before which all others in the history of the Church pale into insignificance--appeared when the Bishop of Rome and his successors began to betray Christ while professing to serve him, perverting his doctrines and ordinances by mixing them with Pagan and Jewish corruptions, while yet formulating and defending much of pure orthodoxy.
It was not the apostasy of open denial, but of false profession--exactly that which Paul warns against when setting forth the duties of a bishop, in his epistle to Titus, admonishing him of such as "give heed to Jewish fables, and commandments of men that turn from the truth, who profess that they know God, but in their works deny him."
Was Judas grasping for the temporal powers of Christ in delivering him up, as so many have conjectured in explaining his conduct?
Did he hope thus to bring on a crisis, and force the Lord to assert his kingship, and set up those thrones which he has promised to his disciples, as sharers with him in his reign?
Here we have no intimation of Scripture, and can therefore express no opinion. But remembering that Satan has now entered into Judas, and that he was acting under his inspiration, this would not be an improbable conjecture: for this was exactly the temptation which the Devil set before Christ as he was entering upon his public ministry—the temptation to prematurely grasp his temporal power.
"The Devil took Him into an exceeding high mountain, and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; and he said unto Him, All these things will I give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me." These kingdoms were Christ's by the Father's promise, but not yet. There must first be the cross, and the rejection by the world.
"The sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow," is the divine order both for the Lord and for his mystical body. "Fear not, little flock," he says; "it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom." But to be content to be a little flock in this dispensation, waiting the Father's good pleasure to give us the kingdom in the next, to accept our present calling of preaching the gospel, in order to gather out "a people for his name," and patiently to wait till the Millennium for the universal conquest of the gospel-- this has ever been the severest test of the Church's faith. And the constant problem has been to find some way of breaking over the bounds of this divine election.
The Ritualist, by his sacrament, would bring all into the Church, without regard to a regenerated heart; the Broad Churchman, by a godless catholicity, would include the Greek and Roman apostasies, the Rationalistic schools, and the “Brahma Somaj” in one comprehensive Church; and the Evangelical, by his sincere assurance of "the conversion of the world," would prove by his computations that only a brief time is required before every one will become Christian under the preaching of the Gospel. What are all these theories but an unconscious grasping after a present universal dominion and glory for the Church?
Now, when "the Prince of this world" offered all the kingdoms of the earth to Christ, he declined the gift. Instead of receiving a present throne by yielding to the Evil One, He accepted a present cross and a present rejection, by yielding to his Father.
But what the son of man refused, the Roman bishop, (Papacy) a few centuries after, accepted from the "princes of this world" and from "the Prince of this world." At the price of the spiritual chastity of the Church, he received the temporal power of the kings of the earth, and that shout of triumph, which belongs only to the Redeemer in his millennial glory, was taken by the apostate Bishop of Rome as early as the third century--"The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ." This we believe to be the wicked one of whom Judas was the prototype --a bishop who, while communing with Christ, is consorting with the rulers of this world, enriching himself with their silver and gold at the price of crucifying the Son of God afresh, and putting him to an open shame, through the false teachings of the Holy Mass, the Abomination of Desolation.”
